Sam was hunched over a little piece of free space on his desk, but he looked up when she placed the cup at his elbow.
“So did you?” he asked again. “Get any sleep.”
“As if you got any, either,” she countered.
He squinted at her over his computer glasses, thick salt-and-pepper caterpillar eyebrows all but obscuring his sharp blue eyes. She could see the exhaustion written so clearly there in the grooves of his face. Sometimes she forgot that he was edging ever closer to his sixtieth birthday. This was not one of those times.
Sam grabbed the coffee and sat back in his chair, taking a gulp without even testing out the temperature.
“God, that’s hot,” he said instead of responding to her. It didn’t stop him from going back for more. He ran a hand over his eyes, drawing a sort of infinity sign with his thumb and pointer finger. They came together at the bridge of his nose, and he squeezed it tight before looking back at her.
“That’s what I thought.” She smiled faintly, blowing on her drink. Some days she subsisted on coffee alone. It didn’t help with her insomnia, but it let her work when she’d rather crash, and for that she was grateful.
Sam and Clarke stared each other down, both trying to decide if they wanted to make an issue out of their mutual deteriorating health. It was a prickly subject for both of them. Sam looked away first.
“How was Texas?” he asked, turning the majority of his attention back to the computer nearest him, which had the blown-up picture of the cabin on the lake occupying every inch of the screen.
“Hot,” she said. “And don’t start with me. Please?”
“Was I starting?”
She came to stand at his shoulder. “The quiet disapproval is almost worse.”
“You get results, I’ll give you that, kid,” he said.
A response died on her lips at the sound of heels on the slick tile. Della LaCroix. Looking far better than any human had a right to this early in the morning, all flawless dark skin and pixie-cut caramel-colored hair and smooth, endless legs.
Della’s deep brown eyes scanned Clarke, starting at her flip-flops and traveling right up to her messy hair that she hadn’t washed in the past four days. Polite horror settled into the corners of Della’s lips, and she didn’t even try to hide it.
“Don’t you start, either,” Clarke told her.
“Well, hello to you, too, sugar,” Della said, with only a hint of New Orleans in her voice. “We thought you might have flown off to Fiji.”
“I got bored of the easy life. Missed all the torture and murder,” Clarke said as Della slid in behind her wall of monitors, unlocking the computer. The cabin picture jumped out on three of the five screens. The other two showed search results. Clarke squinted, trying to make out what they were of, but her tired eyes blurred.
“Well, while you were down there sipping mai tais, we actually came up with something,” Della said, her long fingers flying over her keyboard. Clarke’s attention sharpened.
“Already?” She’d thought the picture might be easier this time. They did tend to get easier. The clock was winding down, after all.
Clarke smacked Sam on the back. “Why didn’t you say something?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “Della, go.”
“No Worries on the stern was the obvious route to take. There are twenty-one boats with that name registered in New York and Pennsylvania. I started on those two states because of the topography in the background of the picture.” She pointed a short, well-manicured nail at the low, rolling mountains behind the cabin.
“Now here’s where we got lucky.” Della zoomed in on the corner of the picture.
“We don’t get lucky,” Clarke countered.
“Okay, true,” Della allowed. “So, this is what he’s letting us see.”
Clarke leaned forward as the red smudge sharpened under Della’s computer wizardry. Della smiled over her shoulder, a lethal flash of teeth. “It’s a ‘For Sale’ sign.”
“That was too easy,” Clarke said, not knowing what it meant. They were supposed to be able to figure them out. But not that quickly.
He enjoyed toying with them too much. He was able to judge their ability to solve his clues with a precision that scared her and tugged at the corner of her brain. It was one of those questions to which she always came back: How did he know?
Della raised a brow before turning back to the monitors. “I can’t say you’re wrong there. It wasn’t necessarily a walk in the park, but it wasn’t hard, either. Nothing like the last one. I made out three of the numbers on the sign and ran an algorithm against them and the properties that were up for sale in the towns with boats that had registered as No Worries.”
