“They weren’t his. I don’t know how they ended up there, but they weren’t his.” Skylar’s voice rises several octaves. I glance toward the door and catch the briefest glimpse of Noah as he sticks his head into the chapel to make sure I’m still okay.
I wave him off. “Why are you so sure Joey didn’t take the photos?”
Saying each word slowly and fiercely, eyes flashing, Skylar says, “Because I know Joey. He was one of the only people who was decent to me after what happened with Riley.”
I shake my head. “Skylar . . . that doesn’t prove anything—other than maybe he had a reason to hate Riley and Rachel.”
“The police said that, too. Maybe he had a reason to hate them, but that doesn’t mean he would have hurt them. He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”
I decide to try something else. “Do you know anything about Paul Harding?”
Confusion flashes across her face. “The guy who takes the yearbook photos?”
I nod.
“Joey took lessons from him last year. He’s supposed to help him teach a workshop tonight.” Her breath hitches a little bit and her eyes fill with tears. “Was supposed to,” she corrects. “He was supposed to help him tonight. At the rec center.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out a crumpled Kleenex. I hold it out to her, but she makes no move to reach for it.
The suspicion on her face hurts, even though I tell myself that it’s understandable.
“Take it,” I say gently.
After a long moment, she seems to realize that I’m prepared to hold my arm out forever. She takes the tissue, blows her nose, and then inhales deeply. Her posture becomes the tiniest bit less rigid as the walls lower at least a few inches. “He didn’t do it, Cat. I don’t care what everyone thinks. Joey didn’t hurt Rachel or Riley.”
She’s so sure—naively sure—that I want to shake her. I want to shake her and I want to protect her because I’m scared that if she doesn’t come to her senses, she’ll end up hurt.
“How do you explain the things in the trailer? Forget the photos,” I say, when she opens her mouth to protest. “What about the screenplay? Or Riley’s wallet? Or the earring they found in Joey’s trunk?”
“I know it looks bad, but there has to be some other explanation. I told you: Joey would never hurt anyone. I don’t care what anybody says. Everyone is looking for him because they think he did something awful, but no one is worried that he hasn’t been heard from in almost two days. Even Chase doesn’t care, and Chase is supposed to be his best friend.”
“Can you blame him?”
Instantly, the walls go back up. Skylar pushes herself to her feet and turns to walk away.
I don’t think; I just act.
Before she can get more than a step or two, I’m on my feet. I grab her arm, pushing her sleeve up so that I can touch as much skin as possible, trying, as best as I can, to see her fear. I have to. I have to find Joey—not just for Noah or Riley and Rachel, but because if I don’t, Skylar is going to get hurt.
Around me, stained-glass saints shatter into a million pieces and reknit themselves into new patterns—
“We are the monsters.” The letters rise above me, oddly familiar. The phrase tugs at me. Like I’ve read it in a book or heard it in a movie. Before I can place it, the letters fall away, replaced by darkness.
Darkness and the sensation of weight. Above me, around me, pressing in.
Dripping water and dank, dark smells.
“Where are you?” Skylar’s voice, my voice, echoes in the dark. Around me, the weight comes crashing down, it comes crashing down and . . .
Skylar whirls, breaking the contact, and I slam back into reality.
She stares at me, eyes wide and scared. When I glance at her arm, I see bruises. For a horrible second, I think I caused them, but then I realize that there are too many marks, like someone grabbed her over and over and pressed their fingers into her skin. Someone much stronger than I am.
I reach out and tug up her other sleeve, revealing a similar pattern of bruises.
“Did Joey do this?” My voice shakes. I’m so angry that I might fly into pieces. “Why are you protecting him? Skylar, someone who loves you could never do this.”
“You don’t know the first thing about anything.” Tears fill her eyes again. They catch the light coming through the stained-glass windows but don’t fall. She turns and runs, not past Noah, but out a side door, one that leads directly outside.
I don’t chase her.
