The Lost Causes

by Jessica Koosed Etting

  The tiniest of smiles appeared at the corners of his lips. It was the opposite reaction than she’d expected.

  “Nice Nash?” He took one step closer to her. Her pulse instantly started racing. “He sounds boring.”

  Nash’s jade eyes searched hers, glowing with an intensity so fierce that for the first time she realized he was having an equally difficult time figuring her out as she was him. “You sure everything is okay, Sabrina? I’m being serious.”

  Part of her wished she could tell him everything — fill him in on Amy, on New Mexico — but she couldn’t let her attraction to him get the upper hand. Wasn’t she the one lecturing everyone else last night about being careful?

  “Yeah. Everything is fine,” she said in what she meant to be an upbeat tone. “I mean, as okay as it can be right now.” She let out a laugh that sounded super weird to her, but hopefully he didn’t notice. “I better get to school, then.” Sabrina’s attempt at sounding casual was just plain awkward. Nash knew something was up. He wasn’t moving.

  “Are you nervous about Wincott’s class after yesterday? Is that what this is about?”

  Perfect. He’d just handed her an excuse for her weirdness. “Yeah, it was pretty awful. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  He looked at her seriously. “Skip his class today if it doesn’t feel right. Greenly’s, too.” He grabbed her hand fiercely and caught Sabrina by surprise. She was even more surprised when he didn’t let go. “Promise me you’ll do whatever you can to stay safe today.”

  “I will,” she said, though she had no idea what the day would hold. “I just want to get closer to some answers.”

  That part was at least the truth.

  As soon as she drove away, a pit formed in her stomach. It really did seem that Nash cared about her — at least about her safety. Or was it possible that he was on to her, and his entire visit had been designed to reel her back into trusting him?

  Instead of driving to Z’s, Sabrina drove in the direction of Cedar Springs High. She pulled over to dial Z.

  “Where are you? You’re late,” Z said.

  “Meet me at my locker instead.”

  Twenty minutes later, she found Z in the designated spot.

  “What’s with the change of plans?” Z asked impatiently. “We’re still going, right?”

  “Yeah, but we need to leave our phones at school. Nash and Patricia can use them to track us.”

  “And I thought I was supposed to be the paranoid one,” Z mumbled as she followed Sabrina back out to the parking lot.

  * * *

  The traffic on the way to New Mexico was more brutal than Sabrina had anticipated. It had already taken them an extra hour, and the only stop they’d made was to buy disposable phones.

  A police car cruised by them and Sabrina stiffened.

  “I’m glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t think having a badge means you can be trusted,” Z said. She flipped to a new song on the road-trip playlist she’d made the previous night when she couldn’t sleep.

  “So if there really was a group of Lost Causes before us, do you think the reason Patricia didn’t tell us is because she didn’t want us to know that the first group all died?”

  “All died together. In the same place, at the same time,” Z emphasized.

  “What if they didn’t tell us because the FBI knows it really was just a freak accident that had nothing to do with their case?” Sabrina fully knew this could be her feelings for Nash talking, but after seeing him earlier, she couldn’t help making one last rationalization. “If the FBI did a whole investigation into Amy’s crash off the bridge and realized that it definitely was an accident, I can kind of understand why Patricia wouldn’t bring it up. If she had told me that everyone in the last group who helped the FBI had died, I don’t know if I would’ve signed on to help with Lily’s case. Even if they said it was a car accident.”

  Z didn’t even pause to think about it. “It had to be something from their case that got Amy and the others killed and that’s why they didn’t tell us. And I’m really starting to wonder if it connects to our case. I don’t believe in coincidences. Plus if it was just a freak crash, why did Amy tell you not to trust Patricia and Nash?”

  Sabrina sighed. Somehow she’d allowed herself to forget about that part of it. “Maybe Amy’s family can give us some kind of clue about the case they were trying to solve.”

  A gas station popped into view on the horizon, surrounded by nothing but dry desert. “Finally,” Z said. “We’re running on fumes.”

