The shock of finding the disturbing images in Olivia’s iCloud account and the texts from Tyler had begun to dissipate, leaving behind a completely clear view.
This was the proof I needed. Somebody had hurt Olivia on purpose. I had to go to the police.
× × ×
The Portage Point Police Department was situated in a miniature antebellum-style brick building on the far side of town, nestled under tall pine trees and fronted by a series of low boxwood shrubs.
I drove too quickly up Main Street, flying past the white, steepled church, a handful of indie coffee shops, a yoga studio, and the small town square, then turned right past a children’s playground and baseball diamond. I parked outside the station, between a police SUV and an American flag flapping aggressively in the wind.
Carol-Ann, the police station receptionist, recognized me as soon as I walked in.
“Abi!” She came around the desk and reached for me, folding me against her massive, doughy bosom. She smelled of lavender and soap, which made me suddenly aware of how long it had been since I’d showered. When Carol-Ann pulled away, her soft brown eyes sparkled with tears.
Carol-Ann was like the police department’s built-in grandma, complete with thick glasses and permed graying hair that poufed around her face. She’d run the front office as long as I could remember, helping the town’s four police officers and two detectives organize legal paperwork, answer the phones, and comfort victims.
“Carol-Ann, I need to see Detective Samson or McNally. Are they here?”
I took a step toward the half-open inner door and caught a glimpse of Samson sitting in a small kitchen, a sandwich in front of her as she stared at her cell phone. The murmur of police radios floated out to me.
Carol-Ann stepped in front of me and put her hand on my elbow, gently guiding me to a chair by her desk. “Let me see if they’re free. I’ll be right back.”
A few minutes later she returned with Detective Samson.
I jumped up, anger flaring in me. “Where have you been?” I snapped. “I’ve left a thousand messages for you guys, and nothing! No wonder you haven’t solved Olivia’s case if you’re sitting here eating lunch and checking your phone all day!”
Samson’s ice-blue eyes flashed something I couldn’t immediately recognize. Not anger, exactly. Surprise.
She nodded at Carol-Ann, then jerked her head toward the door. “Please come with me.”
I followed her down the hallway past the kitchen to a characterless room painted a cold gray. There were no pictures on the walls, no decorations, nothing except a window to the hallway with half-closed blinds and a table like the kind you’d find in a cafeteria with a handful of folding chairs around it.
I pulled Olivia’s phone out of my purse, set it on the table with a loud thunk, then glared at her as she sat down.
“You didn’t take Olivia’s phone.”
Samson crossed one leg over her knee and studied me for a long minute. “Didn’t Detective McNally ask you for it?”
“No.” I started to shake my head, then stopped. I couldn’t actually remember. “I don’t think so.”
“We are pursuing a number of leads, Miss Knight.”
I gritted my teeth, knowing that was code for We haven’t found anything.
“Olivia’s boyfriend, Tyler, he lied to me. He told me they didn’t see each other after she left the barbecue, but there’s a text here.” I clicked into the text thread and handed the phone to her. “See? She says she’s going back to the barbecue. She would’ve met him at eleven thirty. And . . .” I dug in my purse for the threatening pictures I’d printed from Olivia’s iCloud account and laid them on the table. “Somebody sent her these.”
Samson scrolled through the phone for a moment, then picked up the pictures, her face a cold, hard mask. She studied them for a long moment. “Were these on her phone?”
I shook my head. “No, they were in her iCloud account, which was synced with her phone. They must’ve been deleted from her phone.”
“Any idea who sent these?”
“No. None at all.”
Samson leaned forward and handed me her notebook and a pen. “Can you write down her log-in details for me?”
I did, then started to ask if she believed me now, but a knock at the door interrupted me. McNally’s head poked in, his flabby jowls stretched into what I assumed was meant to be a smile. He looked as exhausted and unkempt as usual, but this time there was something else I hadn’t noticed before: an unmistakable edge of animosity.
