by Tara Kelly
“Doesn’t mean she didn’t leave at some point,” I muttered. If she was involved, she’d need help dumping his body. Matt could’ve done it. But still, Christian was a big guy—even Matt would probably need help.
“Eric is leaving Seattle real early tomorrow,” Mom said. “Should be here by noon.” She lowered her voice. “It’s not soon enough.”
“How’s her mom?”
“She should be out tomorrow—Eric is going to help her get a motel room. Get settled. But we can talk about that later. Right now—”
I pulled my hand out of her grasp and stood. “I’m not giving up on him—I’m sorry you have.”
“My first priority is looking out for you, because you’re not doing that.” She watched me for a few seconds. “Maybe you’re better off telling the detectives the truth. Tell them you were scared to come forward.” Her voice softened to a whisper. “You didn’t do anything that night.”
“I lied about it—twice. You think they’re going to care?”
“I think they’re going to keep putting pressure on all of you until one of you talks. And if that person isn’t you…”
“Then I’ll deal with it if that happens. Until then, I’m going to keep my mouth shut. You heard them. They’re looking at all of us, not just Alex.”
Mom stared up at me for what felt like eternity. “You need to lie low, keep your head down. Promise me you’ll do that.”
I crossed my fingers behind my back, knowing there was only one way out of this conversation. “I promise.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” The phone rang, making her huff out a breath in frustration. She checked the caller ID. “I’ve got to get back to the diner.”
“Then go. I’ll be fine.”
She got up and pulled me to her, giving me a quick hug and kissing me on the head. “Keep Gavin out of the ice cream. The doctor thinks he’s got lactose intolerance.”
“Okay…”
“I love you, sweetie,” she whispered into my ear, giving me another squeeze.
After she left, I peeked into Gavin’s room to see if he was in there. He wasn’t. Instead, I heard his voice down the hall—coming from my room.
Jenika was sitting at my desk, staring intently at my laptop, and Gavin was on my bed, going on about his hate for spinach.
“What are you doing?” I asked, moving in behind her. She had the video footage from the night Alex went missing up.
“Had to check my email. Gavin said I could use it.”
“It’s my computer, too,” Gavin said.
I put one hand on the desk, and the other on the back of my chair, leaning within inches of her face. “That doesn’t look like email.”
If me being in her personal space bothered her, she didn’t flinch. Instead, she kept her gaze on the screen. “Relax. Your ranty diary entries don’t interest me.” She clicked on the video of Alex waving good-bye to me, dragging the playhead back and forth.
“I don’t keep a diary.”
“Why’s that?” She stopped the video before he moved out of the frame and replayed it.
“Because diaries are meant to be read.”
Her lips lifted in the corners. “Like you’ve got anything to hide.”
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.” She turned the chair away from me and got up, motioning to it. “All yours.”
“Hey, Jenika?” Gavin asked. “What do you think of asparagus?”
“I don’t.”
“I like to dip it in peanut butter,” he continued with a grin. In a matter of hours, he’d gone from being terrified of her to barraging her with questions. Shockingly, she didn’t seem to mind.
“What were you looking for?” I asked, sitting down and replaying the video.
“Anything useful. Didn’t find it.” She sat next to Gavin, folding her arms.
I opened up my in-box, hoping if Alex did take off on purpose, he’d found some way to send me a message. Some way to give me an answer. Instead, there was a message from Christian Barnett, sent at 4:23 a.m. this morning, file attached.
Subject: Thought you might like this…
My blood turned to ice.
“Gavin?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’m pretty sure there’s an Animal Cops marathon on today. Wanna check?”
“Ooh!” He slid off the bed, running toward the living room. Luckily Gavin wasn’t picky—there was always something on that captured his attention.
“Trying to keep him away from me?” Jenika asked.
“I got a message from Christian…” I read his name over and over, hoping it would disappear.
She moved next to me, squinting at the screen.
I’d deleted my old email address last fall, when I got all those nasty anonymous emails. Zach didn’t even have this one, so the chances of Christian having it on his phone were slim. Still, whoever sent this could’ve gotten my email from someone who knew me.
But that wasn’t what made every hair on my skin stand up. It was the subject line. Thought you might like this… As if they knew I kept that picture of Amber’s body on my computer. As if they knew, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to delete it. I couldn’t tell if they were bragging or taunting me—maybe both.
“You gonna open it or not?” Jenika asked, like it was no big deal. She had no idea what was attached.
Or maybe she did.
I clicked on the message, my stomach muscles tightening, preparing for the worst. But there was no preparing for what loaded in that email.
Even Jenika’s breaths stopped.
Chapter Twenty-One
Red was everywhere, in varying shades and tints, from the maroon gash across his throat, to the bright streaks through his long blond hair, to the murky stains on his gray sweatshirt.
He was lying on top of a picnic table, the same one Alex and I sat on days earlier. His arms were open wide, like he was surrendering to the sky above, a scarlet grin painted across his face. The fake grin stretched from the middle of his chin to the sides of his cheeks. A jagged black line had been drawn inside, giving the effect of sharp, white teeth.
