by Lisa Jackson
Three girls gone. Some people, like Shiloh, discounted them all as runaways, but Katrina wasn’t sure that was correct. Since the girls had vanished on Patrick Starr’s watch, she had overheard a lot of the details, and it sounded like none of the girls seemed eager to get out of town. Kat worried they’d been kidnapped, and her father seemed to agree. Dogged as he was, Detective Starr wasn’t giving up the investigation, not until he found them.
Katrina shook off her dark thoughts and lifted her arms to the humid velvet air. She was safe with her friends. “It’s a good night for this.” She glanced back at Ruthie. “Are you coming or not?”
“Sure.” Ruthie didn’t seem sure at all with her arms folded to cover her breasts.
“Then come on. We’ll ease in from the beach.”
Ruthie let out her breath. Stepped out of her panties. Hid them in her tidy stack of clothes. “Okay,” she said, tentatively following Katrina off the dock to the sandy shore. They waded into lake, the water so cold it could steal your breath.
Katrina hissed, sucking in air through her teeth, her abdomen concaving.
“Wow,” Ruthie whispered as she checked to make sure the pins holding the knot atop her head were secure. “It’s freezing!”
“You just need to get used to it.” Katrina scanned the lake. Shiloh had submerged again. Insects buzzed over the surface and she felt rather than saw a bat fly by, but she wasn’t going to say a word about it and spook Ruthie even further as they picked their way carefully over slick stones and sand.
Katrina loved coming here. To get away. Not only from her summer job as a waitress at the diner, but from other troubles – troubles related to her family. Her father was wrapped up in his work, a detective who worked overtime. Sometimes Katrina thought work was just a handy excuse for Patrick Starr to avoid facing what was happening at home. With Mom.
“She hasn’t come up.” Ruthie was eyeing the water, searching the depths.
“She will. It’s a game Shiloh plays, holding her breath for as long as she can. Ignore her.” She was done pandering to the anxious girl. In one quick movement, Kat dived in and knifed through the water.
Shiloh was untamed and tough, sixteen going on forty, or so she’d overheard her father grumble once. As a lawman Patrick Starr didn’t really approve of Kat’s association with Shiloh and the troublesome Silva clan, but he tried to keep himself from nagging too much, she could tell. No doubt he would prefer to find out that Kat was hanging out with Reverend McFerron’s daughter, since Ruthie walked the straight and narrow as a rule, while Shiloh didn’t give a hot damn for convention of any kind.
“Hey, wait up!” Ruthie called and Katrina saw the timid girl had actually started dog paddling after her.
Katrina began swimming again.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed her leg.
Her heart leapt to her throat and she yelped in shock.
The hand slid away and Shiloh shot out of the water not a foot from her.
“Gotcha,” Shiloh said, grinning as she tossed her wet hair from her face.
“I knew you were there,” Kat lied, more than a little pissed. She was nervous enough as it was with all of Ruthie’s fears coming to the fore. She didn’t need Shiloh playing her stupid games.
“Nah. Ya didn’t. Race ya.”
“You’ll lose.”
“No way.” Shiloh grabbed Kat’s shoulder and pulled her back.
“Hey!” Kat sputtered, spitting water.
“That’s cheating,” Ruthie called from across the lake, but even she was laughing as Shiloh started swimming again and Katrina, still burned, her heart racing, took off after her only to be beaten.
Shiloh heaved herself onto the shore, moonlight dappling her sleek skin. “You should have seen your face,” she said to Kat who glowered at her from the water. “Looked like you saw a ghost.”
“More like the bogeyman,” Kat snapped back.
“Shhh. Don’t say that,” Ruthie said, slowly making her way across the lake, all the while careful to keep every strand of her red hair piled high and dry on her head. “You shouldn’t talk about the bogeyman,” Ruthie warned in a worried whisper as she reached the opposite bank. “That’s tempting fate.”
“Oh, it is not.” Kat kicked and splashed water at her. Ruthie pulled away fast. “Don’t tell me you’re superstitious.”
“I’m not. Not really.” But the tremulous tone of her voice said differently.
Another splash.
“Stop it! You’ll get my hair wet! My dad will notice.”
“He already thinks you’re in bed, so he won’t see you when you sneak back in,” Kat assured her for the thousandth time. Maybe Shiloh was right; maybe she shouldn’t have let Ruthie come along. Even now, as if tired of Ruthie’s complaining, Shiloh had slipped back into the water and vanished without making a ripple.
“She’s a damn fish,” Kat said, half admiringly.
“A cold fish,” Ruthie agreed. “She doesn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t like many people.” Why try to argue when it didn’t matter anyway? It wasn’t like Shiloh and Ruthie were going to start hanging out.
