Free Not Until Moonrise by Heather Hellinger

J ackson
     
    THREE KILLS IN THREE DAYS. Only one kill left now, and it would all be over.
       Jackson left the forest, stepped into the light of the waxing moon.
       A gas station stood on the edge of town, the last faded outpost before crumbling sidewalks and rubble gave way to wilderness. To the left of the station was an antiques shop boarded up long ago. To the right, a field of high grass stretched out to meet the woods.
       He stopped at the edge of the grass. Yellow light spilled from the station’s windows, but the gravel lot remained dark. Gas pumps loomed unattended in the early hours of the morning. Where the lot met the road, a payphone booth stood silent sentry. Jackson headed toward it, watching the station for signs of life.
       Moving was painful. Every step made his joints cry out, bone grinding against bone. Blood dried in a stiff mask across his face.
       Each kill was harder than the last. There should have been a satisfaction in doing what he was meant to do so long ago. Instead it exhausted him. He was tired of watching the horror dawn on each face, tired of the lies and the begging as they realized that what he was, what he really wanted from them.
       He slipped into the sweltering heat of the booth. His coins clunked down the slot. He dialed the number he still knew by heart, the keys stiff with disuse, punching in reluctantly.
       The phone rang once, twice, three times.
       From the direction of the field came an angry feline yowl as the line rang a fourth time. Jackson’s jaw tightened. She wasn’t home. She was working, or she was with someone—
       “Hello?”
       Her voice was blurred with sleep, raspier than he remembered. She’d been smoking too much. Still it was the most beautiful thing he’d heard in a long time. He shut his eyes and held onto the sound of her.
       “Hello? Who is this?”
       “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said.
       Silence.
       He waited, slitting his eyes open to keep watch on the dark. The smell of gasoline saturated everything, made his head ache.
       “Who is this?” she demanded.
       He smiled at his bloody reflection in the glass. “You know who. Did I wake you?”
       “Jackson,” she said, and he hated the way his name seemed to escape against her will, exhaled through clenched teeth. “Where are you?”
       “You’ll find out. I—”
       Headlights swept the lot. A battered pickup truck pulled up to the pumps, door creaking open to expel a bearded old man who set about filling his tank with gas.
       “Jackson, tell me where you are.”
       He shifted away from the grimy windows, moving deeper into shadow.
       “Goddamn it, answer me.”
       “I’m waiting for you,” he said. “Don’t disappoint me this time.”
       “Jackson, don’t you dare—”
       “Sweet dreams, Katie.”
       He heard her cursing as he hung the receiver back on the hook.
       For a moment he didn’t move, just stood staring at the phone. There was no turning back now, no more running. Relief settled in his bones.
       He waited for the old man to finish pumping his gas and limp into the station to pay. Then he folded back the phone booth door and stepped into the night. He crossed the parking lot and headed into the field once more, toward the woods, to wait for the only woman he’d ever loved.

F irst
     
    IT WAS ONLY THREE A.M., but there was no point in trying to go back to sleep. Kate didn’t bother. She got out of bed, dressed in the dark, and went to the kitchen to make coffee.
       It had been two years since Jackson Reeves disappeared from this very apartment. Two years since she came home at dawn to find the front door open, the photographs and the wine glasses smashed, but not one thing missing—not one thing except her lover of nearly a decade.
       Two years that she had scoured every inch of the city for someone who knew something ; two years of grief and guilt and loneliness while