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I could turn them in.It would be easy, I think, as I recite being lost and looking down the red lit hallways for Nic and Nolan. It would be so fucking easy to tell her that it’s both of them, together. They’re murderers, and obviously they’re going to kill again.
I should stop them.
I could do it so easily, and they wouldn’t have time to know it was me.
But instead of telling her what happened in the woods, I paint a different picture. I tell her about running from the side door, about how hard it was to get open and how quickly the man came after me. I even tell her about what it had felt like to see Evan. How I’d thought he was a prop at first, but when I’d tried to help him, the man with the knife hadn’t let me. My voice shakes, but it’s not from fear. It’s from tiredness so bone-deep that I can only assume my adrenaline is the only thing that’s been keeping me going this long.
No, I’m not afraid or traumatized by what happened tonight. But I need Detective Angleson to think I am.
“I hid in this, uh, ditch?” I wave my hand, trying to explain the embankment and the roots of the large tree that I had hid in. “Waited there for him to go away. I was so scared—” I drag in a breath, eyes closing hard. “I thought he’d find me. Or that he’d come back. I hid for too long, I know, but I couldn’t come out. I wasso afraidhe was right there waiting for me.”
“What did the mask look like again?” Detective Angleson asked, her pen moving fast across the paper. “You said it was white?”
“White with blood on it, yeah. Just the same Halloween mask I see at all the stores. You know, the one some craft stores sell to for you to self decorate? And he was all in black, otherwise. Hood up and everything. I’m sorry.” God, I hope I sound like I’m telling the truth. I hope I sound genuine. “I wish I’d gotten a better look.” She won’t buy any sorrow I have for my former friends.
But she’ll buy it if I frame my emotions as fear for my own life.
“But why come after me?” I all-but whisper. “I don’t know what I did to him. Why would anyone want to kill me?”
“Not even Phoenix Hawthorne?” God, she’s like a dog with a bone with him. Unless she knows something more than she should, I have a feeling it’s just well-placed suspicion after seeing how he acted when Daisy died.
“He says he isn’t mad at me.” I hang my head, staring at my hands. “A few days ago I begged him to talk to me. He said…” This is another lie, and I lick my lips to give myself a moment, like this is somehow hard to get out. “He said he knows it isn’t really my fault that Daisy died.” My heart twists as I force the words out, this really isn’t as easy as I’d expected. “But he said that doesn’t mean he wants anything to do with me.”
My eyes even burn, like I’m actually going to cry, and I turn the look up on Detective Angleson, who watches me with her pale gaze. “I don’t think he’d do this. At least not to me.”
“It doesn’t help that he has an alibi for at least one of the deaths,” Angleson agrees reluctantly. “And tonight’s attack as well. He was seen by the fire for a lot of the night, and given the timeline, we don’t think he would’ve had the time necessary to stab Evan.”
I’m surprised she’s telling me this. But it makes something in me uncurl. She’s not suspicious of him, because he’s so good at making sure she can’t be.This really is a smart game they’re playing, and I wonder if it was all Rory’s idea.
He’s a serial killer.It’s hard to reconcile the auburn-haired man’s easy charm and constant, flirtatious jokes with the idea that he’s been killing for longer than this year’s Halloween season. But I have no choice, do I? Especially when he makes it obvious he knows how tonotget caught.
“But I’m going to find who did this.” Angleson’s declaration drags my attention back to her, and I glance up from where I’ve been staring at my hands. “You need to go home. I’m sure there will be a curfew in place for a while after this. There’s no way the town can brush this one off as an accident.” When she gets up, I’m surprised. I’d expected way more questions, and more suspicions.
“Did you ever check out that man?” My lips move faster than my brain, but I pat myself on the back as my tired question makes her stop, obviously having forgotten what I’d said about him at my house. “The guy from the fairgrounds. A few days ago he was watching me in the park. Middle aged, gray hair, weirdly light eyes?” It’s hard not to be frustrated that she hadn’t taken me seriously.
But after what looks like some internal resignation, she slides a small notebook free from her belt, and jots down something with her pen. “You saw him the night of the first death, right?” she mutters, writing down my answer when I give it. “Then at the park…” she writes more notes, then shoves it back into her belt. “I should’ve looked into it more,” she agrees, and I swear for just a second, she’s almost apologetic.
Though, the second is gone when her gaze finds mine, and her hard eyes make the rest of her look just as frigid. “We’ll find who did this, okay, Bailey? Before they can hurt you again.”
Unfortunately, I’m not on the same page as her, and I brace myself for a lecture when I don’t reply with enthusiasm or much more agreement than a tired smile.
But instead her smile is nice. She helps me up as well, squeezing my hand with reassurance in the motion. “Go home for me, all right?” she orders kindly. “I may be in touch if I need more information from you.”
“Okay,” I agree, still sagging from genuine exhaustion. “Honestly, I just want to go to sleep.” When she doesn’t say anything else, I turn on my heel, eyes falling on Nic and Nolan as I head toward them and, by extension, the car.
“Bailey?” The detective’s voice is a little less kind this time, and a little harder when she says my name, and I look at her over my shoulder, brows raised. “Are you sure that’s all you remember? All that happened, as far as you can tell? If there’s something you’re leaving out, or something you think isn’t relevant, I’d rather you tell me.”
I think about it. I think about Rory’s easy movements with the knife. Of the look on Evan’s face as he’d reached out to beg me for help with so many stab wounds in his chest.
I think of them, and I shake my head slowly, from one side to the other. “I’m sorry, detective,” I tell her, eyes wide and earnest. “But that’s everything.”
Chapter20
Oh my god, doesn’t really seem to cover the situation that slams through my skull in broken memories as I crack my eyes open to stare at my dim ceiling. My brain tells me that it has to be at least ten am, if not later. So the only things saving my peace are the blackout curtains that I easily would sell a kidney never to lose.
Oh fuck, is the next epithet that flutters through my thoughts. It seems more fitting, at the very least. And better suited to, well, just about everything that happened last night.
I’ve never really regretted having averygood memory. And I don’t right now…exactly. But it’s hard to do anything other than lie here when my brain oh so helpfully replays each touch, all the smirks, and everything in between. The feelings of humiliation, of squirming in Rory’s grip, shouldn’t make heat pool between my thighs. I definitely shouldn’t be replaying Phoenix telling me to open my mouth.