Della reached over at the end of her little explanation and snagged a piece of paper out from beneath Sam’s coffee cup, glaring at the inanimate object and then at the man himself, before turning back to Clarke.
Clarke glanced down at what Della handed her. A map. “Staunton, New York.”
“In the Poconos,” Sam chimed in.
“Why do I know that name?” Clarke searched her foggy memory banks but came up dry.
It took only a hasty glance between Sam and Della for it to click for Clarke. “The missing-girl alert.” Della had set them all up with an alert for when a female between the ages of fifteen and thirty was reported missing anywhere in America. It was depressing as hell, and Clarke forced herself to read every one that came in. “A couple days ago.”
“It doesn’t fit, though,” Sam said.
It didn’t. The bastard always finished with his current girl before moving on to the next. Anna. He still had Anna.
But. What were the odds? “You—Mr. Nothing Is a Coincidence himself—think it’s coincidence?”
“Did I say that?” Sam asked, and Della’s gaze flicked between the two, knowing enough not to interfere.
“Stop being cryptic, Sam. I’m not in the mood.”
Sam turned back to the monitor, used to her sharp edges. He squinted. “The clue was too easy to figure out.”
Way too easy. “A break in the pattern. Subtle but . . .”
“If he can break one rule, he can break others.”
It wasn’t unprecedented that there was a woman missing in the town to which they were headed. Women went missing all the time. It was far more frequent than the general public knew. They’d chased enough dead ends to realize that. But . . .
“What are you guys silently communicating over there?” Della finally broke in. “What does this all mean?”
Sam and Clarke locked grim eyes across the room.
“It means,” Clarke started slowly, and Sam nodded, knowing where she was headed. “It means he may have his next victim.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
ADELAIDE
April 1995
Adelaide held her breath as Simon crouched closer to the babbling stream that ran behind the Crosses’ house, his nose almost touching the water, his knees sinking into the soft clay banks. His one hand was braced on a slick, mossy rock, and the other was held aloft, ready to strike at any moment.
Adelaide’s fingertips rested against her lips as she watched. Her fiery red curls were ruthlessly pulled into two braids that hung just behind her ears. Strands had already escaped and blew across her face, but she ignored them, the entirety of her attention locked on her foster brother. Her hero.
Just as a blackbird let out a disgruntled caw from the tree above them, Simon karate-chopped his raised hand into the cool water. Adelaide couldn’t contain the gasp of excitement that forced its way out of her mouth. She leaned forward, but Simon’s hand had clenched into a fist, the gentle current washing over it, and she knew he’d missed his target.
She met his angry eyes. “It’s okay. We can find something else for our picnic dinner,” she told him, standing and brushing the dirt that clung to the bottom of her white shorts and the back of her thighs.
“We’re going to have fish.” His jaw was clenched, and he had t
wo angry red spots coloring his cheeks. She knew when he got this stubborn, there was no talking to him.
“Well, I am going to have cake instead,” she cried out, and with a quick bunny hop she was running along the banks, her footing precarious along the rounded edge that sloped down, back into the water. Her braids flew like little kite tails behind her. She turned her head, laughing, to see if he would come along. But she knew he would.
With a leap she went flying, weightless as she soared over what she used to think was a great divide, but what was really an easy jump if the jumper had long nine-year-old legs instead of useless seven-year-old ones. She landed and let her toes curl into the moist grass on the other side. She paused for only a moment, turning back. “Catch me if you can.”
He was close enough for her to see his eyes narrow with intent, but she didn’t stay to watch him cross the stream. She stuck her tongue out and then took off through the woods instead. She dipped and dodged, under rogue branches, over fallen trunks rotting their way back into the soil. She knew the way well, even if there wasn’t a path. Brambles caught at her purple T-shirt and ripped into the delicate skin of her arms, drawing pinpricks of blood, but still she didn’t stop running. The calloused and well-used soles of her feet, though softer from the winter hibernation, withstood the harsh, unforgiving rocks and twigs and pebbles of the woods. Only once did she cry out, but she quickly bit her lip against the pain and kept going.
