Missing

Published by Evernight Teen ® at Smashwords

www.evernightteen.com

Copyright© 2023 Susan Thomas

ISBN: 978-0-3695-0753-2

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Melissa Hosack

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

For Debbie, with a lifetime of love and thanks.

MISSING

Susan Thomas

Copyright © 2023

Chapter One

My cousin Becky went missing on a hot, muggy afternoon in August when the heat shimmered over the tarmac in waves and the cicadas were so loud, I wanted to cover my ears. It had stormed earlier in the day, but the rain had stopped in time for the party. The weather was like that around here.

It was the day of her sweet sixteen, so it was a big deal. Becky had played to her audience. She was as dazzling as the fairy lights strung among the evergreens, and the life of the party until suddenly, she was gone. She vanished from our lives, even as we celebrated her wild and much anticipated coming of age, without a single sign of what was about to happen. None of the guests had noticed anything unusual. Even so, they had plenty of theories to offer when the police came around.

We had danced and sung, arms around each other’s shoulders. We’d drunk a little too much of the punch that my brother had spiked with vodka. It was pink and frothy, but seriously alcoholic. There would be trouble the next day when our parents found out. But as it happened, that had been the last thing on anyone’s mind.

Becky had disappeared and no one knew a thing. No one except me, and I wasn’t talking, not even a month later when her cell phone was found along a wooded country road a hundred kilometers outside the kind of big city Becky had dreamed about. By then it was too late. I had abandoned her to her fate like the deflated balloons and ripped streamers that had littered the garden after the guests had all gone. How was I to know it would turn out to be the biggest failure of my life?

Becky and I had been inseparable from birth, born only a week apart, but as my brother always pointed out, we were as different as chalk and cheese. I think my parents took some consolation in that. Becky practically lived at our house, her parents being low-life drunks. She would come downstairs after a sleep over in her skimpy pjs and laugh at my brother when he blushed. She was confident like that … beautiful, flamboyant, and reckless, while I was the quiet one, studious. I was loved by my teachers and pretty much anyone who needed a reliable babysitter.

You might assume I’d be jealous, but you’d be wrong. I loved Becky and had assigned myself the role of wingman, charged with the almost impossible task of keeping her safe. I was too young to understand that at first, but our fates had been intertwined from birth.

We were well known around town, and that summer we stayed cool by swimming at the beach—me in my dowdy one piece bundled up to protect the fair skin that came with my auburn hair and freckles, and Becky in a skimpy bikini, long blonde hair swinging to her waist, tanned to golden perfection.

She presided over a flock of admiring boys, most of them the same cottagers that invaded our little holiday town every summer. A couple of them would follow us to the General Store vying for the honor of buying Becky an ice cream. If I was lucky, I would get free cone, but I usually had to fork out for my own.

She’d flounce out the front door, sashaying past men old enough to be her father, licking her strawberry ripple cone and batting her eyelashes at them while their eyes would linger on her bikini bum as she wiggled her way by. It was creepy the way guys that age would ogle. They only had eyes for her, and she knew it. She was like that—hungry for attention, never satisfied with her lot in life. More than anything, she wanted to leave Claireville far behind, even if it was the last thing she ever did. You have to be careful what you wish for.

It was the anniversary of her disappearance, and the story was mainstreaming again. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO REBBECA MAY? The mystery was replayed in dramatic headlines with full color photos. Today was her seventeenth birthday. My birthday was a week ago, but I had requested no celebration, no presents, not even a cake. My mom had clucked her tongue in disapproval, but I couldn’t have handled it.

This morning, no one had bothered to hide the newspaper from me. I may as well see it now, they figured, in the safety of my own home. I could feel mom’s eyes on me as I scanned the front page. My stomach lunched. I threw the paper onto the breakfast table and grabbed the keys to mom’s old VW from the hook by the back door, escaping into the storm that had been lashing the house since the early hours of the morning.

Madison, my mother shouted at me through the screen, but even the anxiety in her voice didn’t stop me. The state I was in, she was right to be worried.

I gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying to focus on the road ahead, but the driving rain, along with the tears I was fighting, was obscuring my vision. I had no idea where I was going, just out into the wilds were Becky and I had spent our childhood, exploring life among the hills and the trees. The wind buffeted the car and the force of it sent me into a mild panic.

It was a bad time for someone to come stumbling out onto the road in front of me, but that’s what happened. I screamed, then did what any driver should not do. I slammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel to the side.

I lost control immediately and froze at the wheel. The car skidded toward the culvert, knocked down a road sign, then plummeted into the ravine. It crashed through the trees, a dizzying upheaval of landscape flashing by me as the car rolled.

I don’t remember when it came to a stop. My hands flew off the wheel and covered my head. Still, I took some hard knocks before everything went black.

When I came to, I was suspended upside down by the seatbelt with pain blazing through my temples and blood dripping through my hair and down from my head. A tree branch protruding through the front window had missed me by inches. Shattered glass was everywhere.

I closed my eyes again, vision swimming and nausea rising at the back of my throat. Down in the ravine I was cocooned from the squall, and the silence was eerie. I would have just hung there drifting in and out of consciousness except for the sound that seemed to rise up out of nowhere. Just a slow tap, tap, tapping against the side window, like a branch in the wind. I twisted my head to the left.

