Evan emerged from the fog. “Have you seen—? Oh, hey, Adam. Whoa, am I interrupting . . . ?”
“No,” I claimed, grateful for the darkness that hid my blush. I stood and brushed off any telltale sand. “We went for a walk and got turned around.”
Evan smiled knowingly. “Right. Like you can’t follow the shoreline back.”
I was not amused. “Evan, what do you want?”
“You seen Mallory?”
“No, not since the bonfire. Why, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, I think I might have said some things.”
“There’s a stunner. Did you try calling her?”
“She hung up on me. I tried again, but it went right to voice mail.”
“What about the snack shack? Corn dogs are her usual go-to when she’s upset. Or maybe she’s with Vega and the others.”
“Or maybe she’s on the jetty?” Adam added, and got a sharp nudge from my elbow in return.
“I’ve looked everywhere.” Evan shook his head.
“Well, obviously not everywhere.” My eyes narrowed. “So what did you say to her?”
“That’s not important. We need to find her. Party’s over. Everyone’s leaving.”
“Already?” I said, suddenly wanting to stay the weekend, the week, forever, if it could be like this with Adam.
Evan rolled his eyes and sighed. “Yeah, well, back at the celebration for my victory—”
Oh, please.
“—a few of the guys got wasted and tried setting fire to a lifeguard tower. Beach Patrol is closing us down. Look, I’m going to take my trophy and a load to the van and check the parking lot. You two pack up what’s left and meet me there. One of us is bound to find her, assuming she didn’t leave with someone else.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll find her.”
Evan made a soured-milk face. “She wouldn’t do anything stupid, would she?”
No, that would be me, I thought. Mallory knew enough to fold and run. I was the one who kept raising the stakes, and now I was all in with everything to lose.
RULE #29
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE MAGIC OF GOOD LIGHTING.
I bundled together the last of our belongings while Adam combed the beach for Mallory. By time he returned we were the last two people this side of the dunes.
“Any sign of her?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“I’m worried. I know Mal can be a bit melodramatic, but she’s never held out this long.”
“She’ll be at the van. You’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right.”
We divvied the goods and began the slow plod back over the dunes, which I could have sworn doubled in size since we last climbed them. More than once Adam had to stop to let me catch up, and it occurred to me that all day we—whatever we were—had been like an accordion, drawing together, pulling apart.
By the second set of dunes, the fog had passed us in its race inland. I insisted Adam go ahead, figuring Mal and Evan were probably already waiting for us. I made it to the top and set down my stuff to catch my breath. Below, the lot appeared empty except for our van with Evan’s trophy and the pile of gear stacked beside it—until I noticed a dark vehicle skulking through the low-lying fog. It was the same SUV I’d seen that morning.
Praying I was wrong, I hitched up our gear and started down the dune, steadily increasing my pace as I went. The SUV drew closer to our van. I made it to the boardwalk and broke into a run for the pavement. Ahead I could make out Adam seated on the back bumper, impatiently banging out a beat.
I opened my mouth to shout a warning as my feet hit a patch of sand. I skidded and stumbled to within a couple feet of the van’s front end, then went down in a flying heap of towels, umbrellas, beach bags, and chairs.
The SUV pulled over, its doors flung open, and two familiar men emerged. Bad-dye-job guy had a tarp over one shoulder and a length of sturdy rope in his hands. Briefcase man, the taller of the two, was armed with a syringe.
“Tie her up,” he barked.
His partner stooped to wrap the rope around my outstretched arms, but I kicked out, catching him in the chest. I scrabbled beneath the van and clung to the undercarriage. Cursing, bad-dye-job guy got down on all fours, but I wriggled out of reach.
A pair of bare feet circled the van. “Get away from her!” shouted Adam, and the guy grappling for me was hauled from view.
“It isn’t her we want. It’s you,” rumbled a deep voice. “Alive or dead. Your call.”
