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Simon nodded.
Then the coach gave Gabriel a good-natured shove in the arm. “Unless you’re just getting lazy.”
“Nah.” Gabriel smiled. He’d forgotten how much he missed the easy camaraderie of a sport. Had it really only been a couple weeks? “It’s all him.”
Coach Kanner looked back at Simon. “Think you can play like that this afternoon?”
Simon’s eyebrows went way up. He nodded vigorously.
“We’ll give it a try,” said the coach.
Simon nodded again.
The coach held up a finger. “One time.” Then he slung the bag of balls over his shoulder and turned for his office at the back of the gym.
Simon turned wide eyes to Gabriel. He gestured for the phone.
Holy crap.
For the first time since the weekend, Layne fired up her computer.
She didn’t even bother with her e-mail, rolling her eyes at the bolded number showing how many unread messages she had.
Seriously. Didn’t they have anything better to do?
She couldn’t stop thinking about fire. About arson. About Gabriel.
And her scars.
She’d stared at herself in the bathroom for what must have been a good twenty minutes. At first she’d wanted to yell for her father. She’d wanted someone else to see what she was seeing, to pinch her arm and prove she wasn’t dreaming.
But her father would want explanations, and she sure didn’t have one.
What had happened in that barn?
That night I drove you home was the first night A notebook sat open next to her laptop. She had to think back. The night her father had worked late. The night Gabriel had played basketball with Simon. Wednesday.
Wednesday, she wrote on the paper.
She went to the local news Web site and searched for the word arson.
Bingo. There’d been an article on Thursday about a fire Wednesday night. A family of four, though only three had gotten out. The reporter had interviewed the mother, a Mrs. Hulster, who said that the fire chief had declared the house too dangerous to search, that no one could be alive inside.
Yet somehow a firefighter had been in there. Somehow, her daughter had been pulled out.
Hulster. It sounded familiar.
Alan Hulster! Of course! Taylor had been talking about the fire the next day in class.
Had Gabriel seemed upset? Had he known about it?
Layne tapped her pencil on her paper. She couldn’t remember.
She skipped to the next article. Another fire, another suspected arson. The firefighters had been ordered out, but one fell through the floor. He should have been trapped he should have been killed.
But again, someone dragged him out.
So Wednesday, Thursday . . .
