If Something Happens to Me

by Alex Finlay

The next moments remain a haze. A whoosh of the car door ripping open. A scream. A crushing blow to the head. Then it’s morning. Ryan is outside on the wet grass. The car is gone. And so is Ali.

But he wasn’t free. Not from the suspicions. Not from his own guilt over failing to protect her. Not from his inability to deliver the authorities one viable clue.

He thought the public flogging would end last year when authorities announced that they’d found DNA evidence linking Alison’s abduction to the Missouri River Killer. MRK admitted to slaughtering eight women he’d abducted in towns along the river but denied taking Ali. Then his fellow inmates shanked him thirty-seven times, closing the case, and leaving that fucking cloud of suspicion over Ryan.

“You think it’s Alison Lane’s car?” the bearded guy asks. The sheriff nods. “The bigger question is who are the two dead guys you found in it?”

Needed the purity of this boy. A reminder that there are bright spots in the world.