Exit 42
The rain hit the windshield like nails. Jack Mercer squinted through the smear of wiper blades, knuckles white on the wheel, a cigarette burning between two shaking fingers. The highway stretched ahead, endless, lifeless, slick with memory.
He hadn’t profiled a killer in thirteen years.
Not since Lila Rowan vanished off Exit 42.
Back then, he was the Bureau’s golden boy. Young. Brilliant. Fast. He could read a man’s soul from a coffee cup stain. But Lila’s case was different. They found her backpack on the roadside, straps cut. Blood under the fingernails. A single boot. Then nothing.
And then, the letter.
"She’s not the first. She’s just the one who screamed loud enough."
The killer signed it with a smiley face. Jack spiraled.
He disappeared shortly after. Retired. Disgraced. Rumors said he drank himself half-blind in a trailer near the same cursed stretch of highway that took her. He didn’t care. He’d rather be close to her ghost than far from his failure.
Tonight, the phone rang.
A disposable burner. No one had the number.
He let it ring twice. Three times. Then he picked it up.
“Mercer.”
The voice on the other end was young. Sharp. Frantic.
“Agent Mercer. My name’s Erin Foy. I’m with Behavioral Analysis. There’s been another one. Same MO. Same exit.”
He didn’t speak. Just listened to the static stretch out like a shadow.
“Another girl vanished. Backpack. Blood. A smiley face burned into a tree trunk this time. We need you. Please.”
He lit another cigarette with the butt of the last one. Looked out the window. The road called like a wound that never scabbed.
Jack returned to the scene, trench coat soaked, boots caked in mud. Everything was the same. Same moss-eaten signs. Same crooked guardrail. Same billboard for “Jesus is Watching You!” peeling into oblivion.
The new girl's name was Sophie Clay. Seventeen. Smart. Straight-A student. She was heading home from a volleyball game. She never made it.
They found her phone ten feet from the tree with the smiley face carved into it, still recording.
Jack watched the video. It was dark. Wind. Breathing. Leaves crunching. Then… something metallic scraping the ground. Chains? No. A dragging sound.
And then, a whisper:
“Jack.”
He rewound it. Played it again. Again.
Clear as a bell. Not “help.” Not “no.” Not “please.”
“Jack.”
They brought him in, reluctantly. Half the agents saw him as a legend. The other half saw him as a burnout with a messiah complex. He didn’t care. He didn’t need their respect. He needed to catch this sick bastard before another girl screamed into silence.
He studied the files. All the exits. All 12 victims, now 13. They all vanished near offramps. Small towns. Truck stops. Places no one paid attention to.
Except Jack.
Because there was a pattern.
The killer wasn’t abducting girls. He was leaving messages. Coordinates.
Breadcrumbs.
And they were all pointing… to Jack.
He traced the locations on a map. Each one a dot. Together they formed a crude shape. It looked like a key.
No, a question mark.
One of the old agents, Mahoney, pulled Jack aside.
“You know this is personal, right?” he said, eyes sunken with fear. “He’s not just copying old cases. He’s escalating. And you’re the center.”
“I know,” Jack whispered. “He’s been building to this.”
At night, Jack heard the girls screaming in his sleep. Faces he’d only seen in crime scene photos flickered behind his eyes. Lila. Sophie. Camryn. Mei. Elena.
He kept dreaming of the tree. The one with the face carved in it. Smiling. Watching.
One night, he returned to it alone.
That’s when he found the hatch.
Covered in moss. Bolted shut.
No law enforcement nearby. Just him and the forest.
He pried it open. Climbed down.
It was a bunker.
Old. WWII era. The kind locals forgot existed.
Inside: thirteen lockers. One for each girl. Clothing. Personal items. Photos.
Taped to the ceiling was a picture of Jack. From the 90s. Younger. Smiling.
Underneath it, scribbled in red ink:
“I’ve always admired your work.”
Then the steel door slammed shut behind him.
He turned too late. Gas hissed into the room.
Darkness.
Jack awoke in a chair. Zip-tied.
Across from him sat a man.
Smiling. Calm. Clean-cut.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” the man asked. “That’s okay. You weren’t supposed to.”
“Who are you?” Jack growled.
The man stood, stretching like a serpent waking up.
“You profiled my brother. Said he was a textbook sociopath. You made my whole family a case study.”
He walked behind Jack. Tightened the ties.
“You destroyed us. But you never caught the real monster. You didn’t know… it was me.”
Jack tried to focus. Think. His mind was slow.
“I’ve been recreating every profile you got wrong. Every case you left cold. And now…” he leaned close, breath hot in Jack’s ear, “…you’re going to profile yourself. From inside this room. Because you’re not leaving it.”
But Jack was already working. Counting steps. Noting echo patterns. Tracking the man’s habits. His slips. His vanity.
He made it to day three before dislocating his thumb to slip free.
By day five, he had turned the tables.
By the time the FBI raided the place, they found Jack standing in the rain, blood on his hands, a smiley face carved into the killer’s forehead.
He lit a cigarette. Didn’t say a word.
Mahoney walked up, eyes wide.
“What do we call this one?”
Jack looked toward Exit 42 — now cordoned off, crawling with agents.
Then he looked down the road.
“There’ll be more,” he said. “I missed too many exits.”
He walked into the night, thunder overhead, one more ghost on the highway.
