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The door to the Sheriff’s office isn’t all the way closed. Ajar, just a little, just enough for her to hear the Deputy’s murmured voice, “That little thing out there couldn’t have done it. No way. Bag of bones. She ain’t strong enough.”
She rolls her eyes hearing that. Strong enough to what? Stab someone? Surely it doesn’t take some serious biceps for that, the kind that Trevor has bulking up his Abercrombie polos.
No, Billie is a skinny little thing. Not the cute way either, like the girls in the magazines or on the TV. Some might call her frail or scrawny, but that’s because she forgets to eat most of the time, what with all the drinking.
Still, her face scrunches against the Deputy’s judgement, and she’s a bit irked that he thinks she’s not strong enough to stab a knife.
Maybe, just maybe, she’s irritated that she’s been planted on this hard wooden chair for hours, given the same statement on repeat, a damn CD skipping the same lyrics over and over, and her head is throbbing, and she hasn’t had a drink in who knows how long.
Maybe…
Maybe if she lets go of her annoyance, she’ll have to remember what it felt like to touch Carmine, her hands slipping in hot, wet blood—
No, she doesn’t wanna think about that.
Not one bit.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she falls back in the chair, and she loosens a sigh like a ribbon.
“Bee!”
Her eyes snap open with the flip of her heart. She blinks, swerving her bulging gaze to the officers flanking her best friend—
Her very much alive best friend.
“Kate—” Billie’s voice is a strangled sound, drowned out entirely by the scrape of her chair as she scrambles out of it, all limbs and no brains. She stumbles, near-falling onto the linoleum floor, but her legs kick out in a hurry and, before she knows it, she’s sprinting down the line of desks.
Kate wrenches free from the rough holds of the officers. She tears herself away and races down to meet her—
Their bodies smack together, loud and hard enough to force the air out of them both. But they hardly feel it through the numbness, the relief. Arms are thrown around bodies—and all they do is stand there, tense and entwined, faces buried in the nooks of the others’ neck.
‘I thought you were dead…’
Neither of them speak the words that their tight hugs betray.
“Is that your blood or mine?” Kate murmurs, a lame attempt to be funny—a lame and obvious attempt to shield herself and her emotions. Even in front of her closest friend.
Billie sees right through her. Still, she untangles herself from Kate and slides her hands down her bloody arms to her hands. Their fingers entwine. And Billie takes her in.
Kate had it worse.
At least, she wears more blood than Billie does.
Compared to just her head injury and some bruises, Kate has a bandage wrapped around her forearm that’s already staining red in a line (a gash, a cut of sorts, Billie guesses), and some nicks scattered over her pretty All-American face.
“How did—” Before Billie can even finish, Kate answers.
“Through the window. I was in the shower… I heard…” Her words fail her. “But when I got to the bedroom… Bee, I ran. We all did.”
“All?”Carmine and Grace?
‘Did you see what happened to Carmine?’
“That… That guy in the mask…” Kate trails off and shakes her head. She sucks in her swollen, wet lips.
All Billie can do is give a nod of understanding and murmur, “The Blood Hood.”
Kate shrugs, half-hearted and disinterested. Her eyes betray that her thoughts aren’t with him and the blood on his hood—but with what shesaw. “I can’t.” She cuts herself off and shakes her head, like she just can’t get the words out. “I just… turned and ran. Climbed the lattice down to the yard. And I ran. I think Grace was screaming and she ran out the bedroom. I don’t know what happened to them. I ran all the way here.”
