“But—“
There’s a knock on his door.
“Are you expecting anyone right now?” I ask, my heart thudding in my chest.
“No, I—“ he stands up. “You should hide.”
I shuffle farther into the kitchen, past the view of the door. I hear the creak of it open.
“Hey, Pastor Pete,” her voice says, happy and singsongy, and the sound of it makes me want to race out from hiding and hug her. “Could you come out and help me with something in the yard, please?”
I’d know that voice anywhere. It’s Paige. Somehow hearing her voice is a sign that this will work out.
“I’m sorry, I’m sort of busy right now,” Pastor Pete says.
“Come on,” she says, “it’ll only take a couple of minutes.”
“I really wish I could, but I have so much to do. I still have to pack for the honeymoon, and my house is a mess. I haven’t done dishes in ages.”
I hear her footsteps charge inside, past him. “Just go outside, okay? You kinda have to. I’ll do the dishes for you.”
“Paige, wait—“
I see him grab her arm, but it’s too late.
“Em-bot? Is that—? What are you doing here? What happened to your hair? How did—? Oh, Emma, I’m so sorry.” She races toward me and pulls me into a hug. “Are you okay? I was so worried about you after I left that place. I didn’t know they were gonna do that to you, I promise.”
“I’m fine. It’s okay. Listen, you can’t tell anyone I’m here, okay? Can you promise—“
“Oh, Em, they’re all here. Outside.”
“Who’s outside?” Pastor Pete asks.
“A bunch of kids from youth group,” she says to Pastor Pete. “They’re gonna sing you this song they made up and spray you with shaving cream. It was supposed to be a surprise, for the wedding, but—“
“Paige,” Pastor Pete says, “Do you have a car with you?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Okay. I’ll go outside and get rid of them. I need you to get Emma out of here. There’s a walking trail right outside the back gate that empties out to Vine Street. Can you pick her up there?”
Paige nods. “Yeah, of course.”
“Meet me at the police station in an hour,” he says, then shoves me out the back door.
Paige sneaks out to her car while everyone is busy playing the prank on Pastor Pete. She picks me up exactly where he told her, and we drive toward the police station.
“I’m so sorry, Emma. Really, I am,” she says after I tell her the whole story. “I should have given you a chance.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” I say. “You’re my best friend; I should have trusted you with the truth.”
“You don’t have to be sorry about that,” she says, going quiet. She stares straight ahead of her, and has that face on again, the one that tells me she’s made a decision about something. From the look of it, it’s something big. “You’re not the only one with secrets. I know it’s not the right time right now, but there’s a lot I have to tell you too.”
“Okay,” I say.
When we get a block away from the station, I make her stop to drop me off.
“I’m not leaving you alone here,” she says.
“You have to, Paiger. Just in case I’m wrong. I’m a fugitive. They can’t know you helped.”
“No way,” she says.
“Look, I need you to do something for me, okay?”
Her face is skeptical. “What?”
I pull the birth certificate out of my pocket. The photo too. “I need you to keep these. Just in case they lock me up right away, okay? If it doesn’t happen the way I said, don’t wait. Go to the police and show them this.”
She takes them. “I don’t like leaving you here.”
“It’s almost over,” I say. “Tomorrow, everything will be different.”
Paige drives away, and I find a place to hide across the street until he shows up. Is Jackson in there right now, getting questioned again? Or have they already put him in a cell? I can’t think about it. I have to stay focused, or there’s no chance to save him, to save us.
The hour goes by, and still no Pastor Pete. I try not to worry. It may have taken him longer to get rid of everyone than he thought.
But after another forty minutes, I really start to panic. The sun is dipping close to the horizon, and it’s starting to get cold out here. Where is he?
After two hours have passed, there’s a sinking feeling in my gut and I realize I’ve made a big mistake.
I leave the station, catch a bus across town, back toward Pastor Pete’s house.
I see it the moment I turn onto his block: his garage, standing wide open and empty.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
ALL HIS TOOLS ARE gone, his bike too. The unfinished headboard is abandoned against the wall, forever unfinished.
I walk up to the interior door, just to make sure. It’s standing slightly ajar. No need to lock up when you’re fleeing in the middle of the night, I guess.
The crosses on the wall are gone, a few of the posters too. The bookshelves look picked over. I know before I look that the photo album is gone. He doesn’t know I have the photo. He doesn’t know I have his birth certificate. I almost feel bad. It might be the only thing he has left from his childhood.
I walk through the living room toward the kitchen. The counters are strewn with the leftovers of a quick move: pots and pans, cups and utensils lying around haphazard in the moonlight streaming through the back window. He wouldn’t have had room for much in the bed of his truck, just the essentials. And her things too, of course.
He must have started right after I left, right after he got rid of the other kids. I gave him so much time, trusting that he would do the right thing. He seemed so beaten up, so repentant. How could he have done this to me? To June?
Now I have nothing to take to the police but an old birth certificate that only tells part of the story, a part the police may have known already, if I’m honest with myself. June’s killer is gone. And without anyone else to prosecute, everyone will think it’s me. Maybe I should run. Now, before the police track me down.