I’m not sure I can.
My head feels like it’s going to split in two. My legs tremble, and I don’t so much sit back down as fall, heavily, onto the pew. All around me, the saints watch, but not one offers any advice or help.
Too late, I realize that I forgot to ask her about the car—if she ever loaned it to Joey or if he knows where she keeps her keys.
Thirty
ON THE WEST SIDE OF TOWN, PERCHED ON TOP OF A RIDICULOUSLY steep hill, sits an old subdivision of identical, pocket-sized houses. War homes, Dad told me once. Houses that had been built for soldiers coming back from World War II so that they could settle down.
I try to imagine the neighborhood filled with families; I can’t. A third of the houses have been razed to the ground. Half of the ones that remain have For Rent signs in their windows, trying to lure university students even though it’s summer and there are nicer places to rent near campus.
Harding lives on the very last street. Behind his house is an abandoned baseball diamond that’s so overgrown there are trees in the outfield. It’s creepy and mosquito-filled, but it provides both cover and an excellent vantage point from which to stake out the photographer’s house while we wait for him to leave.
I swat at the back of my neck as a mosquito tries to make me its dinner.
It hadn’t been hard to get details about the workshop Skylar mentioned. From nine thirty to eleven, Harding will be teaching the basics of night shots and digital cameras at the rec center and the adjoining park.
Leaving his house empty—assuming Joey isn’t inside.
I lift a pair of military-grade binoculars. “Are you going to tell me why you have these?” I ask Noah.
“Bird-watching,” he deadpans.
“Fine. Don’t tell me. I probably don’t want to know anyway.”
I raise the binoculars to eye level and scan the windows. All of the rooms look empty—except for the kitchen where Harding sits eating, by himself, at the table.
During the past two hours, we’ve also seen him read by himself, watch TV by himself, and shower by himself. I had looked away as quickly as possible when that happened—though not quite quickly enough. If Harding turns out to be a decent, innocent person, then I feel like we should leave a note in his mailbox warning him that people can see into his bathroom and suggesting he invest in blinds.
At this point, I think it’s safe to assume he’s not hiding Joey Paquet, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t helped him. That doesn’t mean the house might not hold some clue as to where Joey is or what he might be planning.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Noah asks.
It’s been hours since the church. Enough time for the pain to fade, but he keeps watching me like he’s expecting me to keel over.
“I told you: I’m okay.” My voice comes out sharper than I intend. Ever since that moment in the church hallway—ever since the moment I kissed Noah’s cheek—being around him has felt . . . really complicated.
We don’t have time for complicated, so I’m trying to fake normal as best I can.
Unfortunately, as Noah so recently pointed out, I don’t have a good poker face.
I set the binoculars down and shift positions. I’ve lost count of how many times my legs have fallen asleep. “Remind me of our cunning plan again?” I say, just because I have this theory that the more times I hear the words, the less scary they’ll be.
I’m pretty sure Noah figured out what I was doing the third or fourth time I
asked, but he still humors me. “We go in through the basement, look for the darkroom, search for any sign that Harding helped or has been in contact with Joey, and then get out before he comes back.”
As far as plans go, it’s shoddy at best. Maybe a three on a ten-point scale of cunning—if you graded on a curve. Unfortunately, neither one of us was able to come up with anything better.
“The binoculars were a gag gift from Riley,” Noah says. “I got really stressed my first few months away at school. He got me the binoculars and a book on bird-watching and all these pamphlets for bird-watching festivals and tours in Ontario’s cottage country. He said I needed a hobby that would help me chill.”
“Did you go to any of the festivals?”
“Let’s just say that the town of Petawawa’s annual woodpecker festival is surprisingly pleasant.”
In the distance, a door opens and then slams shut. A moment later, a car engine starts.
“There he goes,” says Noah.
My nerves, already frayed, get just a little bit worse.
We stay where we are until full dark falls, and then we make our way across the field and to the house.
