“Are you sure this is it?”
Glancing up at Tate from where I sat crouched on the bank of the lake, I nodded. “This is the spot from my dream. I was standing right here when Amy came out of the lake and dug up the wallet.”
Dropping the diving gear he carried over one shoulder into our rented canoe, Tate sank to one knee on the ground. The night before, when he’d returned to my hospital room, I’d been coming out of the dream where I encountered Amy and discovered the identity of her killer. I’d woken up with sweat on my brow and mud staining my fingers and toes.
Tate had listened while I’d told him what I’d seen, and we’d agreed that as soon as they released me from the hospital, we would hightail it to the marina and rent the equipment for diving. If my dreams guided me in the right direction—and I felt certain they had—we would find the wallet nearby, and Amy’s corpse in the water.
The doctor had released me with a clean bill of health, referring to the tachycardia and coughing up water as a ‘fluke’ and reminding me to get checked out by my own doctor after I got home. The results of the pregnancy test would likely be back later in the day, and I’d get a phone call about them. I pushed that little reminder to the back of my mind for the time being. With Amy’s mystery to focus on, I didn’t have to dwell on it—otherwise, I’d go nuts from worrying.
“Okay, let’s start digging,” Tate said, shoving one hand down into the moist soil on the edge of the bank.
“Not too deep,” I reminded him. “She barely went down an inch before uncovering it.”
Nodding his agreement, he continued in silence. I joined him, pulling clumps of wet soil aside and searching for the telltale brown leather of Brandon’s wallet.
“So, I got a text from Mom this morning,” Tate said, the muscles in his arms flexing while he worked.
“How’s everything?” I asked, pausing to lift a rock from the dirt and throw it aside.
“Everyone’s doing great … Ezra’s engaged.”
Pausing, I glanced up at him, my jaw dropping. “Really?’
He nodded. “Remember Janine?”
“His date from the Founder’s Day Ball,” I recalled. “She seemed nice.”
“Apparently, they’ve been inseparable ever since,” Tate said. “Ezra popped the question, and she said yes.”
I smiled, thinking of Douglas Baldwin’s personal assistant—the man with the warm, kind eyes who had hired me to babysit for the family last summer.
“I’m glad,” I said. “You know, if it weren’t for him, I would never have met you.”
He glanced up at me and we locked gazes for a moment, trading smiles. “True. I think they’re going to have a short engagement … probably a summer wedding.”
I fell silent as I moved away from the small hole I’d started—if I hadn’t found it yet, then it wasn’t in the spot I’d chosen. Tate followed suit, widening his hole and continuing to sift through the dirt.
“Do you want to get married?” he asked suddenly.
My hands went still, and I lifted my head. “Right now?”
He snorted. “Not exactly right this second … but, you know … eventually. Soon, maybe.”
Sighing, I went back to work. “Tate, if you’re only asking me because I might be knocked up, then the answer is no. I don’t think it’s smart to get married just because of the baby. I think there should be more than that.”
“But there is more than that,” he argued. “I love you. I already see my future with you in it. Seems simple to me. Why wait?”
It was hard to argue with that when I felt exactly the same way. But I needed him to understand where I was coming from.
“Look, I love you, too. And I definitely see us together for life, but … I don’t know. I just don’t picture us getting married that way. With you saying ‘hey, you’re pregnant so let’s do this thing.’ Because then it’s not for us, or for the reasons you just stated. And what sort of marriage is that? Once the kid is an adult and leaves, and it’s just you and me, are we going to look at each other and say ‘I’m glad we got married for the sake of the kid’? Or will it be more like ‘I’m glad I married you, because you’re the love of my life and I can’t live without you?’”
“Wow,” he murmured. “I didn’t think about it that way. You’re right.”
I was just about to remind him about my knack for getting these things right more often than not, when my hand encountered something solid in the soft mud.
“Tate,” I whispered, glancing up at him. “I think I found it.”
Pulling my hand back, I glanced down into the hole. Sure enough, sticking up out of the soil, a brown leather wallet sat in the small hole I’d created. Lifting it out, I showed it to Tate, who appeared surprised, even though I’d assured him it would be here.
Sure enough, opening it revealed several sodden and ruined paper cards—but one very much intact driver’s license. There was also a debit card, along with a soggy twenty-dollar bill.
“We got you, Brandon,” I whispered, glancing down at the license.
“Guy looks like a douche,” Tate muttered, upper lip curling in disgust.
“The douchiest,” I agreed. “And this is definitely the face I saw in my dream. What do we do with this? We can’t exactly hand it over to the cops.”
Tate shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Once we find the body, we’ll report it. When they come, we can simply hand it over and say we thought it might need to make its way back to the owner. This whole area will be cordoned off as a crime scene, and once they realize we found it out here, it’ll become evidence instead of something that needs to go to the resort lost and found. If we’re lucky, that’ll be enough for them to nail the guy to the wall.”
“I hope so,” I replied. “With her body being underwater for so long, there won’t be any DNA. They would need him to confess.”
“That’s not our problem,” Tate insisted. “We are doing what we can for Amy. Hopefully, she can be grateful enough to stop pestering you in your dreams and almost killing you.”