“If I could just borrow Detective Samson for a minute.”
Samson carefully folded the printed pages and slipped them into her blazer pocket, along with Olivia’s phone and her notebook. The door closed with a sharp snap behind her.
I sat on one of the metal chairs and watched them through the slats of the cheap metal blinds. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. McNally was speaking forcefully to Samson. He looked angry. Samson gestured with both hands, more animated than normal. She lifted Olivia’s phone, but he shook his head and batted it away. Samson glanced at me, gave me a small tight smile, but something tilted inside of me when I saw it. I felt a sense of foreboding. Of time running out.
And right then I knew, with a dark certainty, that if I left it to them, I would never know the truth about what had happened to Olivia.
I’d spent my whole life hiding, just existing behind the walls I’d built around myself. I never got the answers I needed when my mother died. I was powerless to stop my mom killing herself. Powerless to make Olivia’s father choose me. Powerless to stop my daughter from—the pain of reality hit me in the stomach.
But I couldn’t afford to feel that way now. Self-pity was fine when you were ten, but in a few months I’d have Olivia’s baby to take care of. Wallowing was an indulgence I didn’t have. I needed answers now.
What do you do when you know something and nobody will listen? When you need answers and nobody will provide them? When you can’t trust anybody to help you?
I stood at a crossroads, half aware that my choice now would send me down a path from which there would be no turning back. The decision wasn’t a hard one. I didn’t want to be powerless anymore. I wanted answers.
I slammed the interview room door open, and Samson and McNally turned to me, eyes wide with surprise.
“Something’s wrong,” I said, a crazed fury surging through my body. Rage had hijacked the rational part of my brain, the part that never stood up to people, that sat back while others told me what to do. “I know something’s wrong. And you both know it. Whether you help me or not, I’m going to find out what happened to my daughter.”
11
* * *
OLIVIA
may
“D’you guys wanna go to Java Café?” Madison raised her voice to be heard over the racket of teenagers spilling into the hall. With its exposed brick walls and mismatched array of cushy couches, Java Café was our usual hangout.
It was one of the first really hot days of the year and everybody was either going there or heading for the beach. “I’m dying for a smoothie.” She slammed her locker door next to mine and faced Tyler and me.
“Can’t. It’s ‘Dad’s night with me.’ ” Tyler air-quoted, his words laced with sarcasm. His parents had announced their divorce just a few weeks ago, and he already had to split his time between them. He didn’t talk about it much, but I could tell he was super pissed. I was trying to be nice. Honestly. But he was so grumpy I mostly just stayed away from him.
“Umm . . .” I thought fast, scrambling for a believable lie. Derek was taking me to Seattle after school so we could look up Kendall, who still hadn’t responded to my Facebook friend request.
Since I’d met Kendall a few weeks ago, I’d spent a ridiculous amount of time Googling her. I felt kinda stalkerish. She played tennis for her private Catholic school, was on the debate team, volunteered in the community.
Half of her pictures showed her with an olde
r man—her dad, I presumed—but the weird thing was, I recognized him. At first I couldn’t figure out how I knew him. It was only when Derek saw his picture that he reminded me he was Gavin Montgomery, our state senator.
Duh! An election was coming up in a few months. His billboards were posted all over the place; his political ads ran constantly on TV. And then a thought had crashed into me: if I looked like Kendall and this Gavin guy was her dad, maybe he was my dad too.
Then I totally started tripping. Maybe my dad wasn’t dead. Maybe he was happily living in Seattle with his other family.
So I’d decided to talk to Kendall and see if I could find out anything else.
“Ugh, I have to get an hour of swim practice in and then study for a math test. I can’t even.” I rolled my eyes. “Plus I promised Mom I’d fill out some applications for volunteering tonight.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “Volunteering’s such a waste of time!”
