by Sara Shepard
Suddenly, Madison let out a yes. “Got it. Aerin’s password is CapnCrunch.”
“How did you figure that out?” Seneca asked.
“She used the same password for this fashion-consignment app we downloaded a couple days ago.” The iPad made a bong; Aerin’s texts loaded.
“Well?” Seneca asked impatiently. “Anything?”
Madison filled her cheeks with air, then blew out. “Nope. No text drafts.”
“Ugh.” Maddox grabbed his foot and started to stretch his left quad, then his right. Moving felt good, so he leaned over to touch his toes, feeling the muscles in his back release.
“What are you doing?” Seneca snapped, staring at him.
“I haven’t run in a couple of days,” Maddox admitted, still upside down. “I’m starting to get stir-crazy.”
“But she did send something to her mom about forty-five minutes ago,” Madison interrupted. She had moved to the part of the store that featured a whole bunch of Get Well Soon helium balloons. “And we noticed she was missing, what, an hour ago?”
Maddox stood from his stretch, feeling overwhelmed. It was hard to believe so much had happened in sixty minutes.
Madison tapped the screen. “Her text said Me too, see you soon. And then her mom goes, Have a great time in LA!” Madison wrinkled her nose. “Wasn’t Aerin going back to Dexby?”
Seneca wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, that makes no sense.”
“Aerin doesn’t write back to her mom saying one thing or another,” Madison went on. She scrolled back through previous texts. “Nor do they talk about LA before this.” She twisted the bracelet around her wrist. “Is this some future trip we don’t know about?”
But then Seneca shook her head. “Maybe Aerin wasn’t going to LA. Maybe Brett’s hacked Aerin’s e-mail and wrote about the trip. He planted that idea in Aerin’s mom’s mind.”
Madison’s eyes widened. “Brett didn’t want Aerin’s mom instantly freaking out about where she was, so he made up a story that she was leaving town for a while. So her kidnapping was premeditated?”
“Definitely premeditated.” Seneca absently touched one of the balloons in the shape of Mickey Mouse and then gasped. “Could that be why Brett told us we have until Wednesday to solve that other case? Maybe that’s when Brett-as-Aerin told her mom she was coming back.”
“So if we solve it by Wednesday, he returns Aerin to us, and all is well.” Madison tried to talk this out. “But if she doesn’t, her mom starts to get worried and calls the cops. Though by then Brett and Aerin will be long gone, and we’ll have to confess that we knew Aerin was missing all along and didn’t do anything about it, and …”
Maddox stared miserably into the hospital atrium. Nurses wheeled a woman and a newborn to the exit. The pianist was playing the theme to Star Wars. Doctors in scrubs scrolled past with coffees. Life was moving on while Aerin was trapped. It was incalculably cruel.
He felt in over his head. Brett was crazy. And last time, when they didn’t tell the police right away, Brett twisted the story to suit his needs, and he got to escape. If they could just call the cops, they’d have real evidence on him this time—a surveillance photo from the hotel. And the cops had actual forensic techniques, way more than they had access to—especially with Thomas out of commission. The cops might be able to find a fingerprint or element of DNA that they missed. And they could investigate “Gabriel’s” car crash, too. It wasn’t that Maddox didn’t love sleuthing—it was a huge adrenaline high, and he was thrilled when pieces of a case came together. But this all felt so precarious—lawless, even. They were kids. They weren’t equipped to handle this.
There was another reason Maddox wanted to call in the police, and she was shivering among the floral arrangements, dressed in a breezy, floaty dress and beat-up Vans and wearing that cute, I’m-thinking-really-really-hard expression. Seneca Frazier was the girl of Maddox’s dreams. Literally: Every time he dropped into sleep, Seneca floated into his fantasies; each dream was sexier than the last. He felt she knew every version of him—the investigative side, the nerdy side, the insecure side. His friends from school only knew the jock side—everything else, he’d worked hard to cover up. He thought he knew her well, too—and he wanted to know her even better.