“Noah?”
“Yeah?”
“What if we go in and Joey’s inside?”
“We’ve been watching for hours; I really don’t think—”
“I know he’s probably not,” I say, cutting him off. “I was just wondering what happens if we’re wrong and he is in there. Will we call the police? Will we call Jensen?”
“Sure,” says Noah, “we’ll call the cops.” But he waits too long before saying it, and something in his eyes reminds me of what I saw that night he touched me in my room. The things he wanted to do to whoever hurt Riley. Images I’ve tried not to think about come rushing back, and a knot of fear forms in my chest—not fear of Noah, but fear for him.
It’s too late to have second thoughts, I tell myself. Besides, Joey’s not even in there. There’d have been some sign.
Oblivious to what I’m thinking, Noah walks the length of the house, pausing at each tiny basement window. “I guess it would be too easy if one of them was unlocked.” He glances at me. “Did you find gloves?”
I nod and pull a pair of black leather gloves from my back pocket. They’re two sizes too big and pool around my fingertips and wrists, but they’re better than nothing.
Noah slides his backpack from his shoulder and crouches next to the house. His eyes dart from the small window to me and then back again. My cheeks grow hot as I realize he’s trying to figure out if I can physically fit through the frame.
Lacey wouldn’t have a problem. Or Skylar or Amber. Hell, any girl Noah has ever gone out with—including the one he left back in Ottawa—could probably fit through those windows with inches to spare. But me? I’ll be a tight squeeze—if I can fit at all.
Something behind my eyes pricks and burns. Of all the things to get upset about, the possibility that I might be too big to commit felony breaking and entering has got to be one of the most ridiculous, but knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better.
From the depths of his backpack, Noah produces a brick and a thick bundle of fabric. He slips on his own pair of gloves and then winds the fabric around the brick. “Ready?”
Not even a little, I think as I nod.
Even wrapped in fabric, the sound the brick makes as it shatters the glass is far too loud. I hold my breath, waiting. When nothing happens, I slowly exhale.
Noah knocks the jagged glass out from around the window and then lowers himself through. There’s a moment when his shoulders seem to get stuck, but then he disappears down into the hidden depths of the basement.
I drop to my hands and knees and then crawl backward. Except for the brief moment when he got stuck, Noah made it look easy, but I’m awkward and clumsy and manage to cut myself three times before I’m halfway through. Noah puts his hands on my hips to try to steady me as I push my way back, and it’s a sign of how scared I am that my first thought isn’t that his hands are just inches from my butt.
There’s a moment when my shirt bunches up and his fingers graze the roll above my jeans, but because he’s wearing gloves, I don’t see a thing.
“Sorry,” he says as soon as I’m safely inside. “I should have been more careful.”
“It’s not like there’s really anywhere safe to grab.”
“Safe?”
“You know . . . free of chub . . .” I trail off awkwardly, realizing he’s just so used to trying not to touch me for fear of triggering a vision that he forgot the gloves would make it safe.
Noah pulls a flashlight from his bag and twists the bottom. “You shouldn’t do that,” he says softly, turning his back to me and shining the light over the basement.
We’re in a small room that seems to be half laundry room, half workshop. A pile of dirty clothes lies on the floor next to an ancient washer while a corkboard spans the wall on the left. Wrenches, hammers, and a crowbar hang crookedly from hooks. “Do what?”
“Assume your size is a problem.”
Unlike Aidan, Noah doesn’t tell me I’m not fat. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.
He reaches into his bag again and hauls out a second flashlight. He tosses it to me, and I catch it clumsily. “I’ll go left, you go right. We check down here, then upstairs.”
Splitting up feels wrong, but the quicker we search, the sooner we get out of here and the less chance we get caught.
The laundry room/toolshed lets out into a claustrophobically narrow hallway. Noah heads one way and I head the other.
The first door I try is a closet—empty save for a water heater and an old picnic cooler.
