The Follower Kate Doughty (general ebook reader .txt) 📖

is clutching her phone, her face tight with worry. “Mrs. DiNatori called—she says that Bella isn’t home yet. She left hours ago, right?”

“Yeah,” Cecily says, casting a glance at the dark sky outside. “She rode her bike home before dinner.”

Mrs. Cole turns back to the phone and relays the information, nodding at whatever Bella’s mom is saying on the other end. Cecily can see her mom is worried, and a ball of dread begins to form in her own stomach. How is it that Bella isn’t home yet?

“Is there a chance—any chance—that Bella went somewhere else? To another friend’s house?” Mrs. Cole asks.

Cecily exchanges glances with Amber and Rudy. “I . . . I don’t know,” Cecily says. “She didn’t say she was going anywhere—I mean, she has lots of friends, but . . . I thought she was going home.”

Mrs. Cole speaks back into the phone. Cecily listens to the muffled, worried voice of Bella’s mom until Mrs. Cole finally sets down the phone. Something is very, very wrong.

“Bella never made it home,” Mrs. Cole says finally. “Her mom is going to go ahead and report her missing—she’s never late. I’m—I think I need to go out and look for her—” She cuts herself off. “I’ll get your father and take the Range Rover; you kids sit tight.”

Cecily feels something tighten in her throat as she watches her parents throw on jackets and shoes. Bella. She feels her breath coming faster and faster as her fear escalates toward panic. She hates that it’s Amber and not her who says, “We’re coming with you.”

“You are staying put,” Mrs. Cole says, in a voice that implies there’s no arguing. In the hallway, Cecily hears her dad putting on his shoes, preparing to leave. “Please. Just—watch the house, okay?”

And then the door slams and her parents are gone. Just like that. The sound echoes through the foyer, and all of a sudden Cecily can’t stop thinking about how large the house is around them, how alone they are . . .

How quiet the follower had been.

Cecily opens her mouth. “We . . .”

Rudy stands up. “I’m going to look for her.”

Amber nods and begins to shove her feet into her sneakers. Rudy runs into the kitchen. “Where are the flashlights? Where—”

And just like that, Cecily snaps out of it. “Rudy—” Cecily starts. “Guys—”

“Don’t stop us.”

But Cecily doesn’t want to stop them. She wants to join them.

“We can use our phones, ” she says. “To text everyone. And also for light.”

“Good thinking.” Rudy nods.

They set off into the dark.

Halfway up the driveway, Amber’s phone pings with a text. “Jada. She hasn’t seen her.”

“Shit,” Rudy utters.

“Relax,” Amber says, but she doesn’t sound convincing. They turn out of their driveway and start walking toward Bella’s neighborhood, scanning the woods with their phone flashlights. Rudy begins to call out.

“Bella!”

“She probably just met up with Miles or something.” Amber’s voice is small. Scared.

“Bella!” Cecily yells. Her hands start to shake. She shouts her friend’s name over and over again until her voice goes hoarse.

The dark is setting in faster now. The light from their phones glints off roadside reflectors, shards of broken beer bottles, the glowing eyes of some wild creature in the brush. Cecily starts to feel cold. What if he is out here, right now?

“Stop,” Cecily says. Rudy and Amber freeze. There, on the pavement, caught in her light. A smudge of dirt on a single red shard of glass. It could be part of a bicycle reflector. Rudy’s head snaps toward the woods and then steps forward, raking his light across the long grass, shouting for Bella.

The light catches on a brilliant, reflective patch of rose-gold.

Cecily makes a choking, sputtering noise, the sound of someone trying and failing to scream. And just like that, she’s frozen.

Amber runs over to Bella, and her scattered light illuminates Bella’s broken body.

Cecily feels the panic again, in her throat, in her stomach. It rises, and she starts shivering, her hands shaking—she wants to vomit—

“Call 911!” Amber yells, but Cecily can’t; she can only convulse. “Call 911!” she screams, louder this time. Rudy is crouched next to Bella, and he’s dialing; Cecily can hear his panicked voice, trying to explain—

And then something in Cecily breaks, and she is finally able to tear through the brush to meet Amber. Thorns catch her hair, her skirt; the skin of her knees cracks open as she falls to them to cradle her friend.

Someone is repeating one word: No. No no no no no. Cecily realizes that it’s her.

Because the moment she touches Bella, she knows.

“She’s not breathing,” Amber says. She turns around and scans the forest, searching, searching—there. Bella’s bike, thrown a hundred or so yards farther into the forest. Strangely far. Wrongly far.

Rudy stammers into his phone, Amber searches in vain for a pulse, and all Cecily can do is stare at Bella, lying below her, leg and arm crooked, knee bent wrong. Shards of bone poke through the skin, and Cecily can’t help but fixate on them—so pale, so blindingly white.

She hears the 911 operator on Rudy’s phone, staticky and distant: “Can you stay on the phone until help arrives?”

Help. Help will be too late, because Bella is cold. Bella is cold and bleeding from where she’s been struck; her legs lie akimbo, clearly broken. As Cecily cradles Bella’s head in her lap, she hears her own voice whispering over and over how sorry she is, how sorry . . .

In the distance, she hears the roar of an engine. And then, much, much closer, she hears something else. A softer noise. The buzz of a notification. And then another, and another. A familiar flood that can only mean one thing.

She turns to Amber, face slack with horror. Slowly, Amber lifts her phone and reads. Her face crumples, breaks.

“What is it?” Cecily asks. When she reaches out a hand for her cell phone, she startles. It’s dye, she tells herself. It’s just hair dye. But it isn’t. She knows that it isn’t. Her hands are covered in Bella’s blood.

Slowly, Amber