I start to run, crashing through brush and the trees.Faster, I plead with myself.Faster, faster.When my foot snags on a root, I start to pitch forward but catch myself in the nick of time.
And suddenly there’s a rush of wind, and the person grabs hold of me. He throws me hard to the ground, landing on top of me, his body a dead weight. I try to scream, but there’s not enough air in my lungs.
I’m going to die, I realize, right here in these dark, awful woods. I’m going to die right where Jess Nolan did.
The weight on me suddenly eases a little, and I wonder if I have an opportunity. I kick, then try to squirm out from underneath, but he grabs the back of my shirt and hauls himself farther up on me, driving one side of my face into the ground. Out of the corner of my free eye, I see a large hand near my head, a hand with a rock in it.
“Please,” I try to beg, but my voice is no more than a desperate whisper.
And then comes the sound of more twigs snapping and another rush of air. Someone else is here, right behind us. I hear a loud crack—a crack of bone, I think—and the body on top of me goes limp, squishing me even more into the ground. Next, someone is yanking him off me. When I’m half free, I scrabble out from under him and flip onto my back.
It takes a minute to see, but then I make out the person above me. It’s a woman.Tori.She’s holding a rock, too, but her stance isn’t threatening. It was she who hit the person and dragged him off me.
“Hurry,” she shouts at me.
I struggle to my feet.
“What’s happening?” I gasp, trying to catch my breath. Glancing back, I see that it’s Liam sprawled on the ground, writhing in pain. Liam was planning to kill me? “Why did he do that, Tori? Is it because of the houses, what I found out?”
She’s close enough that even with so little light, I can see the blankness on her face.
“No,” she says. “Nowgo.”
“I know he killed Jamie,” I say. That has to be the reason he came after me. I lurch farther away from Liam but steal another look. His body has gone limp again, but the rock is still loosely in his hand—a rock that must be like the one used to kill Jess Nolan. I glance back at Tori. “And he killed Jess, too, didn’t he?”
Because why else is he here in the very same woods? Tori says nothing, but I read acknowledgment in her haunted eyes.
“Run,” Tori shouts, shaking her head. “Just fucking run.”
This time I do. I scramble through the woods, and then tear through the field, checking behind me again and again to make sure Liam isn’t in pursuit. There’s no sign of either him or Tori.
As soon as I reach the parking lot, where I’m surrounded by people heading to their cars, I rifle through my purse for my phone and call 911.
“Someone attacked me at the Foxton Fair,” I say. “He tried to kill me. He killed a man named Jamie Larsson. And he killed a girl named Jess Nolan four years ago.”
32
ASTATE POLICE VEHICLE SHOWS UP IN A MATTER OF MINUTES,followed by two others. I bolt out of my car, which I’ve locked myself into, and blurt out my story to two male troopers. As they usher me into the back seat of one of the vehicles, radios crackle, police call out to one another, and then several of them take off for the woods. People coming from the fair start to form a crowd, their curiosity in overdrive.
“No, please, I don’t need a doctor,” I insist when one of the troopers suggests escorting me to an ER. I assume my face is badly scraped, but it doesn’t feel like there’s any serious damage. One of the troopers takes pictures of my face with his phone, just for the record, and another pops his head into the back seat to say that a detective will be arriving shortly to take my full statement.
As I wait in the stuffy back seat, my mind churns so hard it hurts. Liam killed Jess Nolan. Though he didn’t spend a lot of time at the club, he was a member, and he must have crossed paths with her there at some point. He’s obviously a sexual predator, maybe even a psychopath, and there might be even more victims. From what I remember, he sometimes deals with clients over the border in Massachusetts and New York.
And Liam killed Jamie, too. I could tell by the look in Tori’s eyes. Butwhy? It seems Jamie somehow determined the truth, and Liammust have figured out that he knew. Had Jamie perhaps remembered a detail Jess had told him? But why would he kill Jamie the night of the party, when there were so many other less risky opportunities to do it? Had Jamie said something that night that had tipped him off?
And then, as if out of nowhere, an answer slams into my brain, almost fully formed: the DNA test.
According to Sam, Jamie had announced at the party that he’d just ordered one, and it seems likely he would have sent off a swab in the coming days or weeks. Tori had been in the study when he was telling Vic’s friend, and she clearly overheard him and mentioned it to Liam—perhaps even innocently. He would have guessed the police had his DNA from the crime scene, but given his lack of a criminal record or obvious connection to Jess, they had no one to link it to. He must have read, though, just like I have, that the police often use genetic genealogy databases to look for DNA matches.
Even though he never would have submitted his own DNA to one of those sites, he would have realized he’d be in danger if a relative did. Because there would be enough similarities to identify the suspect as part of that family pool.
Where is Liam now?I wonder desperately. Did he somehow manage to escape? And what about Tori?
After what seems like ages, a detective arrives, and I share everything that’s happened and also what’s just occurred to me about the DNA. He asks plenty of questions, and I’m grateful that he seems to take me seriously. Eventually he has a medic from the fairgrounds check out my face, then tells me that I’m free to go, though I will need to come by tomorrow to sign an official statement.
“Will I be safe tonight?” I ask. The cops assure me that both Liam and Tori have been taken into custody.
By the time I stagger to my car, after declining a ride from the police, it’s close to ten, the fair gates have closed, and the only remaining vehicles belong to law enforcement. My hands tremble as I maneuver out of the parking lot, and I keep my speed to a max of thirty most of the way back.
