One of Us Is Next

by McManus, Karen M.

  Unease nips at my stomach. “Guess we’ll have to tell him in person, then. It’s almost time to leave for the party, anyway.”

  “Hang on.” Knox’s fingers move across his laptop’s trackpad. “I just plugged Jared Jackson into Google and there’s a lot here.” His eyes flick up and down the screen. “So, yeah, he was arrested for stealing from a convenience store right after he graduated high school. Got probation, did that mentoring program, started working for a construction company.” Something tugs at my subconscious then, but Knox is still talking and the fragment disappears. “He doesn’t seem to have had any run-ins with the law since. But there’s a bunch of stuff here on the fallout from his brother’s arrest…”

  He goes silent for a minute as he reads. “It doesn’t mention their dad by name but I’ll bet that’s David Jackson. He has lung cancer, and they lost their house after Jared’s brother went to jail. So, that sucks, obviously. Understatement. And their mom…oh shit.” Knox sucks in a sharp breath, raising troubled eyes toward me. “The mom killed herself on Christmas Eve. Well, they think it was suicide. She overdosed on sleeping pills, but she didn’t leave a note.”

  “Oh no.” My heart drops as I stare at the Jacksons’ house, dark except for the yellowish glow of a lamp silhouetted in a first-floor window. Everything about the house looks forlorn, from the crooked lampshade to the lopsided blinds. “That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Knox follows my gaze. “Okay, now I feel bad for Jared. He’s had a shit time. Maybe this is all just some twisted way of blowing off steam.”

  “Maybe,” I say, and then I jump as the lamp in the Jacksons’ window suddenly goes off, plunging the house into darkness. The door opens, and a shadowy figure emerges. Knox pushes his laptop to one side and fumbles with the zipper on his backpack, rooting around in it until he pulls out his binoculars. “Seriously?” I ask as he brings them to his eyes. We’re the only ones in the coffee shop except the barista, who’s been ignoring us since we got our drinks, but still. This is not exactly a stealthy way to keep tabs on your nemesis. “You brought those?”

  “Of course I did. They have night vision mode.” Knox adjusts the outer lenses and leans forward, peering through the window as the figure steps onto a section of the driveway illuminated by a nearby streetlight. “It’s Jared.”

  “I could tell that without binoculars.”

  “He has a backpack and he’s getting into the car.”

  “Knox, I can see him perfectly fine—”

  A PingMe alert flashes across my screen. The website you are monitoring has been updated. I minimize the document from Mrs. Myers’s computer and navigate to the Vengeance Is Mine forum.

  Tick-tock, time’s up. Guess I’ll just fucking do it myself.—Darkestmind.

  My blood chills. I don’t know what the words mean, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they can’t be good. I slam my laptop closed and stuff it into my bag. “Come on, we need to follow him,” I say. “He’s up to something.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Knox

  Friday, March 27

  Maeve shoved her bag at me before she got behind the wheel, and now I’m holding too much crap to put my seat belt on as she tears out of Jared Jackson’s street. I drop my backpack by my feet but keep hold of Maeve’s bag. “You need anything in here?” I ask.

  “Could you take my phone out?” Maeve asks, eyes on the blue car in front of us. It turns a corner, and she follows. “Just in case. You can put it in the cup holder.”

  I do, and then I look down at the MacBook sticking out from her still-open bag. I almost forgot what she’d been doing until Jared Jackson drove every other thought from my head. “Hey, what was that second document you opened? The one from my mom’s computer?” I ask. “Was there anything about Brandon in there?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to look at it. Do you want to read it now? It’s still open, I just minimized it.”

  “Might as well.” I pull out Maeve’s computer, stuff her bag next to my backpack on the floor, and position the MacBook on my lap. I open the cover and click on the document icon at the bottom of the screen. “Is this it? Settlement on Behalf of Eagle Granite Manufacturing Corporation…wait. Hang on a second.” I frown. “Why does that sound familiar?”

  “It’s local, isn’t it?” Maeve asks. “I think it had an Eastland address.”

