by T. D. Fox
“I don’t know! For the first time in... I can’t fix this, I can’t—” He dragged his hand through his hair. His eyes darted around. “You can’t think of anywhere she could have gone?”
“She would have gone to me.”
Pain flashed over his face. He dropped his hand. “We fought, just before—” He paused. “I saw her dad on the news, and next thing, I’m driving over to see if she’s okay, and then you call to tell me she’s missing. All I could think of was the last thing I said to her. If she went out and did something rash—”
Dina huffed. “No offense, Jasper, but you’re not central enough to her life to make her jump off the deep end if you said the wrong thing. This is something worse. Whatever happened, she didn’t just run off.”
“I’m not saying it was me.” His jaw jerked, almost imperceptible. “But you didn’t see how unstable she was the night of her father’s incident. What else is there to go on? She doesn’t have any enemies. She left her phone, wallet, everything useful behind in her apartment. It’s Sunday. She’s been missing since Thursday—”
“Friday,” Dina said. “I was on the phone with her past midnight, so I know she was still safe in her apartment in the early a.m.”
“That’s still three days. In a city like this, those odds don’t look good.”
“So how are you suggesting we find her, Mr. Sunshine? Courtney always said you were the guy with the annoying plan to fix everything. Don’t you dare lose that now.”
He opened his mouth, but Dina jumped.
“Hang on—I’m getting a call.” Pulling the buzzing phone out of her pocket, she squinted at the raindrops falling on the screen. “I don’t know who this is.”
“Answer it. It could have something to—”
“Hello?” Dina pressed it to her ear.
“Dina,” said a raspy voice.
Her heart exploded. “Courtney!”
Jasper jumped. “Courtney? Is that—”
“Dina, I need you to—”
Jasper grabbed the phone.
“Hey!” Dina shrieked.
“Courtney, where are you? Are you all right?”
Dina leaped to grab it back, but Jasper leaned out of her reach. He had at least a foot on her, so it was a losing battle. She glared at him while he listened to the other end.
“Court, just tell me...”
Dina bounced on her toes. Jasper’s face contorted.
“Please. We need to know where you are so we can—”
He stopped. For a stiff minute, all Dina heard was the rain. She hugged herself, bouncing in the cold. Jasper lowered the phone.
“She wants to talk to you,” he said in a hollow voice.
Dina snatched her phone back. “Court? Where are you? What’s going on? Whose phone are you calling from?”
“It’s a burner.” The voice crackled at the other end. “Can we meet?”
“Yes! Where are you? Why won’t you talk to Jasper?”
“Dee... I need to see you in person. Alone.”
A shiver ran up her arms. Dina glanced up to find burning blue eyes locked on hers; she turned away a little. “Okay. Where?”
“Do you remember that old tree with the bendy branches we used to hide in as kids? The one with the bench under it now.”
Dina frowned. “Uh... okay.”
“That bench. In an hour.”
“What is she telling you?”
“Hang on, Court...” Dina covered her other ear. “Why? Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“This phone’s minutes are going to be up any second. Can you meet me there?”
Dina bit her lip. “Yes.”
“Thank you.” Her friend’s voice tightened over the phone. “Tell Jasper that I—”
Silence.
“Hello?”
“Did she hang up?”
“Hello?” Dina tried again. Nothing. She lowered the phone.
“What happened?”
“She said she was using a burner. I think it died.”
“A burner?”
“Jasper...” Dina pocketed the phone. “I have to go.”
“You’re going to meet her.”
She couldn’t hold that gaze. Courtney was right; he really did wear every emotion right there for all to see.
“She’s shaken up about something,” Dina said. “I’m her oldest friend. You’re still... new. I’m sure she’s not meaning to push you away.”
“I don’t care. I want to know she’s okay.”
“I’ll tell you.” Dina grabbed his hand. “I promise I’ll call you as soon as I find out anything. You were the only one as determined to find her as I was. We’re in this together, okay?” She squeezed. “I gotta go.”
