The Secrets of Lost Stones

by Melissa Payne

Lucy twisted around. “He’s been trying to keep her safe.”

  She nodded, swallowed. She understood that now. She gritted her teeth and turned to look out the window. The mountains were black shadows that loomed over the van, making Jess feel hemmed in, claustrophobic. Star needed her, and she would not fail this time.

  Jeremy’s eyes kept meeting hers in the rearview mirror. Finally, he said, “She loved him, you know.”

  Her eyes burned. “I know.”

  Jeremy turned to Lucy. “Will we find her?” His voice was hoarse.

  Lucy pursed her lips. “Drive fast, Jeremy.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  STAR

  The drive into Pine Lake twisted and curved up the mountain. Pine trees bordered the narrow road, a dense canopy that shaded the moon and made weird shadow patterns across the pavement. Star breathed in the clean smell of wood and earth and smiled despite herself. It felt good to be back.

  Officer Ben hadn’t spoken since the city, which suited her just fine. She didn’t want to make small talk. A sign appeared around a sharp curve in the road: PINE LAKE.

  Her fingers twisted the fabric of her leggings. Why did Jess want her back? What if Lucy was really hurt? The thought made it hard for her to breathe, so she pushed it away. Lucy was the strongest person she knew.

  But if Ben didn’t know about the note, then Jess might not have found it yet. If that was true, then maybe Star should try to talk to Lucy herself. She straightened her shoulders and looked out the window. For all she knew, that car had nothing to do with the accident.

  The truck slowed, and Ben made a quick turn onto a dirt lane that was hidden from view. It curved sharply up the hill, and Star had to grab the door handle to keep from sliding across the seat. Deep crevices in the road caused the cab to jerk violently back and forth as it climbed.

  “Where are we going?”

  His jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything or look at her.

  Trees crowded the road, the forest beyond deep in shadow. Branches scratched the sides of the truck. She flexed her feet, stretched out her fingers. Something was wrong. “This isn’t the way to Pine Lake.” Her voice quavered.

  The road opened into a meadow ringed by trees. The truck jerked to a stop.

  “Get out,” he said.

  The hairs on her neck stood on end. “What?”

  He hefted himself out of the truck and slammed the door shut; the truck swayed from the force. Her vision blurred. She needed to get out, but her body wasn’t obeying. Her thoughts fogged, one bleeding into the next. Get out. She reached for the door handle. Her fingers missed, flopping like fish onto her lap. What was wrong with her?

  The door flew open with a rusty squeal, and Ben’s plaid shirt was in front of her, filling her line of sight. Then his hands gripped her arms, and she was flying through the air until her body hit the ground and she heard a crack. She cried out from the impact. Above her, the full moon looked like someone had punched a hole in the sky, and she stared at it, her body relaxing despite a muffled voice screaming at her. Get up! Get up! She pushed up onto one arm, but it buckled under her, and she collapsed, her arm stretching unnaturally away from her body.

  Hands grabbed her ankles and pulled. She lifted her head. Ben. Sticks scratched her skin, and rocks poked into her spine. She tried to kick, but he squeezed her ankles. “Stop it,” she cried. “Please! What are you doing?”

  He pulled her like a sack of rice through the meadow. She brought her head up again, tried to look past him, but all she saw was dark sky.

  “Please,” she begged. “Let me go.” He must have known about her note. He loved Lucy. Maybe he’d been protecting her all this time. “If this is about the car—” A rock cracked her skull. White spots pockmarked her vision.

  “He said his kid.” His voice was low, almost a growl, making it hard for Star to understand him. He grunted, and her body stopped moving. “The boy opened the door. Where were you?”

  Star felt cold all over. “I don’t understand.”

  He turned around, stared at her. His hat was missing now, and Star could see his eyes, red-veined and wet. “It was your father’s fault.” He rubbed his eyes.

  “My father?” What does he have to do with any of this?

  “The bastard threatened me.” He squeezed her ankles so hard she felt the pain this time as a dull sensation that traveled up her spine and to her head. “I never knew how he found out I was a cop, until now.”

  Her head spun, and she tried to piece her thoughts together; they scattered easily.