I’m so lost in my sadness that I almost miss the sound. A soft whine, a whimper, coming from upstairs.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
I GO TOWARD THE stairs, following the sound. Someone is here. Someone is crying.
Pastor Pete? Could he be hurt?
I start to run, but stop myself. What if it’s someone else?
Gently, slowly, I place a foot on the stairs. Then another. And another.
I creep down the hall, the carpet making the softest of shifts against my sneakers. The shadows of the dark house play tricks on my eyes. As I get closer, I can hear that the sound is coming from Pastor Pete’s bedroom. Could it be? Is there still a chance?
I press my back against the wall of the hallway, debating what to do next. Go in? Leave and call the police?
“Baby? Is that you?” her voice calls. “Petey?”
I step into the doorway. There’s not much left in the room. The dresser. The bed. An abandoned baseball bat. A few hangers scattered around. On the bed, Miss Hope is curled up on top of the covers, crying. She’s clutching a piece of paper in her hand.
“Emma?” she sits up, swipes at her eyes, irritated at my presence, irritated at me seeing her like this. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see Pastor Pete.”
She stands up, crosses her arms over her chest. “I should call the police. They’ve been looking for you. You’re going to be in a lot of trouble once they find you.”
“I know,” I say, trying to think. “Where is he?”
All of a sudden, she lunges forward, pulling me into a hug. “He’s gone, sweetie. He’s gone.”
She’s gripping me so hard, digging her fingers into the flesh in my back. This was a mistake. I have to get out of here.
I have the phone. All I need is a minute alone.
One minute to call Boyer or Paige and let them know I’m here. One minute to crawl out a window and run.
I don’t get any time at all.
“You ruined my life,” she whispers, digging her nails even farther in. “You ruined everything.”
She pushes me to the ground.
I feel something heavy and hard hit my head. Everything goes dark.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
WHEN I COME TO I’m lying naked in a bathtub. My head is swimming, but I’m still alive. Water pours from the faucet, filling the tub millimeters at a time. I try to lift myself out of the water, but my body is heavy and the water makes it even heavier. I heave myself up to a sitting position, then force my torso over the edge and spill out onto the floor like a seal. I feel so weak—dizzy, disoriented.
Before I can sit up, the door opens, and she comes inside, wearing her white wedding dress, the satin swishing around her ankles, me lying on the floor at her feet.
“Please let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”
She says nothing, just lifts me back into the bathtub, averting her eyes from my nakedness, my wet body spreading a stain across the front of her dress. She doesn’t seem to notice. She doesn’t seem to care.
“You don’t have to do this. We can forget all about it right now. No one has to know. I won’t tell anyone.”
She looks at me with a pitying crease between her brows. “Of course you will.” Her voice is empty, deadpan, her face as lifeless as a zombie.
She turns away and reaches into the medicine cabinet for something. “You had a chance to live, you know. If you’d just accepted things, this wouldn’t be happening. But you couldn’t submit to God’s will, could you? You had to keep digging. I knew it the moment you asked about June getting baptized. After that, framing you wouldn’t be enough. It was just a matter of time before you, too, had to die.”
I don’t know what to do, so I try to keep her talking.
“She was going to tell everyone, wasn’t she? Tell everyone who he was?”
“She thought it would make him a hero, but she was wrong. He’d just have to run again. But you took care of that, didn’t you?”
I would never have thought of it if he hadn’t been for Paige’s video from the night of the lock in. The blind-feely game. Miss Hope planned the game and handed me the box herself, but it wasn’t batteries inside, it was bullets. That’s how she got my fingerprints on them. She was the last person on my mind before I knew.
Then it all came together. She was the one who was mentoring June. She was the one who stole my earring and planted it under June’s body. She was the one who asked me to go upstairs for the soda that night, to get me out of the room. She was the one who killed June after leaving Pastor Pete and Chuck to talk alone.
She was the one who used Pastor Pete’s key to get into the gun cabinet, even bought a silencer so no one would hear her do it, then broke into my house to plant the gun. She tried to run me over with that car after I got too close to the truth. And she sent me to New Mercy Ranch.
“You could have gone with him,” I say. “You could have run together. Maybe you can still catch him if you try.”
“God called me to be a pastor’s wife,” she says, turning around, pushing something behind her back. “And he’s not going to be a pastor anymore, is he?”
“He still could be. You could start over.”
“Don’t be foolish, child.” She slaps me hard, across the face. It stings, but it also sharpens my senses. “There was so much good we were going to do together, but he wasn’t strong enough.”
She kneels on the cold tile floor, leans over the bathtub edge.
“Because God blessed me with a kind heart, I will give you one last chance to repent your sins before you meet Him and go to God with a clear conscious. Give me your hands. Let’s pray.”
I shake my head. But she grabs one of my hands in hers.
“It’s your last chance, Emma. Do you really want to meet Jesus with a dirty soul?”
“You can still have a clear conscience too.”
