Page 32 of In Her Wake
“What the hell?”Beth whispered.Had Kevin fallen ill somewhere?
Checking the storage closet, she fumbled with the door, heart racing.No Kevin.She knocked on the men’s room, called out with voice shaking, then pushed the door open, afraid she’d find him collapsed or hurt.Each empty room ratcheted her worry.
Finally, Beth returned to the big doll in the gym.But now, something about it made her uncomfortable.The eyes—they were wrong.Glass or plastic, she couldn’t tell, but definitely not human.They stared forward, fixed and unseeing, lacking the warmth and intelligence of Kevin’s gaze.
She circled the thing slowly, the initial shock giving way to a creeping dread that tightened her chest.Someone had created this, dressed it in athletic wear, and positioned it in Kevin’s gym.But why?And more urgently—where was the real Kevin?
Then she shuddered as a vague memory reached her consciousness …those whispers she’d heard at the coffee shop yesterday.A woman had gone missing over in Trentville, and some kind of mannequin had been found in her place.Beth hadn’t paid much attention to the details, too focused on her work deadline and her own plans to finally tell Kevin how she felt.
But now the parallels suddenly seemed horrifyingly clear.
Beth backed away from the mannequin, unable to tear her eyes from its fixed stare.She fumbled with her phone, finally managing to dial 911.The dispatcher answered on the second ring.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“I—” Beth’s voice caught.She swallowed hard and tried again.“I’m at Torres Fitness Studio on Main Street.My trainer, Kevin Torres, is missing, and there’s a...there’s a mannequin that looks exactly like him here instead.”
A pause on the line.“Ma’am, did you say a mannequin?”
“Yes.It has his face, his exact face.”Beth’s words tumbled out faster now.“I heard something about a missing woman in Trentville, one who was replaced with a mannequin.I think the same thing has happened to Kevin.”
The dispatcher’s tone shifted, becoming sharper, more urgent.“Stay where you are, ma’am.Don’t touch anything.Officers are being dispatched right now.”
“Please hurry,” Beth whispered, ending the call.
She sank onto a nearby bench, legs suddenly too weak to support her.The mannequin loomed in her peripheral vision, its presence a violation of this space she had come to associate with safety and joy.Her morning ritual, her time with Kevin—all of it corrupted now by whatever sick game this was.
The irony wasn't lost on her.After months of working up the courage, today was finally going to be the day she told Kevin how she felt.Today, she was going to suggest that maybe, just maybe, life could get better than a magazine feature—it could include her, them, together.
Now she had found only this perfect replica of his face, frozen in an expression of determined focus that she had admired so many times, wondering if she would ever see the real thing again.The mannequin’s glass eyes reflected the fluorescent lights overhead, empty and cold, nothing like the eyes that had crinkled at the corners when he laughed at her terrible exercise puns.
The sound of approaching sirens cut through her thoughts.Help was coming, but Beth couldn’t shake the feeling that they were already too late.The mannequin stood in silent testimony to that fear, its perfect recreation of Kevin Torres now seemed both a masterpiece and an abomination.
Beth rose on shaky legs and moved toward the front door to meet the police, casting one last glance at the thing wearing Kevin’s face.The mannequin hadn’t moved, of course—would never move.Yet somehow, in the growing light of morning, she could have sworn those glass eyes followed her, filled with mute accusation for arriving too late to save the man she had come to love.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The winding country road cut through fields still heavy with morning dew.Jenna gripped the steering wheel, her mind replaying the dream that had visited her in the night—Marjory Powell’s face on a mannequin body, begging to return to her human form.Now they were driving to what Jenna already knew would be the confirmation of her worst fears.
“You’re quiet,” Jake said beside her, breaking the tense silence that had filled the cruiser since they’d left the Powell residence.
"Just thinking about what we're going to see out here," Jenna replied, eyes fixed on the road ahead.The speedometer crept past sixty-five, the urgency of the situation pushing against her usual caution."And what does it mean if this is just the beginning?"
“If your dream is right, if Marjory wasn’t his first victim...”Jake’s voice trailed off.
“Then we need to locate the others,” Jenna finished.“Figure out the pattern, find the killer before he strikes again.”
They crested a gentle hill, and Rostow’s farm came into view.The property sprawled across rolling pastureland, split by the now-visible dry creek bed.A cluster of official vehicles had gathered near a dirt access road—two patrol cars, the coroner’s van, and a pickup truck that she thought must belong to the farm owner who had found the body.Yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the morning breeze, marking off an area that stretched down into the gully.
Jenna pulled onto the shoulder and parked.In her rearview mirror, she saw Spelling’s black SUV pull in behind them.
“Looks like the colonel made good time,” Jake observed as they stepped out of the vehicle.
The morning air carried the mingled scents of damp earth, manure, and the sweet perfume of late-blooming clover.Jenna inhaled deeply, trying to center herself before what she knew would be a difficult scene.These moments before viewing a body were always the hardest—the anticipation of witnessing someone’s final indignity, their story cut short by another’s cruelty.
Colonel Spelling joined them.“Sheriff Graves, Deputy,” he greeted them, his usual formality unaffected by the grim circumstances.
“Let’s head down,” Jenna said, already moving toward the crime scene tape where an officer stood watch.