That’s when all hell broke loose. Feet scuffled, tripping over beach gear, flicking bits of asphalt and sand into my eyes. Through flying grit I glimpsed Adam scaling a nearby barbed wire fence. His assailants tried to wrench him back, but the wire tore from the post and all three bodies hit the ground. The syringe skittered across the pavement. Briefcase guy scrambled after it while bad-dye-job guy did his best to subdue Adam with a tarp and a few well-placed kicks.
But unlike at Hayden’s, Adam just lay there, taking the blows.
“Get up, Adam!” I shouted. Why wasn’t he fighting back? I already knew the answer.
I’d made him promise not to.
“Forget your promise!” I yelled, but it was too late.
A glint behind the van’s front tire caught my eye. Evan’s keys. They must have slid out of my bag when I fell. Scraping and crawling over loose asphalt, broken glass, and cigarette butts, I inched my way toward them. Snatching the keys, I hoisted myself out from under the van, opened the door, and jumped into the driver’s seat.
I’d once referred to the van as a weapon. It was as good a weapon as I was going to get. All I had to do was start the engine, but my shaking hand couldn’t find the ignition slot.
Finally the key slid into place. I cranked the engine, glanced into the rearview mirror, and threw the van into gear—the wrong gear. The van lurched forward, and the two thugs leaped aside.
I grabbed the shift and this time shoved it into reverse. The transmission made a terrible grinding sound but obeyed, and the van pulled even with Adam. I leaned across the seat and forced open the passenger door. “Get in!”
Before he could respond, briefcase man seized Adam by the hair and jerked him back. I snatched Evan’s half-full water bottle from the cup holder and pitched it at Adam’s attacker. It smacked him in the forehead and Adam toppled into the van.
“Hold on!” I shifted into drive and punched the accelerator. With a THUNK THUNK we rode up and over the concrete parking chock, flattening Evan’s trophy in the process. Now to find Evan and Mallory and get us out of there.
I cranked the steering wheel hard to the left but still managed to take out a row of fencing. We were nearly to the parking-lot exit when two figures waving their arms sprang from behind an information kiosk. I swerved and slammed on the brakes.
A fist pounded the van’s hood. “What the hell are you doing?!”
Switching on the headlights, I discovered I’d nearly pancaked Evan and Mallory. Rolling down the driver’s-side window, I hollered, “No time to explain. Get in!” Two beams of light struck the side-view mirror. That was all the convincing Evan needed.
He and Mallory slid open the cargo door, Mallory flung her beach tote into the van and they dove in behind it. “Where’s all my stuff?” hollered Evan. “Where’s my trophy?!”
“I’ll make you a new one!” My foot found the accelerator and put it to the floor.
Behind us the SUV cut over an embankment, hot on our tail. Mallory was wigging out. Evan was doing his best to bully me into pulling over. He might’ve been willing to take them on. I wasn’t.
A light flashed on the dash. “Oh god. No gas, Evan!”
“I was going to fill up before we got on the freeway.”
“How many miles do I have?”
“I’d say you’re running on fumes.”
“Dammit!”
The SUV pulled even to the driver side of the van and swerved toward my door. I gave the wheel a hard twi
st to the right. Instantly the van fishtailed. Recalling the squirrel incident, I turned into it, but that ran us up onto the unpaved shoulder, where I clipped a signpost. Two thumps and a whole lot of four-letter words flew up from the back of the van.
I couldn’t worry about that now. Through a flurry of dirt and gravel, I got us back on asphalt, but the road was coming to a T-junction. “Which way?” I shouted.
“Right—no, left!” Evan hollered.
Swerving one way and then the other, we blew through the intersection on what felt like two wheels and merged into traffic. A river of lights filled my rearview mirror. There was no telling if I’d lost our pursuers or not. My only choice was to keep going.
A reflective green freeway sign flashed ahead. I made a multilane change that would have caused even Nana Jo to lose her hair and then swung onto the on-ramp, wheels screeching, horns blaring.
“There aren’t any stations for miles this way. Go back!” Evan was shouting. “We’re going to run out of gas. Pull over, pull over!”
“I will!” I shouted over my shoulder. “As soon as—”
The engine sputtered.
