Stranded

They talked in whispers. Detective Lopez was at the door with a uniformed police officer. Noah’s mother and father stood by the window. It was difficult for Noah to hear what they were talking about because the sound of Ethan’s screams had returned inside his head. The screams weren’t loud. In fact, they were muffled, as though coming from outside his hospital room, somewhere down the hall. But they wouldn’t stop. It was a constant, frenzied screech that clawed at Noah’s brain like fingernails scraping a chalkboard.

At one point he sat up and clapped his hands over his ears. He rocked back and forth, moaning, wishing, begging Ethan to shut up. He didn’t even realize what he was doing until he saw the horror on his mother’s face. But instead of embracing him, comforting him, Noah saw her clutch his father’s arm as if needing his strength to remain upright.

That’s when he realized that it wasn’t his odd gestures that had u

Ethan shut up! Shut up, shut up! Stop screaming!

And Noah shut up immediately.

He stared at his parents and knew that he looked like he had been caught doing something unspeakable. If they only knew.

“You said he’s still out there.” Detective Lopez was standing at his bedside now. “Where is your friend Ethan, Noah?” Then without waiting for a response, he said, “What did you do to him?”

“Do to him?”

Noah could hardly believe what the detective was asking. He looked to his parents again.

“Go ahead and tell him what happened, Noah.” It was his father, but the tone was stern.

They thought he was responsible? Why?

“All that blood,” Detective Lopez said. “We know it wasn’t all yours.”

But he had done something to Ethan. He left him with a madman. And it was worse than that. Much worse …

“We found Ethan’s car.” Detective Lopez seemed to wait for Noah to look at him. “It was still parked at the rest area. Doors unlocked. Keys under the seat.”

He paused, studying Noah.

“We found the rest of your clothes. Folded up, neat and tidy. Right on the passenger seat. Shoes on top.”

Noah just stared at him. How could he explain that his clothes were part of the bargain?

“The boys are best friends,” he heard his mother explaining. “Since third grade.”

“Who goes first?” Noah heard the madman’s voice and searched the room, looking past his parents, looking past Detective Lopez, past the officer at the door. The killer wasn’t anywhere to be seen. But he was still in Noah’s head.

“Your cell phone was there, too,” Detective Lopez was saying, without acknowledging Noah’s mother. Without acknowledging the voice in Noah’s head.

“There were no phone calls to 911,” Detective Lopez said. “No text messages to friends or family asking for help or talking about being stranded.”

Again, Noah stared at the man. Why hadn’t he called for help? Why had he left his phone behind?

Then he remembered. The man had borrowed Noah’s cell phone. He’d told them that his own had run down its battery. His car wouldn’t start. Could they help him out?

Those eyes. That smile. They should never have rolled down the window.

Ethan’s fault. I told you not to roll down the window.

“Noah.” It was his father.

Had he said the words out loud again?

His father was growing impatient.

“Tell Officer Lopez what happened,” he said.

Noah glanced at the detective to see if he noticed his dad had just demoted him. A silly thing for him to notice, but his father was good at that. He could disarm someone with his words before the person realized what had happened.

Like father, like son.

But then his father snapped at him. “Just tell him for Christ’s sake.”

None of it fazed Detective Lopez, and he continued, “Noah, if Ethan’s hurt badly we might be able to still help him. Just tell us where he is.”

The room became silent. Machines hummed and beeped. And amazingly, Ethan’s screams had stopped for the moment.

“I don’t know where Ethan is,” Noah finally admitted. Then he added in a whisper that sounded embarrassingly close to a whimper, “But I know he’s dead.”

CHAPTER 12

Maggie had left Lily after writing her personal cell phone number on the back of her business card and handing it to the woman.

“What the hell good is this?” Lily had wanted to know.

“You can call me anytime.”

Lily had laughed like it was the fu

Now the sun began to sink behind the barn. Maggie had returned to the top of the heap alongside a CSU technician named Janet. The removal of the body in the garbage bag had become a slow and tedious chore. Because almost half the bag remained within the pile of dirt, they couldn’t just pull it out for fear of destroying evidence.

It had been agreed that they needed to dig out the bag from the top, removing the soil, bucket by bucket. Tully had convinced Maggie and the young CSU tech that because they weighed the least of the recovery crew, they were less likely to start a landslide. So here she was again—only this time with a hand trowel—so close to the bag she couldn’t avoid the smell or avoid seeing the writhing mass of maggots every time the plastic flapped open.

She had borrowed a pair of boots from the construction crew that swallowed her feet. Buzz, the foreman, had also offered her a ball cap, reassuring her that it was brand-new, even showing that it still had the sales tag dangling. It seemed easier than trekking all the way back to their rental to unpack their gear. So she had accepted the ball cap before she’d noticed the saying embroidered on the front: Booty Hunter.

It could be worse, she thought as she adjusted the cap and ignored Tully’s grin.

Maggie and Janet filled their buckets, one scoop at a time. Both were cautious, sliding the trowels in slowly and ready to stop at any hint of resistance or even a faint scrape of something that didn’t sound like dirt. Buzz and the three members of his construction crew, along with Sheriff Uniss’s deputies—and even Howard Elliott—had formed two assembly lines, one to take and replace Maggie’s bucket and the other Janet’s.

Maggie and Janet handed off the blue plastic buckets full of dirt. Then the buckets made their way down the lines, each man handing it to the next without moving, to avoid stepping more than necessary in the mud.

At the end of the lines were the other two CSU technicians, Matt and Ryan, who spilled the buckets across a three-foot-by-six-foot designated area on top of the grass. At a later time the techs would be able to sift through the dirt chunks. Right now, they all just wanted to remove the garbage bag, intact, place it in a body bag, and send it on its way to a medical examiner.

“Outdoor scenes are the toughest,” Janet admitted to Maggie.

She wiped a sleeve of her sweatshirt across her forehead. Her long sleek dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and stuck out the back of her navy CSU cap. Her smooth skin showed only slight laugh lines at the eyes and Maggie guessed that she was her age—mid to late thirties.

Maggie could tell that Janet was a veteran at collecting forensic evidence, despite her age. She had taken command of the process with ease immediately after their arrival, allowing Tully to address other issues, like the flow of information. Maggie could see him still on his cell phone. At times she noticed him jotting down notes on anything he managed to pull out of his pockets. She knew that later he’d be trying to decipher his scratch marks on the backs of gas station receipts, his boarding pass, even a napkin with smudges from his chocolate doughnut.