“I used to swim.” She looked away. “A little.”
Her eyes snagged on a brown file folder. It was sitting in the center of the breakfast table. She didn’t have to open it to know what it contained.
Ollie followed her gaze. “See? He’s practically asking me to read it.”
“Why didn’t he take it with him?”
“I’m sure he just forgot. Happens all the time.”
The case file was thick. “Isn’t a good memory kinda important for an officer?”
Luckily, Ollie didn’t take offense. “That’s why they write everything down. Cops do shit-tons of paperwork.” He shrugged. “Memories aren’t reliable, anyway.”
Makani wished that she could forget. In the darkest hours of the night, her own memory was keen and cruel.
“You can look if you want.” Ollie’s voice tensed. “It isn’t pretty.”
Of course she wanted to look—sheer human curiosity demanded it—but there would be no unlooking once she’d done it. Her fingertips crawled toward the file anyway. They recklessly flicked it open to reveal a stack of photographs and papers. A female body lay on her back, right arm hanging limp from a bed. Her neck had been carved open by five crude slices. One for the mouth, two for each eye. X and X.
Dead cartoon eyes.
In Makani’s imagination, this scene, this smiley face, had been tidy and precise, but in reality . . . it was a bloodbath. The head was tilted too far back to see Haley’s real eyes. The longest cut was deep and vicious, and her neck skin flapped open in a jagged, ugly gash. Her hair, clothing, and bedsheets were soaked with enough blood to curdle a butcher’s stomach. Blood had dried inside her nostrils.
Makani closed the file with a shaking hand.
“Bad, right?” Ollie said.
It wasn’t just bad. It was horrific.
A real dead body looked different from the ones on television or in the movies. There was nothing artful about it. Nothing positioned. Haley’s body looked lifeless—but not like life had been taken away from it. Like it had never had life.
Ollie pressed his fingers to his temples. “I should have warned you.”
“You did.” Makani hugged herself. Was Matt in that stack of photos, too, or did he have a separate file? The brutality of the crime overwhelmed her. Someone did this. A real person had crept into Haley’s house and murdered her in her own bed.
“Any chance the police have a lead?” she asked.
Ollie shook his head. “But they do think it’s probably someone a lot smaller than Matt.”
“So, not another football player.”
“Right.”
“Why?”
He waited for her to meet his eyes. “Are you sure you want to know?”
Makani nodded.
“Before the killer did . . . what they did, they stabbed Matt in the gut. But his abdomen had nothing to do with the final display of his brain. So, he was probably attacked by someone who physically couldn’t go straight for his head. They had to weaken him first. Bring him down to their level.”
Perhaps the killer was female, after all.
Dead cartoon eyes. Blood inside her nostrils.
Makani became aware of a dinner plate being pushed gently against her stomach.
“Hey,” Ollie said. “It’s nicer in my room.”
She stared down at the warm plate. Was Matt stabbed once in the abdomen or had it taken multiple jabs for him to go down?
Wordlessly, she accepted the burritos. Ollie carried their water glasses. As the stairs creaked beneath their feet, Makani wondered how many gruesome pictures he’d seen since his brother became a cop. Sure, there had never been deaths in Osborne this violent before, but people died by accident all the time. People like his parents.
Did it get easier to look at the photos? Or did it get harder, knowing that so many people died so young—and in such awful ways? Did seeing the proof of this make you more paranoid or more careful? Or did it just harden you?
Old photographs were everywhere. A framed studio portrait of his whole family hung at the top of the upstairs landing. Ollie was so little that his mother held him on her lap. What was it like for him to look at this one every day?
“It’s this one,” he said, pulling the phrase from her mind.
Makani had assumed that his bedroom would be as black and unembellished as his wardrobe, so when he opened the door, she blinked in surprise.
The room was filled with sunlight and signs of life. Even the kitchen clung to a whiff of abandonment, but here, Ollie’s ubiquitous paperbacks were spread across every surface. There were too many for his shelves, so they’d spilled onto his rug, been stacked on top of his desk and under it, and even lay in messy piles on his unmade bed. With its heap of mismatched blankets, the bed looked like the coziest spot in the entire house.
Makani set down the plate on his desk and picked up the closest book, Jupiter’s Travels. “Four years around the world on a Triumph,” she read aloud. On the cover, a man in an old-fashioned leather jacket rode an old-fashioned motorcycle. The paperback smelled old, too, like dusty shelves and faint mildew. She used it to gesture around the room. “I knew you liked to read, but . . . wow.”
Ollie shrugged with his hands in his pockets. “I get them from garage sales and the used bookstore in East Bend. I haven’t read them all. I just keep picking them up.”
“I wasn’t making fun of you. My last boyfriend read a lot, too.”
Shit. Double shit.
Ollie wasn’t her boyfriend. They barely knew each other. She wanted to know more about him—she wanted him to be her boyfriend—but they were each still standing behind a wall of unspoken history. She decided to act like she hadn’t meant anything by it and casually picked up another book. Glanced at him. His pale skin was unable to hide an emotional flush. At least he didn’t seem turned off by the idea.