  He dropped her ankles and eased himself beside her on the ground. Star tried to lift her body, curl her fists, anything to protect herself, but he swatted her hands away and pushed her into the ground. The air rushed from her lungs, and she fell back into a fetal position.

  He pulled a bottle of amber liquid from his pocket and took a long sip. “Everything was going to work out. She was going to give me the house.” He took another sip. “Every goddamn day I’ve worried about someone opening that shed, and then you two show up and I can’t sleep—I start seeing things.” His body seemed to shrink, and Star thought he looked scared. “Since you came, I’ve been watching that shed every fucking night.”

  He wasn’t making sense, and she struggled to understand. She coughed, tried to get a full breath.

  He drained the rest of the bottle and hurled it across the meadow. Star watched it fall, but instead of landing on the ground it disappeared behind it. From somewhere below them she heard the rush of water. Her stomach lurched. The waterfall?

  “Lucy thinks she can save everybody.” The lines around his mouth hardened. “But she didn’t save me, and she can’t save you.”

  He wasn’t making sense. She blinked against the tiredness, terrified that if she fell asleep she might not wake up. Her mouth was dry; her eyelids lifted too slowly. “Did you put something in my juice?”

  His gaze flicked to her. “Pain meds,” he said. “Maybe too many. It’ll be easier if you’re calm.”

  She touched her lips. They’d gone numb. Nothing made sense. “Why’re you doing this to me?”

  Ben sat with his knees bent, staring at the ground, his face hard, impassive. “You should never have told him,” he said, as though speaking to the ground at his feet.

  Told who? She struggled to sit up, and the trees spun with the effort.

  The sky had begun to lighten with the dawn. She stole a glance at Ben. His skin was pasty and gray, puffy, like her father in the months before he died. Slowly the pieces fell together, not perfectly, some overlapping or in the wrong place, but enough for her to understand a little. Ben hadn’t come over to help her dad get clean; he’d been buying from him. He was an addict too.

  Her stomach heaved, and she threw up into the grass.

  His biceps flexed against the sleeves of his T-shirt. “I’m not a bad guy, Star. You know?” His voice cracked, and Star saw wet streaks running down his face. “I’d gotten clean once; I knew I could do it again. But if they had found out, I would have lost my job—I would have lost everything.”

  Her lips pulled away from her teeth, and she huffed out air through her mouth and nose. Did he want her to feel bad for him? “Did you kill my father?”

  He barked a laugh. “I thought you knew. When you said you remembered me, I thought you knew. If you hadn’t told your dad in the first place, then none of this would have happened.” He rubbed his face, and she heard his beard scratch his palms. “Fucking Lucy!” he roared, and lurched to his feet, pacing back and forth in front of her.

  “Did you hurt her?” she tried to say, but her tongue wasn’t moving well, and it sounded garbled and slurred.

  “If she’d let me buy that house from her when I first offered,” he said without looking in Star’s direction, “nobody else would have been hurt. But when I saw you and Jess at the shed, I could feel that it was all about to come out. I thought if I could just talk to Lucy, convince her to let me buy the house, then I could get
you two to leave.” He swung his head back and forth. “But I never had the time. She was already on the stairs. I think I startled her or . . .” He stopped pacing, hovered over her, glaring down with wide eyes. “She tripped on her nightgown.” His face contorted, and he pounded the top of his thigh with his fist. “I should have taken care of that car years ago!”

  She swallowed, and her throat felt like sandpaper. “You know about the car?”

  “I hid it right away, never drove it again. Nobody ever knew. Not even Lucy, because I kept the keys to that shed.” He looked away and sat down beside her on the grass, hung his head between his knees.

  Bile stung Star’s tongue, and she tried again to sit up, but whatever he had given her had turned her limbs to mush. A dull stabbing sensation ran down the arm she’d fallen on when Ben threw her out of the truck. Star tried to use the pain to clear her head. Ben had killed her father. Her body started shaking. Why did he keep talking about Jess? Chance’s face loomed large in her mind. His smile. His laugh. But she couldn’t hold on to the image, and tears leaked from her eyes when it dissolved.