She meets my eyes then, surprised. Surprised and angry. “Don’t you dare accuse me,” she says. “God knows my heart. He knows I did what I had to do to fulfill His higher purpose for me. He knows there’s so much more good I can do. Even if that means…”
Her voice trails off, but I know what she’s saying. Even if that means killing June, and killing me too.
“So repent now. Or don’t. It makes no difference to me. I’ve never understood the mercy of the Lord. Some people deserve to burn in Hell for their sins.”
“I have nothing to be ashamed of,” I say.
She squeezes my hand in hers, so tight it feels like my bones could snap.
“You think I don’t know about you, but I do. I know everything. I saw you with that boy months ago, in the park, throwing yourself at him, bold as daylight.”
She saw me? She knew about Jackson all along?
“I’ve had my eye on you ever since. I’ve seen you drift away from Christ, harden your heart to Him, and it’s made me sick. You standing up in front of everyone, pretending to love our Savior when you’re really whoring around in the shadows? You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Emma. Those children will be better off without you to lead them astray.”
She grips my wrist even tighter, and something slices across it. I scream as pain shoots through me.
She’s holding an old-fashioned straight razor, the flip-out kind with a long blade. I recoil against the wall, trying to hold my wound closed, but the blood dribbles down my arm, drips into the bathtub.
Suicide. She’s trying to make it look like I committed suicide.
“How are you going to explain this to the police?”
Blood pumps cloudy trails through the water. It turns my stomach to see it.
“A sad affair between an over-sexed teen and a lascivious pastor. You killed June when she saw you, and you killed yourself when he left town.”
“No, please. There’s still—“
“Quiet!”
She forces my body down under the surface. She’s strong, so much stronger than I imagined.
I writhe against her grip, kicking, fighting. She may be strong, but I want to live.
I launch myself out of the bathtub and land on top of her. She throws me off, onto the cold tile. I slide, then I see it. The razor, spinning across the floor. She lost it.
I reach for it and grab it. She’s on me, behind me, binding my arms to my body, preventing me from hurting her. Her grip is suffocating. I grip the blade so tight it cuts deep into my palm.
“It’s your destiny, Emma. Don’t fight it. Go to God.”
She’s right. I should stop fighting her. I can’t win this way. I let my body go limp in her arms. I let my tears turn into desperate sobs.
“Okay,” I say. “I beg your mercy. I beg God’s mercy. He sent you here to guide my path, but I was blinded by my own pride. I didn’t listen to you. I didn’t listen.”
She loosens her grip. “Give me the razor.”
“Let me do it. If it’s really God’s plan, then let me do it myself.”
She switches her grip to my wrists and tugs my back toward the tub, taking the razor out of my hand.
“Please let me do it myself,” I beg. “It just scared me is all, your doing it so fast.”
I go back into the tub of my own free will, sit down in the water, watch my blood curl into its depths. I lie back. I close my eyes.
“Dear Jesus,” I say, “please forgive me for all I’ve done. I come to You a broken and helpless lamb. Let the glory of Your light shine upon me and heal my aching heart as I meet You in Your glory.”
I feel her hand on mine, squeezing. “Was that so hard?” She slips the razor into my hand.
I launch upright and swipe her eyes, missing one, but slicing a line across the other.
She screams, reels back.
I tumble out of the tub, fighting the sway in my head that swirls my visi
on to mud, but I don’t make it.
She lurches forward, blind, blood dripping down her face, and finds my neck with her hands. Suddenly there’s no more air in my lungs. I open my mouth to gulp, but nothing makes it down my throat.
The razor. I still have the razor. I slash madly, furiously, and make contact.
The gurgle of blood rips across her throat, deep and dark.
It’s the last hit I make.
She squeezes harder, but has to pull one hand away to hold it to her throat.
I struggle out of her grasp just as she falls backward, gripping her neck with both hands, a fountain of red spilling against the pure white of her gown.
I stand and slip, slide my way across the tiles.
I reach for the doorknob and feel her fingers wisp past my ankles as I stumble out.
The air as I leave the house, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, police lights blaring toward me, the stars kissing my fingertips as I reach up for them, is the sweetest I’ve ever breathed.
I find my phone and call Boyer.
“I’m at Pastor Pete’s. With the killer,” I say.
Sitting on the steps as they carry Miss Hope out on a gurney, paramedics racing her still-breathing body to the hospital, I think about June.
I think about June’s life cut too short, how she was one of the few people who deserved kindness. Deserved it and never got it.
I think about June free. I think about June as a star in the sky.
I think about what she believed, about heaven and God and angels singing at the pearly gates to welcome the faithful. I hope, for her sake, heaven is real.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
PAIGE FINDS ME IN the hospital. My parents too, but I scream them out of the room. I don’t want to speak to them. I may never want to speak to them again.
So it’s Paige, not them, that sits by my side through the night, holding my hand when the nightmares hit and promising everything will be okay.
She’s the one who goes to meet Tessa in the park, to tell her where I am and help find her a place to stay.
She’s the one who finds a hairstylist who does hospital visits to transform my chopped locks into a pixie cut.
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