Makani had been surprised in Darby’s car yesterday morning when she’d realized that Ollie was more shy than he was rebellious, but she was even more surprised now to realize that she found his shyness attractive.
She held up a travel guide to Italy. “Mind if I go with you?”
“We’ll leave tonight.” Ollie stepped toward her, and her heart spasmed. But he had only come closer to remove his keys from his pocket and take the plate to his bed.
Disappointed, she flipped open the guidebook. “Positano. Hotel Intermezzo. Excellent value in this charming, family-run hotel overlooking the sea.” She carried the book to his bed and plopped down beside him. “Shall I call for a reservation?”
Ollie smiled as he bit into a burrito. He held out the plate with his other hand. She accepted one. It was strange sharing a plate, but she liked it. It made her feel close to him.
“Tell me,” he said.
Makani swallowed before speaking. The cheap burrito was thoroughly mediocre but immensely satisfying. “Tell you what?”
“About your last boyfriend. The reader.”
She smiled. Caught. And then she nudged his leg with her kneecap, pleased by his obvious jealousy. “I thought I’d steered us away from that conversation.”
“You tried. Usually, you’re good at that. At steering away.”
It was the first time that it had been acknowledged out loud. She felt chastised but rose to the challenge. “Okay, here’s my offer. I’ll tell you about my last boyfriend if you tell me about your last girlfriend.”
Ollie considered it for a few seconds. “Deal.”
Makani steeled herself to remain honest. “His name was Jason Nakamura, and we dated for seven months.” She tried to gauge Ollie’s expression. It remained maddeningly enigmatic. “He was a swimmer, too. Freestyle.”
But then he wouldn’t talk to me anymore.
“But then I moved away.”
“Did you try to make it work long distance?” Ollie asked.
She discarded her final bite back onto the plate, an end piece of freezer-hardened tortilla. “That would be a very long distance.”
When he waited for elaboration, she selected her next words carefully. “No. We didn’t like each other enough.”
Ollie nodded with understanding.
She braced herself. “Your turn. Last girlfriend.”
He set the plate onto the floor with a hollow clunk. “No one.”
It wasn’t the answer she was expecting. She stared at him, searching for comprehension. He stared back as he repeated it. “No one.”
“Explain. Use more words.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
Makani had made out with him. Makani had had sex with him. She found this statement to be highly improbable. He knew what she was thinking, and he shrugged, but it wasn’t a shrug of indifference. It was a shrug that was hiding some measure of embarrassment. “I’ve never had a girlfriend, but, yes, obviously I’ve had sex before you.”
Makani couldn’t let that one sit. “Obviously.”
Ollie squirmed and glanced up at the ceiling. “Not obviously because I was amazing. Obviously because . . .”
“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Her hair bounced as she shook her head. “I need to hear you finish that sentence.”
His expression deadpanned. “Because I lasted more than thirty seconds.”
She burst into raucous laughter, which made him smile. Ollie always smiled when he saw that she was happy. Makani leaned into the space between them. “So, are you gonna tell me about this non-girlfriend? Non-girlfriends?”
His smile widened into a grin. “Yes.”
She moved in closer, beckoning. “But not today?”
Their lips were an inch apart.
“Not today,” he said.
They went for each other at the same time. Mouths clashed. Jackets peeled off. She lowered herself onto her back, and he moved above her, pressing down. The weight of his body made her feral. Her fingers clawed under his shirt and up his back as his hands slid over her bra. Her hands moved to the bottom of her shirt, ready to strip it above her head, when suddenly . . . they were aware.
A third person was in the room.
CHAPTER TEN
Chris stood in the doorway and swore. And then swore again. “Damn it, Ollie!”
Ollie scrambled to sit up, scrambled to make sure that Makani was covered even though they hadn’t gotten that far. “What are you doing here?”
His brother rubbed his forehead. “Nice to see you again so soon, Makani.”
Her skin burst into flames as she shielded herself behind Ollie, who tried again. “Why are you home?”
Chris dropped his hand and crossed his arms, drawing her eyes to the holster on his belt. “Chief sent me away to get some rest.” He glanced warily at the empty plate beside the bed. “When did you get here? Did you ditch again?”
Ollie didn’t reply.
“Shit, Ollie. You can’t . . . you can’t do that.”
Makani wished that she could run. She wished that she were anywhere but here.
“We missed zero schoolwork,” Ollie said. “Nothing was happening.”
“If nothing was happening,” Chris said, “then it shouldn’t have been so hard to keep seated until the bell.” When Ollie tightened his mouth, Chris groaned and collapsed into the desk chair. He followed it with a long sigh. “Listen. There’s a killer on the loose, and we don’t know who or where he is. Or if he’s even a he. That means your ass needs to be where it’s supposed to be at all times. I need to know where you are.”
“Why?” Ollie sounded remarkably incredulous for this reasonable request.
“Because it’s dangerous out there!”
“They murdered the star of the musical and the star of the football team. Tell me what I have in common with those victims.”
“You know that’s not the point. Shit,” Chris said again. He turned his attention to Makani. “You’ve gotta stop hanging out with this kid. He’s a bad influence.”