  “Yeah.” I skim over a bunch of stuff I don’t understand until I reach the company name again and start to read. “Worker’s compensation settlement negotiated by Jenson and Howard on behalf of Eagle Granite Manufacturing Corporation, concerning the accidental death of…Oh shit.” I can feel my eyes getting wide as I take in the familiar name.

  “What?” Maeve asks distractedly. Jared is kind of an erratic driver, and she’s speeding a lot more than she normally would to keep up with him.

  “The accidental death of Andrew Lawton. That’s Phoebe’s dad. I forgot my mom handled that case when it happened.” I think back to Owen gratefully pocketing a twenty-dollar bill at Café Contigo, and to Phoebe’s apartment, which is nice but a lot smaller than average for a family of four in Bayview. “Mom always said Mrs. Lawton didn’t get nearly as much money as she should have,” I say.

  “That’s awful,” Maeve says. Jared exits the highway, and she follows. I look up from her screen and register a familiar sign for Costco flashing past us; we’re not far from home. She grips the steering wheel more tightly and adds, “Did you search for Weber?”

  “I’m looking.” Reading while riding in a car makes my stomach roll, but I keep scanning paragraphs until my eyes finally catch on the name. “Lance Weber, executive vice president in charge of manufacturing for Eagle Granite Manufacturing Corporation,” I read. My skin starts to prickle. “Lance Weber. Isn’t that Brandon’s father’s name?”

  I hear Maeve’s breath hiss between her teeth as she quickly changes lanes to stay behind Jared’s car. “Yeah. My parents were just talking about him the other night. My dad’s done business with Mr. Weber before, and he’s definitely a big deal in manufacturing. He works for an aircraft supplier now, though.”

  “Well, I guess he didn’t used to.” I keep reading, until I come to a paragraph that makes every hair on my body stand on end. I reread it twice to make sure it really says what I think it does, and then I say, “Maeve. Holy hell.”

  “What?” she asks. I can tell she’s only half listening because she’s concentrating so hard on keeping up with Jared’s NASCAR moves, so I tap her arm for emphasis.

  “You need to pay attention. For real. Mr. Lance Weber acknowledges that on October seventh, which was Take Your Child to Work Day at Eagle Granite Manufacturing Corporation, his thirteen-year-old son was present on the manufacturing floor. Despite repeated admonitions to stay away from equipment, Mr. Weber’s minor son mounted a forklift and operated its controls for what one worker reported as a five-minute period. That same forklift jammed shortly thereafter while transporting the slab of concrete that ultimately crushed Andrew Lawton.”

  I look up from the document at Maeve’s pale, rigid face. Her eyes are still trained on Jared’s car. “That was Brandon. It has to be,” I say. “Messing around with a forklift that killed Phoebe’s father. Shit. Brandon fucking Weber.”

  Now, the conversation I overheard between my parents makes perfect sense. The case never should have been settled that way, my dad had said. By “that way,” I’m guessing he meant keeping Brandon’s involvement out of any public documentation of the accident. All it did was show Brandon that actions don’t have to have consequences. For a second, I’m so angry at the mental image of Brandon screwing around with a piece of heavy machinery—Brandon, as usual, doing whatever he wanted and not caring how it might affect somebody else—that I forget he’s dead.

  And then I remember. The thought settles on my chest, compressing my lungs
so it’s hard to breathe. “Well, I guess that answers my question, doesn’t it?” I ask.

  “What question?”

  “About who has a reason for hating Brandon enough to want him gone.” I stare at the red taillights in front of us until they go blurry. “It’s Phoebe.”

  “Phoebe?” Maeve echoes in a small voice.

  “We kept wondering if maybe she knew Intense Guy, right? Seeing as how he’s been chasing her all over town, talking about some deal they made on a revenge forum.” My stomach churns as every disturbing, damning thing we’ve uncovered about Jared in the past few hours comes crashing up against the girl I’ve gotten to know. Sweet-faced, sharp-tongued, impulsive Phoebe Lawton. “Maeve. Do you think there’s any way she could’ve…”

  “No,” Maeve says instantly.

  “You didn’t let me finish.”

