Skin and Bone

by T. L. Keary

  My insides disappear.

  My body flashes cold and then hot.

  My mouth hangs open as my eyes flash from Brandon to the figure walking down the dark hall, aimed for the podium.

  Sick turns over and over in my stomach as I see his face. He smiles and waves at the student body, who claps for him, one or two individuals whooping and cheering.

  There he is. Same dark blond hair, same perfectly straight nose, same thin lips and charming smile. Only a few thin lines at the corners of his eyes mark the ten years that have passed. He’s wearing new glasses.

  My heart is pounding in my chest.

  My eyes rip over to Isobel. Her expression matches mine. Horror and utter panic.

  Next, I catch Chad’s eyes.

  Pure terror.

  Landon’s head turns, his eyes wildly searching for mine. He’s pale as snow.

  And Dallin turns in his seat slightly to look at me, darkness filling his eyes. His lips are slightly parted in shock.

  In disbelief, we each turn our gaze back to the podium as Mr. Anderson steps up to it, smiling out over the crowd.

  As his eyes sweep, I slip down in my seat, dipping below the heads of everyone ahead of me.

  I see Chad, Dallin, and Isobel do the same thing.

  Landon just keeps staring at Mr. Anderson in shock.

  “Thank you for the warm welcome back, Falcons,” Mr. Anderson says with a smile. His features look harsh and stark with the hard light shining on him from above. “It’s truly an honor to be back among you, seeing all these familiar faces.”

  I glance over at Isobel, who stares at Mr. Anderson with chilled terror on her face.

  I cast a look back over to Chad, who has sunk so low into his seat, it’s comical.

  Dallin sits with his hand poised over his brows, like he’s trying to block the light from his eyes.

  “I can honestly say that the class of 2010 was a special one,” Mr. Anderson says. “We formed so many special bonds that year. So many memories were made. Laughs. Tears. More than a few tossed lunches over dissected frogs and cow hearts.”

  That earns him plenty of laughs.

  “I truly regret that I had to leave that year,” Harlan continues. “When family needs you, you go. It wasn’t easy walking away from this special class. I left behind a lot of unfinished business.”

  A chill walks its way down my spine. I can’t feel my fingers.

  “But I’m back,” he continues, flashing that devilish smile. “I can’t wait to dive back in. To continue what I started here at South Whidbey.”

  He gives a nod, and the crowd cheers again, clapping and calling out welcome back greetings. With a wave, he walks away from the podium, and back toward the hall.

  I sink further into my seat, letting my hair fall into my face, watching as he walks to the main entry and disappears behind a wall.

  Brandon gets back up, making a few more comments. I don’t hear a word. Frantically, I’m looking for the others, and every one of them looks just as terrified as I am.

  Brandon wraps things up, announcing the next reunion will be in another five years. And then we’re turned loose to chat and catch up.

  “It’s been nice talking to you, Rose,” I say the second Brandon is finished, immediately getting up from my seat. I meet Isobel’s eyes, nodding for the empty table two rows up from her. And when I meet Dallin’s, he nods that direction, too.

  I think I’m going to be sick. My hands shake as I weave my way through the crowd. I swear I can hardly see straight.

  “Holy shit,” Isobel breathes through her teeth as she comes to stand at the end of the table, bracing her hands on it.

  “Why is he back?” Dallin asks with a gravelly voice.

  “You guys…” Chad says as he reaches the table, sounding out of breath. He looks ready to pass out.

  “He seriously came back,” Landon interjects as he joins us.

  And, just like that, it’s like the past ten years never happened. We’re all back together, hearts pounding, fear coursing through our veins.

  “Have any of you heard anything about him in the past ten years?” Dallin asks, looking around at each of us.

  “Nothing,” Isobel says.

  “Not a word,” Landon agrees, shaking his head.

  “I had kind of hoped he offed himself out of guilt,” Chad says, his eyes wide, his words breathy.

