He perched on the fence, one leg extended down. His bare foot hovered just above the ground. It was the stance of someone trying not to scare off a bird.
“Wendy, why are you crying?” he asked gently. That voice was so familiar, like she’d known it her entire life.
She wanted to believe it was him, but her body reacted like he was dangerous. A wild animal, something that belonged in the woods she was so afraid of.
Wendy blinked away her blurry vision. A scream for help welled up in her lungs but couldn’t escape. Her arms were heavy and useless at her sides.
Peter jumped to the ground, a landing so light that she didn’t even hear it, though a loud roar was rising in her ears. He held out his hands at his sides, palms forward in surrender.
Wendy took a step back. “No, stop,” was all she could muster.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his brilliant eyes searching her face. That crease between his eyebrows was back.
Wendy made a strangled noise that was something between a laugh and a cry. This wasn’t happening. She had to get out of here. He couldn’t be Peter Pan. He was a stranger with too many connections to her nightmares.
What if the detectives were right? What if he had been with her during those missing six months?
He stepped closer.
“Please, don’t.” Her feet tripped over each other as she tried to take another step back. He was right in front of her now. Wendy turned to run, only to collide with something hard. The last thing she remembered before it all went black was the clanking of swings and arms catching her.
CHAPTER 7
Crickets
The first thing Wendy noticed was the sound of snapping wood. It cut through her ears and dragged her back to consciousness. The air smelled like damp wood and musty earth. Smoke stung her nose. She was warm and there was something hard poking into the middle of her back. Wendy shifted and groaned as a pain in her temple throbbed. She rolled onto her side, eliciting a symphony of metallic squeaks from under her.
This wasn’t her bed.
Wendy opened her eyes to find a blue pair watching her from less than a foot above. Images of the woods, the hospital, her parents, and the detectives flashed through her mind.
Peter’s lips tipped into a grin, pressing dimples into his cheeks. His eyes sparked with amusement. “Hi.”
Wendy punched him square in the face.
Peter let out a shout and stumbled back. He careened into a table, knocking an empty mason jar to the floor.
Wendy tried to scramble away, but the limp mattress slipped out from under her, throwing her back against the wall. Her right leg fell through the metal coils of the cot. She tugged, but the springs tangled painfully around her ankle.
“Don’t touch me!” Wendy snarled, trying her best to be intimidating even as terror gripped her.
It seemed to do the trick, because Peter stood far back, looking downright shocked and even a little frightened. “You hit me!” he spluttered, rubbing his jaw.
She tried to shake her leg free so she could escape, but the springs only tightened, causing her to hiss in pain. “Where did you take me?” she demanded. “Where am I?” Her mind went wild with endless scenarios, each more terrible than the last, in the seconds it took him to respond.
“I didn’t take you, you knocked yourself out on that swing set, so I brought you here!” He poked along the side of his face, one eye closed in a grimace.
Wendy’s eyes darted around the small room, trying to take in her surroundings while keeping an eye on him.
It was only lit by a dented oil lantern hanging from a hook. Her eyes swung to the crooked window carved out of the wall. Through the grime-covered glass, she could see it was completely dark outside.
Nighttime.
She was in a small structure made of mud-chinked logs. It had a drooping roof and another dirty cot across the room like the one she was currently trapped in. Dust-covered beer bottles spilled across the wood plank floor. A deteriorating buck head was mounted above an old, empty gun rack.
“Hunting shack,” Wendy suddenly realized with a groan. Kidnapped. She had been kidnapped and taken to a hunting shack in the middle of the woods. Was he—
“You really got better at fighting,” Peter told her matter-of-factly, fists on his hips. “Who taught you to hit like that?”
Standing in the middle of a scene straight from a horror novel, Peter looked oddly … normal.
She’d half expected him to be flying and brandishing a pirate sword when she saw him next. It made her feel all the more ridiculous now, seeing him again. Of course he wasn’t Peter Pan. He was just a normal boy, not some magical being from a bedtime story.