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Billy brought Jessica and Nicole in his Camaro, and the sisters sat across from me and Kyrie.
I could feel the tension between them. They weren’t friends, and I didn’t know the history there. Small towns are their history, relationships, intersecting, and crossing names off lists.
Two guys played pool by the front windows, but otherwise, we were alone on that side of the Nest. I cleared my throat, hoping to get started before our food was brought out. “So, I know we look a little … weird here. None of us have hung out. Well, not since I moved here; I don’t know what your history is—”
“Everyone in this town has a history with everyone. Moving on,” Kyrie interrupted.
Jessica rolled her eyes and zeroed in on me. “You wanna talk about the missing girls? That’s old news. And not like I care. I definitely don’t fit the profile of the runaways.” She eyed Kyrie briefly.
Billy turned toward his sister. “Jess, quit. You know as well as I do that no preacher’s daughter hitches it out of this town.”
Jessica glared at her brother. “Rumors, Billy. Just fucking rumors.”
“Yeah, well, maybe they’re not. I don’t think Sam ran away, and you know that,” he said.
“Just because you think she was gonna settle for trailer trash skanks like us because you kissed when you were fifteen doesn’t mean anything, brother. Know your damn place, and you won’t get your heart broken.”
“Sam? Samantha Payne?” Kyrie asked, interrupting the sibling squabble.
Jessica rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Her dad was the preacher out of town on Highway F. Little Creek Baptist Church. You remember them? They had a big farm. She was Billy’s secret girlfriend.”
Billy crossed his arms, shaking his head. “It wasn’t a secret. We were fucking fifteen—”
Jessica sneered. “Youwere fifteen. She was eighteen. She had a car. She just didn’t want her jock boyfriend knowing she was finding dates in the kiddie pool.”
“Wait … she was older than you?” I asked Billy.
Billy sat straight. “I’ve always looked older than my age. For a while, we went to church out there with my aunt Rita before she moved to Montana.”
Jessica asked, “Gonna say the bogeyman kidnapped her, too?”
And Billy glared at his sister. “You know how this fucking town is. They take this shit seriously. Every pastor is selling something, And they sure don’t enjoy competition.”
“What’s that mean?” Kyrie asked, eyes alight with anger.
“Everyone is selling something, and a pretty little preacher’s daughter brings all the high school boys in, don’t you? They need to be saved. Better go fish.”
Kyrie stood up in the booth, hands braced on the table. “What? And I’m the bait?”
Billy eyed Kyrie’s pretty dress, and I saw her blush under his gaze. I could almost smell her sweat. He held up his hands in surrender. “Have a cow, Davis, damn.”
High school hierarchy and mating rituals made no fucking sense to me, but I didn’t need this kind of thing right then. I stood, raising my hands. “Could you guys stop it? If all we’re going to do is fight, we might as well leave.”
“I don’t even know why we’re here, Hemming,” Billy growled.
I could feel Kyrie’s emotions grate at the sound of his voice.
“Because if something is happening to the pastors’ daughters around here, then Kyrie is in danger. And she’s my friend. And if you want to know what happened to Sam, then we need to stop whatever is going to happen next. So what do you know? What do you remember about the time before she went missing?”
“She went into the Archer house the night before she went missing, Billy,” Nicole said, half whispering as she placed her elbows on the table. It was the first time the other sister had spoken.
Billy shot her a look. “Shut up.”
“What house?” I asked, just as Kyrie spoke up.
“The haunted house on Archer. It’s right in town.”
I’d walked by all the houses in town, and to be honest, I knew a few of them could be what one would describe as haunted if they let their imagination get the best of them. But they just looked like empty, sad houses. They were scary if you hated bugs and spiders and rats. But I hadn’t grown up watching scary movies and hearing scary stories. My life was a horror tale before coming here.
