I sigh and close my laptop, beginning to feel like my search is hopeless. Weller would have done all of this already. Judging by his scrapbook, he was a pretty meticulous researcher. Wouldn’t he have found this connection if it—
I freeze, eyes fixed on the hallway outside my bedroom door. I could have sworn I just saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Something that looked very much like a shadow.
I hold my breath, not daring to move. Could it have been my dad? Doubtful. I’d have heard the familiar sound of his boots on the hardwood floors. And Jack or Sonya would have texted or rung the bell, even if the door was unlocked.
Shit. What kind of an idiot am I? There’s a killer on the loose, I’m home alone, and I didn’t even bother to make sure all the doors in the house were locked. What the hell is wrong with me?
I’m not sure how I long I sit in bed, hardly daring to breathe, before the panic begins to ebb. I don’t hear any sounds, and I certainly don’t feel the same kind of ominous presence that was with me in the mine. The house just feels . . . empty.
And I need to keep it that way. Time to do a sweep and make sure all the doors are locked.
I hop out of bed, still slightly on edge, and poke my head out of the bedroom door. The hallway is empty and the bright orange light of the afternoon sun streams through the overhead skylight, instantly comforting. See? It’s the middle of the day. I have nothing to worry about.
I head for the living room first, making sure the front door is bolted and the chain in place, then I do the same in the kitchen and laundry rooms. One by one, I try each window, making sure it is latched and secure. So far, so good.
I move on to the guest bedroom slash junk room, tugging at each of the windows in turn. Then my room and the hall bathroom. Finally, there’s just the master at the end of the hall.
The door is closed, which isn’t unusual when my dad is home but strikes me as odd since he’s been gone for hours. Or is he? His SUV wasn’t in the driveway, but maybe he had one of the deputies drop him off? He’s been working long hours the last couple of days. Maybe he’s taking a nap?
I’ll just peek inside and check. I grasp the handle and try to turn it, but the door is locked.
Huh? My dad’s door is never locked. In fact, though our exterior doors are like Fort Knox, it’s a family rule that inside the house, rooms should never be locked for safety purposes.
I press my ear to the wood, listening intently to see if I can hear anything from inside. Nothing. If my dad is napping, it’s one of the rare times he’s doing so without snoring.
I shake my head, backing away from the door. My imagination is out of control. I’m alone in a secured house, and my dad accidentally locked his door when he left the house in a rush. That’s the most logical explanation.
But as I return to my room, I close the door behind me and lock it.
Back in front of my laptop, I open another link about the town of Banner. This one leads to a nonprofit site protesting the illegal seizure of Native American lands during the time the dam was built and the valleys flooded. The site includes a detailed map of pre-inundated Shasta—marking both traditional Wintu lands and the areas allotted to them by the federal government—and features a statement by a local historian who has been trying to preserve the heritage of the Wintu.
“Not only were Wintu families forced to leave their individual Indian allotments—granted to them by the federal government—but as the water level began to rise, they had to abandon their traditional burial grounds and places of worship as well. These areas are sacred to the Wintu tribes, and as the lake recedes, every effort must be made to reclaim these sites and preserve them for future generations.”—Marion Ainsley, librarian and historian, Redding.
I knew that Greer and Graham’s mom is a librarian, but not that she had an interest in preserving local history. I quickly pull up her bio on the Shasta Library website. Marion Ainsley curates a local history archive, focusing on the vanished towns and settlements of Shasta Lake.
If anyone has information on Malcolm Hockler, it would be Greer and Graham’s mom. But with her daughter in the hospital, I doubt she’ll be at work, or even interested in talking to me on the phone.
But maybe Graham can help?
I don’t have his number, just Greer’s, so I dial, hoping someone answers.
“Hello?” Graham’s voice. Score.
“Graham? It’s Annie.”
“Oh, hey.”
“How’s Greer?”
He heaves a jagged sigh, and I can tell he’s been crying again. “Same.”
“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t volunteer any more information, so I decide to get to the point. “You know at the hospital today when I said I’d find who did this?”
“Mmhm.”
“Well, I need your help.”
“How?”
I briefly explain the scrapbook I found at Weller’s cabin, and the significance of Malcolm Hockler. “I know your mom curates the old history stuff at the library, and I thought maybe she’d come across something that could help? Maybe a photo of Malcolm Hockler. Or more information about him and the mine.”
Graham is silent for a moment. “I can’t really ask her right now,” he says slowly. “The doctor gave her something to help her sleep.”
Dammit.
“But she’s got boxes of old documents in the garage. Maybe I can look?”
“Awesome.”
“I’ll call you if I find anything,” Graham says quickly. He sounds energized again, and I know exactly how he feels. “Annie?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for doing something.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
I’M IN THE SHOWER WHEN MY PHONE BUZZES. BY THE TIME I towel off, I find a bunch of texts: seven from Greer’s phone, and one from Jack’s. I read the older ones from Graham first.
I think I found something weird.
The town of Banner gets its name from the old Wintu words “bana buli.”
Which means “the hill where one eats oneself.”
Fucked up, right?
It reminded me of this story my mom used to tell us, about a vengeful Wintu spirit.
