I know I’ve said it a lot lately—but it was true. Things had seriously changed since then.
I was riding shotgun, and I glanced in the side rearview, where I could see Dana’s usually inscrutable face. Right now, grief was etched there for anyone with half a brain to see.
“Pull up here, dude! Here! Here!” Cal sat in the backseat beside Dana, and he waved manically at a parking spot close to the front of the CoffeeBoy entrance.
Garrett started to shake his head. “We need gas—”
“And I need to take a leak!” Cal barked out a laugh before jolting the door to the backseat wide open, even as Garrett still drove.
“What the eff, man?” Garrett slammed on the brakes.
“You know, the leak I take standing up now?” Cal leaned forward and slapped Garrett on the shoulder like they were sharing an inside joke. It was supposed to be a bro move, but the slap was executed a little too hard, and Garrett winced.
“Just get out and let me park,” Garrett said.
Cal climbed out, but then waited for us to get out of the car before heading inside the CoffeeBoy.
We had all agreed that it would be best to stop for a bathroom break and something to eat-slash-drink before heading back to the Twenty to get some rest.
CoffeeBoy had been Cal’s overpowering choice. I wasn’t sure how safe it was for a Destiny addict to load up on caffeine—but, then again, nothing seemed safe at this point anyway. I doubted a large hazelnut was going to push him over the edge.
We all trooped inside and Dana and I went toward the counter as Garrett and Cal both headed for the men’s.
“Hey,” we heard Cal say. “If y’all really do try to change me back to Sir Lame-a-Lot, you should definitely get a video of me shooting electricity out of my fingers first. I mean, that shit would go viral.”
I shot a glance at Dana and her expression was grim as she stared up at the menu, deliberately ignoring Calvin’s comment.
But then he roared with laughter, which was harder to ignore. “Dude!” he squealed. “Dude! You’re killin’ me!”
Garrett was the dude to whom Cal was referring. But Garrett definitely wasn’t laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
Garrett shook his head. “I told him that we all liked him better before he started walking,” he uttered far more quietly than Cal.
The CoffeeBoy wasn’t that busy, but there were a few bedraggled men in paint-spattered clothes sitting at a table in the corner, along with a mom and her two kids ordering donuts at the front of the line. They’d all turned to watch Cal out of the corner of their eyes, because his laughter was so high-pitched, it almost sounded hysterical. Literally hysterical.
But then? His laughter just stopped. Like someone had flipped a switch. And Cal stood up straight and shook his head at Garrett, his expression so cold that I swallowed hard. “No, dude. Wrong. No one liked me better before I could walk. You, of all people, should know that.”
Garrett wouldn’t meet Cal’s eyes. But I did. “Calvin. Stop it. What do you want?”
“What do I want? To be able to stand up when I pee for the rest of my life, and to maybe be able to shoot laser beams out of my fingers without people breathing down my throat.” He giggled. “Oh! You mean, what do I waaant? Large hazelnut. Black. Lots of sugar. Please and thank you.” Calvin winked at Dana before he finally went into the bathroom.
Dana nodded to the girl behind the register. “You heard him. I’ll also have four bottles of water, please. And four plain bagels, toasted with cream cheese. Anything else, guys?”
Garrett had wisely decided to let Cal have the men’s room to himself and he stepped forward. “I got this,” he said and swiped his credit card. Something about the way he did it was extremely sweet—a far cry from his normal condescendence.
“Thanks,” Dana said, and her voice broke, just a little.
“I know it must’ve felt weird to just leave Lacey there,” I tried to reassure her. “But the good news is that she’s alive.” It was almost hard for me to believe the words coming out of my own mouth. Lacey was alive! It was amazing news. We should’ve been celebrating.
“Yeah,” Dana replied. Her voice cracked, and she looked down at the CoffeeBoy counter. “Alive and knocked up. At fifteen.” She played with one of the coffee stirrers next to the register. “And scared to death of me.” Her chin crumpled, and when Dana gazed back up into my eyes, there were tears in hers. Her face was full of resolve though, and she steadied her voice as she said, “You know, for years. Years. I imagined what it would be like to see my baby sister again.” She laughed, just once, and the sound was bitter.
