Into Their Woods (The Eerie, #1)(17)

Fuck literal and metaphorical forks in the road—they can burn in hell—because I’m facing both of them right now.

“Dammit!” I growl as I slap the steering wheel in frustration and scan the Y shape in the road for the third time. Trees line either side of my two options, and today, I don’t appreciate the colorful foliage. Today, those leaves are an obstacle that prevents me from seeing what’s down either path. I don’t know if I should go left or right, and I’m wasting precious seconds sitting at this stop sign, trying to figure out what to do.

Go to town and report shit or take this car and drive as far as I can get? The problem is, I don’t know if I can find the right road to skip town. And I don’t know that I really want to risk getting arrested for grand theft auto.

Ugh. How is a felony my best option?

Think, Noah, think.

I’m lost on the run, and I don’t want to get more lost, or worse—caught—simply because I’m freaking out and not taking the time to consider things.

Fuck it. I have to make some kind of choice.

“Left,” I announce to no one as I turn the steering wheel and press on the gas.

A right turn is what brought me to this crazy-ass town so maybe left will get me back to my car. That is if my car is still there. Panic weighs down my chest as I try to think of the odds that my Bronco is waiting for me in the parking spot where I left it.

“Keys,” I groan with anguished realization. I have a fuck ton of them sitting in the passenger seat, but none of them are mine.

I also don’t have my bag, my wallet, or my phone. Fuck, they might as well have lopped off one of my hands. How am I going to manage?

What am I going to do?

My throat tightens as I realize that I absolutely need to find help. I need to find a police station or maybe even a fire station that would call the cops for me. I scrunch my nose and grind my teeth because, well, I happen to be in a stolen vehicle, albeit with a very good explanation. But I don’t know if the authorities will look past the stolen part long enough to hear my screwed-up side of the story. Plus, small towns aren’t known to be nice to outsiders.

Cops make me nervous, but I don’t think I have much of a choice here. I haven’t had a lot of run-ins with the long arm of the law, but the same can’t be said for some of the kids I lived with in the system. There’s just no fighting the cloying, throat-closing sense of paranoia that happens when a cop steps into your house and glares at you before they realize you aren’t the kid they’re looking for…

Get over it, Noah, I scold myself. This is different. I’m going to report a crime.

Shit, but what if they’re in on this? What if everyone in this town, including the police, is living their best cult life?

I think about that for a moment. It’s possible, but no matter how I look at it, help seems like the best option. I’ll have to risk it.

Deep breath. Find the police. That’s the plan.

A tinge of guilt settles in my stomach at the thought of Ruger or Perth getting in trouble. I don’t want to think that they were the ones who attacked me in the parking lot…but I did end up at their house, and that makes it pretty hard to deny that they are involved in whatever is going down here. Regardless of how kind or earnest they seemed, I don’t want to see another woman go through what I just did.

I’ve been very lucky. The next girl might not be.

I was wronged. Assaulted. I’m going to go report it and have a cop get a locksmith to open up my car so I can get the hell out of Howling Rapids. End of story.

Fuck their kind eyes and their muscles. They deserve whatever is coming to them for this shit.

Having set myself straight, I drive carefully down my chosen road. I take a bend that twists around a thick copse of trees and slopes downward and then—buildings! Thank fuck. It’s the town.

The quaint structures almost glimmer magically in the morning light, looking deceptively like a fairy-tale village. Too bad I know all about the poison at the center of this shiny apple of a town.

I suppose I’m technically right about the fairy-tale part. Only this is a Grimms’ fairy tale, which means there are no happy endings and it’s full of all kinds of dark, lurking horrors instead.

The center of town is pocket-sized, so I’m confident I’ll be able to find the police as soon as I pull onto the main road. Five minutes later, I see a sign on a flat-roofed building with the emblem of a shiny brass star surrounded by a circle, signifying a sheriff’s office. It’s right next to a gas station with a banner saying it sells its own pulled pork sandwiches.

My stomach grumbles angrily at me as I climb out of the Jeep and lock it. I vow to myself to never let my stomach lead me astray again. Grimms’ cautionary lesson fucking learned. It’s like Hansel and Gretel meets some fucked-up version of Little Red Riding Hood.

Inhaling a sharp, brisk breath of fall air, I tighten the drawstring on my borrowed baggy sweatpants before marching, in socks, up the three steps to the glass-fronted office. It’s more picturesque than any other police station I’ve ever seen, including the fake ones on TV. It’s clean, the bricks are painted white, and the bushes out front are sculpted, their beds litter-free. Inside, the chairs in the empty lobby look like they have padding on the seats instead of the adult upgrade version of every hard-as-rock public school chair I’ve ever sat on.