  Sabrina sent a status update text to the others, then she joined Z in the tiny convenience store.

  Z was headed to the cash register holding three sticks of beef jerky. “Want one?” she asked.

  “Beef jerky? Seriously?”

  “I used to eat it just because I knew it grossed my mom out and then I got addicted. It’s a comfort food.”

  “Mac and cheese is a comfort food. Beef jerky is just gross.”

  Sabrina handed her soda to the man at the cash register. He was so old that she was worried he was going to keel over before he rung them up. Instead, he just stared at her as if he couldn’t believe he had a customer.

  “I’ll just get this, please,” she told him, trying to hurry the transaction along.

  Z gave Sabrina a weird look. “Who are you talking to?”

  Sabrina looked back at the cash register and the old man was gone. But right behind where he’d been standing was a framed photo of him holding up a dollar bill. Sabrina pointed to the photo. “That guy.”

  A young clerk walked up and saw Sabrina pointing at the photo. “That’s my dad. This place was his life. He was here every single day from open to close. Even died here.”

  Z and Sabrina exchanged a look. Sabrina had just asked a ghost to ring up her soda.

  Z raised an eyebrow at her. “Beef jerky?”

  Sabrina rolled her eyes and grabbed it.

  * * *

  It took another hour before they finally got to Taos. Amy had grown up near Albuquerque, but according to housing records Andrew dug up, her mom moved here several years earlier. Taos seemed like a peaceful place to live, with New Age stores and mineral galleries in the place of coffee and fast-food chains, and a Native American influence everywhere.

  Z pulled off the commercial street and onto a residential one, if you could call it that. They were basically in the middle of the desert, and the houses were built at least a half mile or more away from each other. The views of the mountains were amazing, but living here had to be lonely.

  “We’re good with the cover story?” Sabrina asked.

  “I guess. But I still think saying we’re doing a report for school is lame.”

  “Let me know if you come up with something better in the next thirty seconds because we’re here.” Sabrina pointed to the small adobe house with a bright turquoise door in front of them. A large dream catcher made of woven vines dangled from the doorway, and the red, white and black feathers attached to the bottom swayed in the breeze. “So you’ll do the talking and I’ll do the listening?” Z asked. “Hopefully Amy’s family will do all the talking.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  On the way to weight training, Justin met Gabby at her locker. She had PE with Coach Colfax at the same time, so they could walk together — something they’d been trying to do as much as possible since they’d realized it was a teacher who’d killed Devon Warner — and most likely Lily Carpenter.

  “Any word from the Scooby-Doo crew?” he asked. He still thought it was insane for Sabrina and Z to have trekked down to New Mexico in the hopes of finding out more about Amy Hanson.

  “All I’ve heard so far is that Sabrina is apparently now a fan of beef jerky.”

  He guided her down the hallway, where a group of sophomore cheerleaders was staring at them as thoug
h they were on a freaking red carpet.

  “Hey, Gabby!” Hannah Phelps exclaimed. “How are you?”

  “Um, good,” Gabby replied, fidgeting.

  Justin slung a protective arm around her. As if she was going to go back to being friends with Hannah after the girl had ditched her years ago? And why was she suddenly talking to Gabby now? Because he, a football player, was walking down the hall with her? As odd as Z and Sabrina could be, Justin at least knew they were real friends.

  He dodged the crowded flight of stairs inside the hall, instead opening the door to the secluded back steps outside of the building. It was the longer route to the gym, but at least it gave them a little privacy.

  “How was Fields’s class? Anything come up?” Justin asked her. Besides the chemistry connection and the conference he’d been at with Lily, Z heard him lying about where he was the night Devon was killed.

  He couldn’t have seen me that night. No one saw me.

  Dr. Fields was hiding something. If he had killed Devon, those thoughts made perfect sense.

  “There was one small weird thing,” Gabby answered. “Nothing major. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, though.”

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t wearing his lab coat.”