  “Phoebe had no clue about this,” she says urgently. “She can’t have. She was hooking up with Brandon! She’d never do that if she knew he’d had anything to do with her father’s accident. Plus, she wouldn’t spread horrible gossip about herself.” Then she hesitates. I can almost see the gears in her mind sifting through memories of Simon Kelleher and Jake Riordan, and all the twisted things the two of them did to get revenge last year—on people whose wrongs were a hell of a lot tamer than Brandon Weber’s. “I mean,” she says with less certainty, “someone would have to be a stone-cold killer with an unbelievably good game face to pull that off. Right?”

  “Right.” I try to laugh like it’s ridiculous, because it is. Except for the part where it makes as much sense as anything else that’s happened over the past few weeks. If it weren’t for Brandon’s carelessness, Phoebe’s father would still be alive, and her whole life would be different. What does knowing something like that do to a person?

  I take a minute to register our surroundings, and it hits me with sickening certainty that we have an entirely different problem right now. And as horrible as the last train of thought was, this is even worse. “Maeve, do you realize where we are?”

  “Huh?” she asks, tense and distracted. “No. I’ve been staring at Jared’s license plate for the entire drive. I don’t even—” She lets her eyes rove for a second, and her face gets as pale as mine feels. “Oh. Oh my God.”

  We’re on Charles Street in Bayview, the sign for Talia’s Restaurant glowing white to our left. Eli and Ashton’s rehearsal dinner afterparty is happening right now, and we’re supposed to be there. But we’re late, because we’ve been busy tailing the guy who sent Eli death threats for weeks. And that guy just pulled into a parking spot across the street and, finally, cut his engine.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Knox

  Friday, March 27

  “Okay, no,” Maeve says, her voice tight. “This has to be a coincidence. He’s not going to Ashton and Eli’s rehearsal dinner. How would he even know where it is?”

  “You’re always saying there are no coincidences,” I remind her. Pressure starts to build behind my eyes. “And people can find anything online. Haven’t we just proven that?”

  I sound calm, but I’m not, because shit, this is bad. I’m only just starting to grasp how bad this is. Maeve has pulled off to the side of the road, a few parking spots behind Jared in the metered spaces that line Charles Street. He’s still in his car.

  “Oh God, oh God,” Maeve groans. “We have to try Eli again.”

  “He won’t pick up,” I remind her, desperation making me hoarse. Of all the times for Eli to go off the grid.

  “Then I’ll call Bronwyn. She should be there by now. Oh God,” Maeve says again, covering her face with her hands. “Bronwyn is there.”

  Everyone is there, I think. Except Phoebe and her family, even though they were supposed to be until Emma wound up in the hospital yesterday. Christ, I can’t even think about that right now. Maeve is shaking so badly that she’s having trouble placing the call, and I take her phone from her. “I got it,” I say. But Bronwyn’s number goes straight to voice mail, too. “She’s not answering.”

  “Try Addy,” Maeve says.

  I do, with the same results. “Why is no one picking up?” I yell in frustration, banging my fist on my knee. “We’re Generation Z, for God’s sake. Our phones are supposed to be permanently attached to our hands.”

  Maeve’s only response is a gasp, and I look up from her phone to see Jared standing at the edge of the road, waiting for cars to pass. My heart starts jackhammering in my chest as I hand Maeve’s phone back to her and pull out my own. Then I set it to Video, and train it on Jared as he starts to walk.

  “We need to go, too.” Maeve says. She grabs my arm when I lower my phone. “No, keep recording. But follow him, okay? I’m going to call the police and tell them…I don’t even know. Something. I’ll be right behind you after that.”

  A horn honks as I climb out of the car, shielding my eyes against oncoming headlights. I wait for another car to roar past, then I cross to the sidewalk as Jared rounds a fence in front of Talia’s. The restaurant is sandwiched between an office building and a bank, both closed and dark at this time of night. Small outdoor seating areas flank the front door on either side. I can hear murmured voices and laughter from somewhere at the back of the building. The night is windy and a little foggy, mist swirling around the streetlight closest to the restaurant. I expect Jared to head for the front door, but he goes around the side instead.

