Jenny awoke to the thudding sound of a car door. She sprung to alertness in the awful chicken coop that doubled as a cell. She crawled across the small area inside, dunking her hands in shit and chicken feed, holding her breath while her body tried to make her pant.
There was a small opening between the wooden panels in the wall. Too thick to break through even if her whole body worked, but she could see just a little of the sunrise through it. In front of that, the car they’d taken was sitting in the driveway of the farmhouse.
There was crunching along the gravel. Jenny forced her body to turn so she leaned with her back toward the gap. She was looking at the door as it opened, wondering if this was it as the killer stepped inside – if this was her last day on this planet.
“Time to go,” he said.
“Go where?”
“Never mind that.”
Rushing forward to pick her up, the killer grunted and made the effort to walk with her. Jenny held on tight, once more finding that betrayal to herself in the pit of her stomach. She had thought they were going somewhere in the car, but when they headed in the direction of the house, more questions began to arise.
The killer carried her through the house. Jenny clung on, ensuring some of the chicken shit spread across the back of his shirt. When he carried her up the stairs and tossed her onto a springy, creaking bed, he went straight for the door without an explanation.
“Wait,” she called, desperate to stop him. “You’re just leaving me here?”
“I’ll be back. I just want you somewhere I can keep an eye on you.”
Then something happened. Jenny started to piece things together. As she had been in the coop this entire time, she suspected it had been because there was only one spare room in the house. That room had been occupied by the other woman at first, but where was she now? Why hadn’t Jenny heard her cry for some time?
“Where is she?” she asked.
The killer laughed so hard it sent a wave of fear down Jenny’s spine.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said, still laughing.
“Don’t tell me you—”
The door slammed on her. A key turned in the door. Jenny looked around through panicked breath, studying the high window, the locked door. There was nothing in this room but the bed and an empty skeleton of a wardrobe – the doors and drawers had been ripped open, their contents taken and placed elsewhere. Jenny realized then that he had given her the best room in the house, and by best, she meant the closest thing to a cell.
Then there was the other thing. The cold, morbid understanding that the other woman was gone, killed, wiped from this earth. With nobody else in the killer’s possession, this meant only one terrifying thing.
She was next.