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I’m already standing and pulling on my shoes when I see something that makes my blood run cold: a second figure, melting out of the shadowy entry to the ballroom.
From the blond hair and the pajamas, I know it’s Jude, but from the way he follows Remi, I know that doesn’t mean she’s safe. Not even a little bit.
I never trusted that sneaky bastard.
Not from the moment I saw how he looked at Remi when her back was turned. It’s like he had two completely different sets of expressions—the smiles when she’s watching and the smiles when she’s not.
Of course, Remi wouldn’t hear a word against him.
That’s why I never said anything even when I suspected exactly who was the “mouse” running across the piano keys.
But now I’m getting a very bad feeling that there might be more at stake here than a pissed-off girlfriend or a brother pulling pranks. Because the last time I saw Gideon, I pointed him in the direction of Blackleaf.
And if he never talked to Remi…
I’m guessing it’s because Jude answered the door.
I grab my coat and my car keys and then hesitate, glancing at the black doctor’s bag by the door.
Slipping my hand inside, I take my scalpel, too.
* * *
Blackleaf is dark and quiet,no lights burning at the house. I run in through the kitchen door anyway, shouting for Remi. When the heavy silence makes me certain there’s no one inside, I dash back outside to the pumpkin-filled garden.
Mud crusts the back steps. I follow the mud to the two deep grooves cutting across the garden and leading into the woods…
I think of the hole I found in the forest, and my heart stops beating and my vision goes black.
Those grooves better not be from Remi’s heels.
They just better not be because if that motherfucker hurt one single hair on her head…
I’m already running, branches whipping at my face.
* * *
If I didn’t knowwhere I was going, I never would have found the spot. Not in the dark, not without a flashlight.
But I know these woods like I know my own backyard. Theyaremy backyard—and I remember exactly where I saw that shallow grave.
I slow my pace as I get close, ears straining…. My knees go weak with relief when I hear Remi’s voice.
“Are you really going to do this, Jude?”
“You’re the one who did this,” Jude replies coldly. “I got us a fresh start, away from Gideon, just the two of us, the way it’s supposed to be…and as soon as we got here, you were already ruining it all over again.”
“Because I tried to make you go to school?”
“Because you’re a traitor!” Jude shrieks.
Now I’m close enough to make out his pale figure in the gloom, his white-blond hair and the dark pits of his eyes in his narrow face. And most of all, the black barrel of the gun he has trained on Remi’s chest.
Remi has a shovel in her hands and she’s re-digging the grave, uncovering the sickly rotting scent of what I assume is her ex-boyfriend.
Her brother watches her work, in a bizarre recreation of the first time I saw the two of them together. In fact, I’d wager it’s their most characteristic dynamic.
“It was supposed to be you and me!” Jude cries, his finger twitching against the trigger. “That’s what you said, Jude and Remi against the world—but as soon as Gideon came along, or Emma, or that fucking doctor…”
