The Evolution of Mara Dyer Read online

  But I did know this: Jude was the only person with any reason to want to hurt me, and he had tried before.

  Which meant he must be driving.

  When the car hit a pothole I bit my tongue. Blood filled my mouth. I tried to spit but my mouth was covered: by what, I didn’t know. I sent messages to my arms and legs, begging them to move, to struggle, but nothing happened. I imagined myself contorting my limbs, arching and twisting against whatever restrained me, but I was loose and limp. A doll tossed around in a bored child’s toy chest, powerless to move.

  He must have taken me from my home—my room—while my family slept, unsuspecting.

  What had happened to John?

  Tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes. The texture of the trunk’s interior made my skin itch and burn. The muscles in my arms and legs wouldn’t move, which meant I must be drugged.

  But how? We ate at the restaurant, not at home. I rewound the past hour in my mind but my thoughts were blurry and I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t.

  The car stopped. That was when my slow, sluggish heart finally charged to life. It beat against every inch of my skin. I was soaked in sweat.

  A car door slammed. Footsteps crunched on gravel. I lay there, helpless and hopeless, slimy and miserable. Fear made me an animal and my primitive brain could do nothing but play dead.

  The trunk opened; I heard it and felt it and then realized that I still couldn’t see, which meant that I was blindfolded. I listened—there was water around us. It lapped against something nearby.

  I felt big, meaty hands on my body, which was completely limp. I was shackled by terror. I was lifted out of the trunk and I felt bulging, thick muscles against my flesh.

  “Shame,” a voice whispered then. “It’s so much more fun when you fight.”

  It was Jude, absolutely.

  There was pressure in my head—I must be upside-down. I moaned weakly, but there was nowhere for the sound to go.

  And then I was set right side up, propped and arranged in a chair with my arms behind me, chafing against the back. My knees, thighs, calves ached. Smells and sounds—brine and salt, rot and water—were sharp, but thoughts were difficult.

  My blindfold was slipped off, then, and I saw him. He looked older than I remembered, but otherwise the same. Bright green eyes. Dirty blond hair. Dimples. And two whole, intact hands. So harmless.

  My eyes drank in the details of my surroundings and absorbed them like a sponge. We were in some kind of boathouse. There were life preservers stacked against one wall, two kayaks lying across another, and an old, rusty sign that read IDLE SPEED, NO WAKE propped up in a corner. It was well maintained, with a thick coat of grey paint slapped on, obscuring any flaws. There was one door. Jude was in front of it.

  I scanned the room wildly for some kind of weapon. Then I remembered: I was one.

  It was him or me. I imagined him being gutted, a slash of blood stretching across his stomach. I imagined him in agony.

  “So,” Jude said.

  I wanted to spit in his face at the sound of his voice. I would, I decided, if he ripped the gag off.

  “Did you miss me? Nod for yes, shake your head for no.” His smile was an open sore.

  A sour taste coated my tongue, but I swallowed, and imagined my fear going with it.

  Jude sighed then, and his shoulders sagged with the movement. “This is the problem. I would like to talk to you, but if I rip the tape off, you’ll scream.”

  I sure as shit will.

  “There’s no one around who would hear you, and I’d get a kick out of it once, it’s true, but it would get on my nerves after a while. So what do I do?” He looked up at the ceiling. Ran his hand over his chin. “I could say that if you scream, I will slit Joseph’s throat in his bed when we’re finished here?” He withdrew something from his pocket. A box cutter. His watch glinted in the low light.

  It was as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I coughed.

  “Easy there, tiger,” he said, and winked.

  He needed to die. He had to. I turned the image over in my mind. Jude, bleeding out, dying. I rewound it, again and again. Please.

  “Yeah, that should work.” He took something out of his other pocket—a key. He held it up. “For good measure, remember that I can get into and out of your house whenever I want. I can drug everyone in your family and kill them while they sleep. Or make your parents watch me kill Daniel and Joseph? Anyway, I don’t know, there are a lot of options and I hate multiple choice. So let’s just say—there’s a lot I could do which I will do if you scream, and taking you was so easy I could laugh.” A smile appeared and a wholesome dimple deepened in his baby-smooth cheek.

