Betrayal

An hour later, Drew pulled the orange compact car over to the side of a soggy logging road not far from Bri

“Damn,” he said, his eyes fixed on the tiny screen. “Reception sucks out here. I need to check my messages to see what’s up.”

Bria

He opened the car door and went up an incline above the roadway. Bria

“Talk with your mouth, not your hands,” she wanted to say.

A minute later, he got back into the car.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Nobody,” he said.

“You looked pissed,” she said.

“Just listening to voice messages.”

“Really? From down here in this crappy car it looked like you were fighting with someone, Drew.”

“Things aren’t always as they seem,” he said, turning the ignition and putting the car in gear.

Bria

She’d added his name into the mix, even though the TV and newspaper coverage had really focused its hate lasers on her.

“We gotta figure out what we’re going to do,” he said.

“When you say we, I guess you’re making me come up with it. You haven’t had a good idea since the ninth grade,” she said, only half teasing.

Drew glanced at her. “I think we should go back.”

“Like that’s going to help me? They’ll put me in jail. I’ll have to rot there with a bunch of women who will want to pet my hair. No thanks.”

“No,” he said. “I know a place. I think we can hide in plain sight until your dad fixes everything. If we keep ru

Bria

Drew leaned closer and tried to kiss her, but this time she pulled away. “I think I know a place where no one will find us until this mess blows over.”

She turned her attention and started to type on her phone’s keyboard.

Drew reached over and put his hand on hers.

“We can’t use our phones anymore,” he said.

“I want to text my mom.”

Drew nodded. “I know, but you can’t. From now on, we have to stop texting, calling, Facebooking.” He pointed to a cell tower they whizzed past along the roadside. It had been painted green and out-fitted with branches so fake they looked like throwbacks to the seventies, when synthetic trees were in their begi

“I can’t live without my phone,” Bria

“We have to,” he said. He handed over his phone. “Take out my SIM card and then remove yours.”

“That seems extreme,” Bria

He looked at her. “You can’t read it. The towers are collecting every little click. Even when your phone is off they can track us.”

Reluctantly, Bria

“I’m not letting anything happen to us,” he said. “I’m not taking any chances.”

The sky had darkened by then, and Bria

Chapter 20

HAYLEY WOKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, just past 1 a.m. The movie she and Colton had seen was about a town full of possessed teenagers, and while it was scary, Little Town Dripped in Blood wasn’t the cause of her insomnia. Something else was. Her heart was racing. She wasn’t thirsty, but she knew that she needed a big glass of water. Water fueled the gift she shared with her sister. Somehow the fluid made the messages flow in the way electric current passes through water.

She threw a robe over her nightgown and quietly went downstairs to fill a glass from the tap. Hedda, who didn’t like to be alone for even a second, followed her. After she drank, Hayley carried the dog to the overstuffed sofa that her mother always said was too big for the living room. The night was still. She could hear her father’s light snoring from her parents’ bedroom. The clock ticked. An animal rattled the Jameses’ trash cans left out on the street for pick-up later that morning.

Hayley sank into the cushions and waited. It was 1:23 a.m. and for some strange reason that particular time always seemed to hold a little power for her. Hayley softly closed her eyes.

“Hedda,” she said, petting the dachshund’s wiry coat. “I wish you could talk to me. I know you feel things too. Unfortunately for us,” she continued, “this doesn’t work that way.”

With that, she waited. The waiting felt a bit like sitting on the shore and staring out to the flat line of the horizon, squinting hard for the mast of a ship, or maybe the dorsal fin of an orca, something, anything. Just a hint that something lay just beneath the murky surface.

Her eyelids fluttered as she held on to the dog, thinking, concentrating, hoping for relief from whatever it was that was keeping her awake.

The first image was unmistakable. The low-slung expanse of the concrete ribbon that traverses the Hood Canal cha

Hedda squirmed in her arms, but she held the dog tightly. She could feel her anxiety escalating, almost choking her as she braced herself for whatever was next.

Suddenly, the scene changed. The flash of a man’s face came into fleeting view. It was a face that was unfamiliar to her. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a swarthy complexion. He was average in height, maybe a little stocky in build. She couldn’t quite grab how old he was. Then, like a slide show on its fastest speed, another man—this one older with sandy hair and light eyes, holding a folder or an envelope—appeared. Hayley felt a flash of terror.

He shoved the envelope at the first man who took a step backward, nodding unhappily. Hayley’s heart rate, already fast, had started to accelerate more. Even in the midst of the images coming from behind her shut eyes, she could feel the dampness spread across her brow. It was the kind of moisture that came with rigorous physical activity—or fear.