She burst into the meadow seconds before Simon caught her, his forearm coming about her waist so that he could lift her up against him, spinning her in a circle. The flowers blurred into a watercolor painting before her eyes.
“Caught you,” he said, still holding her.
“Nuh-uh! I beat you fair and square,” she shouted into the air that was turning cooler with the setting of the sun, kicking out her legs and pushing playfully at the arm around her stomach.
He dropped her to the ground, and her feet scrambled for purchase. She tumbled into the soft bed of flowers anyway. “Whatever helps you sleep at night,” he said, but the rage had burned out of his eyes, and the angry flush had left his cheeks. She smiled. All was right with her world again.
Adelaide embraced the change in altitude and flopped back against the earth, a snow angel without snow. Her fingers turned down, digging little indentations into the soil with the tips. The light had changed, turning soft and golden. The last remnants of the sunbeams clung to the blades of grass, to the leaves on the trees around them, to the soft swell of his cheek.
She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, that Simon scared her sometimes. She peeked at him under one eyelid.
He’d come to sit beside her, a long blade of grass stuck between his teeth, his legs sprawled out in front of him as he leaned back against his hands. His face was upturned, and she knew he was watching and waiting. For that first star to come out. When it blinked to life in the dark blue sky, the corners of his eyes would go all crinkly with the power of his smile. She’d asked him one time why he liked it so much. He’d shrugged. “You can get away with things at night, can’t you?”
She’d thought maybe that had been a lie. He was good at that. Lying.
When she’d first arrived at the Crosses’, Simon had been her lifeline before she even realized she so desperately needed one. There had been so much confusion. She hadn’t even realized what had happened. Or had refused to realize it.
The Crosses weren’t so bad. But they were old. Old as dinosaurs, he’d said that first day and countless times afterward, often in their hearing. They’d smile at him kindly and pinch his cheeks, and he hated it.
She used to wonder why he’d kept poking at them like that. Then she watched closer. A flash of pain would spark in Mrs. Cross’s eyes for the briefest moment, before her expression would turn calm and happy once more. But Simon would catch it. He was wicked sharp and had eagle eyes for that kind of stuff. There was something inside him that enjoyed hurting the Crosses. For no good reason that she could tell. She never called them dinosaurs even when he tried to goad her into it.
It wasn’t that Simon was mean. He was so nice to her. Except every once in a while. But most of the time, he played with her even though he was older and must have thought her a nuisance and a tagalong, like his friends at school called her. He would always say hi to her in the cafeteria as his class filed in after hers was done with lunch. Even though it was surely suicide for a thirteen-year-old boy to acknowledge a younger sibling—especially a girl one.
He would even wait for her in front of school to walk her home. Her friend Mary Ellen had a brother in Simon’s grade, and he made Mary Ellen meet him three blocks down from the school so his friends wouldn’t see him with her.
And Simon played with her on these warm April days. All summer break, too. They’d been on so many adventures together. To Narnia to rule over the whole kingdom, to the South Indian Sea to hunt pirates, to China to climb over the Great Wall, just like the Huns had. True, their adventures were limited to the woods behind the Cross house, and they didn’t venture out to the park or the streets where his friends could see, but he picked playing with her over playing with them. She hugged that knowledge to herself on the days when no one would talk to her because she was that weird foster kid.
No, for the most part, he wasn’t mean to her. There was just a hard edge to him, like he hadn’t learned how to be gentle. “Too smart for his own good,” Mrs. Cross would say, something dark in her voice. It took a while for Adelaide to recognize why being smart would be a bad thing. But now she thought maybe she got it.
