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“Kit.”
He exhales. “Thank God. Yes. It’s me. Garrett is…” He waves absently. “I heard you scream and—”
“Gazebo,” I blurt. “A wind chime. It was… It was…”
The words stop in my throat, and I can’t speak past them, can’tbreathepast them.
“There’s another wind chime?” he says slowly. “Okay. Should we go see—?”
“No!” I start to shake, and I try to explain, but again, the words won’t come. When I saw that horrible thing—that thing that had been a living person—I’d known what it was. I’d had no doubts about my mental state. Now, with Kit holding me and the cold wind whipping past, it’s like a hug and a slap at once, reassuring me that I couldn’t have seen such a thing while smacking me for being so foolish as to think I had.
“All right,” Kit says. “I’ll take you back to the house, find Garrett and we’ll investigate.”
“No!” I shake my head wildly. “P-please, don’t. Please. Just… in the house. Please. Get in the house. All of us.”
Another quick hug. “Got it. We’ll go inside.” He pulls back and shouts, “Garrett! We’re going in.” Then to me, “The asshole took off. Went chasing what was obviously a damn squirrel.”
“You—you didn’t find…”
He takes my arm to steady me as we set out. “There’s no sign of Sadie. I don’t think Garrett’s going to give up, but that’s his choice.It’ll be dark in a few hours, and we’re not spending the night searching for her. We can’t.”
“N-no more searching,” I say. “No more being outside.”
“Agree,” he says grimly.
We continue on until I see the bridge. That snaps my thoughts back into focus.
“Man,” I blurt as I wheel to Kit. “There—there was a man. On the ground. Hurt. I thought it was a trap, so I ran. Then I thought I saw you and went up onto the bluff.” I shake that memory off. “But first there was a man. We should check. I don’t know if it’s Dr. Abbas or the security guy.”
He frowns. “Security guy?”
“We think we found who was behind the staging.” My heart rate slows as I find something to latch onto. “A couple who rented the place. The guy—John—was in security and asked questions. It seems his wife—Rachel—was one of the people who tried to lowball me on the property.”
I quickly add, “She’s not one you passed over,” but he doesn’t seem to hear me. Any guilt he felt has been wiped away by everything else. Taking blame right now smacks of selfishness.
Rememberthatwhen you start feeling awful about letting Madison come along.
No, that’s an entirely other level of guilt, and one I’ll deal with on my own.
I’m centered now, as if talking about the people behind the staging shifts this all into the realm of the ordinary. Horrible and unthinkable acts, but still acts committed by regular people.
“I’ll show you where I saw him,” I say as I straighten. “If he’s still there, we’ll decide what to do.”
“And if he’s not, then we know he’s out there, and we need to stay inside.”
That’s not the only explanation if the man is gone, but I nod. Keep it in the realm of the believable. Forget what I thought I saw on thebluff. Nothing moved. I hallucinated that. The rest was just staging, and if the man is gone, that proves it was a trap, and he’s alive and fine.
Does that make sense?
I don’t care. It’s the story I’m going with if the man is gone.
Kit takes my hand. Our fingers entwine, holding on as tight and firm as we can. We will not get separated. I will not take off if I spot Sadie.
I tell him where I saw the man, and in thirty paces, I see my tree. I point to it and explain that’s where I spotted him from.
“Good idea,” he says. “Climbing for a better vantage point.”
“It didn’t help me find Sadie.”