  “That is strange,” Justin said. Gabby looked at him as if she couldn’t tell whether he was kidding. “I’m being serious. I’ve never once seen the guy not in it.”

  “It was more than that, though,” Gabby said. “He seemed frazzled. Off his game somehow.”

  They walked down the stairs hand in hand, passing the faculty parking lot.

  Justin slowed as Dr. Fields’s shiny new red Mustang came into view. It bugged him as much as it had the day before. What was the school chemistry teacher doing with that car? He looked around. No one was in sight.

  “What are you thinking?” Gabby asked nervously.

  He inched closer to the car, stretching to look inside the window. A gym bag sat on the passenger seat. What was that peeking out of the side pocket? He took a step closer. It was a cell phone.

  An old Nokia phone, though … not the iPhone Justin saw him talking on the day before. Strange. Why did he have two phones?

  “Justin,” Gabby warned. He looked up. A few students walked by and he moseyed closer to Gabby as they passed.

  “There’s a cell phone in there.” He raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Patricia and Nash said not to do anything out of the ordinary. You want to do what they explicitly warned us not to do?” Gabby asked. She was nervous, but a hint of amusement played around her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “In and out. I’ve gotten so much better. It will take me ten seconds to unlock that door, I bet,” he said.

  Gabby looked around them. It was still quiet. The bell was about to ring, and most students had already made their way into class. “Okay. Try for a few seconds, then. If anyone comes, we’ll stop.”

  Justin grinned and positioned himself in front of the door, focusing on the car lock. He beat his own record. It took only a few seconds for the lock to pop up with a click.

  Quietly, he pulled on the handle and opened the door, sliding the cell phone out of the bag as fast as he could.

  “Let’s go,” he said, pressing the lock back down as he shut the door.

  He and Gabby speed-walked over to the back of the bleachers, partially hidden from the rest of campus.

  “Take a look,” he said, tossing the phone to her. “I’ll make sure no one’s coming.”

  A moment later he heard a shriek from Gabby.

  He swiveled around. “Are you okay?”

  She dropped the phone as if it was radioactive. “Oh my God, oh my God …”

  “What?” he said. “What did you see? Something that ties him to the murders?”

  Gabby shook her head. “Boobs,” she squeaked.

  He couldn’t have heard her right. He picked up the phone and was assaulted by the same image Gabby had seen. A selfie of a woman flaunting her cleavage in a bathing suit and attempting to look at the camera seductively. But not just any woman.

  Dr. Pearl. The school psychologist who’d awarded all of them demerits when Gabby and the others tried to tell her about that first group-therapy meeting with Patricia and Nash.

  He gagged, only half kidding. “Why did you let me look at that?”

  “There are hundreds of texts between the two of them, too. Planning what motels to meet at. What to tell their spouses about where they were going …”

  It all made sense. That angry phone call they’d overheard yesterday? Probably his wife wanting to know where he’d been. The brand-new midlife crisis sports car. The secret phone he used just to talk to Dr. Pearl. Dr. Fields wasn’t a murderer … he was just a sleazeball having an affair.

  Justin quickly pulled out his own phone and tapped out a text about it to Nash. Sabrina and Z thought they couldn’t trust him, but Justin figured they should keep him in the loop.

  Then he quickly sent another text out to the rest of the Lost Causes.

  Fields is boning Dr. Pearl. Don’t vomit up your beef jerky, Sabrina.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Z dodged the dream catcher as she and Sabrina approached the turquoise door. Z knocked twice. No answer. She hadn’t considered that no one would be home. They’d wait all day, though, if they had to. She was about to knock again when the door suddenly cracked open just enough for a woman to pop her head out. She pushed her long, disheveled black hair out of her face so she could get a good look at Z and Sabrina. Her eyes were sunken and hollow, and the puffy purple bags underneath them looked like bruises on her dark skin.

  “What do you want?” she growled, exposing a few cracked teeth. “If you’re selling something, you’re wasting your time.”

