Authors: Mandy Hubbard
So I pick up the mat and look under there. No dice.
As a last resort, I slide my fingers over the doorframe.
Bingo. A single key. It’s old and rusty, and I can’t help but wonder if the locks are the same ones that were there when the Carsons lived inside. I shrug off the thought and pop the key in. The door creaks as I push it open, causing me to cringe.
“Logan?” I call out, my voice pathetically shaky. I’m getting nervous, now, but I’ve come this far.
I step back and replace the key, and then enter the house, my feet whisper silent as I step down the dark hall. All I can hear is the pounding of my own heartbeat.
Daemon didn’t give me a very extensive tour when I was here last—other than of the basement—but he did show me where the bedrooms are, so that’s where I’ll start.
The hardwood steps creak with each footstep. I pause in
the middle and listen again, but there’s nothing but shadows and silence.
I make my way to the top of the stairs and go to the door directly across the hall. Logan told me the other day that the bedroom with the fluttering dark curtains belonged to Daemon, which makes it this bedroom.
One curtain is open, the last dying rays of sunlight streaming in. I creep up to the big dark teak antique dresser. When I open the top drawer, I’m disappointed to see nothing but socks. Undeterred, I dig around a bit, and my fingers slide across something hard.
I pull it out, shock surging through me as I realize what I’m holding.
A can of red paint. The same kind we were using to prepare for the Halloween Masquerade. It’s light, mostly empty. I stare at it for a long moment, remembering the red handprints that emblazoned the car windows at school.
I blink away the image and put the can back where I found it. So the handprints were Daemon’s, which means he
did
wreck Bick’s car…unless he was seeking recognition for something he didn’t actually do. That seems unlikely, especially because he also seemed to take credit for the stop signs.
I shudder. How can Logan ignore this? He must know. He has to.
I rifle through the other drawers, uncovering little more than track pants, ball caps, and soccer shirts. I go to the closet and pull open the double doors, but inside it’s mostly empty. A jacket, two pairs of sneakers, and a few discarded books.
I’m not sure what I’d expected. Newspaper clippings? This all looks so easy on
CSI
.
Maybe it’s Logan who keeps the sentimental things. He has the photo album, after all. He might have kept some other mementoes of their time in Cedar Cove.
I stop at the entrance to Daemon’s room and look to my right, to the door that belongs to their uncle’s room, or at least that’s what Daemon claimed. So I go left, to the third door, where I think I’ll find Logan’s room.
The floor creaks under my feet as I approach his room. Just as my fingers touch the solid wood five-paneled door, I hear something.
Tires on gravel.
My heart leaps to my throat and I rush back to the window in Daemon’s room, where I look out to see the dark SUV rolling down the driveway.
Great. They must have forgotten something. I rush back into the hall, giving one last longing glance at Logan’s room. I need to explore it. I need to know what secrets he and his brother are hiding.
Now I won’t have the chance.
I scramble down the stairs, my fingers gliding down the wooden banister. I can’t be caught in here. Logan can’t know.
I fly out the back door, barely stopping to close it behind me, and across the back lawn. I hear a car door slam shut as I sprint across the grass and dash into the tree line.
I go down almost immediately, tripping on a tree root I
didn’t see in the shadows. I lie there on the ground for a long moment, staring up into the cloudy sky, catching my breath as the painful throbbing in my shoulder recedes. At the rate I’m going, my collarbone is never going to heal.
I listen until the back door of the house squeaks open and bangs shut, and then I get up and run, weaving in and out of the trees, until I’m around the front of the house.
And then I race down the driveway and out onto the main road, to where my car’s hidden around the corner, my heart thundering in my ears until I’m safely ensconced inside.
Daemon stole stop signs. Put blood-red handprints on my car and dozens of others. He must have left me the roses with the twisted notes and messed with the wheel on the quad. Who knows if he had anything to do with the cow bones and dead birds? And he nearly killed Bick.
How far will he go if I don’t stop him?
“H
ow do you feel about a road trip?” I ask, sliding into the passenger seat of Adam’s Samurai. I asked him to pick me up this morning, but I never told him why his services were required.
Come to think of it, there’s actually a slim chance Logan will show up around ten minutes from now to find that I’ve already left, but it serves him right for keeping secrets.
Adam blinks. He doesn’t even look fully awake yet. “Um, to where?”
I purse my lips. “Oregon.”
“And why, exactly, do we need to ditch class and drive three hours?” he asks, his brows scrunched up. “Besides, I’m supposed to help Allie bring a bunch of masquerade stuff to the gym this morning. You know, because I’m such a strong guy and all.”
I ignore his lame attempt at a joke. “I want to go to Cedar Cove.”
He narrows his eyes. “Isn’t that—”
“It’s where Logan’s from.”
Adam frowns. “Look, I’m not taking you two on some—”
“He’s not invited.”
Adam scrunches his eyebrows together. “Care to explain?”
“There’s something going on with his brother. Something that he’s hiding from me. And I’ve gotta figure out what it is.” I turn to Adam and put my hands up in a mock prayer. “Please, please, please, please? You know how I am about freeways. If you don’t drive, I’ll never get there.”
“If Logan won’t tell you anything, what makes you think—”
“People talk. There has to be somebody who knows what happened. Or school newspapers that would pick up stuff the regular media didn’t.”
“This is a little too Nancy Drew, don’t you think? Maybe you should just leave it alone. Or better yet, just
ask
Logan.”
I shake my head. “I
have
asked him, but he’s too busy protecting his brother to tell me everything. Weird crap keeps happening, to me and half this town. I know it’s bothering you too. This is our chance to figure it out.”