Annie? You there?
Can you call me?
I call Greer’s phone, my hand shaking with excitement. The hill where one eats oneself. Considering all the half-eaten bodies that have been discovered in the area, the name is pretty accurate. I wonder if the old legend he mentioned is connected?
After several rings, the call goes to voice mail. “Hi, this is Greer. I’m busy, so leave a message.”
My throat closes up. It’s like a voice from the grave.
“Gr-Graham,” I stutter, forcing myself to speak. “Got your message. Call me back?”
I stand in the bathroom, phone in hand, shivering. Why am I so cold?
I pull the towel around me and walk into my room to find some clothes. It’s dark and I have to turn on the light to see anything. Night already? I must have been so wrapped up in research I didn’t even notice that the sun had gone down. My drawers are pretty empty, a clear sign that I’ve been neglecting the laundry since graduation, but I manage to find an old pair of jean shorts and a powder-blue hoodie, then I sit on the edge of my bed and try Graham again.
Same as before, the call goes to voice mail. Only this time I hang up before I hear Greer’s voice.
Graham must have left the phone in another room or turned the ringer off. Either way, it sounds like he wants to talk to me. To tell me something.
My fingertips tingle. This could be it: the missing piece. Weller had been looking for Malcolm Hockler, but judging by the final entry in the scrapbook, he hadn’t found anything. Maybe that’s because Graham’s mom had the evidence he needed all along?
I can’t wait for Graham to pick up the phone. I need to talk to him. ASAP.
Slight problem: I’m trapped at home, carless.
Jack.
I open his text. Just two words. I’m sorry.
&nb
sp; “I’m sorry too,” I say, the instant he answers my call.
He sighs heavily. “I was frustrated earlier. I just don’t know what to do. And I always know what to do.”
I laugh. “Well, I might be able to fix that.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I think Graham found something, in his mom’s archives. Something that might help us find out who the killer is.”
“Okay.”
“I was about to go to his house to talk to him.” Will he tell me I’m nuts? Ask me to leave it alone?
But Jack’s answer makes me smile. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I’m rifling through my closet trying to find my favorite pair of flip-flops, which have apparently been swallowed by the black hole of my shoe collection, when a knock at the front door scares the crap out of me. My nerves, of course. I know that Jack’s picking me up, but my internal clock is warning me it’s too soon and as I slip into a pair of old sneakers and walk down the hall to the front door, I picture a dark, ominous shadow on the other side, just like the one in the mine.
Which is ridiculous, I realize, but I still breathe a sigh of relief when I see Jack’s spiky Mohawk through the peephole.
The moment I open the door, he sweeps me up in his arms and kisses me hungrily.
“Hey,” he says when he pulls away. His voice is thick, his eyes half-closed.
“You got here fast.”
“Probably broke a dozen traffic laws en route, but it was worth it.” He kisses me again, then holds me close as he nuzzles my cheek. “Annie, I feel like such an asshole. You don’t deserve to be treated like that.”
I close my eyes and relish the feeling of his lips grazing against my skin. “It’s okay. You were trying to protect me.”
“Yes.” He stares into my eyes. Even in the moonlight, I can see the softness in his features. “But I was wrong. Maybe we do need to figure this out.”
“You’re here now. That’s what matters.”
He nods. “Come on. Let’s get to Graham’s.”
The front lawn of the Ainsleys’ ranch house looks like a florist’s truck overturned in their driveway. Even in the subpar light of the street lamps, I can see the bouquets of flowers strewn across the grass, dotted with the occasional potted plant, all wrapped in cheerful bows of Crayola hues that seem out of place, considering their intent. Jesus candles line the front steps—a few have flickering flames burning their brightly colored wax, but the rest have gone out, their wicks exhausting the fuel within. On the porch, an enormous framed portrait of Greer rests on an artist’s easel. It’s her senior yearbook photo. Her plastered grin looks as if she’d been holding it too long, and the glazed look in her eyes is reminiscent of a wax dummy. Not that it’s better or worse than anyone else’s yearbook photo, which, despite being the most important photo we’ve ever taken, inevitably turns out to be a cross between a mug shot and a gag photo, but it seems like such an odd picture to choose for a shrine. Plastic and fake, and not at all like my friend, as if it isn’t really Greer who’s in the hospital but some stranger.
We park out front, but instead of walking up the path to the front door, Jack guides me around the side of the house. “Don’t want to bother his parents. His room is around back.”
I follow Jack through the backyard, neatly landscaped with a stone path and drought-friendly succulents surrounding a kidney-shaped pool. The room off the back—Graham’s room, I guess—is brightly lit with some kind of colored lamp, a dark orange glow penetrating into the blackness of the yard. But as we round the side of the house, we stop dead. It’s not a colored bulb or lamp shade that tinges the concrete patio reddish-orange. The sliding glass door is splattered with red paint.
No, not paint. Blood. Splattered across the pane as if someone tossed a bucket of it at the window.
Through the streaks of blood, I can see Graham inside, crumpled on the floor, and I scream.
The top of his head is missing.
TWENTY-NINE
“AREN’T YOU THE SAME KIDS WHO FOUND DEPUTY WELLER?” The officer taking notes on his iPad looks up at us skeptically, his left eyebrow arched.