“She might hear you,” I warned, lowering my voice.
Tate pursed his lips. “Good. Maybe she won’t let the lake attack us now that we’re going down to look for her body.”
Glancing out at the water, I raised my eyebrows. “Here that, Amy? If you could hold off on trying to drown us, that would be great.”
Refilling the small holes we’d dug, we took a second to rinse our hands in the lake, then trudged back to the canoe. Tate peeled off his shirt and shorts, then started pulling a wetsuit on over his swim trunks. I followed suit, ditching my clothes and working to pull the tight suit on over my bikini.
Once I was finished, I glanced up to find Tate giving me a once-over, a half-smile curving his lips. “I’m thinking we need to go diving more often … that’s a good look for you.”
Rolling my eyes at him, I piled my hair up on top of my head and secured it into a bun. I didn’t say out loud that the tight diving suit made him look pretty yummy, too. It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know it. Plus, my stomach was in knots over what we were about to do. Diving would be fun if not for the prospect of discovering a dead body in the depths of the lake. Even though we’d seen ghosts that looked dead and decaying, I had a feeling an actual dead person’s body would prove to be a nerve-wracking experience.
We helped each other strap on the rest of the gear, then pulled our goggles on so they rested against our foreheads. I climbed into the canoe, and Tate pushed it out onto the water. With a backpack full of our stuff between my feet, I took up one of the paddles and helped Tate steer us toward the middle of the lake.
The day was beautiful—a blue sky and puffy white clouds with the sun peeking out between them. It was early enough in the day that the heat hadn’t kicked into overdrive yet. At this part of the lake, we were far enough from the cabins that there weren’t a lot of people nearby. Down the water, some of the people from our group were riding jet skis, while close to the bank
, others swam and played.
Squinting against the glare from the sun off the water, I glanced around and stopped paddling.
“I think we’re in a good spot to start looking,” I said. “I don’t know how far he might have been when he tossed her out, and she could have drifted while sinking.”
“Weird that she hasn’t started floating yet,” Tate murmured, working to fit his goggles over his nose and mouth.
“I read somewhere that it sometimes takes weeks for corpses to start floating, depending on a lot of different factors like sunlight and water temperature,” I replied, making sure my goggles were secure.
“Of course you did, Bell,” he said with a chuckle.
“It pays to date a nerd,” I replied.
“True story,” he agreed. “Okay, let’s do this. We should probably stick close to each other.”
“Agreed,” I replied.
Tate tipped himself out of the canoe first, and I followed. The initial submersion was a bit jarring, with the sunlight dimming and all noise muting into the odd sound of water filling my ears. After a while, I adjusted, becoming accustomed to breathing through the regulator in my mouth. Tate took the lead, plunging down toward the bed of the lake and swimming at a languid pace, head moving left and right as he scanned for any sign of Amy. I stayed parallel to him, with only a few feet of distance between us.
For a long while, there didn’t seem to be any sight of her, and I started to wonder whether we’d been completely off the mark. But then I remembered the vivid dreams I’d had, and told myself there was no way we could be wrong. Amy Liu was here somewhere; we just needed to find her.
A sudden flash of movement to my left drew my gaze to Tate, who was waving at me with one hand and pointing with the other. I looked in the direction he indicated and found the trunk of a cypress tree shooting up through the water and up over the lake. Not overly large, the cypress seemed to be one of those that had survived, standing strong in the middle of the large body of water.
Following Tate toward it, I held my breath, heedless of the tank strapped to my back and the regulator in my mouth providing plenty of air. As we got closer, the feeling in the pit of my gut became full-fledged nausea, and dread stole over me. It felt as if my body and mind knew what was coming, and feared it. Still, I pressed forward, determined to see this through now that we’d come this far.
Once we reached the tree, we dove deeper, searching around the base of it. I was forced to take a breath through the regulator, but almost choked on it when my eyes fell on something curled up at the base of the tree. She lay splayed beneath the tree, her spread arms and legs entangled by tree roots—explaining why she hadn’t floated to the surface. Her pallid skin had begun to bloat, leaving her face distorted and almost unrecognizable. I wouldn’t have known it was her if not for the half-moon necklace still hanging from her neck—which had begun to tarnish from being submerged for so long.
After a few seconds of staring, I couldn’t take it anymore. I reached out to grasp Tate’s arm and got his attention, pointing toward the surface. He nodded, and together, we ascended, coming up far enough from the boat that we had to swim a few feet to get back to it. The motions of swimming kept me together until we reached the boat, but once I’d climbed back into it, I snatched off my goggles and regulator. Leaning over until my head rested between my knees, I closed my eyes and worked to breathe past the pressure in my chest. The breaths came quick and shallow, and I trembled from head to toe. Tate’s hand found my shoulder and stayed there until I’d pulled myself together. Lifting my head, I glanced up into his eyes and found the same turbulence in them that I felt. He looked as if he might be sick, and I wondered if either of us would ever be able to forget the gruesome sight.
“You okay?” he asked, wrinkling his brow in concern, water streaming down his face and dripping from his hair.
I nodded. “Yeah. I will be, at least. We did it … we found her.”