  He took a bag of white pills from his pocket, stuffed a few into his mouth, and swallowed them dry. “He saw me, and then he was there in the middle of the goddamn road. It seemed so easy.” Ben’s body twitched, and he clenched his hands into big fists. She flinched when they brushed her side.

  Her heart thumped painfully. “You killed Chance?”

  His back shook, but he made no sound. “So much is blurry about that night. I-I thought I’d hit a pothole instead of the kid.” Ben’s hands fiddled with the plastic bag. He dried his face with the back of his sleeve. Several pills tumbled from the bag when he did. “That poor woman. She didn’t deserve any of this.”

  Star lifted her head to see where she was. An empty meadow, the edges blurring into a thicket of pine trees. They were alone. Sweat trickled from her armpits. She tried to put together everything he said, but his words flitted away, making it hard to concentrate. Her body shook, racked by shivers.

  Ben sighed and shifted so that he was kneeling on the ground beside her. He looked down at her, his eyes soft and wet and full of compassion. “I thought you knew.” He scooted his arms under her knees and back and picked her up, cradling her body to his broad chest. She wanted to kick and bite the flesh of his shoulder; instead her body hung limp in his arms. She was going to die. Tears ran down her face.

  The crunch of leaves sounded from beyond the meadow. She twisted her head, straining to see around the curve of Ben’s shoulder. A small form stood in the shadows of the trees. Red sweatshirt, hands hanging by his sides. The air shimmered, and darkness snaked around his body.

  Ben walked her across the meadow; her head bobbed, and she lost sight of Chance in the blur of trees and sky. The meadow ended abruptly in a steep cliff that rose high above the lake and waterfall. Ben teetered at the edge. How was she going to get away when they were so far from town? A thick haze settled behind her eyes, making her thoughts feel detached, like those of another person.

  The shrill ring of a cell phone opened her eyes wide. Ben set her down, holding her arm firmly with one hand while he dug for his phone. He looked at the screen, tightened his grip on her arm. “Damn it,” he said.

  “Please let me go,” she whimpered.

  He gazed down at the waterfall, pointed. “They put that gate up after Jeremy,” he said as though she hadn’t spoken. He kicked a rock, and Star watched it plummet over the side and bounce off the sharp point of a boulder that lay half-submerged in the lake.

  He pushed her roughly against a large boulder. Her ribs crunched from the impact. “Stay there,” he growled.

  The effort of leaning against the rock took every bit of strength she had. Strong winds rushed up the valley, hitting Star in the face and whipping her shirt. She turned her head away from the wind, and her breath caught in her throat. A small dark figure moved fluidly through the open meadow. The wind swirled, bending tree limbs low, flattening the grass like a giant hand. Gray clouds raced across the sky. A fluttering in her belly. Could Chance save her again?

  Ben faced the cliff and didn’t notice the figure coming toward them. He fumbled with something small and clear, and it took her a moment to realize what he held in the blue light of early dawn. A syringe. She shook her head, let out a low moan.

  Ben’s head shot up at the sound. “Heroin. It won’t surprise anyone. Heroin’s become a big problem here.” He shook his head. “Kids start with pain pills, but it’s an expensive habit to keep up.” He tapped the syringe. “The affordable solution. A street kid like you? I’m sure you know all about this.”

  Her body began to shake uncontrollably. He’d make it look like she’d overdosed or killed herself.

  He smiled, and for a moment he was the man who’d sat with a little girl in the hospital when she was scared. “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt.”

  Tears wet her face; she didn’t want to die. Could Chance help her? Her skin prickled. Or was he waiting for her? She scanned the meadow, but it was empty, and Star felt her body deflate.

  She was alone.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  JESS

  Jeremy flew down the two-lane road out of Pine Lake, the bloated van hurtling like an awkward toddler around sharp corners. Jess slid back and forth on the seat, her fingers clutching the handrail. She dialed Ben’s number again. No answer. She rubbed her arms, watched the trees race past the van. In any other circumstance, she would have yelled at Jeremy to slow down. “Can you drive any faster?” she asked.

  The light outside was a dull gray that submerged the thick stands of pine trees into a deeper gloom. The road curved sharply, and she cried out. Chance stood on the side of the road, staring straight at her.