A little over an hour ago, he’d gotten up the guts to kiss her. It had felt beyond amazing, but it hadn’t been enough. To him, a measly eleven-second kiss (yep, he’d mentally timed it) was the equivalent of downing a Gu energy packet after a long road race. And now that it had finally happened, he was reluctant to dive back into more danger. If Brett took Aerin and hurt Thomas, couldn’t one of them be next? What if that was Seneca? Or his sister? Or him? No, he’d rather call the cops, hide away somewhere, let someone else handle it.
Except they couldn’t. Here they were, again, handling it on their own.
“So I guess we jump on this other case, right?” Madison broke the silence. “This Damien kid?”
Seneca pinched the space between her eyes. “I feel for him, I really do, but I don’t know if we have time.”
Maddox felt alarmed. “But … don’t we have to?”
“This is Brett’s master plan. He’s going to make us run around like chickens with our heads cut off while he plots something awful we don’t see coming.” Seneca looked hard from Maddox to Madison. “Think about it, guys. Aerin’s kidnapping was premeditated—we already figured that out. So when did Brett plan for it, and how did he carry it out without tipping us off? It all happened while we were searching for Chelsea. While we were focused on her, Brett was securing the place where he’d take Aerin, and grabbing a getaway car that looks just like Thomas’s, and figuring out how to fake his death, and watching Aerin’s every move. If we look into Damien, we might fall into that trap again … and who knows what he has planned next.”
Maddox shifted from foot to foot, still thinking about Brett picking them off one by one. Maybe Seneca had a point … but it seemed foolish to just ignore Brett. “He said that if we don’t solve the Damien case, he’ll hurt Aerin. Can’t we try to solve it and find them?”
Seneca made a face. “I don’t like dividing our efforts.”
“But Brett gave us a way to get Aerin back. Shouldn’t we at least try to find Damien?”
Seneca scoffed. “Since when has Brett been a man of his word?”
Maddox stared at his phone. The CNC message thread about the case was on the screen. Damien Dover, a quiet, introspective nine-year-old who loved Harry Potter, hadn’t come home from school on a Thursday afternoon two months before. After searching and interviewing, the townspeople noticed that Damien’s piano teacher, Ms. Sadie Sage, had vanished, too. Then the police found a surveillance camera image that was dug up from a Trailways bus station of Sadie and Damien standing together the night he was taken. They were together … going somewhere.
An amber alert went out, but not a single soul called in a tip. After only a month, the police held a press conference saying they’d failed. “So weird,” Maddox said out loud. Why had the cops given up so easily?
He peered through the interior double doors marked ER across the atrium. What were the doctors doing to Thomas in there? Would he be okay? What if one of them was next? Then he turned back to Seneca. “I think we have to do both things. Remember how Brett said that he wanted updates? What if he gets pissed when we don’t have any information for him? Sure, maybe he’s bluffing, but do we really want to toy with Aerin’s life?”
Seneca pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and stared blankly at a huge spray of pink and purple flowers. After a moment, she let out a huge sigh. “You’re right. I just hate that Brett’s in the driver’s seat again.”
“I do, too.” Maddox was glad she’d come to her senses. Sometimes, with Brett, she could get irrational, laser-focused, forgetting everyone and everything around her. He understood when she got that way, he really did—he’d go crazy, too, if he were battling the maniac who’d murdered one of his parents. It was his j
ob, he figured, to bring her down to earth, show her the big picture.
“Excuse me?”
Maddox turned. A tall, sandy-haired male doctor in blue scrubs had crossed the atrium to find them. “You’re here for Thomas Grove, right?”
“Yes.” Seneca stood straighter. “Is he okay?”
The doctor pressed his lips together. “He has multiple fractures, a broken arm, facial contusions. He’s also suffered a few second-degree burns, some smoke inhalation, and a possible concussion. But if his MRI is clear, he’ll be on his feet in a few days.”
Maddox swallowed hard. A few days? Then again, it could have been much, much worse. “Can we see him?” he asked in a wobbly voice.
“We have him sedated. It’s best if he sleeps.” The doctor gave them a kind smile. “Call the hospital tomorrow morning. He’ll probably be more lucid then.”