Before he could reply, or stop her, she turned and set off at a sprint down the rain-soaked street.
⬥◆⬥
Dina didn’t know what to expect when she approached the park. The light was fading, late afternoon sun losing the battle against the heavy clouds. She spotted the little figure in an instant. Huddled beneath their favorite childhood tree, Courtney sat on the bench with her knees pulled to her chest, wearing a coat with a big hood. Dina barely saw more than her chin. But she recognized the blue raincoat.
Courtney saw her coming and stood. Dina hurtled forward and threw her arms around her.
“You had me worried sick,” she snapped into her ear. “Tell me for real. Are you okay?”
Courtney nodded. She pulled back. “I’m okay.”
“You’re freezing.” Dina clapped her on the arms. “What are we doing out here? Come back to my apartment, I’ll make you some hot chocolate.”
“I can’t. Jasper would look there first.”
“What?” Dina blinked. “So you are avoiding him? Did he do something?”
“No.” She shook her head vigorously. Her hood fell off at the movement. “It’s not him at all—”
“Whoa, what happened to your hair?”
Courtney reached up. Her usual blonde braid was gone, replaced with a choppy cut almost as short as Dina’s.
“Oh. Um—long story.”
Dina took her first solid look at her friend. Without the hood, she now saw the shadows under Courtney’s dark eyes. Their rich brown color had dimmed. After only three days, somehow her cheeks already looked hollow and flat.
“What happened to you?” she whispered.
Courtney shut her eyes. A tremor ran through her—Dina felt it through the hand on her shoulder.
“Sorry,” she gasped. “Just give me a second, I...” She choked and doubled over. Dina grabbed her other shoulder.
“What’s happening?” she cried. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. It’ll pass in a minute.” Courtney gulped in air. “He said I was strong enough—I can do this. I can control it.”
“What? Who said? You’re scaring me, Court.”
Courtney hissed a slow breath through her teeth.
“Sorry.” Her eyes opened again, glazed with pain. “I’m freaking you out.”
“The hell you are.”
Courtney moved back to the bench and sat down. Dina followed. Their breath curled in steamy wisps on the chilly air.
“Why can’t we go inside?” Dina asked. “Let’s start with that.”
“Because my apartment is the first place Jasper will look, and yours will be next.”
“What’s with all the secrecy? He’s your damn boyfriend, Court, and I’m your best friend. At least, I was. But for whatever reason you felt like you needed to drop off the map and hide from us—”
“I wasn’t hiding from you.”
“Then you’re hiding from Jasper?”
“No.” Courtney winced. “Sort of. But only for right now.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a cop, and if he goes all detective on me now, I don’t trust myself not to give everything away.”
“You’re hiding something from him, then.”
Courtney looked away. Her throat bobb
ed. “I need to tell someone. I can’t hold this in anymore, and I don’t know who else to trust.”
The fear, which had hardened into a sharp ball of frustration in Dina’s chest, melted at those words. Suddenly, they were eight years old again sharing a secret beneath their favorite tree. She reached forward and wrapped Courtney’s cold fingers in hers.
“I won’t tell a soul,” she whispered. “Whatever you’re carrying, share the load.”
Courtney’s grip tightened on her own. She took another one of those deep, shaky breaths.
“Okay. It started two months ago at the coffee shop...”
⬥◆⬥
Courtney sat in the basement of Dina’s mom’s house, wrapped in an afghan, surrounded by the smell of dust and mold. She clutched her mug of steaming coffee. The cold had finally driven them indoors. As wary as she was about returning home, Courtney was too tired to fight the idea of a warm, safe night’s sleep on a friend’s sofa. Dina had proposed a happy medium. They’d spent many childhood sleepovers in this old building. Dank and musty, it felt more like home than any place she could’ve gone.
