54. Utah

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

utah

M emphis hadn’t said a word since I told her what we were doing.

I decided to just consider myself lucky that, rather than attempting to jump out of the truck while it was still moving, she’d opted to move closer to me for the rest of the drive.

For someone who had never seen the house from the outside in the daylight to know what it looked like, something inside Memphis’ body told her very clearly when we were close. The GPS didn’t work in this part of the mountains, and I was following a set of written directions that Indy hoped would keep us from getting lost. When the truck’s odometer ticked off the thirteenth mile from our last turn, where I was supposed to start watching for a very hidden driveway, Memphis tensed up so hard that I was a little concerned she’d stopped breathing. Her brain might not have held onto every detail of this place, but her body remembered it for her; sensed it, tried to remind her that this was the kind of place from which she was supposed to run.

I almost drove right by the overgrown driveway.

It really wasn’t simply overgrown once I looked at it a little closer, though. Someone had very intentionally positioned, broken, and directed the trees and shrubs to grow toward that dirt path.

“How do we know there’s no one here?” Memphis whispered.

A question I probably should have asked.

The only explanation I could offer was, “Indy said it would be empty.” He was the one responsible for the research that kept me safe. I didn’t bother to question it much anymore. When we first started, I was hesitant about blindly placing my safety in the hands of a computer kid who typically wasn’t physically seeing what I was seeing. But the more time we spent working together, the more Indy proved he could actually see more than I did. Being on the behind-the-screen side of this job gave these nerds the chance to think way more objectively than the team member who was standing directly in front of the danger.

I put my hand on Memphis’ thigh while I turned the truck onto that dirt path, and both of her hands immediately landed on top of mine to squeeze it. That path turned into a tiny, barely visible trail the further we followed its back and forth winding up the side of a mountain. Nearly nineteen miles and a noticeable altitude change later, I was looking through the windshield at a house that could have been pulled right out of a Stephen King nightmare. But it was even worse than a Stephen King nightmare because this house was a real life nightmare for Memphis.

I put the truck in park and waited for her to make any move at all that might tell me what to do next. I wanted her to face it. I wanted her to march right up to this mansion of a rundown cabin and own every bit of what she’d survived to make it back out. I wanted her to use that as a building block toward accepting that she was a force capable of doing fucking anything that needed done.

But I couldn’t make her do any of that.

I could sit here and guide her in that direction, but she needed to be the one to get out of this truck.

“Take your time,” I whispered and squeezed the very cold, clammy hand that was still clinging to mine. I wasn’t going to rush her, but I wondered if she could hear the thunder that rumbled in the distance or if there was a nonstop stream of panicked white noise taking up all the space between her ears in that moment.

“It’s—” she started to say and paused. “It’s just a—house.”

“Just a house, sugar,” I confirmed.

I had no doubt that this building managed to exist in her mind as a living, breathing monster that was somehow capable of sprouting legs to chase her through her unconscious moments. Seeing it for the first time from this perspective and all these years later as just a house was a good enough start in the right direction for me.

When she finally moved, she let go of my hand and just barely shifted back into the other seat to put her hand on the door handle. Then she froze again, and I had to wait quietly for another several minutes. I had to scramble to get out and catch up to her when she decided she was going for it though. She jumped out of that truck band-aid style. Ripped it right the fuck off before she could even think twice about it. I caught up to her when she stopped right at the first step of the six that would take her up to the front door.

I followed her up those steps and allowed her to be the one who put a hand on the doorknob. To the surprise of both of us, it was unlocked, but I most definitely stopped her before she took so much as a single step through that door.

“I’d like to believe Indy knows for sure that it’s empty, angel, but I’m not really willing to bet your life on it.”

Memphis stepped aside to let me walk in first, but she was glued to my back a second later and holding onto both my hips like she was afraid that I might disappear into thin air if she didn’t keep me in place. I paused just inside the door to listen for movement anywhere in the house, but I couldn’t hear much beyond the erratic breathing coming from behind me.

“Do you want to wait in the truck until I know that it’s empty, angel?”

Her grip only tightened on my hips. I assumed that meant she had exactly zero intention of separating from me. No words came out of her either way.

I had no knowledge of the layout of this building, and there was nothing under the sun that could make me request that information from Memphis right now. I was considering myself lucky that she hadn’t just passed out already.

The first floor was mostly what I would’ve expected from the main level of any house.

A kitchen, a bathroom, what I assumed was meant to be a master bedroom, and a dining area.

It was furnished, but it was absolutely disgusting. It looked like it hadn’t been occupied in years, but my stomach started doing somersaults when it crossed my mind that these were probably the exact conditions in which Memphis had been kept here.

All empty, though.

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs to listen again and couldn’t have been more shocked when Memphis released me. She walked right around me to start climbing the stairs. For all the concern that I carried about the possibility of someone being in this house, I wasn’t about to interrupt whatever this moment meant to her. I just followed right behind her.