“I mean, yeah, I thought she was dead, so it was really just a fantasy. But I always imagined that I’d be somewhere—getting groceries, I don’t know—and I’d catch a glimpse of her and I’d turn, and she’d see me, too, and we’d run toward each other and hug and laugh and cry. And she was always a little girl, the way she’d been when she was taken. And I know. I’m not stupid. I can do the math. She’s not that little girl. But she’s not even—” Dana cut herself off. “I know that was a fantasy, but this is a nightmare. And then there’s Cal…”
The counter girl had come back to the register with Cal’s coffee, the water, and the bag of bagels. Dana shook her head. “I’m sorry, can you just—” She motioned for us to get the food. “I need to get some air.”
Dana strode, head down, out of the CoffeeBoy and around the corner of the little brick building. Garrett grabbed the bagels and I got the coffee and the water, and we followed to make sure she was okay.
We found Dana bent over in tears, her back against the outside wall of the store.
“Dana,” Garrett said carefully. “I mean, I know I don’t know you that well and all. But Lacey’s your sister. She’s had some rough shit happen to her, but she’ll come around. I mean, really. I know she will.”
It wasn’t the most eloquent speech. But Garrett was making a serious effort.
And it occurred to me that, right now, Garrett McDouche was more aware of Dana’s feelings than Calvin.
Dana looked up at Garrett. “Do you really think so?”
“I know so!” Garrett replied. “She’s family. And with Morgan doing more of his weird gay voodoo on her—”
Dana managed to laugh through her tears at that.
“His voodoo comes from him being a G-T,” I pointed out.
“Whatever,” Garrett said. “Bottom line, Lacey’s going to be okay.”
“And Calvin is, too,” I blurted.
“Yeah, Calvin. Too.” But Garrett didn’t sound as convinced.
Dana stood up and wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Even if it doesn’t turn out to be true, thank you for, you know, trying to give me hope.”
“Hey!”
Calvin had come around the corner.
Garrett glanced up and spread his arms out wide, still holding the bag of bagels in one hand, as if to signal that he meant nothing by hugging Dana.
Dana, however, was so overcome with emotion that she didn’t let go of Garrett. And didn’t let go.
“Shit,” I said quietly.
“I knew you were a douche! You’ve always been trying to steal my woman!” Cal roared and marched toward Garrett, who tried to swivel himself so that Dana wasn’t directly in Calvin’s path.
But Cal pushed Garrett, hard. The sudden move knocked Dana off her feet. She landed on the sidewalk, on her butt.
“Stop!” I yelled. “Calvin, what the hell!”
But his rage was too thick, and he couldn’t hear me—or maybe he was just choosing not to. Blue currents shot from his fingers, landing squarely on Garrett’s chest.
Garrett went down, convulsing almost instantly.
“Stop it! Calvin, you’ll kill h
im!”
Garrett’s body moved jerkily, involuntarily, as Calvin pushed wave after sickening wave of electricity into the other boy’s body. I watched as Garrett’s head made contact with the pavement.
Cal really was going to kill him if he didn’t stop now.
“Calvin!” My best friend may have been super-powerful, but Dana was stronger. She jumped up from where she had fallen and tackled Calvin to the ground, and his crazy power stopped.
Garrett groaned, stunned but still conscious, thank goodness.
“What? Wait, what just—” Cal was equally stunned, apparently.
“You must stop this,” Dana said and reached out to cup Cal’s cheek. “Please. You must.”
And Calvin’s eyes softened as he gazed into Dana’s. “Oh God. Oh my God, what was I doing? What did I do?”
His expression was one of utter shock—like he’d just woken up from a terrible nightmare.
Then he turned and looked up at me, his eyebrows raised helplessly. And he burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed.
Dana crouched down and put her arms around him. “It’s not okay,” she told him. “I can’t tell you that it is, because it’s not okay. You can’t be doing this.”
