by Nicole Baart
But he didn’t flinch. “Good arm,” he commented. “What do you mean ‘a tickle’?”
Meg sighed. “I just know. Okay? I know I’m not alone. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“You’ve never been caught unawares?”
“I let myself get caught sometimes,” she admitted.
They were quiet for a minute, and in the silence she tilted her head toward the bushes. Someone was getting close. Meg could hear their tentative footsteps as they gave the raspberries, and their infamously sharp thorns, wide berth. She didn’t want to be discovered, curled on the ground with this unsettling stranger, so she took a deep breath to shout. Now that the mystery of Dylan’s appearance was wearing off, Meg found that she was more than able to yell her little blond head off. But before she could form a word, Dylan’s hand fell across her mouth.
“I caught you,” he told her. “I caught you fair and square.”
Furious that he would dare to restrain her, Meg wriggled and kicked and bucked until he let go. She tumbled back a little and felt a thorn tear a shallow cut along the back of her bare arm. “It won’t happen again,” she snapped. “It will never happen again.”
She scrambled to her feet and was screaming before he could utter a single protest.
The next time Meg saw Dylan was when school started in the fall.
From first grade through eighth, Meg rode her bike to school rain or shine. In the early years, it was a My Little Pony bike with a purple banana seat and a basket sporting faded plastic flowers. After she hit a growth spurt the summer she turned eight, Meg graduated to her brother’s discarded Freestyle BMX, a rusted hunk of metal with bent handlebars and stunt pegs that led to her first broken bone—her right arm—after she tried and failed to do a double peg grind on the handrail of the library steps. Six weeks in a hard cast did much to dampen her Freestyle ambition, and when Meg was pronounced fit for regular activity, she continued to ride like the wind, but shrewdly decided to cut short her stunt career.
Meg seemed almost incomplete without the shiny black bicycle beneath her, but the pivotal jump from junior high to high school demanded a change of equal consequence. When September rolled around, Meg determined to grow up a little, not necessarily because she wanted to, but because life was plodding on with or without her. Jess, her sensible, older neighbor who had only just given up his glasses for contacts, was smoking, and Bennett, who used to aim spit wads at Sarah’s hair, suddenly decided he’d rather twist his fingers through the auburn ends. The world was overbright, hard and shiny and foreign. What choice did she have but to at least try to navigate the unfamiliar territory?
With special care, Meg cleaned her beloved BMX in the frigid spray from the garden hose, and then parked it in the back of the shed for the winter. On the first day of school, she set off for Sutton High on foot. Backpack slung over one shoulder and long waves pulled away from her face in pretty tortoiseshell clips instead of multicolored rubber bands, she had to admit that she felt a bit older with every step. More mature. Ready for something that required a deep breath, maybe a little resolve.
Meg never intended to attach those feelings to Dylan. But then a car pulled up beside her when she was halfway to school.
It didn’t occur to her to be startled; Sutton was small, and there had never been reason for her to be wary before. Even when she heard the car door open, Meg barely paused. Out of the corner of her eye, she registered a faded pickup truck, noted that she didn’t recognize the driver, and kept on walking.
“Meg Painter!” someone called.
She looked up at the sound of her name and felt a little ripple of alarm melt across her shoulders. But on the far side of the unfamiliar pickup, she could just see Dylan leaning over to shout out of the open driver’s-side window. A teenage boy was behind the wheel, and he didn’t even bother to glance at Dylan as he hopped out of the passenger side and gave the creaky door a hearty slam. The truck squealed away, and Dylan was left standing in the middle of the empty street, staring at Meg with a half smile nipping at the corner of his mouth. It was a teasing look, filled with thinly veiled mirth, as if he had just remembered an inside joke and couldn’t stop himself from smirking.
Unsure how to respond to his sudden presence, Meg studied him for a moment and tried to settle the irregular thrum of her heart. She didn’t know if she was scared or excited, and, pulled taut between annoyance and anticipation, Meg finally settled for throwing him a haughty look and continuing on her way. But Dylan drew his backpack over both shoulders and took off after her, jogging across the street and over the curb, where he met her on the sidewalk and fell comfortably into step with her hurried pace.