“Oh, great,” whined Mallory.
“I think I can make this off-ramp.” I spun the wheel. Two more thumps in the back. The van veered over a row of sandbags and across the dirt divide. Hiccupping and lurching, it rolled down the steep freeway exit, drifted along a dark and narrow frontage road, and came to rest in a pullout beside a row of rural mailboxes. I cut the lights and let my head fall onto my hands, which still clutched the wheel.
“You want to explain what the hell is going on?” Evan was rubbing his head and scrambling over the top of the seat like he wanted to throttle me, but I was too scared to be intimidated. I spun around to ward him off.
“While you two were off doing who knows what, two guys tried to kidnap Adam!”
Evan dropped into the middle seat. “Why would someone want to kidnap Adam?”
“No idea.” But my guess was they knew something about him we didn’t.
“We need to call the police,” insisted Mallory, who was holding her stomach as though she might be sick.
Adam was slumped against the passenger door. He’d pulled a towel over himself and had been strangely quiet, even for him. “You okay?” I asked.
“Still . . . here.”
But where was here? I peered out the window. Strands of mist twined through dense forest, strangling the bay laurels, oak, and pine until they nearly vanished from view. For the moment we’d lost the SUV, but we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. I pulled out my phone. Nowhere didn’t have phone reception.
Rolling down my window, I searched for a way out of our predicament, the one I drove us into. No people. No buildings. Nothing but a discarded tire and a half dozen rusty mailboxes. Gradually my eyes adjusted to the dark. Far up a dirt lane to our right, the tiniest light twinkled through the branches of a pine grove. “Is that a house?”
“Looks like,” said Evan.
“Why don’t you and Mallory go see if you can borrow a phone or bum some gas. Adam and I’ll wait here with the van in case someone comes along who can help us.” Like that’s going to happen. The only people likely to come along here were the kidnappers.
Mallory, who was too busy wallowing in self-pity, also hadn’t budged, but that didn’t stop her griping. “My parents are going to be so pissed if I’m not home by midnight. Why didn’t you listen to Evan and go back? Oh, shit. I’m missing an earring.”
That’s when I lost it. “Will you shut up and try to think about somebody besides yourself for a change?!”
Evan smacked the back of the driver’s seat, hard. “Hey! You’re out of line. You’re the one who got us into this mess. Why are you yelling at her?”
“Because if we hadn’t been off hunting for her, this never would have happened,” I said. I took a deep breath and slowly deflated. “And because I’m scared. I’m sorry.”
“Come on, Evan. If we don’t go, we could be here all night,” said Mallory, sounding somewhat resigned. “Let’s see if we can find a phone.”
Still grumbling, she and Evan took off down the lane, but not before Evan pointed out the dents, missing hubcap, and damaged paint where I’d sideswiped the fence and signpost. Dad was going to kill me.
Adam and I sat in stunned silence as the approaching bank of fog engulfed the van. I didn’t dare turn on the overhead light in case those two thugs were still out there looking for us. I should have taken a less obvious route home. And it was probably a mistake sending Mal and Evan off into the dark. This whole scene was straight out of a horror movie, the one where the dumb teens lost in the woods are torn to pieces by a serial killer or a swamp thing.
From out of the dark, Adam said, “Some driving.” His voice was a weak and ragged whisper.
“Thanks. Yeah, apparently it helps when I have someone trying to run me off the road. How bad are you hurt?”
“It’s my ankle. I slammed it in the door trying to get in the van.”
Then why was he buried under a towel? It’s wasn’t that cold. Determined to see for myself, I got out, but not before listening for the telltale snap of a twig or the huff of heavy breathing. The only heavy breathing was my own, so I circled to the other side of the van. Adam held the door fast. “Dammit, Adam, open the door!”
He grudgingly released the handle while pulling the towel clear up to his chin. “Now let me see your ankle.” I reached for his leg, but his hand stopped me. His touch was cold, moist, and sticky. I’d helped Tony wash too many bodies not to recognize the sensation. Blood. I reached for the overhead dome light, no longer caring who saw us.
