Endurance - Jack Kilborn [101]
But now she knew different.
“You killed him,” she whispered.
Cam didn’t say anything.
“Did you kill your friend, Cam?”
“I blamed it on a stranger. Said I was locked in the closet. I think the police suspected me, but no one could prove anything. I wore gloves. Brought along an extra set of clothes.”
“Why?” Kelly asked, backing away. She really didn’t want to know. She just wanted some time to get some distance between them.
“To see if I could get away with it. And I did. But even after he died, I could still hear his screams. They were so loud, I couldn’t sleep. I tried to kill myself, but the screaming still wouldn’t go away. So I did it again, with someone else. In the institution. I thought maybe if I killed another person, my friend would have some company, and finally shut the fuck up. But that didn’t work either. So now I’m thinking something else.”
He’s a psycho. He’ll need to run.
But Kelly was too frightened to move.
“What are you thinking, Cam?” Kelly asked, her voice cracking.
Cam pulled a scalpel from his back pocket. “I’m thinking third time is a charm.”
He lunged at her, grabbing Kelly’s arm, poking her in the shoulder with the blade.
Kelly screamed like she’d never screamed before in her life.
“That’s how he screamed,” Cam said.
Then he poked her again.
Deb, who’d been in a dozen triathlons and three marathons, had never been so tired. They’d spent the entire night calling for Letti’s daughter, and she was practically hoarse. Each step she took was agonizing. Without the gel socks, her prosthetics chafed at her skin. It felt like everything below her pelvis was one giant blister, getting rubbed with sand.
Mal looked equally dishevelled. She knew how traumatic losing a limb was, both physically and emotionally. That he’d managed to keep going, and even retain a sense of humor, showed Deb what a hell of a guy he really was.
He’d noticed her grimacing earlier, and had offered to shoulder her suitcase with her extra legs in it.
“I don’t need you to give me a hand,” Deb had told him.
Mal had laughed at that, and when Deb realized what she said, she was mortified.
“It’s okay. It makes up for my gotten off on the wrong foot comment when we met.”
And he took her bag. Just lost a limb, and he took her bag.
If we get out of this alive, I may have to rethink my no dating rule
Letti was the one who appeared most distraught of all. She continued pushing forward, even with a drastic limp, stopping every minute to shout her daughter’s name.
Deb knew it was counterproductive at this point. Kelly wasn’t answering. And undoubtedly both that cougar, and the remainder of Eleanor’s wacko family, could locate them without much difficulty. But neither she nor Mal told Letti to stop.
If it was my kid, I wouldn’t stop either.
Deb had no idea how far they’d travelled, because the woods all looked the same. It became a little easier as the sun came up, but after so many trees and rocks it all just blended together.
“At least it’s a pretty view,” Mal said, coming up beside Deb. “Check out those mountains.”
Deb rolled her eyes. “If you’ve seen one mountain, you’ve seen… oh my God.”
“What?”
“I have seen this mountain. I’ve seen this mountain, from this very spot.”
Deb stopped, looking around. She knew, as long as she lived, she’d always remember this spot.
This is where the mountain lion attacked me. I crawled through this area, with two broken legs.
“What are you saying, Deb?”
“Up ahead, just around that bend. The cliff.”
“The one you…?”
“Yeah.”
“So there’s a road around here. Right?”
Deb shook her head. “I had a Jeep. I’d taken it down a trail. The trail is two miles away, but the main road is five more miles.”
“Seven miles? That’s a long hike. Do you think you can still find the trail?”
“I don’t have to. After my accident, the county built a lookout platform on top of the mountain I fell from. There might be someone there right now. If not, they for sure have