  I was disgusted by him and disgusted by myself. How did I get here? How did I let this thing in human skin chew his way into my life? How did I miss this? How could I not know?

  “You understand? Nod yes if you understand.”

  I nodded, my eyes brimming over with tears.

  “If you scream without my permission, you will kill your family. Nod yes if you understand.”

  I nodded and felt bile rise in my throat. I was going to choke.

  “Okay,” he said smiling, “here we go. This might hurt a little.”

  And then he ripped the duct tape from my mouth. I retched onto the slatted floor: that was when I noticed there was water beneath it. The ocean? A lake?

  The ocean. I smelled salt.

  Jude shook his head. “Gross, Mara.” He looked at me the way you would at a puppy for soiling a newspaper. “What am I going to do with you?” Jude looked around the room. His eyes settled on something. A mop. He stood up and cleaned the mess from the weathered wooden slats.

  Trying to kill him was useless. He lived through the collapse somehow and anything I tried would fail. Jude realized it, because when he looked at me, he wasn’t at all afraid.

  But even if I couldn’t kill him, I wasn’t powerless. I heard Noah’s defiant voice echo in my mind.

  “Don’t let your fear own you,” he had said. “Own yourself.”

  Jude wanted something from me, otherwise I’d be dead already.

  Whatever it was, I couldn’t let him get it.

  “I asked you a question,” Jude said, when he was finished. “You can answer.”

  He wanted me to answer, so I stayed silent.

  Something hardened in his face and I was glad, because he finally looked the way someone who bound and gagged and kidnapped someone was supposed to look.

  “What am I going to do with you?” he asked again, his voice quieter and infinitely more horrifying. “Look at me,” he said then.

  Own yourself. I looked away.

  Then he came close and pinched my cheek. “Look at me.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “You look pretty good, Mara,” he said softly.

  Please, please let him die. Please.

  “Your opinion,” I whispered, “means very little to me, Jude.” I opened my eyes. I couldn’t help it.

  Jude’s smile had spread. He rocked back in his chair. “I bet that mouth gets you into all sorts of trouble.”

  He exposed more of the blade he was holding, smiling the whole time, and a primal, instinctive shiver ran through me. He raised his hand, staring at the wickedly sharp edge.

  “What do you want?” I was surprised by the strength in my voice. It fortified me.

  Jude looked at me like I was a puzzle he was trying to work out. “I want Claire to not be dead.”

  I closed my eyes and saw the words he left for me in blood.

  FOR CLAIRE

  My bones hurt and my mouth and arms ached from my position. “I want Claire to not be dead too.”

  “Don’t say her name.” His voice was edged with razor blades. But then, seconds later, it was calm. “Are you going to bring her back?”

  He knew what I’d done. That I killed her. And now he was punishing me; he’d been punishing me all along. This was revenge.

  I had no idea w
hat to do. I didn’t see a way out; I was tied up and trapped and I’d tried to kill him before but he didn’t die.

  Should I lie? Pretend I didn’t understand? Or admit what I did since he already knew it? Apologize?

  I couldn’t decide so I ignored the question. “I thought you were dead too.” I swallowed. Looked at his hands. “How are you alive?”

  He rocked forward in his chair this time, until he was inches away from me. I felt his breath on my face.

  He wanted me to flinch, so I kept still.

  “Disappointed?” he asked.

  He wanted me to say yes, so I said, “No.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

  I couldn’t help it. “No.”

  At that, a toxic grin spread across his mouth. “There we go,” he said softly. “Some honesty, finally. Don’t worry, I don’t hold that against you.”

  “It was an accident,” I said, before I even knew that I’d said it.

  Jude considered me for a moment, then gave a single shake of his head. “We both know that’s not true.”