“Don’t!”
Too late. The cab filled with a weak amber glow. I sighed in relief. The substance covering his palm was too orange to be blood. But then, through the tatters of his shirt, I saw a wicked gash across his chest. “Adam, you’re cut.”
“From the barbed-wire fence,” he admitted.
I fumbled for the dry towel crammed behind his seat so I could clean the gash, but he warded me off. The sudden movement caused a gush of the same orange, syrupy fluid from the wound.
I stumbled back. “What the—!”
Covering the apparent wound with one hand, Adam slammed the palm of his other against the light, plunging us back into obscurity. But I knew what I’d seen, and it wasn’t blood.
My mind reeled for an explanation. Rust? Lotion of some kind. Jam or jelly. Antifreeze. Antifreeze? Coming from an open wound? Pus, then. No way. It hadn’t been long enough for an infection to set in. Then what?
My limbs started to shake, my stomach to churn. “Adam, what’s that orange stuff? What’s wrong with you?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you, back at the beach.”
I could think of a thousand possibilities of what he might say, and none of them were anything I wanted to hear. He was going to ruin everything. I could feel it in my bones.
“I’m not who you think I am—what you think I am.”
Stop talking stop talking stop talking.
“I’m not . . . human.”
Adam was delusional. He hit his head during the scuffle in the parking lot. Or maybe that was me, because nothing was making sense.
His hand found my shoulder. “Lily, hear me out.” His voice was calm.
Before he could force me to face the reality of that gruesome gash and the peculiar fluid seeping from it, Evan’s and Mallory’s muffled voices cut through the ensnaring mist. Quickly Adam retracted his arm and rearranged the towel to cover any evidence of his injuries, while I retreated from the van.
I bent over, hands on knees, and took several shallow, shaky breaths. There were two possibilities. Either one of us had lost it, or he was telling the truth.
For once, I wish he could lie.
RULE #30
LEAVE NO TRACE OF BLOOD.
Mal and Evan had returned, hopefully with a means to get us out of here. How would I tell them about
Adam? Should I tell them? Evan would simply call me a liar or think it was all a big prank. Mal would flip out. I wanted to flip out.
I straightened and pushed backed my hair, but remained clear of the car. “Did you get it?”
“No one was at the house with the light,” answered Evan, “but I found a full gas can in a shed. Left a twenty under the welcome mat in payment.”
Mal helped Adam move to the middle seat so she and Evan could take the front, but I was finding it hard to even look at Adam, let alone touch him. Evan drove to the first station off the freeway, filled the tank, and soon we were back on the road with no sign of our pursuers.
“I . . . thirsty,” said Adam.
“I’ve still got a couple drinks still in my bag,” said Mallory and passed him a bottle. He gulped it down and took the other. “Guess you’ve got a thing for cream soda,” she teased.
“That’s not cream soda,” said Evan. “You drank the two bottles we brought, remember? That’s beer. I was holding a couple for one of my teammates and put them in your bag to keep them cool. I guess he forgot about them.”
“Sorry, Adam,” she said. “My bad. But, hey, maybe it’ll help you relax after all that’s happened tonight.”
That, it turned out, was an understatement. Adam closed his eyes, complaining about rolling down the freeway—sideways. He then asked someone unseen to read him the story about jousting knights and unfaithful kings and queens. I couldn’t tell if he was drunk out of his mind or suffering from head trauma. At last he settled into a restless sleep, and he remained that way until we were parked in the delivery bay behind the mortuary.
“Adam, wake up. We’re here.”
His head lolled to the side, but he slowly came to. He adjusted the towel to better conceal his injuries.
The van door slid open, and his body virtually poured out. Body? If what he claimed was true, did he even have bones, muscles, or a heart like ours?
“Man, he is totally sloshed,” said Mallory. “And I thought I was a lightweight.”
She and Evan assisted a woozy Adam over to one of Nana Jo’s benches by the back door to sober up, but it was hard to believe his condition was solely due to a couple brews.
Mortal Remains Page 21