A hand was wiping the rain from the glass, and a pale face peered in at me. If I could have screamed, I would have, but my throat was tight with fear. The eyes were bright and staring, the mouth distorted. My fists clenched and then my fingers slowly uncurled as realization took over.

It was Becky, wild-eyed and staring. She mouthed something through the glass, but my ears were ringing and I couldn’t make it out.

I raised my arm in wonder to touch the window where her cheek lay pressed against the glass. When I got close, she jerked her head away and was gone. The fogginess returned, and I felt myself slip away into another kind of pain. The kind that came with a heaping side of guilt.

****

A rough blanket scraped against my cheek, and sunshine, warm on my face, told me the rain had stopped. Vague images of the accident nudged my thoughts, but then I remembered Becky, and everything came rushing back. The crash, her face, the fear. My eyes flew open and I sat bolt upright, bile rising up from my stomach. The light streaming through the windows made my head ache even more, and I closed my eyes again, hoping to shut out reality. It didn’t. The thick gauze wrapped around my head felt sticky with blood.

As I squinted through my fingers, my surroundings focused and became familiar. The small cabin was one of the rustic getaways I had been hired to clean last spring before the summer influx of cottagers. But now, today, I had no memory of getting there.

The blanket fell to the floor as I swung my legs over the side of the bed, feet touching the floor silently. I was stiff and sore. My ears still buzzed and my thoughts were addled. Instinct was warning me to be quiet. I stood, a bit wobbly, and crossed the one-room cabin to the back door. The scent of damp field and forest hung on the breeze. Through the screen, I could see a man throwing small hand axes at a large wooden bulls-eye.

He was huge, long legged and broad shouldered. He’d taken off his shirt and the muscles across his back rippled with every throw of the axe.

I glanced around. There was no sign of Becky. I backed away quickly, my mind squirming with possibilities. This axe swinging giant must have brought me to the cabin. My gut told he was dangerous.

I crept toward the front door and let myself out with as little noise as possible. My head screamed an objection. The trail that led to the road was overgrown, and I realized too late I wasn’t wearing any shoes. I couldn’t go back. I picked my way through the underbrush, branches snagging at my jeans, and passed my mom’s car along the way. A sweat broke out on my brow. It was a write off, smashed fenders and shattered glass. I clambered up the ravine, muscles tense with pain, and managed to pull myself to the side of the road.

When I saw an old pickup heading toward me, I flagged it down.

It was George Elliot heading into town. He owned the small holding next to ours, and I had known him my whole life. He pulled onto the shoulder and slammed on the breaks. I was at the passenger door before he had a chance to get out. He reached over and opened the door for me.

Jesus, Madison. What the hell happened to you?

I dragged myself in through the door, pulling my torn shirt closer around me. Call the police, I gasped out.

You know we don’t get cell reception out in these woods.

Then take me to the police station. I glanced over my shoulder into the woods, anxiety building.

He stared at me in silence for less than a minute. His homely face was creased with concern.

Now, please! I shook all over.

He shifted into gear. The hell I will. His tires spun in the gravel as he put the pedal to the floor. We’re heading to the hospital first.

We blazed a trail of dust all the way into town.

Chapter Two

No amount of arguing would change his mind, so I ended up in the emergency ward after all. It was crowded and the last place I wanted to be.

George had dropped me off, apologizing that he couldn’t stay. Hospitals made him sick he said, but he phoned my mom before he left. I walked in alone and nearly turned around and walked right back out. There were people bleeding, babies crying, nurses scurrying everywhere. I’d never taken myself to the hospital before.

Then my mom turned up, like a tornado, all upset and determined to take charge. She might have pulled some strings, being a nurse herself, because once she got there, I was ushered into a cubicle in record time.

I sat there having my head wound examined and thorns picked out of my feet. I put up with all of it with good grace, but I kept insisting the police be called. When nobody paid any attention, I got agitated. The nurse must have thought I was getting hysterical, because she sent for a doctor instead. Perfect. That was something else I didn’t want or need.

He entered the room, all calm and professional. He looked too young to be sporting a white coat and a stethoscope, but his name tag assured me he was Dr. Munroe.

Hi, I’m Dave Munroe. He shook my mother’s hand.

I would have been tongue-tied by his smooth good looks, but his coffee breath put me off. When I told him my story, he looked at me with pretty clear skepticism. He didn’t ask me any questions, so I guess he’d heard the nurse’s version of events first.

At least he examined my head wound and took a quick look at my feet. His hands were like ice, which, along with the coffee breath, gave him a clear zero in the bedside manner department. Madison. His voice was kind, but I had the feeling he had other patients he’d rather be attending. He cut to the chase. A knock on the head can cause all kinds of issues: concussion, memory loss, even hallucinations.

Although he was looking at me, I had the feeling this was some kind of not-so-subtle warning directed to my mother.

"I know. I’ve read articles, but…

You’ve read articles… He threw a look toward the nurse.

Was it my imagination that he rolled his eyes?

The very thought had me rocketing off the gurney and staring him down. I had to grit my teeth when my sore feet hit the floor. I wasn’t hallucinating. I wanted to be perfectly clear. I know what I saw … who I saw … and it was Becky. One hundred percent certain, final answer, and the police need to be called.

Madison. Please. My mother must have thought I was