“Did you feel me?” he asked conversationally. “A tickle?”
Meg frowned.
“You didn’t, did you? It’s Ghost in the Graveyard all over again.”
“We call it Bloody Murder.”
“Whatever.”
She walked faster.
He lengthened his stride. “I’ve snuck up on you twice now.”
“You did not,” she told him. The moment he appeared beside her, she had promised herself she wouldn’t let him know that he got to her, but it was impossible not to respond when he was so obviously egging her on.
“You can’t read me.” Dylan elbowed her side gently.
Meg felt sure the gesture was meant to be lighthearted, conspiratorial, but her skin prickled where his arm had glanced it.
“You said it wouldn’t happen again,” he pressed.
In a flash, Meg remembered. All at once she was irrational, furious, and without pausing to think, she threw down her backpack. She didn’t really even know what she meant to do. Her hands were balled into fists and she wasn’t afraid to use them, but Dylan grabbed her wrists and held her fast.
“If you think I’m going to let you hit me again, you’re nuts,” he told her. “You bruised me last time.”
“I did?” Meg bit back a grin in spite of herself and tried to rearrange her features to appear stern.
“And if we’re going to be friends, you’ve gotta relax a little. I can’t have you going off the deep end every time I tease you.”
“Friends?” she parroted, picking out the one word in his mild reprimand that held meaning for her.
Dylan raised an eyebrow good-naturedly and gave a slow nod as if he was assessing her. “Yup, I think so,” he said.
“What makes you think I want to be friends with you?” Meg jerked her wrists out of his grip and took a quick step back.
“Hey,” Dylan shrugged, pulling the dangling straps of his worn backpack tight. “I’m not gonna put a gun to your head.” And he breezed past her, stepping over her discarded pack and using his long legs to his advantage. He was halfway down the block by the time Meg snatched her belongings from the ground and went after him.
She didn’t want to chase him, she didn’t want him to look over his shoulder and see her running, hair fanned out behind her and eyes hopeful as she came. But she did. And when she drew up next to him and opened her mouth to say something, anything to smooth over her offense, he stopped her short by bumping her with his elbow again. Meg understood that it was his way of rewinding the clock, of letting her know that it didn’t matter.
Dylan was forgiving. She liked that about him. And she liked it that he was perfectly comfortable to finish the last block in an easy silence. When they made it to the front steps of the high school, he simply waved good-bye and disappeared.
And though Meg didn’t expect anything more than a moment on the way to school, Dylan was waiting for her after the final bell at the end of the day. He appeared to be utterly indifferent to the looks that her classmates shot him, and it felt obvious to Meg that he was above the disdain of his peers because he was a rare breed of boy. He didn’t care, and in that self-security, he earned a sort of esteem that made him seem much older than his fifteen years. Meg watched him shoot her an earnest smile, and learned a lot about him in the time it too
k to walk the sidewalk from the doors of Sutton High to the curb.
She smiled back with a little less enthusiasm, but she didn’t argue or let her steps falter when Dylan headed back the way they had come hours before. A brief inclination of his dark head was her only invitation to follow, though she realized that it was less an invitation than an expectation—he acted as if he knew that she would come. Meg stole one parting glance at Sarah, who had to stay late for band, and received a look of pure bewilderment that must have matched her own. But Meg could also tell by the expression on her friend’s face that the unlikely alliance was not necessarily forbidden. So she gave in, and let herself be drawn into his wake as if Dylan emanated his own gravity.
“Did you like it?” he asked without preamble. They walked past the line of school buses in front of the high school, their feet falling in perfect syncopation.
“What do you mean?” Meg’s voice sounded small in her ears.
“School. Sutton High. It’s your first year in this place, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, a little breathless from trying to match his long strides. Even though he was only a year older than her, he was a full head taller. “It’s fine,” Meg continued. “It’s school. What grade are you?”
“Sophomore.”