“Thanks,” Seneca said gratefully. Everyone shook his hand. The doctor nodded and pivoted back toward the ER doors. Maddox felt relieved … but also unsettled. Where did they go from here? How would they start looking for Damien? Then he thought about Brett and Aerin together. Where were they going? What was churning in Brett’s brain? If only they could talk to someone who knew the real Brett, not his aliases. He stared at the lettering on the hospital sign until his eyes blurred. Suddenly, an idea came to him like a bolt, and he straightened up.
“Wait a minute.” He pointed at a large hotel directory that hung behind the piano guy, who was now playing, appropriately, “Piano Man.” “Chelsea Dawson was brought here. We should talk to her. She spent hours locked up with Brett. Maybe he gave a hint about who he is, and where he might be going, or … something.”
There was a spark in Seneca’s eyes, too. “God, you’re so right.” She reached over and squeezed Maddox’s hand. “Good thinking.”
“Thanks.” His stomach felt like it was swinging from one of those rope vines on American Ninja Warrior. He wanted to pull Seneca close. Just for a couple of minutes. Just to further define what they’d just become. And to tell her, in no uncertain terms, how protective he felt, and how much her safety meant to him.
But it was time to go back into the hospital and ask some questions. Maddox’s stomach twisted at the thought of coming face-to-face with Chelsea again. Just this morning, she’d been stuck in a house with Brett, forcibly obeying his every whim, probably scared out of her mind. It was the same situation, he realized with a shudder, that Aerin was in right now.
Even more reason to find out how Chelsea was doing, coming through it alive.
FOUR
WHEN AERIN KELLY woke up, it felt like her tongue weighed a thousand pounds. There was a terrible taste in her mouth, too—sort of like tin, sort of like a rubber tire—and her neck was twisted at an uncomfortable angle, like she’d spent the night sleeping on a boulder.
She blinked a few times, deeply disoriented. What time was it? Where was she? A heavy blackout curtain covered a window, letting in only tiny slivers of gray light at the borders. A large, boxy air-conditioning floor unit rattled. The floor was carpeted, and the walls and ceiling were painted a flat white. The whole place smelled overwhelmingly like mint. Something else had smelled like mint recently—but where? The inside of somewhere. A car. A newly cleaned car, fresh and minty and horrifyingly wrong.
And then she remembered.
It hit her like a hammer to the back of her skull. The hotel driveway. Dropping my bags in the trunk. Climbing in to that minty upholstery smell. And then … Brett.
As her vision focused, she noticed a dark figure in a ball cap standing by a door. Her heart jumped, and she slithered toward the headboard, gutted with fear. She tried to scream, but the sound came out muffled. She raised a hand to her mouth but realized her wrists were bound together with plastic zip ties. When she touched her lips, she felt several strips of duct tape across them, sticky and strong.
She squealed, trying unsuccessfully to rip it off. Brett pounced and clamped her wrists to the headboard.
“Now, now.” Oh God, his voice. It dripped with sarcasm. “If you’re good, I’ll take off the tape. But if you scream, not only will we have to leave it on, but I’m also going to have to tie your hands to the bed. You don’t want that, do you?”
Aerin’s pulse thrummed at her throat. She had never felt so afraid and disgusted in her life. Here was the man who’d haunted her dreams since she’d discovered he’d killed her sister. The man who’d insinuated himself into her life, who’d befriended her, flirted with her, almost kissed her, before she realized who he really was.
It sickened her that she’d so unwittingly gotten in the car with him at the hotel. She’d thought he was Thomas—the white Ford was exactly the same, and Brett’s profile behind the tinted windows in his baseball cap hadn’t given her pause. By the time she’d realized her mistake, it was too late. And now she wondered: Was she Brett’s goal all along? Maybe that was why Brett had lured them all to Avignon—kidnapping Chelsea was a fun game, but it was really Aerin he wanted. Was that somehow possible? He had had a crush on her. He had seemed shaken when she rejected him, and wasn’t it the girls who rejected him that he went after?
“Promise me you won’t scream?” Brett asked in an eerily calm voice. Aerin frantically nodded yes.
“Are you sure?” Brett urged. Aerin nodded again.
