I slammed into the backside of one of the girls, knocking her to the ground and toppling headlong with her.
Dizzily, I used my scratched-up palms to lift myself off the girl. She was on her back now looking up at me, crab-crawling backwards away from me. Her eyes wide as saucers.
She’s looking at me like I’m the boogeyman…
“Don’t hurt us. It was only a joke!” whined the girl, her voice nasal and scared. Looking at her close up, it became apparent that she was only twelve or thirteen. Just a baby.
Another girl stepped out from between two trees. Her hair was long and dark brown, all the way to her waist. She had both hands on her hips. Unlike the other girl, she looked closer to being a woman than a child.
“Don’t try anything,” she warned. “The cops are already on their way.”
She held up her cell phone triumphantly.
Chapter Twelve
“Their parents are on their way to get them. What were you thinking … chasing two young girls in the dark?”
I stared at Nash Winslow’s face, still shaken by its familiarity.
I’d never had any run-ins with Officer Winslow before, but I felt like I’d seen him a thousand times … over and over again in my memory. But it wasn’t him in my memories—it was his father, working the case out there in the field.
“You look just like your dad,” I said, softly. It was a strange response to his question, but I was still out of breath and shaken up. Seeing the spitting image of his father in my field had brought back so many memories, and not particularly good ones.
“Did you meet him when he worked the case?” Nash squinted his eyes at me.
I nodded, circling back to memories of his father. Hands on his hips like a cowboy from the Wild West, as he broke the news to my parents that the lumpy mass in the field was indeed a real human girl.
“You’re lucky their parents don’t want to press charges.”
I was sitting on the front porch step of the farmhouse, ratty old robe wrapped tightly around me as I shivered and shook. I glanced over at the girls. They were huddled together at the edge of the field, tennis shoes slapping the edge of the gravel drive, as they waited for their parents to get here. The older one had given her jacket to the younger. They were shivering, the youngest girl’s face snotty with tears. She had a few scrapes and bruises from our tussle, but nothing major.
“What about me, huh? They were trespassing. And they left that stupid note and dummy in … in the same place Jenny was… What was I supposed to think when I followed them? I didn’t realize they were only kids. The note was threatening … did you read it?”
Nash sighed, then nodded. His hair was scruffy and brown like his father’s, those same deep-set hazel eyes … and as much as I hated to admit it, as a young girl, I’d been attracted to the rough and tough policeman who visited our property dozens of times that year… What would Nash think if he knew I’d had a crush on his late father?
Looking into his son’s face, my cheeks burned with embarrassment.
“You’re right. They shouldn’t have been here. What they did was wrong and I’m sure their parents will deal with them accordingly. Do you want to press charges?”
I glanced over at the girls, then shook my head.
“Who are they anyway? I’ve been back here for ten years and I’ve never seen them. Of course, I don’t know many kids around here anymore…”
Nash’s eyes settled back on me. “Amanda Butler and Cally Kells. Middle school students at Austin Junior. My guess is that this was some sort of dare, but they’re not talking. I’m certain that they stole the dummy from a supply closet in the nursing station at school.”
Cally looked young and frail, wispy white strands of hair stuck like glue to the corners of her mouth. Her eyes and nose were red—from the crying or the cold, I wasn’t sure.
“I didn’t mean to scare the girl, but I didn’t know who was out there.”
As though she had heard, the older girl—Amanda—raised her eyes to meet mine. There was something familiar about them—dark, determined, challenging…
If looks could kill, I thought drably.
“Dammit.” Nash lifted his head to the wind, listening. There was a crow in the distance; it fluttered from one tree to the next with a warning caw.
“What?” I said, standing up. Still cinching closed my embarrassingly dirty robe.
The whir of engines in the distance.
“The parents?” I asked, leerily.
“Nah, the press. I’d bet money on it.”
“Fuck me…” I looked over at the girls. Cally’s weepy eyes were now wide and glistening. Amanda flashed a triumphant smile at me. Once again, I felt like I knew that face … those eyes, that smile…
“Who called—” But before I could finish my question, news vans were whipping into the gravel lot. The girls were on their feet now, both wearing innocent, wimpy expressions.
I rolled my eyes. “Do I have to stay out here?”
Nash’s hands were on his hips as he glared at the reporters.
“Nah. Go on in.”
But a young red-haired reporter was already out of the van, trying to flag me down as I pushed my way through the door.
I looked her straight in the face, my hair and face crazed I’m sure, and said, “They trespassed.”
Back inside, I shivered from head to toe as I changed out of my robe and put on jeans and a heavy gray sweatshirt. A chill had settled over me; I couldn’t warm up no matter how hard I tried, as though there were a block of ice settling over my bones.
Thirty minutes later, I was sitting at the kitchen table, still shell-shocked, when there was a gentle knock at the