“Sorry we haven’t gotten a chance to air this place out.” Dina squeaked open a window under the edge of the ceiling while a heater blasted by her feet. “Mom’s uptown this weekend. She won’t mind you staying over.”
“Thank you.”
Dina hopped down from the sofa she’d used to reach the window and snagged a second afghan from the ground.
“Feel any better?” She asked, plopping down across from Courtney.
“Loads. The caffeine’s clearing out the last bit of fuzziness from those tranquilizers.”
Dina’s lip curled. “I can’t believe he drugged you.”
“Really?” Courtney sipped her coffee. “After everything I just told you?”
“I can’t believe he didn’t kill you.”
Courtney chuckled dryly. She took another sip.
“So let me get this straight.” Dina folded herself so she sat cross-legged, fingers steepled under her chin. “This strange customer at your café ends up becoming a sort-of-almost-friend, and then this sort-of-almost-friend turns out to be the same guy who stuck a gun in your face and beat up your coworker. And oh, I shouldn’t forget, the same guy who shot a man in the head in front of you. All while wearing a different man’s face. Have I got it right so far?”
Courtney winced. “So far.”
“Then this psycho sort-of-almost-friend turns out to be the killer from the papers, the most notorious mass murderer in Orion City.”
“Yes.”
“Who saved your life.”
She hesitated. “I didn’t say...”
“But that’s what happened. You’re a Changer.” Dina’s voice caught. She leaned forward and gripped Courtney’s wrist so tightly she almost spilled the coffee. “You’re a... You could’ve been...” Dina shut her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Court. Your dad...”
Courtney felt the pain well up again, stacked up behind her thin veneer of control. Ready to break loose and tumble out.
“They always just disappear,” Dina said. “Like nothing even happened. It’s all so unreal and impossible that it’s easy to write it all off as a hoax. All these disappearances, when they don’t affect you—when it’s no one you know, when the White Coats swoop in and clean it all up in minutes—it makes more sense to think of Changers as an urban myth in this stir-crazy city.”
Courtney couldn’t look at her.
“Until it’s you. Oh, Court...” Dina squeezed her hand harder. “I’m so sorry. I’m sure... I’m sure they’ll find your father. That organization, the scientists they sent in from the Outside, they have to be working on a cure. If they took him, that means they’re trying to help him. Right? They’re the best people for him to be with right now.”
An image of a boy caught in nets, convulsing as he fought the Change, stabbed through her mind. Dragging over the cobblestones. That one sharp, horrible jerk before he went still under the barrel of a tranquilizer gun.
She recoiled at the memory of tranquilizers in her own system. The nausea. The panic as her body shut down. Shuddering, she took another sip of coffee.
“You don’t need to backtrack to spare my feelings,” she said. “You just said the Whistler saved my life. I think we’ve both seen enough to guess how the White Coats really treat Changers.”
Dina’s lips pressed together. “We don’t know anything for sure.”
“Nobody does.” Courtney gritted her teeth. “Which is why it’s so frustrating that the only man who seems to know anything about what’s going on in this city is Orion’s Number One Most Wanted.”
Dina hummed to herself, picking at the threads in her blanket.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” Courtney sighed. “I should have told you after that night in the alley, when I found out who he was. But by then I was already in over my head. I guess I was scared.”
“No, you weren’t. Sounds like you were a lot of things, but scared isn’t one of them.”
“What?”
“I get why you hid it from me,” Dina said. “It sucks, but I get it. I’ve known you since we were six. You might be able to lie to yourself, but not to me.”
“I don’t...”
“You’re protecting him.”
Courtney blinked.