Makani felt a wave of gratitude that he didn’t view her as the bad influence. She ventured out from behind Ollie.
“Does your grandmother know you’re here?” Chris asked.
She wanted to lie, but he was a cop. “No.”
Chris shook his head. He picked up Ollie’s keys from the desk and held them out, staring at the hardwood floor. “Ollie, drive her home.”
“Chris—”
“Ollie.”
Ollie stomped over, snatched the keys in a way that made Chris wince, and then stalked out of his bedroom.
Makani followed, but she glanced back to lift a hand in goodbye.
Chris raised a weary hand in return. “Sorry. But I have to.”
It was a strange thing for a parental figure to say, and it reminded her of the unnatural relationship that he’d been forced to play in his brother’s life. In that moment, she felt sorry for Chris. Ollie hadn’t made it easy for him. Then again, nothing about Ollie’s life seemed to have been easy, either.
That night—when Haley and the drama club were supposed to be in the middle of their first dress rehearsal, when Matt and the football team were supposed to be winning their final game of the season—Darby sent a text to Makani: Can we talk?
She’d just finished loading the dirty dinner dishes into the dishwasher. Grandma Young was watching a Marvel movie in the living room. She didn’t know that Makani had been to Ollie’s house, and Makani planned to keep it that way.
“Will Chris tell her?” she’d asked on the somber drive home.
Ollie tried to assure her, despite the crease in his brow. “I doubt it. His weakness is that he still wants to be my cool older brother.”
To be safe, they made Saturday plans in full view of Grandma Young. He was going to come over before his shift at Greeley’s.
I mean, phone-talk?
Makani frowned at the second message. It was always ominous when someone asked to talk instead of text. She told her grandmother that she’d join her in a minute and waited until she was safely enclosed in her bedroom before hitting the call button.
Darby picked up after the second ring. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
An awkward silence followed. Another bad sign.
“Darby?”
“I—I just want you to know that as your friend, I love you, and that’s why I’m telling you this.”
Makani felt her body temperature drop. “Tell me what?”
“And you know I would never say this if it weren’t important. If Alex and I weren’t genuinely concerned.”
“What, Darby?”
He mumbled something rapidly that contained the name Ollie.
A surge of hot anger replaced Makani’s chill, but she tamped it down and asked him to repeat that last sentence.
The accusation spewed forth in a torrent. “Discounting rumors, it’s still a fact that Matt and his friends have been bullying Ollie for years, and his alibi isn’t strong for either murder, and we think he might be taking advantage of you, and Alex said I had to be the one to call, because you’d just tell her to screw herself, or you’d think she was joking, but I swear we’re not.” He took a breath. “Not that we think he’s guilty! But that was creepy how he got your phone number. You have to admit it.”
Makani didn’t have to admit anything. It was misguided and insulting. “So, what? You and Alex just sat there at the Feed ’N’ Seed all afternoon, selling cattle supplements and talking shit about me?”
“No!” Darby sounded miserable. “I’m sorry. We’re worried about you.”
“Yeah. You mentioned something along those lines yesterday, remember?”
His voice dropped into a meek whisper. “It didn’t seem like you were listening.”
Fury overtook her like an explosion from a pressure cooker. “And what about Haley, huh? What did Haley ever do to Ollie? Why would he kill her?”
“In eighth grade, he asked her out, and she said no. She was a seventh grader. He was humiliated. It wasn’t long after his parents had died, and it was the last time I heard of hi
m asking out someone from school until . . . this weird thing with you.”
It shocked her into speechlessness. She hadn’t expected Darby to have a real answer. But it was still a colossal leap.
“Makani? Hello? Are you there?”
“That was four years ago.” She forced her voice into a normal volume, despite the outrage swelling inside her again. “That’s a long time to wait for a petty grudge.”
“Just consider this: Ollie snubbed you for months. You guys hadn’t talked since the end of summer. It’s possible . . . he might want revenge on you, too.”
She sucked in her breath.
“Regaining your trust could be a part of his master plan—”
“Master plan?”
“I only meant—”
“I was mad at him, too! It was mutual. A stupid misunderstanding.”
“You’re right, it’s probably nothing.” Darby backed down to plead with her. “But you have to understand that I could never live with myself if he turned out to be the bad guy, and I’d kept my mouth shut.”
Makani’s indignation dissipated. Flared back into raging life. And finally re-extinguished. Darby was trying to be a good friend. He was just getting it wrong. On paper, fine, Ollie looked suspicious. But he wasn’t a murderer.
She couldn’t prove it. She just knew it.
Ollie was shy and helpful, and he looked happy whenever she was happy. Darby’s confrontation hurt, because he was supposed to be the thoughtful friend. Alex was the impulsive one. And it confirmed her fears; they really did talk about her behind her back.
Darby sounded distant through her buzzing eardrums. “Makani?”
“I appreciate your concern.” It was a lie and not a lie. “But you’re wrong.”
And then she hung up.
All night long, Makani tossed and turned. The house creaked like it was alive.
Ollie, Haley.
Ollie, Matt.
Ollie, Me.
All morning long, she ignored the apology texts from Darby and the jokey texts that acted as apologies from Alex.
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