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Cass didn’t know how long she’d been screaming when her strength eventually gave out.
She slumped down to the ground, her face wet with tears, her throat raw from her cries for help. Her entire body trembled from fear and exertion, and she was dizzy and weak.
The sun had sunk lower in the sky, dipping beneath the canopy of trees. She shivered, her shoulders shuddering. If she didn’t figure out a way out of this soon, she was going to be spending the night here. How dark was it going to get? She couldn’t remember how full the moon had been the previous night. The idea of spending the night out here, chained to a tree, while surrounded by the corpses of seven murdered women and the body of the man who’d killed them chilled her right down to her soul. Could she survive a night out here?
It wasn’t only the dead she was frightened of. There were wild animals—black bear and moose, and maybe even wolves. If a predator smelled her, it might seek her out. Her gaze landed on the body in front of her. It might not even be her a predator would smell. It might pick up the scent of the dead body and be drawn in by that. Could she smell the blood? From her position against the tree, it seemed like bucketloads had soaked into the ground.
She craned her neck and sniffed, and instantly regretted it.
The stink of something filled her nostrils, and she turned her face away, trying to avoid it. Metallic, mixed with the earthy odors of the forest. And something else underlying it, putrid and dank. The body. She was smelling the body, and the blood that had seeped out of it and mixed with the forest floor.
No, it was too soon. She had been here for several hours, but she was sure it took longer than that to be able to smell a decomposing body. Or maybe it wasn’t only his body she was starting to smell. Only a matter of ten feet or so away, the last girl—blonde haired, twenty-year-old Anna Whittle—had been buried, and that had been a couple of weeks ago now. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed the smell before, but the killer’s death had made her focus on the aroma of death, and now she was smelling it, she couldn’t stop. It was as though her olfactory senses had honed on the stench of blood and death, and now she couldn’t escape it.
Bile rose in the back of her throat, scorching a fiery track up her gullet. Cass coughed, her throat irritated by the acid, and as she did, a surge of vomit rose. She had no control over her body’s reactions. Leaning to one side, as far as the chain would allow her, she puked a hot stream of the water she’d drunk from the bottle earlier, together with her stomach acid.
She coughed and spluttered, her eyes streaming. She retched again, but this time nothing came out. Her forehead prickled with perspiration and clear snot ran from her nose. Well, she guessed that meant she hadn’t managed to eat breakfast this morning. There certainly hadn’t been any sign of it on the way back up. Normally, she didn’t bother eating before she left her apartment. She worked in a coffee shop, and it was just as easy getting breakfast there. Besides, she never much felt like eating at five in the morning. She certainly wasn’t hungry now either, especially not since she’d been sick, and she was convinced the stench of death still hung around her.
How long would her lack of hunger last, though? Maybe she wasn’t hungry right now because she’d been pumped full of drugs and put through one of the most terrifying times of her life, but eventually she’d start to get hungry. Even worse, she was going to be thirsty. She already had a hideous taste in her mouth from the vomit, and while she hadn’t managed to keep the last drink of water down, she already wished she had something to drink.
Her gaze traveled across the body of the man toward the bag he’d left sitting on the forest floor. He’d had supplies in there. She’d seen the bottle of water, and she bet he had snacks, too. It wasn’t as though he could pop to the local store to buy anything, and she was sure he spent time out here with his victims, enough that he’d need refreshments. A shudder ran through her at the thought. However horrifying her current situation was, it could have been worse. That son of a bitch might still be alive, and he’d be busy raping and cutting pieces off her by now. No matter how bad things got, she needed to keep that at the forefront of her mind. There were seven other women around her who hadn’t been so lucky.
Cass barked laughter at the thought of this being lucky. She’d been abducted and chained to a tree in the middle of nowhere. No one knew where she was, or where to start looking for her. Did anyone even realize she was missing yet? It was later in the day now—she could tell by the position of the sun—but had she been missed? Her boss at the coffee shop would have realized she hadn’t come to work, but Cassandra couldn’t even remember if she’d opened up or not. She was wearing her sneakers, and not her work shoes, so that made her think she hadn’t gotten that far, but her memory of that morning was murky. If she hadn’t opened up, her manager, Donna, would have assumed she was sick or had forgotten her shift, and probably would have called her cell phone to see what had happened to her. Obviously, she wasn’t going to answer. Cass didn’t even know what had happened to her phone or her purse, so would the alarm be raised right away? Or would Donna just leave a pissy message on her voicemail, demanding to know what had happened to her, and leave it at that? Maybe if her purse and phone were found, someone would realize something bad had happened to her, but if it wasn’t, no one would even know she was missing. Her roommate, Lacey, would be at work, too, and she was used to Cassandra not being there when she woke up. Chances were, Lacey would end up going out for drinks after work, too, so might not even notice when she got back that Cass was still missing.
A solid rock formed inside Cassandra’s stomach and sank low. If her boss didn’t raise the alarm, there was a good chance no one would even be looking for her yet.
She couldn’t stop her thoughts going to her family. If she had more people in her life who cared for her, maybe things would be different. Parents who messaged her, or siblings who might pop into the coffee shop to see her at work, and realize she was missing, or even a boyfriend who’d know something was wrong if she didn’t answer her phone.