I try the next one. The knob slips under my gloved hand, but I grip it a little more tightly and it turns.
Bingo. A long table holds plastic trays. Above it, strings crisscross the room at eye level, loaded down with photographs held in place with clothespins. I shine my flashlight over the pictures. An old, rotting barn, a lighthouse, a pile of rusting machinery. Artsy, but depressingly normal.
My heart sinks.
What was I expecting? Evidence Joey had used the darkroom lying out in plain sight? Pictures of me and Rachel hanging up to dry? Some irrefutable proof that Harding was involved in whatever Joey’s done—knowingly or unknowingly—or a clue that pointed to where Joey is hiding?
Even if we find something that can lead us to Joey, what then? How do we get him to tell us what—if anything—he’s done to Riley? I haven’t thought through that part. Not really. Not enough, anyway.
But I think Noah has. I think he’s given it a lot of thought. What if, instead of helping him, I’m pushing him closer to doing something horrible?
“Cat . . .”
Noah’s voice is just loud enough to carry across the basement. I exit the room, closing the door behind me.
“Found the darkroom.” My own voice is just a touch louder than the slap of my sneakers against the bare concrete floor. “There’s nothing in it.”
The hallway leads to a long, narrow space that seems to run the width of the house.
Noah is standing in front of the only piece of furniture in it: an old floral couch with a high back that’s been shoved up against the unfinished concrete wall.
He pushes it out of the way.
“What are you doing?” I ask, but then I see it: the wall isn’t concrete—it’s just painted to look that way. Set in the center of the space is a padlocked door painted the same flat gray as the wall. If you didn’t look closely, you might miss that it was here.
“Why would you padlock something in your own house?” I ask, confused. The lock is big and heavy, like the ones you see on the gates at construction sites.
“To keep any visitors from getting in, I guess,” says Noah, lifting the lock to examine it more closely.
A lump rises in my throat. There had been that gap . . . hours between when Rachel left the diner and when she had been found. “Or to keep someone fr
om getting out.”
A sharp, stricken look flashes across Noah’s face. He drops the lock and heads down the hall at a run. Seconds later, he’s back, a crowbar in hand.
He sets his flashlight on the back of the sofa, angling it so that the beam falls on the padlock. He swings, and even though I know it’s only in my head, I swear I feel the reverberation of the impact in my legs.
Again and again, Noah swings, each impact harder than the last.
“Noah!” I yell his name, but he doesn’t slow, he just keeps swinging.
I lose count of the hits long before he finally stops. His shoulders shake and his arms tremble. The padlock is still intact, but the latch is starting to give.
“Maybe we should call Jensen?”
“And say what?” Noah’s voice is ragged and desperate. “That we broke into a house and found a locked room? I’m sure he’ll come running right over.” He swings again, but the lock holds. “Goddammit!” he yells, hurling the crowbar across the basement.
Noah’s shoulders start to shake harder. His breath comes out in funny little gasps. It’s so unexpected that it takes me a minute to realize he’s crying.
“Noah . . .”
His back is to me. He doesn’t turn.
I set my flashlight next to his on the sofa.
I don’t know what to do, so I do the one thing I would want to do if I were normal. If I were just like everyone else. I close the distance between us, and I wrap my arms around him, hugging him from behind.
He stiffens and then trembles against me.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, holding him as tightly as I can, even though I know it’s not okay. It’s not okay at all.
This whole time, he’s acted like what happened to Riley is a foregone conclusion, but as I slip off one glove and press a finger lightly to his wrist, I see what he’s most afraid of. He’s afraid of the basement. Of the locked door. Of the possibility that Riley is in that room, wrapped in plastic and rotting, not looking like Riley anymore.
I gasp, and he pulls away. He looks down at my hand, and I quickly pull my glove back into place.
“What did you do?” A confused, almost wounded look flashes across his face, and there’s a hard, suspicious note in his voice.
You Were Never Here Page 25