  “The building was old and it collapsed,” I said, trying like hell not to sound so desperate and fake.

  He tsked. “Come on, Mara. You don’t believe that.”

  I didn’t, but how did he know what I believed?

  “I don’t believe that either,” he said. “You saw the video.” He shook his head. “God, that laugh, Mara. Really creepy.”

  “How did you get it?” I asked him. “How did you get out?”

  “How did you trigger the pulley system?” he asked me, moving closer. “How did you get the doors to close? Did you just think it and it happened?”

  Was that how I did it?

  “I heard the levers shriek and then ran to the doors, but they closed on my hands,” he said. His eyes studied my face. “You actually smiled at me when I turned to look at you. You smiled.”

  The memory flickered in my mind.

  One second, he had pressed me so deeply into the wall that I thought I would dissolve into it. The next, he was the trapped one, inside the patient room, inside with me. But I was no longer the victim.

  He was.

  I laughed at him in my crazed fury, which shook the asylum’s foundation and crushed it. With Jude and Claire and Rachel inside.

  “What kind of person does that?” he asked, almost to himself.

  Own yourself. My lips were dry and sour. My tongue was sandpaper, but I found my voice. “What kind of person does this? What kind of person forces himself on someone else?”

  His nostrils flared. “Don’t pretend you didn’t want it,” he said sharply. “You wanted me for months. Claire told me.” Jude crouched next to me, his cheek close to my ear. He held up the box cutter in front of my eye. “This could happen two ways. One, you do it yourself. Two, I do it for you. And if you make me do it for you, I am going to take my time.”

  The blade was so close to my eyes that I squeezed them shut reflexively. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Because you deserve it,” he hissed in my ear.

  52

  HELPLESSNESS AND FEAR WARRED WITH hatred and defiance—I didn’t know what to do or say, but the longer I kept him talking, the longer I would stay alive.

  “They have you on camera,” I said, grasping for anything. “They’ll know you did this.”

  He laughed. “At the police station? Did you tell them it was me?” He took my chin in his hand. “You did. I can tell just by looking at you. Let me guess—they have a guy on camera who was wearing long sleeves, baggy clothes, and a baseball cap. And you thought they’d believe it was your dead boyfriend? No wonder they think you’re crazy.” He sucked in his lower lip. “And let’s be honest, you kind of are. But it does make this easier,” he said, glancing down at the box cutter. “Less messy.”

  He stood from his chair and my veins flooded with adrenaline, bringing everything into sharper focus. I felt wrung-out and picked clean, but my wrists were less numb. My legs were less limp.

  The drugs were wearing off.

  “Why’d you come to the police station? To school?” I asked. Begged.

  “I wanted you to know I was alive,” he said, and I was so grateful just to hear words issue from his mouth that I could have cried with relief. “I thought you saw me at—What’s it called?”

  “What?”

  “Your old school.”

  “Croyden,” I said.

  He snapped his fingers. “Right. You ran,” he said with a smirk. A snake smile, reptilian and cold. “And the precinct? I didn’t know why you were going. But I was—” he paused, considering his words. “Concerned. I wanted to distract you.”

  It worked. “You could have killed me a hundred times before now. Why wait?”

  Jude smiled in response. Said nothing. Lifted the blade.

  Oh, God. “What about your family?” I whispered. Talk, Jude. Talk.

  “Claire was my family.” Jude’s voice was different now. Less harsh. He swallowed and took a deep breath. “You know what they found?” he asked evenly as he moved behind me. “She was so badly mangled they had to have a closed casket.”

  “Rachel too,” I said in a low voice.

  It was the wrong thing to say. Jude crouched next to me, his cheek close to my ear. “Please,” he said, and grabbed my hand.

  And this feeling, this terror, was something new. Like nothing I’d ever experienced—not earlier, in the trunk, or in the asylum.

  “Why should I help you kill me?” My voice was barely more than a breath. Barely a whisper.