Especially when Ruthie, standing chest-deep in the water, was once again staring anxiously at the darkest spot in the thicket of trees, trying, it seemed, desperately to pierce through blackness to discern what might be hiding behind the thick boles. “We should go back.” Nodding to herself and worrying her lower lip, Ruthie added, “Yeah, I think it’s time. You know . . . it might not be so safe here. Let’s go.”
Shiloh broke the surface of the water again to stand next to her. “What are you talking about?”
“Ruthie’s thinking about the missing girls,” Kat said.
“I didn’t say that!” Ruthie protested.
Kat said, “But you were.”
“No, I--”
“But nothing happened to them, okay?” Shiloh cut in. “Some people don’t know this, but Rachel and Erin took off after going to a rodeo – happens all the time. Sometimes teenagers just don’t come home.” Shiloh barrel-raced in the local circuit, so she considered herself an expert on all things rodeo.
“Rachel Byrd wouldn’t just not come home!” Ruthie argued.
“You know her?” Shiloh was skeptical.
“No, but her family attends a church where my dad sometimes preaches.”
“Oh, God.” Shiloh rolled her eyes. “So what? Here’s a news flash Ruthie: Even churchgoers cross moral lines, just like the rest of us. Trust me, I know. Some of them are the biggest hypocrites around!”
“No--” Ruthie started to argue, but Shiloh ran over her with, “Even the police think those girls ran away. End of story. No big deal, really. Maybe they needed to leave. Maybe things weren’t all that great at home. Maybe they were really bad.” Her expression, already shadowed in the moonlight, turned even darker. “When I turn eighteen, believe me, I’m taking off.”
“You mean to college.”
Shiloh shot her a searing and didn’t bother keeping the sarcasm from her voice. “Sure. College. That’s the plan.”
Stung, Ruthie winced, but asked, “Where would you go?”
“Somewhere else. Anywhere else.” Shiloh was emphatic. “Like those girls who got the hell out of here.”
“They didn’t just run away,” Ruthie said, spinning in the water. “Isn’t that right, Kat?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Your dad doesn’t think they’re runaways. That’s what you said about Rachel and Erin, right? And Courtney Pearson . . .”
“Give it a rest,” Shiloh muttered, her voice hissing across the lake’s surface.
But Ruthie went on, “Courtney’s been all over the news, and I told you, Rachel used to attend our church. But everyone talks about them. Right, Kat? And . . . and, Shiloh, you really shouldn’t use the Lord’s name in vain.”
Shiloh snorted. “Kat’s dad is a deputy. He’s paid to be suspicious, but no
one’s saying anything bad happened like -- foul play.” She looked to Kat for corroboration.
“Not officially,” Kat agreed, “but Dad doesn’t tell me everything. He can’t.” Especially when he wasn’t around all that much, when he was avoiding coming home.
“I’m telling you all that’s going on is that a couple of girls took off to get away from some kind of bad situations. They probably had dads or stepdads who knocked them around and had weak mothers who didn’t believe them, or even want to believe them. Or maybe their mom was a drunk, or on pills, or a sicko cousin or some creeper of an uncle tried to get into their pants.”
Ruthie actually gasped, treading water with some difficulty.
“Oh, get real!” Shiloh rolled her eyes at the younger girl’s naiveté. “For God sake, Ruthie, it happens, okay? Not everyone has a perfect mom and dad who go to church picnics and hold hands and dote on their children and wear halos over their damned sanctimonious heads!”
“Shiloh, enough,” Kat warned.
In the moonlight Ruthie’s face started to crumple, but she kept her head above the waterline and managed to lift her chin a fraction. “Why are you so mean?”
“I’ve had lots of practice,” Shiloh said tautly. Not backing down an inch, she added, “Remind me again, would you, why you were so hell-bent on coming here?”
Ruthie’s lips tightened. “I don’t know anymore.” She spun in the water and took off for the dock where they’d left their clothes.
Kat glared at Shiloh. “Do you always have to be such a bitch?”
Shiloh was hot. “Yeah. I think I do.”
“You went too far this time. Look what you did.”
“What I did? What you did,” Shiloh shot back furiously. “Bringing her was your idea.” Before Kat could say a word, Shiloh dove deep and disappeared again.
“Damn it.” Pissed as hell, Kat saw Ruthie’s head bobbing over the water’s surface. What a colossal mistake this whole skinny-dipping thing was. Well, it was the last time. Shiloh was right: Ruthie was a wimp, but with three girls missing it was kind of stupid to be out here like this. And Ruthie wasn’t wrong about Shiloh, either. At times Shiloh was an angry, heartless bitch.
Who needed either of them? Kat thought, as she cut across the water after the shyer girl. She had her own problems. Big ones. Unbidden, her mind drifted back to her mother, never far from her thoughts. Ill . . . dying . . . And no one in her family knew what to do.
Nope. She didn’t need Shiloh or Ruth. She vowed with each stroke that, starting tomorrow, she was going to find new friends. Normal friends.
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