Wavering between what I want to do and what I should do, I watch her face fall. Alone in front of the hospital, her shoulders sag with resignation. She’s realizing she’s going to have to walk home.
Before I can climb out of the truck and do the creepy thing by asking her if she needs a ride, the cop I’d forgotten was still in the lot pulls in front of her. A grin spreads across my face when I notice her face fall even more. Clearly, she’s not fond of the cops either.
With no other options, she climbs inside, and they pull away. This is exactly what I needed, the only thing that will feed what is quickly becoming a new obsession. Keeping distance from the cop car, I follow them out of Haverhill and back toward Andover.
Unease settles low in my gut as I watch the cop car pull up outside of an unkempt house. The larger than normal driveway is an indication that this house has been transformed, more than likely, into several studio apartments.
She doesn’t look back at the car after closing the door, but the officer doesn’t pull away until she retrieves a key from under the mat, unlocks her door before placing the key under the mat once again, and closes herself inside. Stubborn, naive girl. Doesn’t she know how corrupt and dangerous the world is? Did she not learn her lesson mere hours ago?
The urge to go to her, to teach her a lesson about self-preservation lights my skin on fire. The need to show her just how bad things can be if she isn’t careful with her safety begins as a twitch in my knee. I stare at her door, leg bouncing with jittery agitation because at this very second, there’s nothing I can do to correct her behavior.
The world is starting to wake up. Traffic is increasing on the roads as the sun lifts on the horizon, which means I have to wait. I’ve waited all night to see her again, to be close enough to reach out and touch her. When there is only one crappy car parked in the oversized driveway, I climb out of the SUV and bury my face and hands deeper into my coat, more to shield my identity from others than a need to get warm. Heat is the last thing I’m thinking about because my blood is already on fire for this girl. Her carelessness makes me want to shake her until she understands the dangers, or at least until she’s frightened enough to take precautions.
She weighs almost nothing. I could tell from the way the full-sized bed at the frat house nearly swallowed her, so subduing her if she came at me would be child’s play. As if I own the place, I scoop the key out from under the mat and let myself into her space. Just as I suspected, the one-room apartment allows me to observe her from the door.
She doesn’t stir when the door closes behind me. Surely, her exhaustion from last night has taken over, and she’s down for the count, but upon further inspection, I notice the prescription bottle of Ambien on her bedside table.
In the time I waited for the house to clear out, she’s taken a shower. Blood no longer decorates her skin. It no longer enhances the delicate glow of her blonde hair. I miss it immediately. Fighting the urge to replace it with my own, I walk to her kitchen. A purse she wasn’t carrying earlier sits on the cramped countertop. Knowing that she’s out like a light with the help of a sedative, I upturn the bag and pour the contents out.
Two things draw my attention, her small wallet and her cell phone, neither of which I imagine she had on her tonight. Imagining what those guys were planning to do with her after they’d had their fun only serves to reignite the turmoil I felt when I left her there to take Briar home. From my vantage point, I see no pictures, no snapshots of friends or family members. A quick search of her phone, not password protected by the way, provides the same dismal results. Either this girl has purposely isolated herself, or she has no one to rely on. The result, however, is the same. There’s a good chance that no one would look for her if she disappeared. If those guys finished her off after their playtime ended, no one would be the wiser, a missing girl no one would look for. She wouldn’t even be a blip on the police radar.
The realization is both jarring and filled with so many possibilities.
After taking a picture of her driver’s license, I upload a tracking app on her phone, hiding it in a folder labeled “Shit I’ll Never Use.”