Page 57 of One Night Years Ago

Who is this?

Some instinct made her swallow the words.

“I’m at the station, yes,” she said, not offering up any more information.

Hunter looked at her, a curious expression on his strong face.

“You don’t know who I am, Natalie?” The voice became a raspy laugh. Natalie realized he was using a voice distortion device. Those things were five bucks a piece on Amazon nowadays.

Natalie felt a shiver run all the way through her body. The hairs on her arms stood on end.

“How did you get this number?” she said.

She put her hand on Hunter’s arm and signaled urgently towards his truck.

“You should know who I am, Natalie. After all, we know each other, and I do mean biblically.” There was that raspy laugh again. “I don’t think any of the others will ever come close to pleasing me as much as you did. Alas, I was younger then.”

Natalie pressed the mute button on the phone. She checked quickly to make sure the little phone icon was highlighted in red.

“I need your truck, Hunter. Right now!” she yelled, running.

He ran alongside her, easily overtaking her with his longer legs. He reached the truck before she did and got into the driver’s seat, not saying a word.

The disembodied voice continued rambling. Natalie forced herself to listen, even though it was making her sick. “… the scent of your fear was … intoxicating. Are you still there, Natalie?”

Natalie jumped up into the passenger seat and slammed the door close. Outside the wind howled but inside the truck everything was silent. She hit the button on his cell phone to activate her microphone again. “I’m here. What do you want?”

“I wanted to tell you I’ve got another one. But if you’re too busy working, then—”

“Who is she?”

“Is that really what you want to know? Wouldn’t you rather know what I’m going to do to her?”

“Let her go!”

“I will, I’ll let her go. This one will be like Lanie, though, not like Felicia. You’ll find her floating in the water, perhaps.”

“Please don’t do it. Don’t hurt anyone else,” Natalie pleaded. She silenced the phone again and spoke urgently to Hunter. “Next time I go on mute, start driving, get us out onto the main road. He wants us to go somewhere.”

“And you want to get as much of a head start as possible.”

“Where are you?” she asked the voice then hit mute on the phone again. Hunter didn’t need to be told twice. He turned on the ignition and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The mud made the truck slip, and he almost ran into the fence he and his brother had been fixing, but he managed to straighten the vehicle at the last minute.

“I’m too far away for you to do anything, even if you run to your car now and break all speed limits to get there. You’ll never make it.”

She signaled Hunter and he stopped the car, once again turning off the ignition. He looked worriedly at the road behind them.

“Tell me where you are. I’ll drive over there and we’ll talk calmly,” she said to the voice on the phone, feeling anything but calm.

“I’d like to see that … we didn’t talk much last time we were together. You were too busy screaming.”

Natalie dug her nails into her palms. He was taunting her, she knew, and she couldn’t let it get to her. What happened thirteen years ago didn’t matter. What mattered was what was happening now.

“Who’s the girl?” she asked.

While she waited for the man to reply, she fired off a quick message to Rob.

He called me. Says he’s got another girl. Is anybody missing?