  Jeremy braked hard, making the seat belt cut into Jess’s chest and stomach.

  Her hands shook when she unbuckled her belt. She scooted forward, pointed to the road. “There,” she said. “Turn right there.”

  Jeremy swung his head back and forth. “Where?”

  She couldn’t breathe. Chance stood within feet of the bumper, his brown eyes locked on to her own. “There’s a road.” She stabbed a finger in the air. “Right there!”

  Lucy placed her palm on top of Jess’s hand, and the contact settled her.

  “She’s right, Jeremy,” Lucy said. “Turn here.”

  When Jeremy turned, the trees opened up, revealing a narrow dirt lane that climbed up and over a steep embankment. The engine roared as the van climbed, spewing dust and rocks behind them. At the top of the hill, the trees opened up, and the van pulled into the middle of a clearing, nearly colliding with a white pickup truck.

  Jess was out of the van before the wheels had stopped turning. Her heart leaped into her throat. At the end of the meadow, where it looked like the ground disappeared into the sky beyond, Star stood swaying on her feet, Ben holding her by her arm, his fingers squeezing tight. At the sound of the van, he jerked Star like a rag doll, and when he saw Jess, his face contorted.

  “Ben!” she cried. “No!”

  Fear trickled across her skin, but before she could move, something cool brushed against her arm, dry and thin, like if she reached out it would scatter in the air. Her pulse thumped in her throat, and the wind tickled her face, bringing with it the scent of her son’s skin after a bike ride. Sun warmed and sweet.

  She breathed in and ran. Ben’s eyes widened, and he fumbled for something at his waist. A gun appeared, the tip pointed at Jess. She halted several feet from where Star perched on the rocky edge of a steep drop. The girl hung from Ben’s grip, her face slack. The tip of the gun wavered in the air. Jess looked from the gun back to Star, narrowed her eyes. What was wrong with the girl? She stepped forward, her hand outstretched, fingers desperate to touch Star’s face, pull her body in for a hug. But Ben stepped backward until his heels neared the edge, and he yanked Star with him.

  “Don’t come any closer,” he said.

  Jess stopped moving
.

  “Let her go, Ben.” She spoke softly, but the wind picked up her voice and swept it through the grass until it seemed to twirl with the leaves in the air. Her heart beat against her chest, and she held her hands out, palms up. “I just want to talk,” she said.

  Footsteps moved the grass behind her, and out of the corner of her eye, Jess caught the swing of Lucy’s black skirts. The old woman could do little in the face of Ben and his gun, but her presence was a comfort nonetheless. “Stay behind me, Lucy,” Jess said in a low, calm voice.

  Ben swung the gun, pointing to the space beside Jess. “Do you . . . can’t you see . . .” Saliva flew from his lips, and his cheeks turned ashen. “Oh, Jesus. Don’t you see him?” His gaze implored Jess to say yes. To acknowledge the boy in the red sweatshirt with butterscotch skin and soft brown eyes standing beside her. The boy who stared, unblinking, at Ben.

  But Jess didn’t respond, and Lucy and Jeremy stayed a silent few feet behind her. “How have you lived with yourself all these years?”

  Her question must have taken him by surprise, because he tightened his grip on Star’s arm. At the girl’s soft whimper, Jess dug her nails deep into the skin of her palms. With Ben’s gaze locked on the silent figure by her side, Jess inched forward. Should she grab the gun? Try to pull Star away? Every plan seemed futile. With Ben’s size and weapon, she stood no chance. Ben let out a low moan, and the hand holding the gun trembled violently.

  She felt a strange calm wash over her. There were memories she kept buried because they hurt too much, but remembering might be the only way to get Ben to listen. “His favorite color was red,” she said, and her voice cracked on the words.

  Ben dragged his eyes away from Chance and stared glassy-eyed at Jess.

  Her chest ached. “He loved pancakes with whipped cream smiley faces.” She was crying, her tears running over her jaw and down her neck. But she couldn’t stop. “He loved his stuffed bear with the missing ear, and his favorite Matchbox car was a ’67 Chevelle.” She gulped for air and felt a light pressure by her side.