“Mom says it’ll help me get into college or whatever.” I defended her halfheartedly, but made a face. “Anyway, if it makes my mom happy—”
“—it’ll keep her off your back.”
I laughed. “Exactly.”
It was a weird thing we’d started doing lately. Madison would make fun of some stupid rule my mom had, and I’d say at least it kept her off my back.
Madison and my mom had never really gotten along. It wasn’t like they fought, exactly. My mom was way too nice for that. She was a worrier, overprotective, but she wasn’t a hater. But Madison was always throwing shade.
I shut my locker and gave Tyler a quick peck on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.”
Outside the sun was splitting the sky, cheerful puffs of cotton clouds wafting overhead. The air had that sharp, grassy smell to it, like somebody had just mowed the lawn. I walked around the side of the school, cut across the track and into a residential neighborhood, then ducked into Derek’s car.
His black leather biker jacket creaked as he turned toward me.
“Hey,” he said, a molasses-slow smile creeping over his face.
I was being a stupid girl. Of course my insides weren’t melting. Okay, my heart sped up a little, but that didn’t have to mean anything. I loved my boyfriend. I did. Derek was just a friend.
Anyway, it wasn’t like I could tell Madison we were friends. She’d told me some crazy shit. Like, that he’d threatened a guy in New York with a knife. She’d majorly freak if she found out I was hanging with him.
“Hey yourself,” I replied, grinning at him like an idiot.
“Where to?”
“I thought we could find the Starbucks in Mercer Island. If her friends are anything like mine, that’s where they’ll go after school.”
“Good thinking.” Derek nodded like he was impressed. “Here, do you want to drive?”
“What?”
“Drive.” He waved at the car. “Do you want to?”
“Uh, no. I don’t know how,” I admitted. I was the only one in my class who didn’t have a license. Considering I’d be seventeen next month, it was totally mortifying. “You think my mom would let me do something as normal as drive? She made me wear a helmet in T-ball. I’m surprised she doesn’t make me take a snorkel to swim meets.”
He snorted a laugh. “D’you wanna learn? I can teach you.”
I hesitated. I did want to, but I also wanted to talk to Kendall Montgomery.
Derek made the decision for me. “Drive it is.” He got out, walked around to my side of the car, and opened the door.
“What about Kendall?” I asked.
“We’ll talk to her another time.”
“Okay,” I agreed uncertainly. “But don’t let me forget to text my mom at four. Otherwise she’ll freak.”
“Why?”
“She just worries.” I couldn’t help the note of defensiveness that crept into my voice.
He didn’t say anything, which I liked. It was pretty annoying when Madison and Tyler made fun of me for still having to call or text my mom.
I got into the driver’s seat and clicked my seat belt on.
“Let’s do this!” Derek said, trying to pump me up. “Ready?”
I inhaled, already aware that he could probably get me to do just about anything. “Ready.”
I put my hand on the stick shift, and he put his hand over mine. It was warm and rough.
“A bit of enthusiasm, please,” he joked.
“Woo-hoo!” I shouted.
Derek threw his head back and laughed. The afternoon sunlight spilled like melted butter across his face, lighting his dark-blue eyes. They penetrated deep inside of me, promising something different than the safe, sheltered life I’d lived so far.
I drove a few laps around the neighborhood, lurching the car from start to stop more often than I wanted to. I couldn’t believe Derek was letting me maim his poor car. His dad had helped him do it up when he’d first bought it: a spoiler, aftermarket headlights and taillights, expensive-looking rims, banging subwoofers. I knew it was special to him.
I got the feeling those were the only days his dad had ever shown him any sort of attention. Derek and Madison’s parents weren’t really involved in their lives that much, which was sort of sad. My mom was totally up in my business. But in a good way. She’d do anything for me.
I ground the gears and paled as the Mustang jerked out of my control and careened toward a mailbox. Luckily, I slammed my foot on the brake and stopped just in time.
