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26
MARK
Rok callsme back as I rush across the hospital’s cool and empty entry hall.
“One of Eva’s phones is off, but the other one is pinging in a location near to where Dino was found,” he says, not stuttering as badly as he usually does. “But—”
“Send me the location,” I say and start running. Brina is calling my name, but I don’t stop.
“It’s in the middle of a wooded area,” he says. “I don’t think it’s any good.”
He’s right, that doesn’t sound good. But the alternative is sitting around going over CCTV and wishing and hoping something shows us where Eva is.
I can do that after I check this.
Right now, I need to be moving, doing anything and everything to find her.
“I just got access to the traffic feed from that time,” he says, just wasting my time now. “Going over it now. But there’s also something else that I think I found. Something you should maybe see.”
“Send that as well,” I snap, hang up and unlock my car.
“Where are you going?” Brina asks breathlessly as she finally catches up to me.
I explain using as few words as I can.
“I’ll call for reinforcements,” she says as she climbs into the passenger seat.
I only wait long enough for the ping of Rok’s message, then peel away from the sidewalk, chasing the blinking blue dot on the map he sent.
That dot is my only hope of finding Eva fast. And even though I know it’s not possible, it seems to be fading with each blink.
* * *
EVA
Hana shoves me through into a dark room and slams the door behind me so hard, the glass part of it rattles and cracks. Through it, I can hear her sickeningly soothing voice as she comforts Anica some more, as well as the equally sickening sounds of more sloppy kisses.
The room I’m in only has the single window facing the driveway and the car’s headlights are illuminating it well.
The only furniture inside it are three wooden dining chairs all facing the back wall. My first thought is that it’s covered with some type of modern graffiti wall paper, but that’s just because my mind is still trying to see this entire house and this whole situation through a lens of normality.
The wall is actually covered with round, childlike multicolored handwriting, and drawings of houses, trees, birds and the sun drawn two-dimensionally the way a small child would draw it. Next to most of the houses, two stick-figure women are holding hands. But one is different. In this one, a little girl is standing between the two women and they’re all holding hands.
This scene was drawn over a long passage of words, so it’s probably new. And the cramp that passes through my belly at seeing in makes me double over from the pain.
What I can read of the words makes me sick too.
Blood will bring them home.
Blood will stop their suffering.
Blood cleanses.
Blood frees.
Death brings everlasting peace and calm waters.
And the rest of that section is just covered with the words calm waters written over and over again.
“No! Stop fussing,” Anica’s high-pitched voice sounds from the hall. “I will have this baby. I will have it now.”
“We can’t,” Hana says. “It’s too dangerous. This is not like the others.”
“Yes, we can’t… we can’t have a baby of our own,” Anica protests. “But we’ll have a baby… hers… mine.”
The door opens and Anica is standing there, her knife once again held high.
“What are you going to do?” I snap at her angrily. “Cut it out of me?”
“Yes,” she says and begins slowly walking towards me. “Then you will bleed out and the baby will be mine.”
That is by far the creepiest sentence I ever heard. Because she means it. Completely. And she sees absolutely nothing wrong with her plan. That much is clear from the crazed, glassy look in her eyes and the even tone of her voice.
I’ve faced some psychos in my day. Men who have done unspeakable things to their victims. But none of those encounters even compare to this one. She’s looking at me with the hungry look of someone who’s about to get what they’ve wanted their whole lives as she approaches slowly.
I back away from her, but only get two steps before my back hits the wall.
“You do this and both me and the baby die,” I say.
“No,” Anica says sweetly. “That won’t happen. I’ll be careful. Only you will die. After you give me your baby. You don’t want it anyway. You wanted the river to take you.”
Calm Waters.
“Stop her,” I plead with Hana who is still standing by the door.
But she just shrugs. “She wants what she wants and I can’t say no to her. It’s a travesty that a single woman can’t have a baby in this country. Absolutely barbaric. And she wants one so badly. She wants to love it and right all the wrongs that were done to her when she was a child.”
Hana’s long gone too, just in a different way. I should’ve seen it. I did see it. I was right, but wrong at the same time. Anica is the killer we’ve been looking for. But I’m sure Hana helped her.
“This won’t be like the others,” I say to Anica. “I won’t just let you plunge the knife into my heart because I want the salvation you offer. And my baby will never love you. She will always know you killed her mother.”
Anica giggles shrilly. “Nonsense. She’ll think I’m her mother. She won’t know any better. She will have to love me because I will be the only mother she knows.”
Another cramp passes through my stomach, followed by a kick from my daughter.
“No, you’re wrong,” I say once I catch my breath again. “Blood knows. Blood is only calm when it is spilled peacefully. You know this.”
I’m inventing wildly here, drawing on what she wrote on this wall and in the letter Hana brought to me.
“You know it must be offered freely,” I repeat.
She’s only inches away from me now, but she finally stops, a puzzled look in her eyes. She looks back over her shoulder at Hana.
“Do you think she’s right?”
And to my greatest relief, Hana nods.
“Get her out of here,” I plead with Hana. “Take her somewhere far. Get her the help she so desperately needs. We won’t chase you. I’ll make sure we don’t.”
I had her for a split second. I saw hope and relief cross her eyes, but I overplayed it.
“That’s a dirty lie and you know it,” Hana hisses at me.
The black smoke and stench of burning has reached this room and is casting dark shadows across Hana’s face, making it appear even more monstrous than her scowl already made it.
