10.2
“Dean.”
It was a breathy, feminine whisper, hanging in the darkness above me.
“Please, Dean. Please wake up.”
There was a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently, trying to pull me up from the depths of sleep. I resisted. I kept my eyes shut and rolled away from the voice, burying my face in the pillow. It was warm there, inside the pillow.
Inside the pillow, there was nothing but heat and sleep and dreams.
“Where is she, asshole? What have you done?”
Mac grabbed the back of my sweatshirt and pulled me off the bed. The sweatshirt ripped at the seams, and I fell to the carpeted floor. My right elbow hit the ground hard, numbing my entire arm.
“What the fuck?” I gasped, pushing the question out through gritted teeth.
He grabbed me by the hair and pulled me across the room, my feet scrambling beneath me as I tried to relieve the pressure on my scalp. He pushed me up against the wall and wrapped his fist around my neck. His thumb dug into my windpipe, making my eyes water; I saw his bearded, frenzied face through a blur of pain. There were tears in his eyes. The muscles in his jaw trembled with seething emotion.
We were alone in the room. Taylor was gone.
“Where is she?” Mac yelled, spraying saliva across my face. “Where the fuck did she go?”
“I… I don’t know,” I managed, my voice a thin croak, barely making it past his clenched fist. I thought he meant Taylor. Did she flee? I wondered. Why? Was it because of our night with Danny? The sex had been dizzying, overwhelming, and I didn’t know what to think of it myself. Or is it because I touched her?
“Mac! Mac! What the fuck are you doing?” It was Sabine’s voice, coming from the hallway.
Without taking his eyes off me, he raised his free hand, waving a crumpled piece of paper toward the door. “She’s gone,” he growled. “And this little piece of shit’s responsible.”
“Calm down,” Sabine said. “Let him go.” Her voice was placating but firm. She moved into my line of sight, pushing her hands up against Mac’s chest, trying to get him to relax his grip.
I was quickly losing my vision; the edges of the world contracted inward, like an aperture sliding shut over my eyes.
“I said let… him… go!” Sabine yelled. She threw her body forward, slamming hard into Mac’s chest and knocking him backward. My head snapped forward as he lost his grip on my throat.
As soon as he let go, I sucked in a great big gulp of air. The rush of oxygen set my sight spinning. My head felt like an over-inflated balloon, ready to float up toward the ceiling. Then my knees buckled, and I slid down to the floor. As I gasped for breath, Sabine stepped out in front of me, holding her hands out toward Mac.
He kept coming after me, but each time he took a step forward, Sabine pushed him back. His frenzied eyes darted back and forth between us, but he seemed reluctant to turn his anger against Sabine.
“Calm down,” she said. Mac took another step forward, and she once again pushed him back. “Calm the fuck down!”
“What’s going on?” Floyd asked. I turned and saw him standing in the doorway. He was rubbing his eyes and yawning. “What time is it?”
Sabine gave Mac one last push, and the strength left his legs. He collapsed to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. His shoulders slumped forward into a defeated slouch. “Look after him, Floyd,” Sabine said. “Keep him away from Dean. Sit on him if you have to.”
Sabine crouched down at my side. She stared into my eyes for a bit, a concerned look on her face. “You still there, Dean? Everything okay?”
I tried to speak, but my voice got caught in my throat. I swallowed, pushing saliva over my freshly damaged larynx, and tried again. “Yeah,” I croaked. “But I won’t be singing… in no choir… anytime soon.”
I glanced over her shoulder and noticed Charlie standing in the open doorway. His eyes were wide, and he wasn’t moving. He looked like a statue, a marble effigy carved into the threshold.
“What the hell was that, Mac?” Sabine growled, turning on her heels. “What the fuck did you think you were doing?”
Mac was sitting like a forlorn lump on the edge of the bed, his eyes pointed down at his stocking feet. Floyd was sitting next to him. There was a piece of paper in Floyd’s hand: the crumpled sheet Mac had been waving around. Floyd started to read aloud: “There’s something I need to do, someplace I need to be. I know you don’t understand. I’m sorry, Amanda.”
After he heard Amanda’s words, Mac’s head shot up, the anger suddenly back in his eyes. “It’s all his fault,” he said, nodding toward me. “They’ve been sneaking around. He’s been feeding her delusions. Fucking wolves, my ass! He’s been telling her all of the things she wants to hear!”
“Amanda’s gone?” Sabine asked, in surprise. “When? When did she leave?”
“She was gone when I woke up. At first, I thought she was just getting food or making coffee, but then I saw the note. Her boots and jacket are gone, but the rest of her stuff is still here.”
“Maybe it’s nothing,” Sabine said. “Maybe she just went out for a walk.”
A cold, bitter smile appeared on Mac’s lips. His eyes remained fixed on my face. “Tell us where she went, Dean. Tell us where you made her go.”
His voice was scary calm. If his earlier assault had been an act of thoughtless passion, this new voice… this new voice promised cold-blooded, premeditated murder.
“I might know,” I croaked, looking away from Mac’s angry eyes. “There’s a place she wanted to go.”
We found her clothing in the park, near the mouth of the tunnel. Each garment was folded and stacked in a neat pile: jacket, sweatshirt, jeans, long underwear, panties, and socks. Her boots stood on either side of the stack like perfectly matched bookends.
As soon as it came into view, Mac darted ahead and knelt down by the pile of clothing. He quickly sorted through the entire stack, carefully lifting and turning each neatly squared garment, as if he were expecting to find Amanda hidden inside some random fold. When he reached the bottom of the pile, he glanced up and stared fixedly at the mouth of the tunnel. There was a line of perfect footprints leading into the darkness.
“No way,” Floyd said, taking a startled step back as soon as he saw the dark hole in the side of the hill. “There’s no way I’m going into that fucking hole!”
“You don’t have to,” I said, my voice low, a damaged rumble. “You can stay out here if you like.”
Sabine reached out and put a comforting hand on Floyd’s shoulder, at the same time flashing me a confused look, surprised at the vehemence of his reaction. Charlie stayed back near the copse of trees, a good dozen feet away.
It was just the five of us.
I’d searched the entire house before we left, but it looked like Taylor had performed another one of her early-morning vanishing acts; she must have left sometime before dawn, as I lay asleep in her bed. And what was that about? I wondered. Why was she constantly disappearing without word or explanation? Frankly, it was starting to piss me off. Maybe it was my fault; maybe I’d scared her away. But after our night with Danny—and I blushed briefly at that thought—it felt like she was toying with me, using me to slake her own inscrutable desires, then disappearing as soon as I needed her leadership and support.
She would have been able to keep Mac in check, I told myself. She would have gotten to the bottom of this.