I don’t appreciate the implication. Or being called “kids.”
“Yes,” I say, sounding cooler than I feel. “I’m Annie Kramer.” I keep expecting my dad to come around the corner of the house, see me with Jack at yet another murder scene, and fly into a rage. But so far, Sheriff Kramer hadn’t appeared.
“Oh.” It takes a few moments for the hamster wheel that operates his brain to ramp up, processing my last name, then he sucks in a breath and his face lights up. “As in Sheriff Kramer.”
“Uh-huh.” A Rhodes scholar, he’s not.
The office’s demeanor does a one-eighty. “Oh! Hey, are you guys okay? Pretty horrible to find your friend like this.”
I glance over his shoulder toward the pool. The macabre red glow is masked by fleeting shadows from the army of forensics investigators crawling through Graham’s room.
“Yeah.”
“Clear case, though.” He scratches his chin with the nub of a well-chewed fingernail as he confides in us like we’re part of the force. Totally the opposite of five seconds ago, when he clearly thought we might be the killers. I can’t help but think that if Jack had been here on his own, the officer’s opinion would have been very different. “Shotgun from his parents’ collection, powder inside his mouth. Plus the note. Open-and-closed suicide, if you ask me.”
“Note?” Jack asks.
The officer eyes his Mohawk, his smile slipping. My boyfriend is not, apparently, part of the team. “Suicide note.”
“But he just texted me a half hour ago,” I say, a tremor in my voice. “He asked me to come over. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Weird,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t usually work the dead-body cases. More of a desk guy myself. But the department is stretched pretty thin tonight, with this and those college students gone missing. So I’m just pitching in.”
I’m barely listening to him ramble. Suicide? I pull out my phone and reread Graham’s texts. He seemed excited, maybe a little scared, but at no point in time did he sound as if he might want to take his own life.
“Can I see?” Jack says, then lifts the phone from my hand.
“Why would he do it?” I ask, more to myself than with the hope that anyone will actually supply me with an answer.
“Oh!” the officer exclaims, a smile brightening his face. “I can tell you that. Got a picture of the note right here.”
I hold my breath as the officer flips his tablet over so I can see the note. I swallow, trying to focus on the words instead of the red splatters across the white page.
“Can’t take the guilt. I tried to kill my own sister. I’m too sick to live.”
I don’t even remember Jack driving me home. I haven’t been able to stop crying, but even with the deluge of tears that sting my eyes and a raging headache, I can’t get the image of Graham’s mangled skull out of my mind. It dances back and forth with Deputy Weller’s disfigured corpse and the black-and-blue mess that was Greer’s face. Around and around. A pattern of death and horror, and I don’t know how to stop it.
Jack sets the parking brake and cuts the engine, then walks around to the passenger door and slips his arm around my lower back, sliding me from the truck. I cling to him as we walk toward the house.
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” I say, feeling an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Graham attacked his sister? I just don’t believe it. I saw him at the hospital—he was ravaged by grief, not guilt.
“If Graham attacked Greer then killed himself from guilt,” Jack says, “that does explain a lot.”
I sniffle, wiping the tears off my cheeks. “Do you really think Graham tried to kill his own sister?”
Jack clenches his jaw. “No, I don’t.”
“Me neither.” And if Graham wasn’t responsible, it means the killer is still out there.
“Annie, I know everythin
g seems crazy right now, and I know I’ve made promises before that I haven’t always kept.”
“It’s okay.”
He pauses at the front door and brushes the hair away from my tearstained face, then places his hands firmly on each of my cheeks. “No, it’s not.” He gazes down at me. “Is there anything else you remember about tonight?”
I’m not sure why he’s asking. “I was researching Malcolm Hockler, then I took a shower. That’s when Graham texted.”
“Okay.” Then he takes my hand. “There’s something dangerous going on, and I want to protect you from it.”
I nod, staring into his eyes.
“Annie,” he says softly. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”
His thumb strokes my skin and suddenly, Graham, Greer, Weller, and the killer vanish from my mind. All I can think about is how much I love Jack. My body clenches and deep within me, something aches. I want Jack. I want all of him.
I grab him by the shirt and kiss him, hard. It’s an aggressive kiss, and I don’t care whether or not Jack might find it a turnoff. There’s been too much death, reminding me that at any moment it could be one of us. I want to live like any moment could be my last.
Because it might be.
Jack holds me gently by the hips while he kisses my neck. Respectfully. But the last things I want right now are gentle and respectful. “I want you.”
“Mmhm,” he murmurs, not understanding the full meaning of my words.
I pull away and grip him by the sides of his head. “Jack, I mean that I want you. Right now. For the first time.”
His eyes widen. “Are you sure?”
I nod and slip my hand under his shirt, clawing at the buckle on his belt. I can’t get his clothes off fast enough.
“Annie, I don’t want you to do this because you think—”
“I want to,” I repeat. Need to. “More than anything.”
He doesn’t try to talk me out of it; instead he lifts me off the ground. I wrap my legs around his waist, and kiss his upturned lips as he carries me inside the house.
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