Brett slowly pulled the tape from Aerin’s skin. When the tape was free, Aerin let out a cough. “Where are we? What day is it? Does anyone know we’re here?” She pictured Seneca and the others at the hotel. Thomas would tell them Aerin hadn’t shown up. They would find her. She knew it. Her four best friends were crack investigators—they could solve anything.
Brett snorted. “Doubtful.” Even in the dim light, Aerin could tell he was smirking. “It’s nice to hear your voice, Aerin. I’ve missed you. Did you miss me?”
Aerin held in a joyless laugh. Was he insane?
Brett reached out and traced his fingertip along Aerin’s calf. His touch felt like sandpaper, like a million tiny needles. She wanted to slap him, but there wasn’t much she could do with bound wrists. And so she lay, helpless, staring at his finger as it made a figure eight across her skin.
Tears welled at the corners of Aerin’s eyes. Brett didn’t deserve to touch her.
She felt his fingers travel to her kneecap, and then his other hand touched her cheek. Was this what Brett had done to Helena, too? She pictured Brett hovering over her sister in her last moments, stroking her cheek, saying bullshit about how nice it felt, how he hoped they’d be friends. She wanted to throw up.
He was going to kill her. That was how this was going to end.
“Can you say you missed me, too?” Brett asked, cupping her chin.
Aerin cringed. Helena’s murderer wanted her to talk sweetly to him? Seriously? “No,” she said, shaking her head.
Brett’s fingers froze on her jaw. “Excuse me?” His voice was a little sharp.
She glared at him. “I’m not going to do that.”
He squeezed her jaw hard. Pain and surprise rippled through Aerin’s body, and she let out an ugly scream. Brett wrenched Aerin’s face around and she was forced to make eye contact. In the tiny bit of light that came through the blinds, she saw the soullessness in his eyes.
“Did. You. Miss. Me?” he whispered, his voice low and calm.
Aerin felt her chin wobble. “Y-yes, okay, I missed you,” she blurted, filling with shame.
Brett let go of her and shoved her back to the pillow. Aerin curled into a ball, her throat tight, her jaw aching.
She pictured Seneca and the others again. Were they still at the hotel? Had they figured it out? Of course Seneca wanted to find her—Seneca would never give up.
There was one question, though. Would she find her in time?
FIVE
NO ONE SPOKE as they walked quickly through the hospital atrium, around the guy playing the grand piano, and to the information desk. With every step, Seneca felt more and more anxious. All she
could think about was that Aerin was trapped with Brett. What was he doing to her? Was she scared? She prayed Chelsea would have an important clue that would guide them toward him. Chelsea had spent almost a week with the guy—she had to know something.
Or if not, maybe Viola would. She checked her e-mail, hoping Viola had gotten her e-mail and wrote back. But she had no new messages.
From behind the information desk, an aging man with tufty gray hair appraised the group. “Only two people are allowed to see psych patients at a time,” he said in response to their request. “One of you will have to wait downstairs.”
“I’m going,” Seneca volunteered. There was no way she was twiddling her thumbs for the next thirty minutes. She wanted to hear the intel on Brett firsthand.
“I’d rather not go,” Madison said, looking relieved. “Hospitals give me hives.”
Maddox and Seneca looked at each other. “Guess it’s us, then,” Maddox said.
The psych ward was on the fourth floor. Seneca pressed the elevator button and waited. The doors slid open, and she and Maddox stepped inside. As the doors closed, they turned to each other at the exact same time.
“Hey,” Maddox gave her a nervous, crooked smile.
Seneca’s jaw twitched. “Hey.”
“You okay?”
She took a breath. “… No.”
Maddox put his arm on her shoulder and pulled her into a hug. Despite the chaos, there was a tiny flutter in Seneca’s chest. She looked up, into his eyes. God, she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to forget this nightmare for a few seconds … but her brain wouldn’t let her.
She pulled away.
“Seneca?” Maddox said.
“I’m sorry,” she blurted. Maddox looked embarrassed, and she quickly backpedaled. “Not that I’m saying we shouldn’t … you know. I just …” She blew her bangs off her face, hating how awkward she sounded. “Let’s see where we get with Chelsea, and then go from there. Okay?”