Page 59 of Ask for Andrea

Brecia didn’t mince her words as she curled up next to April on the quilted, sagging bed and got right up next to her ear.

“When you wake up, you need to find a way to take the girls and get the hell out of here. You can’t wait. He’s going to kill them. He’s going to kill you, too. Just like he killed me.” She paused for a second then said, “I’m Brecia, by the way. And I’ve been following him—and you—for the past two years. Do you remember the nights he came home late from ‘work?’ The story you read about the girl who was murdered right by your hometown in Utah. The girl police are asking him about. Remember the photo Nina sent you. Do you remember—”

That was as far as she got. April’s eyes had been twitching back and forth the whole time she talked, in the dim light from the little bedroom window. Then, suddenly, she was sitting upright in bed, crying and stumbling out of the covers, flailing to find her phone on the nightstand.

The phone wasn’t there. She backed into the corner of the room, staring at James’s still form, breathing hard and swiping at her eyes.

“Damn,” Meghan whispered, turning toward Brecia and me. “That worked fast.”

Brecia was still staring at April. “I can’t believe I could have been doing that the whole time. I never thought …”

I stepped forward and took her hand, just like I’d done with Meghan a few minutes earlier. I knew, even before I touched her hand, that she was headed down a rabbit hole of what ifs. That if she’d somehow figured this out earlier, she could have stopped him.

“No,” I told her. “No. Don’t carry that. It won’t do her any good.” I nodded at April, who was carefully shutting the bedroom door behind her and padding into the hallway. “Come on, let’s go.”

I’d hoped that April would be wrapping the girls up into blankets. That she’d tuck their sleepy little bodies into the minivan, find the keys, and drive until she found the police. That they’d all arrive back here before it was even light outside. Before he knew what was happening.

Instead, she sank to the floor next to their bed, staring at the creepy-ass teddy bears on the quilt in the darkness. Tears were still streaming down her cheeks, glinting silver in the wash of moonlight through the window. She sat on the floor with her hands clasped tight in her lap, shaking her head.

The three of us sat down next to her on the floor. It was impossible to know what she was thinking or how Brecia’s words had made their way into her dreams.

I was glad it had been enough to get her out of bed.

I just hoped it was enough to finally wake her up.

41. MEGHAN

Cascade, Idaho

Around 4:00 a.m., April finally wiped her eyes, tucked the creepy bear quilt around the girls’ shoulders, then climbed back into bed.

I felt my last bright inklings of hope slip away from me, into the darkness beyond the closed bedroom door.

It was just a waiting game now.

Even so, we tried again the next night. And the next night. With about the same results.

Once, after the “dream talking” as Skye had started calling it, April wound up thrashing and screaming so loudly it woke the girls in the other room. James rolled over and shook her roughly to wake her. When she kept whimpering, he pushed her hard enough that she tumbled off the bed in a tangle of sheets and quilt.

As the covers came off the bed in a pile, he swore loudly and stretched out across the bed to snatch them back, ignoring the girls’ thin wails from the other room until April slowly picked herself up off the floor, gingerly touching her head.

“You woke them up, you deal with it,” he muttered. Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

As his breathing turned slow and deep, Skye spoke up. “Let’s do it to him.”

I stared at her, not quite following. “Do what to him?”

“The dream talking thing. The worst nightmare we can come up with.”

Brecia shook her head. “He’s the worst nightmare I can come up with. What scares a fucking narcissist who gets his kicks from killing women?”

Her question hung in the darkness between us for a long moment.

“April,” I finally whispered. “And the kids. That they’ll see through him and turn him in. That they’ll eat all his food and mess up his insane fugitive-on-the-run game.”

Skye closed her eyes and nodded. We couldn’t send him those nightmares.

He smiled and murmured something in his sleep, as if being rocked to sleep by the waves of simmering rage building and crashing around him.