CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

“I didn’t realize Hartley lived this far out of town,” Jenna muttered as she drove the cruiser along Freeport Road. She cast a glance at the Stevenses’ home as they passed by. They’d interviewed Amber’s parents there just the day before.

“Seems like he’s kept his distance from the town in more ways than one,” Jake commented from the seat beside her.

“Bill’s place has been in his family for years,” Frank chimed in from the backseat. “Kind of a semi-rural homestead, you know? Never been there myself, though. I don’t think he gets a lot of visitors.”

“Really?” Jenna said, frowning slightly. “He never struck me as the loner type. Always seemed to thrive around people, especially when lecturing.” It was strange to think of the genial history professor as a recluse. Jenna had always seen him surrounded by eager students, imparting knowledge with an affable smile.

“Sometimes the image we present in public is just that—an image,” Jake added, turning to face her. “We all have our private selves, I suppose.”

“True enough,” Jenna agreed.

As she continued to drive, houses grew fewer and farther between, each one retreating into its own pocket of privacy below the St. Francois Mountain Range.

“That’s the driveway,” Jake said suddenly, pointing to a name on a mailbox. Jenna guided the cruiser through the turn and saw a large, well-kept house that stood alone, surrounded by expanses of greenery. The paint on the wood siding gleamed fresh, and the windows sparkled under the afternoon sun. An older model sedan was parked in front of it.

“Looks like he might be here,” Jenna remarked. “Jake, Frank, stay sharp. We don’t know what we’re walking into.”

“Frank should stay in the car,” Jake suggested. “We can handle the initial check.”

Jenna glanced at Frank through the rearview mirror, noting the stubborn set of his jaw. “Frank, it would be safer—”

“Like hell, I’m staying put,” Frank shot back. “I didn’t train you just to sideline myself when there’s work to be done, Jenna.”

She sighed, knowing there was no room for argument. They all left the vehicle, and Jenna led the way to the porch, her senses heightened. The wooden porch stairs creaked beneath their collective weight as they approached the door.

Jenna knocked firmly. “Bill Hartley, this is Sheriff Graves. I need to speak with you.”

Silence greeted them. No shuffling from within, no voice raised in query. Just a stillness that seemed to Jenna to hum with tension.

“Try the door,” Frank suggested, his voice low. “He might not have heard.”

Jenna reached out tentatively, her hand closing around the doorknob. She turned it, half-expecting resistance, but the door swung open with ease, unlocked and inviting. Her eyebrows rose in surprise. Leaving a home unsecured was rare, even in a town like Trentville where everyone knew each other’s names—and secrets.

Frank’s chuckle sounded behind her. “You know, Jenna, this is one of those country neighborhoods where folks don’t worry much about locking up. Trust runs deep here.”

She glanced back at him with a raised eyebrow, not quite sharing his amusement. The lax security seemed more a lapse in judgment than a testament to communal faith.

Jenna stepped into the dimly-lit foyer, her hand instinctively reaching for her service weapon as she surveyed the interior. What she saw was just the cozy living room of an old family home. Sunlight filtering through lace curtains cast a warm glow on well-loved furniture. Sepia-toned family portraits in ornate frames lined the walls, and a fireplace was flanked by shelves displaying antique knick-knacks and a collection of weathered books.

They called out again and received no response. When they moved forward, the adjoining dining room and the old country kitchen all seemed the same.

Then Jenna crossed the kitchen and opened an innocuous door that opened to what had once been a huge pantry. She found a light switch on the wall and flicked it on.

In that room, vintage concert posters plastered the walls, their edges yellowed with age, but the vibrant images of punk bands were still defiantly alive. A glass cases housed rows of vinyl records, the names emblazoned on their covers marking the rebellious anthems of a past era.

A leather jacket studded with metal spikes was draped over the back of a chair, and an electric guitar hung next to a faded band flag—Rigor Mortis. It was an altar to a time when anarchy seemed a breath away, preserved in the heart of rural Missouri.

“Bill Hartley certainly wasn’t the man I thought him to be,” Jenna murmured, taking in the incongruity of the history teacher’s secret homage to chaos and discord. “But where is he right now?”

***

Amber’s consciousness crept back through the veil of darkness, a dull throb pulsating behind her temples. She peeled open her eyes, heavy as if weighed down by lead, and the dimly-lit root cellar came into focus. The kerosene lantern flickered, casting shadows against the stone walls, which seemed to sway with an eerie life of their own.

Then a chill ran through her body as she felt a hand on her hair.

“Welcome back, Lisa,” a voice broke the silence, and she turned her head to see the man who had enclosed her there. Bill Hartley was seated on the floor beside her cot, idly toying with a gun he held in one hand.