“Only one thing left for us to do,” Tate said.
Taking another deep breath, I unzipped our backpack and reached for my phone. Unlocking the screen, I quickly dialed 9-1-1.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
I met Tate’s gaze, and he nodded, as if to encourage me. Clearing my throat, I pressed forward.
“I need to report the discovery of a dead body.”
“I can’t believe you guys found an actual dead body,” Mia gushed as we crowded around the living room in our cabin to watch the news.
“Yeah,” I muttered, trading glances with Tate, who was returning from the kitchen with a cup of coffee. “Crazy, right?”
His solemn expression mirrored my emotions, and even after a good night’s sleep the night before, I felt wrung dry and exhausted. After calling 9-1-1 and being told to wait for the police, Tate and I rowed our canoe back to the bank. Several officers arrived on the scene and questioned us about what we’d seen.
Tate took over—in a way that reminded me so much of his father—and explained that we’d been out diving when we discovered the body underneath the cypress tree. Then, retrieving the wallet from the boat, he’d handed it over to the officers and mentioned stumbling over it while we’d been changing into our diving gear. From there, we could do nothing but wait. Word spread quickly that a section of the bank near the lake had been cordoned off with yellow tape—but still, people with their camera phones attempted to sneak close enough to get shots of the cops poking around for evidence. People, including Mia and half the others from our group.
An officer had accompanied us back to our cabin for rigorous questioning that seemed to last for hours. By the time he was done, he seemed satisfied that we hadn’t been up to anything and had simply been lucky enough—or unlucky depending on how it was looked at—to stumble over the body of a girl who had been missing for weeks.
We’d given the officer our numbers in case there were more questions. From there, we had been free to go about our spring break. By the time all was said and done, I was exhausted. The disturbing dreams, as well as the events of the previous days, had left me feeling as if I could sleep for a week.
Surprisingly, Amy didn’t come to me that night, and I slept peacefully, awakening to news that a suspect had been taken into custody. Crowded around the TV, we watched the news story about how the body had been discovered by two Georgia State students visiting Lake Blackshear for spring break. We hadn’t wanted our names released in connection to the story, so I was glad the local media seemed to be holding true to their promise to keep us anonymous.
Following the story of the body being discovered, it was announced that an unidentified suspect had been taken into custody following the discovery of new evidence at the crime scene. I didn’t want to assume, but I felt confident it had to be Brandon Williams. What evidence found at the scene could there be other than the wallet, placing him there? It was my hope that more evidence would peg him to the wall … or that he’d feel guilty enough about what he’d done to confess.
The news segment ended with a tearful video from a press conference held with Amy’s parents, who were saddened to know their daughter had been murdered, but glad the police now had a lead to go after her killer. Their watering eyes and sad expressions tugged at my heartstrings, making me glad I’d convinced Tate to go along with solving the mystery of Amy’s death. Knowing how it was to lose a parent, I couldn’t imagine how it must feel to lose a daughter, but not know where she could be or how she might have died. I hoped the Liu family could at least take comfort in closure and, eventually, justice.
“Hey, a bunch of us are heading down to the Cypress Grill for breakfast,” one of Tate’s frat brothers said as someone switched off the TV. “You guys coming?”
Tate exchanged glances with me. “Bell?”
Glancing down at my phone, I noted the time. It was already ten o’clock. I had been up for an hour without eating—I was starving. But there was still the matter of my pregnancy test. I’d missed the phone call from the
hospital the day before, and I’d hoped giving them a quick call back would turn up my results. While I was nervous about what those might be, I knew that prolonging the inevitable would only make things worse. Better to get it out of the way so we could move on with telling our parents and making the necessary plans.
“Yeah, I just need to make a phone call right quick,” I said, rising to my feet.
“Hurry up, girl,” Mia mumbled, standing to stretch. “I want some pancakes.”
The mention of pancakes made my stomach growl, but I edged my way through the crowded living room toward our room. Tate glanced at me over his cup and mouthed ‘want me to come?’. I shook my head, hoping my expression conveyed I would be okay by myself for the call. After all, if it turned out that we were having a baby, I knew I had him regardless. Even from the other side of the closed door, his presence brought me comfort.
Sinking down onto the bed, I stared down at my phone in silence. In moments like this, I often wonder what my mother would have said to me if she were still alive. I closed my eyes and imagined her face, her warm eyes, and could almost hear her soft voice telling me not to be afraid—reminding me that no matter what happened, she would love me. My dad would likely say similar words, following it up with a birth-control lecture. Tate and I were usually so careful, but sometimes things just happened. If I was pregnant, I refused to think of it as a mistake, but rather one of life’s challenges to be tackled and learned from.
Resolved, I opened my eyes and lifted my phone to make the call.
A few minutes later, I came out of the bedroom to find the living area empty. Voices drew me outside to where everyone piled into cars, ready to go grab breakfast. Tate still stood on the porch, slumped against the wooden rail, fidgeting and running his hands through his hair as if nervous. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him.
“Hey, you,” I said, calling his attention to me.
Tate snapped to attention, propelling away from the rail and toward me. “Well?”
Bellamy and the Haunting Page 5