  He was close again. So close. Behind me, next to my ear. “You can choose, Mara. Your one life, or two of your brothers’.” He reached around and held the blade against my cheek. Reminding me what he could do.

  And reminding me of something else.

  His watch, his Rolex, the same one Noah saw in his vision, was inches from my face. “Nice watch,” I whispered. Keep talking. Keep talking.

  “Thanks.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Abe Lincoln,” he sneered.

  “Why did you take Joseph?”

  Jude said nothing.

  “He’s twelve.” My voice sounded like a wail.

  Jude’s stare was ice. “A brother for a sister.”

  My hate grew, a formless, shapeless mass that devoured my fear. “You used to talk about football with him at my house.”

  Jude laughed then, and the word that reverberated in my mind was sick.

  “I had this whole plan,” he said, sounding exasperated. “I was going to bring Daniel over for a party—don’t worry, I wasn’t going to hurt him either. You were.”

  I would’ve shaken my head, but the blade was too close. “I’d never hurt him.”

  “Never say never,” he said seriously. His voice turned quiet. “I can make you do anything I want.” Then he sighed. “But someone had to go and be a hero,” he rolled his eyes. “And now here we are.”

  “I’m not a—”

  Jude chuckled. “You think I mean you?” he said, wrinkling his nose and moving closer. His breath was in my ear, tickling me. “You are no hero, Mara Dyer. You’d do anything to get what you want. Which makes you just. Like. Me.”

  Then he moved in front of me so that I could see him. Stood up to his full height. He was broad and enormous and immovable before me. His eyes scanned my body. “Kind of a waste.” He ran the back of his hand down my bare arm, and my flesh died.

  Make him talk. I grasped for words, for anything. “Why’d you take Joseph to the Everglades?”

  “I told you already. And if you’re going to dispose of a body in Florida, there’s really no better place.”

  But the shed—the property was owned by my father’s client. By Leon Lassiter. “Why there?”

  “It was a suggestion.”

  I was reeling. “From who?”

  “A mutual friend,” he said, as he inspected my wrists. Turned them over. Glanced at the blade.


  My family might believe that I would kill myself. After everything that happened, it was possible. But, “Why would I come here?” I asked urgently. Tell me where we are.

  “You wouldn’t want them to find you at home, would you? Where Joseph could be the one to find your body? No, you’d do it somewhere out of the way. Somewhere you’d be found pretty quick, but not by anyone you knew. You took Daniel’s car tonight, by the way.”

  He sounded so proud of himself. It made me want to cut out his tongue.

  Jude moved behind me. Dragged my chair to the back of the room, which was when I noticed that there was, in fact, another door; it was painted the same color as the walls and there was no knob, so I didn’t notice it until he pushed it open, dragging me through.

  “You know, I always thought that once I had you like this, what I would want most would be to kill you for what you did. But I wonder if there might be something worse?” His eyes slithered over my skin.

  I couldn’t bear him staring at me that way. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  He shook the chair and my teeth chattered. “Hey.” Shake. “Look at me.” He was right in my face and he took my chin in his hand. “Look at me.”

  There was nothing I could do. I was alone. My eyes opened.

  But as I stared right into Jude’s—unnaturally dark, considering the bright lights in the boathouse—words seared through me, words that weren’t mine.

  “You aren’t alone in this.”

  Noah’s words, spoken to me just hours before. Noah found Joseph when he’d been taken—by Jude, I knew now—when my brother was drugged and in danger. He felt an echo of what Joseph felt, and knew where Jude had taken him because Noah saw it through Jude’s eyes.

  Noah heard me when I was hurt and trapped in the asylum. I trapped myself, so he saw what I saw through my eyes.

  If I hurt myself now, he might see through them again.

  He wasn’t in Miami, so he couldn’t save me. But I could make sure he knew the truth.

  I bit down on my tongue so hard that I moaned. See me, I wished.

  “Are you going to do this,” Jude breathed into my ear, “or am I?”