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All that said… as I walked around the street fair with the knowledge Alistair and Nicole were here, I found my eyes surveying the area constantly, trying to find her.
And I did. After a good twenty minutes of wandering around, I spotted her sitting at one of the wooden tables situated on the small grassy area that was between the mom-and-pop restaurants and the road. She was by herself, though she’d brought what looked to be a notebook of some kind, along with a pencil.
She was drawing, I think, so intently focused on the paper before her that the world around her had ceased to exist. She was alone in a sea of people, surrounded by strangers she didn’t care about.
And she was beautiful, with her hair wild and free, the mismatching colors swaying in the gentle breeze, nothing but the streetlights overhead and the colors of dusk filling the sky. She wore what looked to be a thin hoodie, its sleeves pulled down over her arms, and dark blue jeans.
My gaze shifted around, and I tried to spot Gareth among the crowd. No matter how hard I searched, though, I didn’t see him. It looked like Brianna was alone.
Just keep walking and ignore her, my mind spoke in an effort to guide me away from making what might be the worst mistake ever.Just turn around and go the other way. Stop staring at her. Move. Do something. Don’t just stand there, slack-jawed, like you’ve never seen a more beautiful girl.
Listening to that little voice in my head was impossible. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. But she was in the middle of the main area of the street fair; I couldn’t go up to her, couldn’t talk to her, without a bunch of people seeing. Even if Gareth wasn’t here, Alistair might see us talking and get the wrong idea.
Or, you know, the correct idea.
I made the split-second decision to walk away—and I meant away from it all. Away from my post at the street fair, away from the damned street fair entirely. I walked through the small side streets that broke off from the main road, taking one of the back sidewalks to the park. The park’s lot was full of cars, but the park itself was empty, devoid of all people. Everyone who was here was at the street fair.
I pulled out my phone once I was far enough away, once I’d reached the back portion of the park. The area just off the parking lot was a wide-open space with a basketball court and a large playground, and then just beyond that was a giant grassy field where fireworks were held on the Fourth of July, but beyond that was the tree line, and that’s where I currently paced, holding my phone, just barely stopping myself from texting her.
“Fuck,” I muttered, knowing it was a bad idea, but not caring at the same time. I texted her to meet me, told her where to go. I wanted to see her again, to talk to her, to… to have those lips on mine again.
Erin’s disappearance wasn’t just something Brianna and her friends were looking into. She was now officially truant, and her truancy had been called in to her parents—parents which were also missing, but the school didn’t know that. Mary had told me all this when I’d called and asked last week.
But there wasn’t a body, and that led me to think something more was going on. It was possible her body, along with the bodies of her parents, waited to be discovered in the woods somewhere—there were a lot of woods in Eastcreek—but something told me there was more to it.
I didn’t get a message back from her, and I started to think she wasn’t going to come, but after a few minutes of pacing, I heard someone else’s feet crunch the leaves once they reached the wood line, and I stopped pacing, moving to see Brianna tentatively approaching, whipping her head around in search of me.
Being so far removed from the park, from the street fair, there were no lights nearby, nothing but shadows and what little light remained in the sky past the canopy of the trees.
“Rick?” Brianna spoke my name tentatively, and once I stepped in her field of view, her expression morphed into one of fury, her lips curling into a pouty frown, like she was mad at me for something. “Is this about Erin, or do you want to tell me the whole truth now?” She held onto a notebook, holding it against her hip.
It wasn’t about any of that, so I said, “I just wanted to see you.” A lie, because I really wanted to do so much more than that, things that would land me in the hottest waters of history. You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson years ago, but no. All those years spent, alone, hating Alistair and Gareth, and here I was, still caught up in their shit because there was a new, pretty face involved with them.
“Well, you saw me, so I guess I’ll be going now.”
She turned to leave, to storm away, and that was the only reason I took a step forward and called out, “I haven’t found Erin’s car. Someone either drove it out of the county, or they’re hiding it.” I’d say anything to get her to stay just a bit longer.
Brianna was measured in facing me again. Five whole feet between us, and yet it felt like an ocean. The look she gave me right then told me she wasn’t surprised about the car. “It’s been weeks. Do you think…” She couldn’t finish the question, but that was fine, because I was pretty sure I knew where she was going with it.
“Do I think Erin is still alive? Do I think her parents are all right? I don’t know.” I shook my head once. “I’m as clueless as you are. If it isn’t Gareth, if it ain’t Alistair, then—”
The question she spoke next startled me: “Is it you? Are you the one doing this to try to frame Gareth?”
The insinuation flabbergasted me at first, and then it enraged me. “You think I’d kill your friend and her family just to try to frame Gareth? Why? Tell me why the fuck I’d do something like that.” I couldn’t hide the bitterness from my tone; she’d pissed me off royally by suggesting it.
“Because you hate Gareth for killing his mother,” Brianna shot back, raising her voice a bit too much. “Yeah, Alistair told me all about how you were in love with his sister, Gareth’s mom. He told me you killed—”
Something in me snapped. I rushed her, and before she could finish saying it, I had a hand clamped over her mouth. I bum-rushed her all the way to a nearby tree, anything but gentle as her back slammed against it. The movement was so quick, so sudden that she dropped her notebook on the ground, her eyes wide.
“Don’t you say it,” I hissed out, leaning in to her, using my body to pin hers against the tree. She squirmed, she struggled, but I was stronger. She could’ve gone for my gun, I supposed, but she didn’t. “I lived it. I don’t need you dredging up the past because you think you know it all now.”
Her expression turned into a hard glare, and only then did I lower my hand off her mouth. I didn’t move away from her, though. I remained right where I was, pinning her against the tree. She had nowhere to go, unless she wanted to take my gun and shoot me.
“You’re just like them,” she whispered, her tone hateful. “You’re just like Gareth and Alistair.” The words were a slap in the face, a knife to the heart, the only comparison that could ever hurt to hear.
“If you know what they are, if you think I’m just like them,” I growled out the words, letting my emotions get the better of me, “then why did you come to me?”
She leaned forward—or rather, her head leaned forward, since the bottom half of her body was still pinned by mine—and whispered, “I hate you. I hate all of you.” Her voice was raw with feeling, and I suspected she meant the opposite but didn’t want to admit it.