Simon turned, catching her one open eye. He grinned, the long piece of grass still hanging from his lips.
“Why do you call them dinosaurs?” she blurted out. Because that was what she had finally realized about Simon. He could in a heartbeat identify the thing that would make the person he wanted to hurt bleed the most. And while others would be gentle with the information, he was not. He used it. When he was mad or annoyed or just bored. He sliced into them.
His face went blank, slack now, and suddenly she felt way too vulnerable in her position. She sat up and tucked her knees under her chin. Oh, how she wished she had swallowed the words instead of letting them tumble out.
“Cuz they are,” he said, and she wanted to roll her eyes at the teenager in his voice. She often sat with Mrs. Cross as she crocheted baby blankets for the women at church who were expecting. Intricate collages of pinks, blues, yellows, and greens. Adelaide enjoyed running her fingers over the fluffy strands that wove together in ways she couldn’t quite comprehend. She’d watch Mrs. Cross’s fingers fly through the air with the needles, and still didn’t know how the final product actually came to be. But on those days, when Simon came storming in through the front door, the screen slamming against wood, cussing something fierce with sarcasm dripping from every word, Mrs. Cross would wink at Adelaide and talk about the teenager in every little boy’s voice. They grew out of it, she assured Adelaide. Sometimes.
“They’re so nice to us, though,” she said, her voice quiet as she plucked at the head of a happy buttercup. It resisted her tugging, then gave way with a small pop. She rolled the petals, crushing them between her fingers. She didn’t know why she was picking this fight. She liked the Crosses well enough, but not like she loved Simon, the brother she’d never had. Why anger him?
He glanced at her. “They’re nice to you. Their little angel.”
She wanted to protest. He just didn’t want to admit that they treated him well. That was it. But she finally had wised up and kept the words to herself.
“Matthew called them that,” Simon said when she didn’t say anything. “Dinosaurs.”
Every single muscle in her body clenched. Matthew. Simon had mentioned him only twice. Once on that first day, and then once again when he’d screamed at her that Matthew would never have told the Crosses about that fire he’d started in the pile of dry twigs and branches right where the backyard turned into woods. It had b
een a long, silent three months for Simon to get over that supposed betrayal.
She didn’t even want to breathe. If she did, it could break the spell; he could yell at her and take off toward the house instead of telling her about Matthew. But he didn’t stand up. He just stared off into space, his floppy dark hair falling over his eyes. All his clothes were still too big on him, and for the first time she wondered if they were Matthew’s.
“He was their twenty-first foster kid. What kind of psychos take in twenty-one kids?” He paused and gave her a look. “Twenty-three.”
“They didn’t have any of their own,” she said, defending her foster parents. Mrs. Cross had always wanted a baby. That’s all she had ever wanted. It made Adelaide sad when she saw her coo over the ones at church, wrapped in the blankets her fingers had slaved over, reaching for mothers who weren’t as scary as a plump old lady grabbing at chubby cheeks.
“Grow up, Addie.” His voice was sharp and cutting. He called her Addie only when he wanted to annoy her. He knew she hated the nickname that she was too timid to stop her foster parents from using.
“What happened to Matthew?” she asked instead of letting him provoke her.
He looked away from her again. “He wasn’t the perfect son they wanted. They got rid of him.”
She found it hard to believe anyone could be as imperfect as the boy sitting next to her, but once again she held her tongue. “How?”
“Ever wonder why they have so much land behind the house?”
She felt her stomach drop as her brain caught up with the implication. No. She would not believe it. Simon was messing with her, like he always tried to do. He was making it up, just like the horror story he told her that first summer about the murderer lurking outside little girls’ windows. She hadn’t been able to sleep that entire summer because of his stories. Night had been an unrelenting horror-filled trauma. But then he’d stopped. Adelaide had guessed the Crosses had discovered the reason they would find her sobbing outside their bedroom door every night.
It Ends With Her Page 6