Adam looks away, out the window. Which means he’s thinking about it.
I chew on my lip, contemplating how much to reveal. “Look, I haven’t told this to Bick, and I don’t know if we should, because you know how he is. He’ll take matters into his own hands. But I think Daemon’s the one who wrecked him. I think Daemon’s…activities started back when they were in
Cedar Cove. So I want to go down there and see if I can dig up anything. If we get enough evidence, we can go to the police. We have to stop him.”
“Whoa, back up,” Adam says, his eyes wide. “Why would Daemon go after Bick?”
“I don’t know, and I have no proof.”
I don’t tell Adam about the paint can I found in Daemon’s room. I can’t exactly tell the cops I broke into his house and found it. And besides, Bick and I removed the red handprint from his truck. There’s no longer anything to tie it to the accident.
“Please? I need you.”
Adam sighs, shifting into gear. “All right, fine. Let’s go.”
The last hour of the drive to Cedar Cove takes us along a winding highway that threads through the foothills, bringing us closer to the Pacific Ocean with each shadowed bend and turn. A dark, oppressive cloud hangs low overhead, threatening rain.
When the road finally flattens out, adorable little motels and inns begin to dot the landscape, and that’s how I know we’re close. Billboards, seemingly out of place on such a quiet, rural road, crop up on each side, advertising suites and windsurfing and everything you’d expect from a coastal tourist trap.
Just past a sign for Go Karts and Putt-Putt golf, we pull onto the main drag and Adam stops at a red light. “So, what’s the plan?” He glances at his watch. It’s twelve forty already. The drive took even longer than I was expecting, especially since
Adam insisted on stopping for snacks. Twice. The wrappers litter the floorboards and a Big Gulp cup sits in the cup holder next to me.
I sit up in my seat. “Let’s go to the school first. If we’re lucky, it’s big enough that we can slip in unnoticed,” I say, pretending as if I know exactly where to start. It seemed obvious when we were in Enumclaw, but now that I’m here, I am not sure what to do. I find it difficult to believe that no one will notice the new girl with the shoulder brace.
“I don’t know…” Adam says. “I don’t think I want to trespass on school property.”
I decide to take charge. “I just need to get into the library. And maybe talk to a few students, see if they remember Logan or Daemon.”
Adam knows me too well to buy it. “Yeah, but it seems kinda sketchy,” he says, flicking on his blinker and following the signs to the high school, despite his protest. “I’m not big on criminal records.”
His words send a new wave of butterflies through my stomach, and I almost balk. It can’t be criminal to walk around a high school if you’re actually a teen, can it? It’s not like we’re planning to vandalize it or something.
Besides, I have to know what Logan is hiding. I have to know if the stuff that’s happening to me—to the town—happened here. “Come on, it’s not that big of a deal,” I say, shrugging as if I actually believe that it’s not. “We’ll be there twenty minutes. Tops.”
“Do I have to?” he asks.
“Did you see Bick’s face?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Adam says.
“Not the day it happened. You saw it a couple days later when he came back to class, and the swelling went down. He looked like he lost a fight with a brick wall the day I picked him up from the hospital.”
Adam groans as he turns into the packed school parking lot, snagging one of the last available parking spaces at the back. “Okay, okay. You’re right. Let’s just get this over with.”
I look around as he straightens out the car. I want people to think we’re students, but I don’t want to get caught by a school security guard who thinks we really
are
students, playing hooky. There’s no way I can explain to my dad why I’m five hours away in the principal’s office at the wrong high school. I’d be lucky if he remembers Logan’s name, let alone understands why I’m all the way down here, investigating his past.
“Come on,” I say. We get out of the car and walk to the side doors while Adam shoves his keys into his pocket. I glance around, taking it all in as I bury my hands in the front pocket of my hoodie. An ocean breeze, briny and fresh, drifts over us. The school is not very big, a little smaller than Enumclaw, probably has a couple hundred students in each class. Hopefully the size helps. If it were too big, there’d always be the chance that people wouldn’t remember Logan, but if it were too small, everyone would know we don’t belong here.
It’s pretty, though, with a manicured lawn and hedges, and it’s made of brick, with a glass sculpture meant to mimic ocean waves sweeping across the wall near the main entrance.
We step into the halls just as a shrill bell rings out, and in an instant, we’re jammed into a mix of students, shoulder-to-shoulder. Adam grabs my elbow, linking us together as we push through the crowd.
I see a giant sign proclaiming M
AIN
O
FFICE
and move faster, dragging Adam behind me even as I knock into student after student. We might not be low profile, but I don’t want anyone from the school administration seeing me, knowing I don’t belong.
We round the corner and my heart thump-thumps when I see a placard for the library hanging from the breezeway. We scurry across the courtyard, our feet nearly silent on the concrete. I tighten my grip on Adam’s hand and pull him harder, wanting this mission to be over, wanting to get to the truth and just…
know.
We step into the library, the sounds of the crowd dying instantly. A few students look up at us, curious, and I hope I’m right—I hope this school is big enough that we seem anonymous.
“Come on,” I say, faking confidence, control. “I want to see if there are any student newspapers from the time Logan was here.”
Adam shrugs and follows me, having given up any further attempts at protest. We weave between tables sparsely populated with students quietly studying and eating lunch, toward a circular desk in the back.
“Excuse me,” I say, stepping up to the guy behind the desk. Huh. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a guy school librarian before. I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I
was hoping for a sleepy, detached sort of librarian. “I’m looking for the student papers from last spring and fall. Do you know where I can find them?”