Amber’s thoughts were sluggish, scattered. Fear was there, somewhere in the mix, but it was faint, overshadowed by an overwhelming fatigue.

“What are you planning to do?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper, rough with disuse.

“That’s up to you,” he responded calmly. Then he leaned closer,. “You remember, don’t you? You admitted to being Lisa,” he said, a hint of urgency creeping into his voice. “You even told me you’d be Nancy if I wanted.”

Amber’s breath caught in her throat. She had only said those things to buy time, to survive.

“And now, I want us to end this like Sid and Nancy. In a blaze of glory,” Hartley continued, his eyes gleaming with madness. He lifted the pistol and added, “First a shot to your head, then to mine. A beautiful murder-suicide. The stuff of legends.”

Amber didn’t understand. Whatever story he was tilling, it wasn’t her story. She wasn’t Lisa. She wasn’t Nancy. She was Amber Stevens, and she clung to that truth.

“What if I refuse to play this game?” Amber’s defiance surprised even herself, her voice steadier than she felt.

The briefest flicker of distress crossed Hartley’s face, a crack in the facade of certainty. He clearly had not expected resistance, not at this stage. Not when he thought he had crafted the perfect conclusion to his delusion.

“Then … you will … still go out in a blaze,” Hartley said, but his conviction was wavering, the gun in his hand not quite as steady as before. “But I … I will go on.”

Amber searched his eyes for some shred of the teacher she once knew, some vestige of rationality. But all she saw was a broken man clinging desperately to a distorted past.

“Lauren Knox thought she could defy me too,” Hartley’s voice was almost conversational. “She wouldn’t play Lisa for me either. But that didn’t save her. It just left me here all alone.”

Amber’s breath caught in her chest. She understood that she wasn’t the first of

Hartley’s victims. She was cornered in a narrative written by a madman, where the ending would be her death, one way or another.

“Once you’re gone, I’ll just have to wait longer for Lisa to come back to me again,” he murmured, lost in his delusion. His words were a twisted serenade to a ghost only he could see.

Amber felt the weight of her choices pressing down on her. To succumb to Hartley’s demands meant to become an accomplice in his suicidal finale; rejecting them meant that she would die anyhow and he would still be alive. The cruel irony of her predicament settled around her like the darkness of the cellar.

As she lay there, her mind raced, evaluating the bleak options before her. If she played along, became “Nancy” in Hartley’s deranged reenactment, maybe he really would kill himself too. It might bring an end to his cycle of violence. The thought of her captor continuing to walk free, to breathe, to perhaps ensnare others in his morbid fantasy, ignited a fierce resolve.

Then she imagined her father, hands stained with grease from a day’s honest work, her mother’s gentle smile as she tended to their home—never knowing what had become of her. They deserved answers, closure, but there seemed to be no hope for that now. If the monster lived, maybe someday he’d be caught, and at least they’d know what had happened to her.

“Time to decide.” Hartley’s voice was eerily calm, a stark contradiction to the madness in his eyes. He got to his feet, holding the gun aimed at her.

And she did decide. It would be better for Hartley to live on solely in the hopes that her loved ones might someday know her fate. Amber struggled to a sitting position and stared up into her captor’s eyes.

“I’m not your Lisa,” she said loudly and firmly. “I’m not your Nancy. I am Amber Stevens, and I will not be the echo of your past mistakes.”

***

“Attic is clear,” Jenna said.

“Basement’s clear, too," Jake added.

“Nobody anywhere,” Frank grumbled, his jaw set, a testament to their shared frustration.

“Let’s split up and check the grounds,” Jenna decided. Without another word, they filed out the back door, stepping into the sprawling expanse surrounding Hartley’s home.

They split up again, Frank taking the left, Jake moving right, and Jenna heading straight toward the heart of the property. As she walked there alone, she saw it—a weathered wooden door half-concealed by overgrown bushes. The old door fronted a small stone building half-buried in a slightly sloping hillside.

She recognized it from her dreams—that standing doorframe where Lisa had stood, calling through the door, “You’ve made a mistake. She’s not the one you want. Don’t hurt her. I’m here.”

The dream—no, the warning—now felt like a piece of the puzzle clicking into place. Jenna stood before the door, knowing that the answers that had evaded them lay just beyond it. Then she saw the sliding metal piece that had been fashioned to cover a peephole. She reached out and carefully slid it aside.

Through the narrow opening, she saw what looked like impending doom. There he was—Bill Hartley, standing over a woman who was sitting up on a cot. The gun in his hand was steady, pointed at her.

Jenna’s gaze fixed on the captive, a woman whose eyes danced with confusion and fear. She knew it was Amber Stevens, looking disheveled and delirious but unmistakably alive.