A message above the picture read: He won’t be bothering you anymore.
Jenika cussed under her breath. She leaned closer, her lips parting. Her finger hovered over the center of Christian’s mouth, where a sliver of purple could be seen between his actual lips. “Is that…”
“A foxglove.”
His lids were slightly open, showing only the whites of his eyes. For me, that was the most horrific part.
A prickly feeling swept across my skin, and my fingers curled inside my palms. That could’ve been Alex, and next time…maybe it would be. I swallowed, trying to shove my fear deep inside. Fear wasn’t going to help me.
“Can you blow it up more?” Jenika asked, still studying the screen like it was a beautiful work of art.
“Would you like me to make you a poster?”
“That’d be great—thanks.”
“You are beyond sick,” I said, increasing the zoom value.
“I don’t see you looking away.”
She was right, and I hated her for it. Just like with Amber, I wanted to look away, needed to look away. But I couldn’t do it.
“Look how clean that is.” Jenika ran her finger across the gash on Christian’s neck. “It’s like they used a scalpel.”
“How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “I read a lot of forensic books.”
“Why?”
“Why do you have so many books on homicide investigation?” She shook her head, keeping her eyes on the computer screen. “If those detectives see that bookshelf, they’ll love you for this.”
“They’d love you a lot more—if they knew everything.”
She straightened and stared down at me. “I get accused of shit just for breathing around here. If I were going to kill someone, I’d do it somewhere else.” She threw her arms up. “Don’t you get it? Who’s been doin
g a knockout job of making Alex look guilty?”
“Zach… But—”
“But nothing.” She paced back and forth in front of my bed, her fingers tapping together. “Mama’s boy, repressed anger. He fits the bill.”
“According to what—Hollywood?” I looked at Christian’s white-eyed stare and the blood on his throat. There was no way Zach had the stomach for that, not without being possessed. “If you spent any time with him, you’d know—”
“Let’s see. He’s obsessed with you. He hates Alex. The victims are the two people closest to him.”
“Why the hell would he kill his girlfriend and his best friend?”
Jenika stopped pacing. “Crazy doesn’t need a reason. I should know. I live with it.”
I thought back to the night someone put those scratches all over Alex’s car. I’d never even considered Zach being behind it, but it made sense. It was just the thing to do if you were a coward and wanted someone else to pay the price—he knew Alex would make a beeline for Christian. And Alex played right into his hands.
Then there was that threat Zach got, the one that came just at the perfect time to make him look like a potential victim.
Sure, if someone was trying to set Alex up, Zach looked good on paper. But Jenika didn’t see the terror in Zach’s eyes when he got that picture of Amber’s body or the anguish on his face the night of the Fourth. Unless she was right about the crazy part. I’d read about a guy with dissociative identity disorder once. The killer was just one of his many personalities.
But Zach was rarely alone. If he had multiple personalities, people would notice. Especially his mom.
“We’re talking about a guy who didn’t notice the security camera right above my window,” I said. “Not exactly a mastermind.”
“Or maybe he’s having a good time playing you,” she said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
The eleven minutes he spent in my room was plenty of time to snoop through my email and my hard drive. But none of this explained what I still felt in my bones—Zach wasn’t the one killing people.
“He could’ve planted evidence in here,” she continued. “Have you done a search?”
“You saw him yesterday. He was coming apart at the seams.” I pointed at the cut across Christian’s neck. “That takes calculation. A steady hand. I’m telling you—there’s no way Zach did that.”
“Okay, fine.” Jenika sat on my bed, her left leg jiggling. “Let’s pretend you know what you’re talking about. Who the hell is it, then? ’Cause clearly they know you. It almost sounds like they did this for you.”
“I have no idea…” But I needed to figure it out. I needed to figure out now. I hit the forward button on the message and dug out the detectives’ business cards from my pocket.
“What are you doing?” Jenika asked, her voice tense.
“Forwarding it to those detectives.”
“So they can be even more suspicious? That message implies you’re involved.”
“That’s partly why I’m sending it.” I knew forwarding this would make them circle me all the more, but not sending it was far worse. There was always the chance it would help the case. And like Detective Sandoval said, these things had their way of coming out, even though I was sure the killer got rid of Christian’s phone, too.
“They’re going to think Alex sent that,” Jenika said.
“If they have half a brain, they should be wondering why he’d be so obvious.”
She went quiet, but I could hear her shifting and tapping the floor with her heel.
After forwarding the message, I signed out of my account and typed in Zach’s email address for the username. He had multiple email addresses, but this was the one he used the most for personal communication—at least with me. I probably had three guesses at a password before his account would get locked, and he’d get notification of someone trying to break in.
“Who else has your email address?” Jenika asked, startling me.
“My family, Alex, Megan, some other people at school, like Brandon.”
“That’s right. You and Koza have gotten…close.”
I turned to face her again. “Not like that.”