“Freshman,” she muttered, and was instantly shamed by her own banality. Of course he knew what grade she was in, but she finished lamely anyway, “I’m in the same class as Sarah. You know, Jess’s sister?”
Dylan caught her eye and laughed. But she could tell he wasn’t laughing at her, at least, she didn’t think he was. Besides, with his lips parted she could see that his bottom teeth were appealingly crooked, turned toward each other as if leaning in for a reluctant embrace. His imperfect grin was endearing somehow, and Meg found herself relaxing in spite of her misgivings. Being with Dylan wasn’t the sort of awkward she had imagined. It was a certain vertigo: she felt light-headed, but with him so confident beside her, she didn’t really care.
“Do you like it?” she asked abruptly.
“Like what?” He peered at her out of the corner of his eye, then checked both ways and led her across a tree-lined street.
“Sutton.”
“We’ve been here for almost a year,” he reminded her. “And yet that doesn’t change the fact that I’m the perpetual new kid. You guys gotta get a life.” But then he stopped himself, and it seemed to Meg that he was determined to tell the truth. Or at least a part of it. “It’s not home yet,” he admitted. “But it’s not bad.”
Meg hopped on the curb and walked it heel to toe like a balance beam as they turned down her street. “What do you miss the most?”
“About Arizona?” Dylan paused. “I miss warm winters, geckos in the backyard . . .”
“Geckos?” Meg parroted, her curiosity piqued.
“My mom’s lemon pie made with lemons from our tree, my friends, our pool, the skate park in our neighborhood . . .”
“You had a pool?” All at once Meg’s inhibitions fell away. “And a skate park? My cousin would die. He thinks he’s a ‘pretty tight shredder.’ ” She framed the distinction of her cousin’s self-imposed description with sarcastic quotations marks in the form of curled fingers.
“You sound ridiculous,” Dylan told her cheerfully. “You sound like a poseur.”
“I am,” she agreed with a hearty nod. “I don’t skateboard.”
“Neither do I.”
“Then what? Bike, rollerblades . . . ? Or did you just watch everyone else having fun at the skate park?”
“I have a Haro Freestyle FSX with skyway six spoke mags, a full chromoly fork, four bolt-on stationary pegs, and a knee-saver handlebar.”
Meg blinked at him. “I have no idea what you just said.”
“I have a ‘pretty tight BMX.’ ” He grinned. “But it doesn’t do me much good around here. I can do a mean one-eighty on the half-pipe and land in a fakie, but there’s no half-pipe in Sutton.”
“Fakie?” Meg repeated, too startled by his admirable knowledge to worry about sounding dumb.
“Riding backward,” Dylan explained.
“I have a bike,” she countered weakly.
“I know.”
“I broke my arm trying to do a double peg grind.”
“I know.”
“You do?” They were in front of her house now, and Meg stopped with her hands on her hips, considering Dylan with cool curiosity. “How do you know that?”
“Jess told me.” Dylan thought for a moment then continued with a glint in his eye. “You’re sorta famous, Meg.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“Oh, chill out,” he said. Meg bristled at the familiarity with which he chastised her, but he went on before she could complain. “You’re just not like other girls,” he told her. “It’s not a bad thing that people find you . . . interesting.”
She wanted to be defensive, but Dylan’s honesty was so candid, so ingenuous, she ended up laughing. “I’m interesting? Because I broke my arm?”
Dylan shrugged his backpack off his shoulder and held it in his hands. “I could teach you how to do it,” he offered.
“Excuse me?”
“I could teach you all kinds of grinds. And some flatland tricks, but without a pipe of some sort, the air tricks are a no go.”
Meg didn’t even have to think about it. “Deal.” She stuck out her hand with a definitive air, and when Dylan took it, she squeezed hard and shook fast, a good handshake, a man’s handshake.
He shook his head at her, but his lips were curled, smiling.
3
LUCAS
The silence inside the barn was thick and viscous. Lucas could feel it pressing against his skin, a malevolent, threatening force bent on choking him. He cleared his throat loudly and fought the unexpected burn of bile in the back of his mouth. “Uh,” he stammered, “it’s a tibia. See? Here’s the fibular notch, and here”—he dug his fingers into the earth beside the ridge of bone—“is the fibula.”