  “Mrs. Hanson?” Sabrina asked with much more confidence than Z could’ve mustered.

  “Yeah, who are you?”

  Z wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed that they had the right woman. Although now that she really looked at her, the similarities to Amy Hanson were obvious. The same skin tone, the same long, straight nose and the same pronounced eyelids.

  “My name is Sabrina. This is Z,” Sabrina explained calmly, ignoring the woman’s withering look. “We’d really appreciate if we could talk to you about your daughter, Amy.”

  Mrs. Hanson’s face went slack. Z felt almost ashamed. Maybe they hadn’t thought this completely through. What mother would want to have a conversation with two strangers about her dead daughter?

  “Nina?” A soft, female voice came from inside the house. “Who are you talking to?”

  The door suddenly swung open and another woman joined Mrs. Hanson. This woman looked like Mrs. Hanson might have if she were to take a shower and get some sleep. And maybe a little dental work. As opposed to the loose clothes that were hanging off Mrs. Hanson, the dress this woman was wearing hugged her curvy body.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked, toying with the lapis crystal pendant around her neck. She sounded suspicious but not rude.

  “We’re sorry to show up unannounced like this,” Sabrina began again. “I know it’s an incredibly difficult subject, but we were hoping to talk to Mrs. Hanson about her daughter, Amy.”

  The woman put her arm protectively around Mrs. Hanson’s gaunt body. “Nina, go inside. I’ll handle this.” Amy’s mother shuffled away, and the woman turned back to them. “I’m Nina’s sister. Amy’s aunt. What do you need to know about Amy?”

  Their auras are fascinating. Such a bright yellow. And the one with the buzzed-off hair is a darker blue than I’ve ever seen.

  As soon as Z heard the thought, she knew exactly how they’d get the answers they needed.

  Z stepped forward. “My friend here keeps seeing Amy’s ghost.”

  Sabrina shot Z a lo
ok she didn’t need to interpret because Z heard her next thought.

  Z, if you are listening, what the hell are you doing?

  But Sabrina’s annoyed look shifted to surprise as soon as the woman opened the door wider.

  “Please come in.”

  Sometimes the truth actually worked.

  * * *

  “Do you both have the gift?” Kaya Hanson asked.

  Z and Sabrina were sitting on a velvety pale blue couch across from the woman in her living room. A distinctive scent hung in the air — apparently she had just finished her weekly ritual of burning sage before they’d arrived. She was probably the type of person who thought meditation was the answer to everything.

  “Just me,” Sabrina answered.

  That explains the bright yellow, Z heard Kaya think.

  She continued trying to listen to Kaya’s thoughts as she looked around the strange room. The antique walnut bookshelf housed no books but instead was brimming with multicolored crystals and candles. The couches and chairs were various shades of purple and blue, and with the dim light in the room, the ambience was almost ethereal. Z could imagine someone holding a séance there.

  “And you saw Amy?” Kaya asked Sabrina, not a hint of doubt in her silvery voice. Her fingers toyed with the small box of Amy’s keepsakes that she’d brought out for Sabrina to look through.

  Sabrina nodded. “I’ve seen her a few times. I haven’t been able to speak to her much, though, so I guess that’s why we’re here. I was hoping if I learned a little more about her, I could figure out why I keep seeing her.”

  “When she appears to you, what does she seem to want?” Kaya asked.

  “It’s like she wants me to understand something about her. Something no one else but me can understand,” Sabrina answered honestly. “Was there anything strange about the way she died?”

  Kaya paused for a second. “I always thought so, but no one else seemed to.”

  Z’s pulse quickened. “We read about what happened. It was a car accident?”

  “Yes. Amy was driving a few of her classmates one night. They were new friends of hers. Amy didn’t have a lot of friends, so it was nice that she suddenly found this group.” She rummaged through the box and pulled out a strip of three photo-booth pictures of Amy with two other girls. In each photo, the girls were in a different pose, making funny faces at the camera.