The Follower by Kate Doughty (ebook reader with built in dictionary TXT) 📕

And I took care of him. And then you.” She turns her gun on Rudy, and Amber has the awful thought that she is eyeing him as if to figure out where a shot will hurt the most.

“Please,” Rudy says. “We’ll leave, we’ll—”

“You missed your chance to leave,” Reena says. “Too late! Too bad, oh no, so sad.” She looks at them with wide, alert eyes. “There is nothing innocent about this family. I know it. After all, I’ve been following you.”

CHAPTER 33

Cecily

Reena gestures at the triplets with her gun. Cecily flinches back, and Reena sneers at her. “Why don’t we go up to my bedroom, since you seem to like it so much?”

“Your bedroom?” Amber echoes. “The—the attic?”

“Where I was forced to squat?” Reena asks. “No.”

Cecily is quiet. She knows where they are going.

Reena’s eyes land on Joseph. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll be back for you, if you’re still here. Ruining my kitchen. Rude. Making a mess. Daddy hates it when you make a mess.”

Reena levels the gun at Rudy and gestures for the three of them to ascend the stairs. The staircase is covered in stock photos that Mrs. Cole had put up for the renovation—happy, laughing families. Cecily doesn’t know how she’s moving. It feels like someone else is in her body, walking up flight after flight of stairs, past the bedrooms on the second, then the third floor . . .

Reena pauses near the bedroom that Rudy painted. She shakes her head and locks eyes with Cecily’s brother. “This is when I knew I would kill you. And you’d be dead by now, from a fatal allergic reaction, if you hadn’t lied on the internet about your weakness.”

Reena’s voice shifts cadence as they climb, changing, becoming more . . . Reena. Up here, it is more stringy, more shaky, more unhinged. She seems . . . jumpy, as if she’s looking for Alex Grable in every shadow. Her face, too, has changed—but it hasn’t grown taut with anger or adrenaline or fear as Cecily would have expected it to, for what Reena is about to do. No—Reena’s face has softened. She looks almost . . . childlike, in both her control of the triplets and her fear of Alex. She was so young when Alex died. Cecily tries to picture Alex, hanging out the window, looking at her mother, and the small yet powerful hands of Reena on her back . . .

As they climb the flight to the turret, Reena actually starts . . . humming. A lilting tune, the same one they’d heard on the tape. All Cecily can think of are the lyrics:

Flying and falling and gone; flying and falling and gone—

When they reach the turret, Reena’s eyes are glued to the blank blue walls. “You erased her,” she says. “Mom. You erased all of her.”

Her voice has ratcheted up, spiked an octave. She sounds exactly like the tape.

“Father’s desk, too. Entitled, entitled.”

Reena forces them inside the room and stands in front of the doorway, blocking their exit. This is exactly where they were standing when they’d livestreamed, Cecily thinks. Only this time, there is no audience. Only Reena.

Next to her, Amber is pale and silent. Cecily had seen her sister; she knows that the livestream has to be recording in her pocket—but no one has come.

She is consumed by fear. The weight of Reena’s gaze is paralyzing.

“Well?” Reena asks, looking to Cecily. “Did you enjoy my bedroom?”

Her eyes—they’re so intense, so frighteningly blue. Cold like the sky in winter. Cecily tries to find her words. “It’s . . . it’s lovely,” she stammers.

“Wrong answer,” Reena snaps. “It’s not for you. It’s mine.” She pauses. “You’re afraid. Alex looked that scared, too. Before she flew.”

Reena looks toward the window. “It’s time for another game,” she says. “Who becomes the first shooting star?”

Amber steps forward and whips her phone out of her pocket. “W-wrong,” she says. To Cecily, it sounds like Amber’s voice is made of fear. “You’re the one with the choice. I’ve been livestreaming this whole time. Our followers know who you are; they’ve called the police. It’s over. You should run while you can.”

Reena reaches for her pocket and checks her own phone for notifications. She keeps the gun leveled at the triplets. And Cecily hates so, so much that she doesn’t allow herself to hope, doesn’t believe that Amber’s idea could possibly work—because it hasn’t. No one is here.

“So you have. Smarter than I gave you credit for,” Reena says, but when she looks up at Amber, she’s smiling. “But let’s read the comments, shall we?” She gestures toward Amber’s phone with her gun. “Go on. I said read. Read them to me.”

Amber takes a shaky breath and reads.

“‘This is so fake.’ ‘There’s no way.’”

Cecily watches as her sister raises up a hand to cover her mouth. Amber’s voice breaks as the last traces of hope drain from her face.

“They deserve—deserve it anyway.

No one would believe this.”

A shaky breath. Their followers don’t believe them. No one is coming.

“It’s just a—just another stunt.

B—bad acting.”

Her voice chokes then trails off. Beside her, Cecily hears Rudy’s frantic intake of breath. Cecily wants to go to her sister so badly, but Reena is still standing there, gun raised on Amber.

“I’m not worried,” Reena says, her voice cool. “How does it feel to be abandoned? It’s funny, all those followers and no one seems to care if you live or die.”

Amber doesn’t answer. Cecily’s head is spinning.

Reena turns to Cecily. “But first, I want everyone to know exactly what I’ve done.”

Cecily isn’t sure at first what the madwoman is talking about, until she gestures to her own eye. “They’ve been asking to see it. That beautiful, beautiful eye.” She jerks her gun at Amber. “Film it.”

Cecily feels her heart pound harder in her chest. The gun is back on her.

“Do it. Do it now.”

Tears are running down Amber’s face as she turns her camera toward Cecily. Cecily wants to tell her that it’s all right, that it’s okay, that she doesn’t blame her—but Reena