“I think I’m done for now,” I said quietly. Thinking about my mom had upset me, uncertainty wedging in my gut. I wasn’t sure if I was okay with defying her like this. She’d told me I couldn’t drive yet, so I shouldn’t have been doing it.
Derek looked at his watch. “Do you want to go to the arcade in Laurelwood? I’ll drive.”
I nodded, relieved. We switched places, and he drove us to Laurelwood, parking in front of a big metal-and-stone warehouse that housed the town’s popular arcade. I sent my mom a quick text checking in, then followed him into the arcade.
Bright lights flashed everywhere. Teenagers out of school for the afternoon battled over games of pool or aimed plastic guns at flickering screens. It smelled like popcorn and a little bit like feet. My own feet squelched in something brown and sticky, then stuck to the gummy tile floor.
Derek barreled across the arcade, and I followed, darting looks left and right, worried I’d see someone I knew. How would I explain being here with Derek? Especially since I’d told Madison and Tyler I was working on applications today. But I blinked, and it was just a sea of unfamiliar teenage faces.
“So you don’t know how to drive, but do you at least know how to play air hockey?” A teasing smile played across Derek’s mouth.
“Play it? I’m the queen of air hockey,” I joked, tossing my ponytail over my shoulder.
“Oh-hoo! Is that so? Because I’ve won championships, so don’t make things up around me, missy!”
“Please! You couldn’t hold a candle to my awesomeness.” I grinned. Was I flirting with him?
“You’re on!”
Derek put some coins in the table’s slot and grabbed the puck.
“You ready?”
“I was born ready!”
He cracked up. “You’re too much, Olivia.”
“Bring it!”
Derek hit the puck, sending it sliding across the table so fast I almost didn’t see it. I flailed but managed to hit a glancing blow. It ricocheted off his side of the table and bounced back to me. I slammed the puck, this time making proper contact. The puck launched off the table, sailing right toward his head.
Derek ducked, throwing his arms up to protect his face. The puck flew over his shoulder, landing on the ground beyond him and skittering a few feet away.
Derek popped back up, his eyes wide in surprise. Laughter spluttered from his lips. “God! You said you were good, but I didn’t know you actually took people out!”
I laughed so hard I could barely breathe.
We battled it out for four games, finally calling it a draw when we noticed some younger kids lining up for a turn.
Derek punched me lightly on my shoulder as we left the arcade and headed toward the empty boardwalk. The islands in the distance bloomed emerald against the fading sunset. Below us the tide rolled in, the sound of the surf a gentle song.
“I had no idea you were so competitive!” He laughed.
“I compete in swim meets all the time. You’ll see the real competitive Olivia come out again in September.”
“I know, I just never knew you were so, you know”—he looked sideways at me and laughed—“aggressive about it.”
“I guess I’m not normally.”
“What’s changed, then?”
“I don’t know.” I lifted my shoulders. “I feel like a lot of things are changing. Obviously, trying to find out about my dad, that’s totally out of character. Then, you know, coming here with you.”
Derek’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “How’s that?”
“Well, like, I had to lie to Tyler and Madison. I told them I’m doing volunteer applications today. So don’t let Madison know we were here, okay?”
“Would she be mad you’re hanging out with me?”
“Yeah!” I laughed, surprised he even had to ask. “She’d go mental!”
He shook his head; his jaw ticked an angry rhythm. “She always has to be the center of attention. Even when it comes to you,” he said.
“No she doesn’t.” My sense of loyalty flared up, and I jumped to her defense. “She just worries about me.”
“What the hell does that mean?” He stopped walking and turned to me abruptly, the blue of his eyes suddenly edged out by darkness.
“I mean . . . I don’t know . . .” I stuttered, flustered. I didn’t want to tell him about all the things she’d told me. How scary she made him sound. “You know, like when you pulled a knife on that guy in New York? And selling pot at school? She just thinks maybe you can be dangerous or something.”
The Night Olivia Fell Page 7