“Back away,” Alex commanded, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him roughly backward. “We’ve probably done enough damage already.”
“She must be lying on her back. Legs pulled up against her chest . . .”
“You don’t know that,” Alex insisted. He yanked Lucas to his feet. “You don’t know that that bone belongs to Angela.”
“Of course it’s—”
Alex’s glare was enough to silence Lucas. “I know you’re not used to this,” he said, “but you’re a doctor. I expect a little more professionalism from you.”
Lucas swallowed, nodded. He took a quick look at the two assisting cops and was reassured to see that they looked as pale and shell-shocked as he felt.
“I’m calling DCI,” Alex declared, his voice steely with resolve.
“DCI?”
“The Department of Criminal Investigation. They have a Major Crime Unit that assists in death investigations, and this is way over our heads. They’ll know what to do, how to exhume the body. If it is a body.”
“If?”
“All we’ve seen is a leg bone.”
Lucas didn’t know if he was more disturbed to imagine that Angela’s body lay crumpled beneath him or that it was just a pair of her shinbones.
“How long?” one of the younger officers asked.
“The nearest DCI office is in Sioux City, but there are a couple dozen agents statewide. I don’t know who they’ll call in or where they’ll come from. An hour? Maybe more? But nobody is going anywhere until they’ve given clearance.”
“I need to call my wife . . .”
Lucas watched as the three men dispersed to different corners of the barn so they could make the necessary phone calls to excuse themselves from taking kids to baseball games or for being home late for supper. He wondered what Jenna would say if he called to let her know that he would be later than expected, not to worry, everything would be okay. Would she even pick up the phone? He couldn’
t bring himself to dial the number and find out.
The blow of what they had found still rang and clattered inside his head as if he had been slugged. Angela Sparks was much more to him than simply a name, or now possibly a body beneath the floor of an abandoned barn. And though Alex was right to chastise him, to remind him that he was a professional and had a job to do, it wasn’t easy, with her memory haunting the air above him.
Angela came back to him in bursts and impressions, remembrances of colors and feelings like a scattering of haphazard photographs in a forgotten shoe box. It was strange how the mind preserved things. He saw her as a young woman, cheeks framed by white-blond hair so fine that it blew like corn silk and was forever obstructing her mouth, her eyes. Then she was a whip of a girl sitting bare-armed and bare-legged at his kitchen table, chancing an impish grin. Now she was bruised, blinking up at him from beneath a shiner the color of ripe plums. The outfits changed, her expression, her age. But her eyes were always the same: big and sad and green as damp moss.
Jim Sparks’s neglected daughter was Jenna’s first client at Safe House, even though no one ever solicited her services on behalf of Angela. Jenna just happened to bump into the poor child during her very first trip to Blackhawk’s only grocery store.
“You should have seen her,” Jenna told Lucas afterward, as she stacked cans in neat rows on the shelves of their empty pantry. “Sweetest little thing. All by herself. She was just walking up and down the aisles, touching the boxes of cereal and bags of chips with the tips of her fingers.”
“Where were her parents?”
Jenna shrugged. “It’s a small town, I guess kids can go to the grocery store without their parents.”
“But it doesn’t sit good with you,” Lucas prompted.
“No.” Jenna set a can of pinto beans down with more force than necessary. “Something’s not right there.”
They ran into each other a few more times, the new-in-town social worker and the little girl who Jenna learned wasn’t so little after all. Angela was fourteen years old when the Hudsons moved to Blackhawk, but she was such a tiny thing, so delicate and slight that she hardly seemed a day over ten. Maybe it was her innocence that drew Jenna in. Maybe it was her undeniable beauty or her deep silences or doleful eyes. Whatever it was, it wasn’t long after meeting the small, seemingly parentless, grubby Cinderella that Jenna was beyond smitten. Within weeks she had taken Angela in like a would-be adoptive mother.