  We talk in low voices, so as to not be overheard, and thankfully the crowd is loud.

  “Isobel, have you heard from Emma? Do you know where she is?” Dallin asks as his dark eyes flick over to her.

  She shakes her head. “Last time I talked to her was, like, five months ago. She was still out in Ohio.”

  “Call her,” I say, my voice sharp and quick. “Right now.”

  Isobel scrambles for her phone, scrolling through contacts. She taps one and holds the phone to her ear.

  She goes even more pale just two seconds later.

  “Straight to voicemail,” she says.

  Landon swears, pounding his fist on the table, making it rattle.

  “We need to find out why he’s back here,” Dallin says, looking around at the five of us. “We need to figure out what he’s been doing the past ten years.”

  “I think we all know exactly why he’s back here,” Chad says, his pitch rising again. “He even said it. He’s got unfinished business.”

  My throat is so tight I can hardly breathe. I can hear my heart pounding in my ears.

  “We need to figure this out,” Dallin says. “Quick.”

  “Shit,” Landon breathes as his eyes slide over to mine. “Cass, you’re a teacher here now.”

  Every one of their eyes flip back to me. I try to swallow, but I can’t. I just nod, even as my ears start ringing.

  “We need to go to the police,” Chad says. “I don’t care that we don’t have Emma. We can’t go back into this mess.”

  “And we tell them what?” Landon snaps. “That we tried to stop him ten years ago? Emma will never come forward. And you really want to tell them the whole story?”

  We’ve screwed ourselves here. We can’t go to the police. Not without implicating every single one of us.

  Chad looks at Landon with wide, terrified eyes. “Guys, I have a baby on the way. I can’t get involved in this mess again.”

  “You really think any of us want to dive back into this?” Isobel says. “It’s been ten years. We’ve all finally moved on. But this is Emma. Now it’s Cassidy. We have to do something.”

  Chad swears, letting his head fall into his hands.

  “Isobel, you need to do everything you can to get in touch with Emma,” Dallin says. And I’m reminded, how he only ever shined on the football field, and here in this little circle. “We need to find where she is, make sure she’s safe. Ask her what’s happened in the last ten years.”

  She nods, and if anyone can find Emma, it’s her. She was the last one in contact with Emma, and her reach into the world of social media and connecting with people knows no comparison. Which is ironic, considering how much she hates people.

  “Chad, you’re the only one who can look into Mr. Anderson’s past,” Dallin says, fixing him with a dark, dead serious look. “I know you’ve got the connections to dig.”

  Chad looks ready to throw up. But with an angst-ridden expression, he nods.

  “You still got connections in town?” Dallin asks, looking up at Landon. He just nods, his muscular arms folded across his chest. “See if you can find out where he’s living. Get people watching him. We need gossips looking out for him.”

  Landon’s family has been in South Whidbey for years. They’ve founded half the businesses here. He’s trusted, and the town knows they rely on the Blackburn family for a lot of the jobs here.

  He has the local connections.

  “On it,” Landon snaps.

  Dallin looks over at me, and I’m having a hard time reading his expression.

  “Cassidy, you can’t go ba
ck to school on Tuesday” he says, his voice hoarse and rough.

  “I can’t just quit my job,” I say, shaking my head. “School starts in three days. I can’t just—”

  “Cass, this is Mr. Anderson we’re talking about,” Chad interrupts me, his voice harsh. “You can’t just go walking around under the same roof as him. Not after what we did.”

  My stomach rolls, and I actually have to cover my mouth.

  I’m back in the ocean, coughing and fighting for air. A blurry face floats above me, lips pressed together in concentration, wicked eyes that sing triumph, boring into my own.

  I take four deep breaths.

  “There’s no way he doesn’t know I’m here already,” I say. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t be back. He has to know that I’m here, maybe more than just me.” My eyes slide from Chad to Landon, to Isobel. And finally to Dallin. “We won’t get a better opportunity to watch him and learn.”