“And besides,” she says. “Anica is set on taking your baby… she wants what she wants.”
“Why mine?” I ask.
The only thing preventing Anica from plunging that knife into my belly is this conversation we’re having. And I’ll keep it going forever if I have to.
“That’s easy,” Anica says. “And that’s how I know the baby is meant to be mine. She came to me.”
“How do you figure that?” I ask.
She giggles. “See how stupid you are? Asking all these stupid questions. You really don’t understand anything, do you?”
Then maybe my baby is too stupid for you too, I almost say.
“You’ll just have to explain it to me, won’t you?”
She sighs exasperatedly and rolls her eyes and looks just like a little girl as she does. “OK, fine.” She sounds like a little girl too. “You came looking for me, didn’t you? And how did you know, huh? Because your baby led you to me… because she wanted to find me… because she is mine. Enough talking now.”
She starts moving towards me again and another cramp makes me double over. I think I hear police sirens in the distance, but that’s probably just my wishful thinking.
Dino must be dead and so he couldn’t tell them what had happened. Or Mark would be here by now.
* * *
MARK
The closer we get to the blue blinking dot, the farther it seems to be. And even when we were almost right on top of it, we couldn’t quite reach from the dark, narrow road we’re on.
“I’m trying that driveway,” I say after having to turn back yet again because the road took us too far past the dot.
“You want to look at this video Rok sent?” she asks. “He thinks the witness was following Eva.”
I glance at the footage she’s showing me but dare not take my eyes off the road for more than a second.
“We’ll deal with that later. Now we try to find her,” I say and the words sound very feeble in the silence that follows.
Silence that a few moments later is rent by sirens coming from the direction of the city. The backup Brina called has reached us, even though we had quite a head start on them. That’s how long I’ve been trying in vain to hit that blue dot.
“Wait for them,” Brina says as I near the only path that leads away from this straight winding road towards the damned forest that where the blue dot is blinking.
And I only do it because they’re almost on us, rolling down the window and waving for them to follow me as soon as they’re in sight.
Then I turn onto the rutted and overgrown driveway. Someone might get the fright of their life as all of us ride up to their door with sirens blaring. But I’ll be closer to the dot. And that’s all that matters.
A car with its headlights still on is parked in front of a boxy, run-down house, and my heart starts beating even faster than it already was.
Did we get lucky? Again?
I can hardly believe it.
But then my headlights hit Eva’s face in the room directly beside the front door.
It could just be a mirage. Just something I need to see and that’s why my brain is showing it to me.
But that doesn’t matter.
I run out of the car because I’m checking it either way. Brina is yelling at me to stop, to wait, to make sure it’s safe.
But I’m not letting Eva wait a second longer. She’s waited all day, fearing for her life, while I sat around, doing what? Waiting to interview the wrong suspects.
She was right.
And I know that even before I elbow Hana out of the way and send her flying into the wall.
Eva is on her knees and the greasy-haired lunatic that was supposed to be our star witness is standing over her, holding a huge kitchen knife.
I was so wrong. Again. And it very nearly cost me everything.
No more. Never again.
* * *
EVA
It’s not true what they say. My life is not flashing before my eyes as I crawl away from Anica and her knife, using the rest of my body to protect my belly. In fact, my mind is blank, and it’s hard to move now. I’m almost in the corner of the room. Even if I could get up and run, Hana is blocking the doorway, a leering smile on her face.
“Let’s get it done, I’ll hold her down,” she says to Anica. “I can see what this baby means to you. I’m sorry I was against it. I’m not anymore.”
Anica giggles happily. “I knew you’d come around… I love you so much.”
“And I love you.”
Then they’re both coming at me.
But it’s OK. Mark will find our baby. And then everything will be all right again.
The sound of sirens is still echoing, growing louder.
But it’s just my imagination.
Until it’s not.
Thudding footsteps run across the floorboards in the hall and Hana then screams. “Anica, run!”
But she can’t, anymore than I could a moment ago.
Mark is holding her firmly with his arm wrapped around her skinny neck. With the other he knocks the knife from her hand. It clatters to the floor beside me and I knock it away to the corner I was almost forced into. By the door, Brina has overpowered Hana and is keeping her down with her knee pressed against Hana’s back. That doesn’t stop Hana from wailing and begging us not to hurt Anica.
Then four more police officer rush in, Sojer leading them. “Take her,” Mark says and pushes Anica into his arms.
Then he’s kneeling in front of me, brushing my hair away from my face. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
He’s cupping my cheeks with both hands, but I still manage to shake my head. “No, I’m not hurt. But the baby… she’s coming now.”
“Now?” he asks.
“Get me out of here,” I say. “I don’t want this nasty house to be the first thing she sees.”
“Let’s go,” he says and leaps to his feet, lifting me up gently.
We somehow overtake the officers taking Hana and Anica to the police cars.
“Don’t hurt her! Anica!” Hana screams in such an anguished voice it pierces my heart, despite knowing they don’t deserve my pity.
“Hana! Save me!” Anica screams back, sounding like a child in extreme agony.
And as we reach Mark’s car, I see Hana break away from the officer holding her and run to Anica. I'm sure she wants to shower her with more of those squelching kisses but she never makes it. One of the officers knocks her down into the dirt.
Sad.
That’s what all of this actually is. Just sad.
And I’m ready to leave it all behind.
In a few more moments my wish comes true as we’re speeding towards the city light sparkling in the distance, a police cruiser leading our way.