I was grabbing Garrett’s arm to pull him away and give them privacy when Dana’s burner phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket while still hugging Cal. She glanced at it before handing it to me. “It’s Milo.”
“I’m so, so sorry.” Cal was sobbing. “I won’t do it again, I promise.”
I answered with, “Hi, it’s me. Dana’s…a little busy right now. There was kind of a…thing. With Cal.”
“There’s a thing happening here, too,” Milo told me, his voice distant over a crappy connection. “With Rochelle.”
“But that’s just it, babe,” Dana was murmuring to Cal. “You absolutely will do it again.”
Cal lifted his head at that, and there was an echo of his earlier anger in eyes that were suddenly clear and dry. He wiped his face, and then his nose with the back of his hand. “I will not.”
Um.
Meanwhile, I was getting even worse news from Milo. “Since our John Doe seems to be in for the night,” he told me, “I used the tablet to check in on Rochelle. Her friend Ashley came over and…I’m pretty sure Rochelle is jokering.”
I put Dana’s phone on speaker. “Guys, we’ve got trouble,” I announced.
Milo’s voice came through the phone. “I think Rochelle just killed Ashley!”
That got their attention, fast.
“She’s jokering!” Dana snapped into team commander mode. “Milo, where are you?”
“I’m already outside Ro’s beach house,” he reported, his voice even more distorted and crackly. “I heard them get into an argument—Rochelle and Ashley—something about a stain on a dress that Ashley borrowed. But the camera in the living room is still pointed at the sofa, so I couldn’t see what was happening. It got loud and extra crazy, so I came over here, but by the time I got here, the screaming had stopped. I replayed the audio from the tablet and…I’m pretty sure Rochelle killed her. Ashley. I have no idea where Jilly is, but it looks like the closet door is unlocked.”
“Stay outside,” Dana ordered Milo as we all piled back into Cal’s car. “Wait for us. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Jilly might not have five minutes,” Milo said.
“Milo, please,” I said, as Garrett put Cal’s car into gear, and we peeled out of the CoffeeBoy parking lot.
“I’m pretty sure Rochelle is upstairs,” Milo said. “There may not be a better time to go in there, grab Jilly, and get out. I’ll leave the tablet outside in case we don’t get back out. I love you, Sky, I do, but God, I have to try.”
“Milo!” Dana and I both said it in unison, but he’d already cut the connection.
“Oh my Lord,” I said. Milo was going in there. I looked at Garrett. “Drive faster.” Why was he going so slowly?
“Police on my tail,” Garrett said, gesturing at the rearview mirror.
“Here.” I turned to see that Calvin was holding out his phone to me. “I hacked into the video feeds from the cameras in Rochelle’s house,” he told me. “I got them to come up on my phone, so you can see what’s happening inside the house.”
“How did you do that?” I asked, realizing that along with his ability to burp prescient-ish information and his crazy electricity-shooting-from-his-fingertips thing, the Destiny was also making Cal scary-smart. He was smart to start with, but this was evil-genius smart.
“It’s complicated,” Cal told me, a little heavy on the douchiness, considering he’d just been begging us for forgiveness. “You wouldn’t understand.”
As I watched on the screen of Cal’s phone, the camera that was pointed toward the living room sofa spun to reveal Milo, who had gone inside. He’d moved the flowers so that the camera now showed us the living room. “Ashley’s definitely dead,” he reported, his whispered voice coming through much more clearly than it had via the cell-phone signal.
“Oh my Lord!” I said again. The walls were sprayed with the woman’s blood. This wasn’t just a murder scene; it was a psycho-murder scene.
“Jesus!” Cal said when he saw the carnage.
“Rochelle is upstairs,” Milo said. Clearly he expected us to rewind and watch the footage when we got to Rochelle’s house—he had no idea we’d hacked into the signal and were watching him, live. “I can hear the sound of the shower.”
“He needs to get out of that house!” I said but I knew Milo wasn’t going to leave—not without Jilly.