  “You’re going to freaking spy on Mr. Anderson, right in front of his face?” Chad hisses, slapping his hand against the table. “That’s the most insane thing you’ve ever said, Cass.”

  “She’s not wrong,” Dallin says, his eyes slowly sliding from mine to Chad’s. “We need access. We have to figure out what he wants.”

  “All of us dead,” Chad says, drawing a circle in the air, indicating all five of us. “That’s what he wants. I can tell you that right now.”

  “But right now we’ve got nothing,” Dallin says. “Nothing to get him locked away. We can’t say a damn word about what happened back then. But that doesn’t mean we can’t point him in the direction of a jail cell, now.”

  “You want to use Cassidy as bait?” Isobel says. Her tone is disgusted and horrified, but she’s not writing it off.

  Dallin’s eyes flick over to meet mine. I study him, trying to figure out how this can work.

  I’m terrified. Scared to death.

  But it all sits there above our heads, threatening to suffocate every one of us. What happened ten years ago isn’t over.

  “We have to do something,” I say. I look back at Isobel. Over to Chad. “And I have to make sure nothing happens to any other student. I couldn’t live with myself if I let there be any question.”

  “He never touched anyone else, Cass,” Chad says. “It was only ever Emma.”

  “And what if it wasn’t?” I say, voicing the question that was always in the back of my mind. “What if there were others who were just as scared as Emma? What if he does it again?”

  Chad swears once more, shaking his head as he stands, looking around the room.

  We could never, ever be certain. No matter how closely we watched him, none of us ever would have guessed what happened to Emma. So, how could we be sure he’d never done it to anyone else?

  “She’s doesn’t have to do this alone,” Dallin says, his shoulders shrugging up to his ears as he avoids my gaze for a moment.

  “What do you mean?” Landon asks.

  Dallin finally looks over at me, considering for just a moment. I see his eyes fall to my lips, going to my hair.

  Something flashes over my skin. Something hot and awkward.

  “You got a boyfriend, Cassidy?” he asks.

  “What?” I question, my brows furrowing together. “No.”

  Once again, his eyes fall to my lips for just a brief moment. They rise back up to meet mine. “If I’m your boyfriend, no one will question if I show up here to visit you. No one will wonder why I’m over at your house.”

  My eyes flick to the others, and I see varying reactions on their faces.

  Dallin and I both still live here in town. So does Landon, but he lives on the same street as the rest of his family, and I heard throughout the night that that pretty blonde with him is his fiancé, and she lives with him.

  Isobel lives up in Oak Harbor, forty-five minutes away.

  Chad lives over on the mainland, in Everett now.

  Dallin and I are the only ones who live right here, alone.

  “Fine,” I say, my throat thick and awkward. “We’ll pretend we’re dating.”

  Dallin nods, like it’s a simple matter of business. Like this isn’t going to cause all kinds of whispers, because everyone here knows who we are. We’ve both lived here forever.

  “Everyone know what they need to do?” Dallin asks, looking around. They each nod, but everyone looks sick to their stomach. “It’s been ten years. I know I don’t have anyone’s number anymore.”

  I don’t have anyone’s, either.

  After that last night, and then after graduation, we all agreed that we’d never speak again. We’d never bring up senior year. We’d let the past die in a dark, silent grave.

  But here we are again.

  I type in each of their numbers, one by one, saving the contact information.

  “Keep in touch,” Dallin says. The room is growing quieter. People are leaving. We need to move. “If anything happens…”

  “Let everyone know,” Isobel says.

  Each of us nods.

  The clock is ticking.

  We need to get out of here, slip into the crowd.

  “Let’s go,” Dallin says, standing up from the table.

  He doesn’t waste a second.

  He places his hand at the small of my back, and we aim for the door.

  This is weird. So weird.

  We haven’t spoken in so long, even though we see each other in town all the time. And now we’re pretending to be a couple.

