“Tell me about it.” Literally, Marcus, I need you to tell me about it. Please.
“Well.”
“Maybe tonight … If we could get some drinks and just … I don’t know.”
The pause hovered a moment, then released on a sigh almost too quiet for the line to pick up. “Where?”
“I was thinking that pub on Hamlin. It’s not usually too crowded.”
“I know where it is.”
“So … maybe six or so?”
“Sure. Six.”
“Thanks, man.”
“No problem.” The line clicked.
15
Thinking like a fugitive must take practice. When the doorbell rang, Violet’s only thought was relief at the interruption to Belinda’s bird-watching stories. A heartbeat later, Khloe’s and Belinda’s panicked, darting gazes reminded her that she was supposed to be scared.
“We’ll hide upstairs, in the closet.” Khloe scurried toward the foyer.
Belinda shot across the room faster than her age and figure should have allowed. She grabbed Khloe’s shoulders and turned her toward the hallway on the opposite side of the kitchen.
“I left the front door open.” She barely whispered the words. “Whoever that is, they’ll see you go upstairs. Remember the tunnel I told you about? Down to the basement, center of the west wall.”
Khloe ran. Violet trailed her down white-painted wooden stairs into cool, carpeted darkness.
“Where’s the light? We won’t find the door without the light.” A small thump sounded a few feet ahead of Violet. “Ow! There’s a couch or something. Watch out.”
Violet stretched her hand along the stairway wall and flipped a light switch. The room was furnished with only the burnt-orange futon in front of her and a rocking chair in one corner. Violet’s eyes roamed the room. This basement was some sort of gallery for antiques. She couldn’t identify most of the rusted contraptions hanging on two of the walls. The other two were dark and paneled.
Khloe had already dashed to the farthest paneled wall and stood in the center, pushing at the seams. “This is west. Why won’t it—?”
A section of the panel caved under her hand as it swung open from the other side, a sort of revolving door. The opening couldn’t measure wider than two feet or taller than three.
Khloe bent to enter the tunnel. “This is a new experience for me, ducking through a doorway.”
Violet followed and pushed the door back into place. Darkness settled over them. Not a sliver of light reached through the door seams.
“We left the lights on out there,” Violet said.
“If they come down here, Belinda will pretend she left them on, herself.”
“Yeah.”
Violet tried straightening up and bumped her head. She reached up, and soil grazed her fingers, then a timber support structure. She pulled away from a would-be sliver. The wood felt old. Or maybe the tunnel just smelled old. Moldy, for sure.
“Who do you think’s upstairs?” Khloe whispered.
Violet stretched her arms and found the walls on both sides. “She said the con-cops have never been here.”
“Always a first time.”
“Or maybe it’s a Christian come to visit.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“You seriously mean that?”
Water dripped in the far distance. The new silence seemed to heat the space around Violet. But Khloe needed to hear this.
“Khloe.” Violet blinked, but the tunnel’s features didn’t materialize, even dimly. “These people aren’t safe. They should be in re-education, all of them. Even Belinda.”
“And even my dad?”
“He’s a Christian.”
“So if it was your dad, you’d volunteer for re-ed. Just to save his brain from illegal beliefs.”
The dirt walls absorbed their rising voices. Violet rubbed her thumb over a charm on her bracelet, bit her lip, then forced a whisper out. “I think I would.”
“Actually, I was considering it,” Khloe said. “I was thinking, ‘Why don’t I turn my whole family in and get a head start on re-ed? I’ll be out the same month I graduate.’”
“All I’m saying is—”
“I could have two parties. A graduation party and a re-ed release party.”
“These people are—”
“I could invite everyone from school. They could give me release presents, like graduation presents, only better. I could decorate with signs that say, ‘You’ve been right all this time. I really am a freak.’”
“Khloe …” Wait a minute. All this time?
The dripping and the quiet rejoined them.
“I don’t want you thinking you can trust Belinda just because she seems …” To care about other people, to risk herself for the freedom of strangers. “Just because she seems nice.”
Drip. Drip. Was Khloe even listening?
Violet stepped forward into the black. “Khloe?”
Sticky strands draped her face. She froze. Something nearly weightless dropped onto her scalp. Leaves? Dirt? Moving dirt? Light and nimble, scampering over her forehead and down her cheek, grazing her lip—
The scream tore from her throat. She clawed at her face, snagged legs and furry body and tried to throw it, but where was it now?
“It’s on me, it’s on me, it’s on—”
“Vi!” Khloe’s hands clamped down on her arm, then her shoulders, and shook her hard. “Shut up!”
“Spider, Khloe spider, Khloe spider!”
“Shut up!”
Violet held her hands out at her sides and shook them. She stomped her feet and pawed at her face. Her skin prickled as if a hundred legs crawled over her. She brushed at her bare arms, her jean-clad thighs. Khloe smacked her shoulder, searching the dark, then found her hand and tugged.
“They might’ve heard you. Come on.”
Violet was pulled a hundred feet or so before her brain rebooted. She jogged beside Khloe and used her free hand to skim the air in front of her. Better a handful of spider than a mouthful. She tried to stop shaking.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Tell me again when the con-cops storm in and haul us away.”