Meanwhile, we were driving at Great Aunt Matilda speed. I turned to look behind us, and the police car was still right there.
Hell, I could’ve run faster to Rochelle’s house.
No. I really could have.
But, of course, that would catch us a lot more attention than we needed right now. So instead I stayed in my seat, fists clenched, watching through Calvin’s tiny cell phone screen as Milo came back into view via the flower-cam in the hallway—as he walked toward Jilly’s closet-slash-prison.
The door wasn’t just unlocked at this point; it was hanging wide-open.
Dana and Cal leaned forward to keep tabs from the backseat. Dana’s expression was stoic, but I saw her eyebrow twitch, and I knew she was as anxious as I was.
“Jilly?” Milo called the girl’s name quietly, as he picked up the bouquet with the camera and held it in front of him so that we could see what he saw.
With his foot, Milo nudged the door open farther. The lighting was dim inside, but there was enough illumination from the lamp in the hallway for us to see the outline of feet.
Jilly, lying on the closet floor.
“Jilly!” The flower-cam got jostled for a second as Milo set the bouquet down next to him on the closet floor.
Her limp body came into view, her face and neck the color of spoiled milk. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t moving—and for one horrible, sickening moment I actually thought she was already dead.
But then, she blinked. And her left arm twitched—her arm, which was, at the moment, being squeezed tightly above her elbow by a rubber tourniquet.
An IV needle was sticking out from the map of blue veins beneath her paper-thin skin. Tubing filled with dark red liquid led down to a nearly full bag of blood. No doubt about it, Rochelle was bleeding her dry. Thankfully, the D-addict had messed up and left that tourniquet on, so it was happening slowly.
Jilly spotted Milo, and her expression changed. She didn’t look angry this time. Her eyebrows raised high, and when she met his eyes, she actually appeared relieved.
“Don’t move,” Milo said softly. I watched his muscular forearm come into view. It was such a contrast next to Jilly’s malnourished limb. He leaned forward and ever so gently pulled the needle from Jilly’s arm, carefu
l to apply pressure with a piece of cotton he’d found in Rochelle’s home D-lab.
Jilly nodded and mouthed the words thank you. Her de-needled arm flopped down to the floor, as though she didn’t even have the strength to keep herself upright.
If Milo expected Jilly to leave Rochelle’s house with him, he would need to carry her out. It wouldn’t be the kicking-and-screaming variety this time—but she wasn’t going anywhere without some serious help.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a glint of movement.
“Guys? You see that?” Calvin spoke from the backseat.
Garrett had been reciting four-letter words in a little rhythm the entire time he’d been driving—and he still hadn’t stopped. Because the police vehicle was still behind us. And that meant Garrett was required to maintain the speed limit—which felt, right now, like the pace of a snail on Valium.
“What?” Garrett asked. “See what? What happened?”
At first I didn’t know what Cal had seen. And then, I did.
Rochelle.
I spotted a glimpse of her as she came into camera view in the living room. She was done with her shower, and now she was back downstairs.
“Oh my God,” Dana muttered. “No. No.”
“Milo has to get out of there!” I said for what felt like the trillionth time.
Rochelle was stalking around the room, taking her sweet time to observe the damage she’d done when she’d brutally murdered her best friend Ashley. She stopped at one blood-spattered wall and paused for a moment to wet her index finger before scrubbing gently at the edge of a silver frame holding one of her beloved self-portraits. Ashley’s blood smeared slightly, but it didn’t come off. The blood had already solidified into dark streaks against the cream-colored wallpaper.
Cal sighed heavily from the backseat. He didn’t say a word.
“Come on come on come on!” I willed Rochelle to turn around and head back upstairs. Surely there was something she needed up there. But, instead, she kept inspecting the scene of her crime, her face disturbingly blank as she emotionlessly studied the carnage.
Milo was taking too much time as well. If he would just get his act together, he might still have a chance to run out through the garage without Rochelle seeing them. But he had to leave now.
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