  It’s not going to go over smoothly. If we were really together, we would have come to the reunion together. There were nearly one hundred witnesses who saw us sitting at different tables.

  But we’ll deal with that later.

  I watch as Chad goes back to his pregnant wife. As Landon goes back to his smiling fiancé.

  Isobel goes back to the guy she was sitting with, asks if he’ll walk her to her car.

  We all walk out the doors. I know how shifty we look as we each scan the crowd and the parking lot.

  “I don’t see him,” I say quietly to Dallin.

  Already, we’re getting looks. Already, I see people leaning into each other, talking quiet with their eyes fixed on us.

  Dallin doesn’t seem to notice. “Me either.”

  One last time, I catch the eye of Isobel. Chad. Landon.

  We’ve not spoken in ten years. And now we’re back in it, tied together when we were hardly even friends in high school.

  Dallin leaves his beat up truck in the parking lot, following me to my car. We slip inside and after I lock the doors, I lean back in my seat, my heart pounding.

  “I can’t believe he’s back,” I say, knowing I’m going to throw up the second I get home. “You think he saw us?”

  Dallin shakes his head, still scanning the parking lot outside. “I don’t know. It was pretty dark in there. But I have a feeling your picture and name are on the school website.”

  I nod, because it is.

  “And I’ve been here forever, same with Landon,” Dallin says. “If he’s been paying attention at all, he knows at least the three of us are still around.”

  “Dallin, what are we going to do?” I ask, looking over at him. “He knows what we tried to do. He’ll never forget. And if he’s back…”

  Dallin looks at me, and in his dark eyes, I don’t see the answer. He knows this is bad. That things won’t end well.

  “I don’t know yet, Cassidy,” he answers honestly. “I have a feeling things are going to get messy. And this is all on us.”

  We can’t go to the police.

  Because ten and a half years ago, the five of us tried to kill Mr. Anderson.

  He knew it was us.

  We failed.

  And now he’s back.

  A tale of insidious obsession…

  Check out THREE HEART ECHO by T.L. Keary

  * * *

  Welcome to Roselock, where the ground bleeds, and the night screams.

  * * *

  After
the senseless murder of her fiancé, Iona Faye can’t move on. There was no happily ever after, and no goodbye. Desperate for closure, she goes to see Roselock’s one and only reclusive inhabitant.

  * * *

  Sully Whitmore has lived a life of seclusion, with one hand on the gate to the other side, and a family curse binding him to the town his ancestors founded. When Iona demands he speak to Jack for her one last time, he knows something is wrong. She paints a picture of love and devotion, but Sully sees something else: a story of possession. A story of lies. A story of two faces.

  * * *

  But it’s too late now. Sully has opened the gate. And he will help Iona find the truth about Jack, if it’s the last thing he does.

  Also by T.L. Keary

  Also by T.L. Keary

  OUR LAST CONFESSION

  THREE HEART ECHO

  * * *

  Also by Keary Taylor (science fiction & fantasy pen name)

  THE BLOOD DESCENDANTS UNIVERSE

  House of Royals Saga

  Garden of Thorns Trilogy

  Crown of Death Saga

  THE FALL OF ANGELS TRILOGY

  THE NERON RISING SAGA

  THE EDEN TRILOGY

  * * *

  Also by Annie K. (contemporary romance pen name)

  THE McCAIN SAGA

  WHAT I DIDN’T SAY

  Connect With T.L. Keary Online

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  * * *

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  About the Author

  T.L. Keary is the psychological thriller pen name of USA TODAY bestselling author Keary Taylor. She has written over thirty-five novels, encompassing suspense, thriller, sci-fi, paranormal, and contemporary romance. She grew up along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where, from a young age, she started creating imaginary worlds, dark motives, and daring characters who had a tendency to fall in love. She now splits her time between a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest and a beautiful valley in Utah, with her husband and their two children. She continues to have an overactive imagination that frequently keeps her up at night.keeps her up at night.