“Like what?”
“You and Alex,” I blurted out.
She stared back at me for a few long seconds, no hint of emotion in her dark eyes. “I’ve heard things about Koza…”
“What things?”
“That he’s a pretentious pothead. Likes to do massive bong hits in his backyard when Mom’s not home.”
I shrugged, focusing back on the password field. “All I know is he’s a nice guy. And he’s into Gabi De Luca.”
“Into or obsessed? Because I heard obsessed. Like, he stalked her.”
My fingers froze on the keys. She was definitely at the forefront of his mind a lot, but I could say the same thing for me with Alex. Still, he hated the cakes at least as much as I did. They’d stolen Gabi away, in a sense.
Yet when I closed my eyes and tried to imagine him slashing Christian’s throat, I couldn’t see it. Maybe that was my problem. I didn’t want to put a face I knew on the killer; a stranger was easier to swallow. A stranger didn’t know me.
“Brandon’s a joke to them,” I said. “Just like the rest of us…”
“But you don’t think it’s him, either.”
“No,” I said, automatically. As if I knew him that well…
I typed in Gotham, what Zach named his favorite guitar. That was his PlayStation password. “Invalid” appeared in red above the field. Strike one. Since most email services recommended numbers being included in a password now, he might’ve done his birthday or something else easy to remember.
“That leaves Megan, I guess,” Jenika said.
“Right. And she transported and dumped the bodies how?”
She snorted out a laugh. “I was kidding, but thanks for the mental image.”
I spun to face her. “How the hell can you make jokes right now? Nothing about this is funny.”
“I’m a sociopath, remember?”
I faced the computer again, ignoring her.
Getting Amber’s body down to South Beach seemed like it would be difficult for one person, given the steep incline. But Christian had to weigh close to two hundred pounds. Two hundred pounds of dead weight—not something just anyone could lift.
Maybe I’d been thinking of this all wrong. I’d been assuming they killed Amber and Christian before dumping their bodies—because that was what most “organized” killers did. But nobody fit into a neat little box in a textbook. Either the killer had help or Amber and Christian were brought to their dump sites alive. It made sense—both were killed shortly before they were found, in the wee hours of the morning. That would be how I’d do it, if I were a raging psychopath.
“Is it better to be scared like you?” Jenika asked. “Hide out in my room and dick around on my computer?”
“I’m not dicking around. I’m trying to get into Zach’s email.”
“Why? You know the cops have probably been through it.”
She had a point, but how could we know for sure? “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“And if you don’t get in, then what? You going to leave him another voicemail? Ask him to meet you for ice cream this time?”
My fingers dug into the armrests of my chair. “You are scared like me. You just don’t have the balls to admit it.”
Her eyes narrowed into a squint, and she shook her head. “That’d make you feel better, wouldn’t it? If deep down, I’m just like you. All fragile and insecure.”
“At least I’m real.”
“Yeah?” She hunched forward, resting her forearms on her legs. “Were you real with Alex? Stringing him along, year after year, until he finally decided to try to move on.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. So stop talking.”
“Or what? You’ll try to guess my password and hack into my email?”
I couldn’t get into t
his. Not now. But I couldn’t say nothing either. “You’ve never cared about Alex. You put him down every chance you got. Now all of a sudden, you want to fight his battles? You’re full of shit.”
She held my gaze. “Alex knows where I stand. That’s all that matters to me.”
“Where’s that?”
“I don’t owe you an answer.” She straightened, her chin tilting up slightly. “I don’t owe you anything.”
“But right now you’re sitting in my room, asking me for answers. And I don’t have a single reason to trust you.”
The tension around her mouth faded, and her gaze went from my face to the wall behind me. “He’s become a good friend.”
“A good friend you don’t know that well?”
“That was me shutting those cops down. Something you should’ve done. But, no”—she threw up her hands—“you had to blab. Tell them all about your big old crush on your best friend.”
“It’s better than acting like you’ve got something to hide.”
She shook her head. “I think it’s safe to say I’ve dealt with the cops a lot more than you have.”
“And?”
“They go after the weak links, the people who spill their guts ’cause they’re scared and they think they have to.”
“All you did was piss them off. They’ll be looking for any reason to bring both of us in.”
Her shoulders lifted and fell. “So what? They’ll talk a big game and throw out their best scare tactics. They need actual evidence to hold us.”
My stomach muscles tensed thinking about being in some windowless room with fluorescent lights humming and flickering above me. I’d always imagined those interrogation rooms smelling like sweat and cold coffee.
“You want real?” Jenika asked, her eyes boring into mine. “Here’s real. I’m not here, in Eric’s little dream house, because I have to be. I’m here to find Alex. You know him better than anyone else. And if you haven’t noticed? We’re about the only people he’s got on his side.”
“I—”
“I don’t care what you think of me,” she continued, her voice taking a harsher tone. “Or how you feel about my relationship with Alex. You treated him like dirt, too. Only it’s worse because you’re his best friend. You were supposed to have his back.”
