Don't Look Behind You (Don't Look Series Book 1) by Emily Kazmierski (ereader iphone txt) 📕

With one hand slung over the wheel, Esau turns to me. “What did you forget?”

“My phone.”

“You grabbed it off the counter before we left. Try again.” Esau’s expression is firm, brooking no argument.

My terror burbles up and bursts. “We don’t have time for this.” Panic has a stranglehold on my throat.

“Fine! Fine. But it doesn’t look like he’s home,” Esau grumbles, leaning past me to study the house’s darkened windows.

“You’re forgetting something.”

Esau’s deep eyes slide to mine.

“I make the magic happen.” I hate how unsteady I sound, but I keep eye contact with him and hope that he reads it as conviction. If Mr. Baugh isn’t home, I don’t know what I’ll do. But I press forward.

Opening the door and slide out of the truck, I zip my jacket up to my chin. The wind’s fingers snag in my hair, throwing it in my face and whipping it against my cheeks. When I manage to get it under control, Esau is holding an extra hair tie in front of my face. Snatching it off his pointed finger, I toss my hair up into a messy bun like his. It probably looks like hell, but at least I can see now.

My jaw drops to the ground when Esau pulls the bench seat forward and retrieves a hefty shotgun from a pair of hooks mounted to the truck’s rear interior wall. He checks and loads it with deft hands.

I swallow a nervous squeak.

“Is that necessary?”

He eyes me, resting the shotgun against one shoulder. “You tell me.”

“. . . Let’s go.” With a rushed breath, I move toward the yard and plow into the needling grasses.

The parallels of this experience and that day at the corn maze don’t escape me as I’m slinking around the side of Mr. Baugh’s house in a hunch, lifting just enough to peek in each window before I move on. Esau was right; the house looks completely empty. The TV sits dormant in the front room. Piles of Chinese takeout cartons litter the kitchen counter. When I dare to try the handle on the back door, it’s locked.

Almost imperceptibly, my pulse begins to slow. I’ve read this situation all wrong. Mr. Baugh isn’t the bad guy here. I’m tilting at windmills.

Then my eyes slide over the unkempt backyard to land on a barn so flimsy I’m dumbfounded the winds battering it haven’t caused it to collapse.

Esau stops me with a hand to my elbow when I start to move toward the leaning structure. “Whatever you forgot can wait. Let’s go.”

He’s giving me a chance to come clean about the reason I’ve dragged him to Mr. Baugh’s house and am sneaking around the place like a burglar with a hot tip about an easy take. But none of this is easy. If I come clean with Esau now, he’ll never understand. The drive inside him that pushes him to direct and control everything in theater has to be warring with whatever he might feel for me. I’ve given him less than nothing to go on, and yet he drove me over here on a flimsy excuse.

I can’t tell him everything, but I still have to try.

“Someone’s been putting notes in my backpack when I’m at school. Threatening ones.”

Esau’s eyebrows go up and his grip tightens on the rifle. “Someone has been threatening you?”

I nod. “And it occurred to me that it could be Mr. Baugh. At first I thought it was Justin, but it turns out Aunt Karen asked him to keep an eye on me while she’s at work.”

“What? Why didn’t she—”

“I can’t explain right now. Please trust me.”

I reach for his hand even as questions scrawl across his beautiful face.

“Lower your rifle.”

The sudden, rough words make me put my hands up and twirl around.

But it’s not the police doing the commanding. It’s Mr. Baugh. And he has a gun pointed at my chest.

“Mr. Baugh?” The words crack at the same instant the puzzle pieces begin to snap together to show the completed image.

Esau lowers his weapon slowly, never taking his eyes off the barrel of the other man’s firearm. “No need for that,” he says once the shotgun is leveled at the ground. “Megan just left something in your car.”

“Did she? Drop it.” He gestures with his free hand. Reluctantly, Esau complies.

“Why?” I ask my favorite teacher.

“I’m doing this for the same reason you are, Megan.”

Finally, Esau’s eyes jump from the man to where I’m frozen with my hands still up in the air like a freaking statue. I command them to lower, and my fingers twitch as they come down. My hands curl into fists at my sides. My eyes dart over the yard. Looking for a sign. Anything. There’s nothing.

“Go on.” The gleam in Mr. Baugh’s eyes turns greedy as he gestures for us to precede him to the barn. Inside, he marches us to a concrete structure. A tack or storage room, maybe.

I look around the cave-like space, once more sweeping for any shred of evidence that she’s been here, and come up empty. There’s no sign of her. I clench my teeth at my own stupidity. I practically frog-marched Esau right into what is clearly a trap.

Tossing a key on a ring to Esau, Mr. Baugh orders, “Unlock it.”

Esau does, lobbing the keychain into our teacher’s outstretched hand.

“Now go inside, nice and slow.”

I start to protest; my instincts screaming at me to flee. If Esau and I go into the small, cave-like room Mr. Baugh is forcing us toward, we will never make it out alive. My hand clamps around my naked wrist, cursing myself. No one will be able to find us out here. No one will hear if I scream. Steeling myself, I ready the muscles in my calves to run. Cut a glance toward Esau, who looks primed to punch Mr. Baugh in the face with his tightened fists. His eyes meet mine. He’s ready.

The feel of cold metal on