Eventually, yeah. Violet swallowed a surge of tears.
As they ventured farther, the smell of dust and mold gave way to a richer scent, soil and some kind of foliage. A few more minutes of forward shuffling and Violet’s hand skimmed a wall not unlike the ceiling above them—dirt and wooden beams.
“This is it.” She stretched her hand from side to side and caught a length of rope, hung from somewhere above them.
“We should check it out.” Khloe’s hand settled above hers on the rope. “Even if nothing happens today, we might have to leave fast, you know? We should know how.”
Violet shimmied up a few feet before colliding with a broad wooden square. After a minute of swaying on the rope, shoving with her shoulder and one hand, she budged the door a few inches upward. It lifted more easily after that, until it fell open with a muffled crash.
“See anything?” Khloe whispered from below.
“Hold on.” Violet hoisted herself through the opening and into … not a forest. A shed, no more than six feet square.
Sunlight sifted through the grimy window and glinted off points of dirty steel hung on a pegboard, mostly trowels and shovels. Two rusty flat-tired bikes leaned against one wall. A green-and-gold braided rug had covered the trapdoor and now lay folded between it and the rough wood floor. There was a wheelbarrow, a watering can, white plastic bags of soil. An old hose was looped over a hook halfway up the far wall.
“Well?”
“It’s a garden shed. Come on up.”
Khloe squirmed up and over the edge of the trapdoor. “We escape the house to hide in a shed?”
> “Someone probably put it here to hide the hole.” Violet swiped a tendril of web from her arm. She stood and headed for the shed door. It shouldn’t be locked from outside.
“Think we can see the house from here?”
“Let’s find out.” The knob gritted against her hand, left a layer of dust, and turned.
The steel shed crouched in a clearing along with a high blue pickup truck. Thick woods screened them on every side, but determining the direction of the house wasn’t hard if you knew about the tunnel.
Khloe turned a circle, and sunshine waltzed through the strawberry highlights of her hair. “Where do we go? If we’re trying to escape?”
“Anywhere but—” Violet pointed back from where the tunnel had come. “Maybe the truck’s a getaway.”
No, definitely not. No license plate. She stepped over the uneven, weed-choked ground to the driver’s side. Broken headlight, crumpled bumper, major damage all the way to the crushed doorframe. Whoever had been driving last didn’t get out on this side.
Khloe rounded the front of the truck to the passenger side. “This side’s fine, except the window’s broken out. I wonder …”
She ran back around the truck and latched both hands onto Violet’s arm.
“There’s blood inside.”
16
The bloodstain spread over the back of the driver’s seat, about the size of a sand dollar. Violet stood on the running board, head poked through the broken-out passenger window, and tried to spot other clues. The truck looked normal inside, other than that brown stain. Her legs nearly buckled, and she locked her knees. Keep it together. Whatever happened here, it was over now.
“Somebody died in this truck,” Khloe whispered from behind her.
“I think you have to lose more blood than that to die.”
“Okay, so blood loss didn’t kill him, the car wreck did. He was driving and someone shot him straight through his body and—”
“The windshield would be broken, then. Besides, there’s no bullet hole in the seat.” Violet hopped down from the running board.
Khloe padded over the grass as if someone might overhear her steps. She wobbled on tiptoe and leaned toward the truck window but kept her hands balled at her sides.
“Okay, so they shot him in the back. And when he fainted and drove off the road and died, they hid the truck here.”
“Khloe, who are we saying shot this person in the back?”
“I can’t see Belinda doing it, so probably her husband. Or Marcus. He’s kind of scary.”
But a gunshot wound wasn’t the only thing that could make a person bleed from his back … while driving and then wrecking his vehicle … Okay, yeah, gunshot did seem most likely.
Her thumb rubbed a charm on her bracelet. The starfish, painted red. Bright red.
She had to stop these people. She had to get to a phone.
“Vi? What’re we going to do?”
Violet turned a circle, three-hundred-sixty degrees of indecision. The glassless window, the sunlight glaring on the chrome bumper blurred as if her eyes refused to see the evidence. She rotated slowly until she faced the edge of the clearing. The tree-fringed path pushed deeper into real forest.
“Something bad happened, obviously. And if Belinda finds out that we know, she might …”
If Belinda would protect someone, even knowing they’d killed a person, then surely she’d have no problem threatening two teenagers who knew too much. Violet shuffled toward the trail that ended at the clearing. After ten feet, Khloe’s hand clawed into her shoulder.
“Is that … a …?” Khloe’s voice pitched upward. “Omygosh, it is.”
To one side of the trail stretched a slightly raised section of dirt. Nettles and a lone white wildflower had sprouted, and the ground had settled almost level, two feet wide and maybe six feet long.
Violet shivered in the thick heat and crossed her arms. “It’s a grave. They buried someone out here.” Killed and buried?
A blue jay squawked from nearby as if to prod her forward. Look closer. Make sure. No way.
“It’s just some dirt,” Khloe said. “Belinda didn’t kill anyone.”