“It makes sense,” Dina went on. “Even before you disappeared, I knew something was off. You’re different. There’s a weird sort of spark that wasn’t there before. You talk about stuff different. You walk all over topics we never wanted to touch. It spooked me. You started poking holes in all the places I thought I didn’t have to think about. And then, you weren’t just talking different. You were acting different. I saw a homeless kid walking down the street with your yellow peacoat the other day. Didn’t you say you lost that? Then you went to Chinatown by yourself in the middle of the night to chase some lead in your boyfriend’s case. You started actually following the news. I didn’t know if you’d gotten braver or stupider, but you were suddenly more alive than you ever were.” Dina sat back. Her frown deepened. “You started caring, and doing something about it. Now that I know the full story, it scares me.”
“What scares you?”
“Who got you to start caring.”
The roar of the heater filled the space between them.
“I don’t know what to do,” Courtney murmured.
“There’s only one thing to do. You need to tell Jasper.”
“I can’t.”
“By not sharing what you know, you’re protecting a murderer.”
Courtney flinched. “He’s not everything the media paints him to be.”
“I don’t care. What’s to stop him going out and killing again tomorrow?”
“I know nothing that would help the police. I didn’t see any landmarks, street names, anything they could use to find him. I don’t even truly know what he looks like.”
“You know a lot of things, Courtney. His mannerisms. His habits. Where he goes.”
Courtney pressed her lips together.
“If you don’t tell someone, I will.”
“They’ll want proof.” Courtney set down her coffee. “You’ll have to tell them I’m a Changer. There’s no way around it. I stayed in his apartment for three days. There isn’t a non-incriminating way to explain how I’m involved with the Whistler.”
Dina scowled.
“The only thing I have to figure out is what to do now.”
“What more can you do without the police? He let you off the hook. He let you go.”
“I can’t just go back to being a barista, steaming milk and serving muffins like nothing happened. Not knowing what I know.”
“Courtney. He’s a killer. He’s deranged in the head. He let you go, for God knows what reason, but you’re free of him now. You can walk away. Put him out of your life for good. How many of his other victims can say that?”
Victims. You make me sound like some sort of s
erial killer.
Memories flowed unbidden, her own voice bouncing around inside her head.
In my experience, serial killers don’t go around handing out cereal boxes to homeless kids.
Sounds like you have a lot of experience with serial killers.
“I woke up on my own couch,” she said. “In my own apartment, covered with a blanket, with the worst hangover I’ve had in my life. He even left me the burner phone I used to call my brother, since mine was gone.” She’d later found it drying out in rice in a jar on the kitchen counter. He must’ve discovered it lying where she’d dropped it beside the open door that night, waterlogged and dead. Courtney gripped the afghan. “Why go through all the trouble of getting me back home? Why not just shoot me?”
“Ask yourself why enough times and you’ll end up with Stockholm syndrome. Maybe you were nice to him when nobody else was. Maybe you look like his mom. Who knows? What I do know is that he is a killer and you are a good person, who needs to put him behind you.”
Good. Did she really fit that label? Good people, bad people. Black, white... gray.
The look in Dina’s eyes took on a sharper glint. Courtney glanced down to see her friend’s hands clutching the afghan, her olive-toned skin rimmed with ivory at the knuckles.
“You’re right.” Courtney picked up her coffee again, balancing it on her folded knees. “It is time to put him behind me.”
“Didn’t I say I can tell when you’re lying?”
“I mean it.” Courtney reached forward and unclasped Dina’s hands from the blanket. She held them tight. “For whatever reason, he’s given me the chance to get away from him, and I’m going to take it. He helped me at my lowest, taught me how to get control of this Change, and for that I’m grateful. But that doesn’t change who he is.” She hesitated. “I won’t talk about him to Jasper. Everything he told me, it’s... safe. After that, we’re even. He’s out of my life.”
Dina’s eyes flicked between hers. After a few stiff seconds she must’ve seen something there to lower her hackles, because she nodded. “You don’t owe him anything.”
“No.” Courtney let go of her breath. “I don’t.”
Dina settled back, appeased for the moment. “What are you going to say to Jasper?”
Bright, concerned blue eyes filled her head. She felt sicker than she did when she’d first woken up. “I’ll think of something.”