Her homelife had never been a happy one growing up. Where many people could recall their childhoods in detail, she found she was only aware of small chunks of hers. It was just snippets—like a birthday or a trip to the beach. Things other women her age remembered clearly, such as when they’d had wobbly teeth as a small child, or even when she’d gotten her first period, she simply had no recollection of at all. She remembered her parents fighting, however. Remembered sitting on the top of the stairs, her arms around her skinny knees, listening to them screaming at one another.
She hadn’t always been an only child. She’d had a brother, a long time ago. She was six years old when he died, and he was only three. Just like with the rest of her memory of childhood, he only existed in tiny glimpses of time. She remembered him climbing into bed with her and them hiding under the covers together, giggling at their game, pretending they were in a cave. She remembered how soft and fine his hair had been under her nose, and the way he squealed if she tickled him.
That loss, and the repercussions of that day, had been a black hole in her life, sucking in everything that might have been good.
No, she didn’t want to think about him right now. She didn’t want to think about any of her time growing up. Life was hard enough in this moment without dredging up any of that shit. She’d moved away the day she’d turned eighteen and never looked back. Thinking about it all wasn’t going to help her.
Cass’s mouth was horribly dry. She wished she hadn’t thrown up. She’d wasted the small amount of water she’d managed to drink that day. The rucksack containing the bottle taunted her. She might not have been able to move the body toward her using her feet, but was there any way she could get the bag? It was far lighter than the body, but it was also farther away.
Was there any way she could reach it?
There was no possibility she’d be able to reach it with her hands, but she still had her feet. She hadn’t bothered to put her sneakers back on after she’d tried to reach the jacket with her toes. Perhaps she could hold something between her toes and use it to hook the bag?
Frowning, her lips pressed together, she looked around at the vicinity where she was standing.
The ground was scattered with the usual debris she’d expect to find under a tree—fallen dried leaves, covering a carpet of mulch, which in turn covered mud. Twigs and small rocks jutted out from the forest floor. Moss covered the lower part of the tree trunk, and a couple of smaller ferns grew from where the thick roots penetrated the ground. Overlapping clusters of fungi protruded—some like discs embedded in the side of the tree, and others the classic mushroom shape, like little umbrellas. Cass didn’t know enough about fungi to be able to identify them, but she was fairly certain the ones with the red caps and white spots would have a good chance of killing her if she attempted to eat them. The yellowy orange ones growing in tight clusters from the roots of the tree didn’t look quite so threatening, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Or at least, it wasn’t right now. Who knew how she would feel if she was still out here in several days and was literally starving to death.
She spotted what she’d been looking for—a longer branch about an inch in thickness. It wouldn’t be too heavy for her to lift with her feet, but should be strong enough to hold the bag, if she was able to reach it.
The stick was half buried beneath the leaves and mulch. Unable to use her hands, Cass lowered herself to her bottom again. She stretched out her feet toward the stick, grabbing it between her soles. She gave it a yank, pulling it out from beneath the undergrowth
A dart of movement shot out from behind the stick.
Cassandra froze, her breath locked in her chest. A snake with a tan head and darker brown markings slithered through the leaves.
Copperhead!
The snake’s body undulated in strong, defined movements toward her. If it touched her, or slithered over her leg, she thought she might scream. Screaming was a bad idea, as was making any kind of fast movement. These snakes were known for biting rather than running away, and even though their bites weren’t as venomous as some, she couldn’t take the risk of having a snakebite to deal with on top of everything else.
She stayed as still as possible, fighting her body’s instincts to leap to her feet and climb the damned tree to get away. She widened her eyes, her skin prickling with fear as the snake brushed the sole of her foot, before vanishing back into the undergrowth.
Cass let out a shaky breath. It was gone—for the moment, anyway. She realized she was trembling.
Oh, God, what if there are more? She’d almost poked the damned thing with her bare foot.
No, it was gone, and she couldn’t sit here, unmoving, for fear of snakes. That would kill her as sure as a snakebite.
Blinking back tears of fright, she refocused on the stick. She wasn’t sure she had any strength in her limbs after that encounter, but she had to try. Another couple of hours, and it would be getting dark. This was going to get a whole lot scarier when night fell. There might even be a flashlight in that bag.
That idea was enough to get her moving again. Keeping a close eye for anything that slithered, she reached out with her feet again and grabbed the stick between them. Then, in an awkward, shuffling movement on her bottom, she wriggled back around so she was facing the bag, the distance between herself and the bag now as short as she could get it.
She stretched out with the stick, her lips pressed into a thin line, her muscles protesting at the awkward position. Her back was as far down the tree as she could get it, so she was almost fully lying on the ground with her arms above her head. She did her best not to think about the snake and imagine it moving beneath her. A grunt of exasperation escaped her. She couldn’t get enough control over the stick using her feet to do anything useful with it, and even if she could, she was still too far away by a long shot.
“Fuck!” she yelled, dropping the stick and wriggling back up. “Mother fucking fucker!”
She already felt drained just from trying to reach the bag, her energy quickly sapping. Sweat beaded her upper lip and stuck her t-shirt to her back. With no way of replenishing her energy sources, each attempt to reach something made her weaker.
But she had to try. What were her other options? She couldn’t just sit there and hope to be rescued, could she?
What were the chances of someone else coming along and finding her?