“I’m not saying Belinda did it. Maybe the Christians did it and put the body out here.”
“To frame her?”
“Or because it’s somewhere nobody would look. Maybe Belinda doesn’t even know.”
They crept nearer until they stood over the low mound. Mute seconds slid by. Violet bent to pluck the flower. The root system lost its grip on the loose soil, and she suddenly held the entire plant. She twisted the slender stem around her finger and pulled it tight. It pressed a ring onto her skin.
Khloe shook her head. “It’s dirt. It’s an anthill or something.”
“Six feet long and wide enough for a person?”
“It’s not a grave. It’s not.”
Violet’s ice-capped thoughts were starting to thaw. “We have to call the cops.”
The words seemed to paralyze Khloe. She didn’t blink.
Violet put a hand on her back. “There’s no way around it. If someone buried a body here…”
The end of the mission beckoned like a lighthouse. And there had to be justice now too, for whatever body lay eroding beneath the dirt. She’d call 911 right this minute if she had a phone.
“Violet, no. We can’t. We don’t know anything. Come on, we’ve got to go back before Belinda realizes we’re gone.”
“You’d do literally anything to stay out of re-ed, wouldn’t you? Like, literally.”
Khloe gnawed her lip and stared at the dirt.
They’d only been out here a few minutes, but that doorbell could have heralded the UPS man. Belinda could be on her way down that dark tunnel right now to give them the all-clear. And if the Christian resistance had hired her because she didn’t look like a psychopath but was willing to do their dirty work …
That’s really incredibly unlikely.
Still, she could call someone, send someone to find them. Someone with a car, while they plodded on foot. Someone who knew the woods better than they did. Where would they end up, if they started in any direction? Running off now, especially without a phone, would be stupid.
“Okay. We’ll go back. But I’m going to find out what happened, Khloe, and if they killed somebody, then—”
Khloe’s head shook, and her ponytail bounced around her face. Violet grabbed her shoulders, and she twisted away.
“Stop it. You want to get killed by a bunch of Christians?”
Khloe stilled her thrashing, but her whole body quivered. “They’re not like that. My dad’s not like that.”
Maybe not.
Khloe grabbed Violet into a hug that, from anyone else, would crush ribs. “No cops, not yet.”
Even if that wasn’t a body, Violet had to report to the Constabulary. Soon. Tell Khloe the truth.
Violet pulled away from the embrace and stalked toward the shed. Her legs trembled again. She looked away from the mound of earth as she passed it, but the truck drew her eyes. Shiny, blue, and crumpled up on one side as if punched by a giant.
If only Austin’s friend could see this.
17
Clay hadn’t meant to arrive half an hour early, hadn’t done so with the hope that maybe Marcus would be early too. But he’d been here forty-five minutes. By now, he’d read every sign in the place, from the painted chalkboard announcing the beer specials to the bubble-lettered poster board tacked on a wooden pillar. “Summer Concerts: Peace, Love, and Music Every Wednesday!” He was waiting for his second Blue Moon as well as Marcus.
A table away, two gray-haired guys in greasy T-shirts had finished their chips and salsa and waited for their meals. Clay had opted for a table rather than the bar, but until Marcus arrived, privacy wasn’t necessary. Maybe he’d go perch on a stool f
or a minute.
The door opened, admitting a burst of evening sun around a bulky silhouette. Marcus stood a second too long before crossing the threshold. Clay lifted one hand to shoulder-level as the man’s gaze scoured the room for him, and Marcus beelined to the table.
Small talk would be in order. Clay squashed the questions he wanted to volley and nodded at the chair across from him, but Marcus was already pulling it out and sitting down. His gaze took in the building’s whole interior in a few seconds, probably noting the exits.
Clay spoke over Sheryl Crow from the overhead speakers, clinking silverware from the back kitchen, and the small crowd’s voices bouncing off the vintage brick walls and oak floor. “Thanks for coming.”
“Sure.”
Before Marcus could say another word, the buxom brunette server hustled up to their table. She set down Clay’s drink with more flourish than the establishment warranted.
“Blue Moon, no fruit.” She swiveled her gaze and her hips toward Marcus. “Nice of you to show up.”
“What?”
“This poor, lonely man’s been sitting here for an hour.”
Marcus’s eyes flicked between Clay and the girl as if he suspected a prank.
“Not that long,” Clay said.
“Pretty close.”
Hadn’t anyone trained her on how to talk to patrons? Or maybe she was untrainable where tact was concerned. Khloe would be. Not that Khloe would ever work in a bar.
“Anyway,” she said, “what can I get you?”
“Coke, please.”
Her smile pinched at the corners. “One Coke, coming right up.”
Clay hadn’t even considered that Marcus wouldn’t drink a beer with him, but it sort of fit the guy’s personality. Marcus probably qualified as a control freak.
“You’ve been here an hour?”
“She’s exaggerating. I was a few minutes early. No big deal.” Clay ran his finger around the rim of the weizen glass.
Marcus looked skeptical, but after a moment, he planted his elbows on the oak-edged table. “Well. They’re okay.”
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