  I hesitate as he disappears, and Maeve comes up behind me, breathless. “Where is he?”

  “He went around back. Should we try to find Eli?”

  “Let’s see what he’s doing first.”

  Voices get louder as we approach the rear of the restaurant. I pause when we reach the corner, poking my head out just enough to take in the scene in front of me. Talia’s has a raised, open-air deck that’s about eight feet off the ground, surrounded by a wooden railing. White lights are strung everywhere, music is playing, and people stand in clusters on the deck, talking and laughing. I’m at an awkward angle, but I think I see the back of Cooper’s head.

  Jared is on one knee and has the backpack in front of him. My phone is still recording, so I lift it again and aim it for him. He reaches inside, and for one heart-stopping second, I think he’s about to pull out a gun. Options flash through my brain: tackle him? Yell? Both? But when he takes his hand out, it’s empty. He zips up the backpack and tosses it beneath the deck. Then he rises in a low crouch. I yank Maeve’s arm, backpedaling with her until we’re at the front of the restaurant. “Stairs,” I whisper, and we run for the entrance, flattening ourselves against the wall beside the door.

  Jared emerges a few seconds later from the side of the building. He strides quickly across the parking lot, looking straight ahead the entire time. We watch him until he disappears around the fence. “What’s he up to?” Maeve breathes.

  I pull up the video I just took and send it to Eli. “I don’t know, but I think we’d better get that backpack.” I shove my phone into my pocket and grab Maeve’s hand. Her palm feels reassuringly cool and dry in mine. “Come on.”

  We retrace our steps to the back of the building. The space beneath the deck isn’t open like I’d thought it would be when I watched Jared throw his backpack from around the corner. It’s thick wooden lattice, except for a squat, narrow crawl space in the middle. I kneel and reach an arm in, sweeping it in every direction, but I can’t feel anything other than dirt and rocks.

  Maeve hands me her phone, lit with the flashlight app, and I shine it inside. The backpack is almost directly in front of me but at least six feet away. “It’s there. I’m going in,” I say, taking a deep breath. I don’t dislike closed spaces as much as heights, but I’m not a fan either. As soon as my head is inside the crawl space, though, I can tell the rest of me won’t fit. Nobody would ever call my shoulders broad, but they still won’t make it through. I reverse course
and sit on my haunches next to the opening.

  “Maybe we should tell everybody to leave,” I say, wiping my chin against my shoulder. My face is a gross combination of sticky and gritty from just a few seconds in the crawl space. “Something bad is in that backpack, or he wouldn’t have put it there.”

  Maeve drops to her knees beside me. “Let me try.” She ducks her head through the opening, twisting her body so her shoulders are at a right angle. She’s a lot narrower than I am and manages to slide the rest of the way through. The backpack emerges soon after, shoved out of the crawl space by Maeve’s dirt-streaked hands. She follows, forcing her shoulders through with a painful grimace as I lift the backpack by one strap. It’s a faded tan color, ripped along one side and heavy. I tug at the zipper and shine Maeve’s phone inside.

  Maeve coughs and brushes a cobweb from her hair. She’s covered in dirt, and her right arm is bleeding from a long, jagged scrape. “What’s in there?”

  “Something round and metal,” I report. “It has a lot of wires and…switches, or something.” Alarm starts coursing through my veins, making me sweat. God, I wish I’d paid more attention to my father when he used to explain how stuff works. “I can’t be sure, but this looks a lot like somebody’s idea of a homemade bomb.” My voice cracks on the last word.

  Maeve’s eyes get wide and scared. “What do we do?”

  I’m frozen, indecisive. I want this to be somebody else’s problem. I want Eli to check his damn phone. He’s up there somewhere, and if I yell loud enough I could probably get his attention. But I don’t know how much time we have.

  “We have to get rid of it,” I say, scanning the area. We’re in luck, sort of, because the space behind Talia’s is nothing but grass until you get to a bike path a hundred yards away. Tall bushes line the back of the path, and if I have my geography right, the Bayview Arboretum is right behind them. Which closes at six, so it has to be deserted this time of night.