Except for a bloody partial handprint on her wall.
The files are all still on the corner of his desk. My dad reads them every night before he goes to sleep. If he even sleeps at all.
When I get to the bottom of the stairs and peek inside his office, it’s empty. The boxes are all over the place, some of them open, piles of papers laid out everywhere. My dad’s one of those visual/tactile learners. He’s got to lay everything out, move it around, and really study it, and then answers just come to him.
Obviously, he and Struz
were
working, and on an older case, something ongoing if it has this much of a paper trail, but everything looks like he just left it and went up to bed.
Which isn’t like him.
Although his oldest child did just come back from the dead. I suppose I could cut him some slack.
The “light” box that Alex strategically placed so I could snoop through it is one of the open ones. Only it doesn’t have anything to do with my truck or the driver. It’s an old case file from 1983, a series of deaths in California and Nevada, where the victims were killed from radiation poisoning. Deep gamma burns practically disfigured the bodies, most likely the result of some kind of nuclear exposure.
I leaf through the pages, scanning them for anything that might explain why these old files are in my dad’s study. Apparently, nothing other than the actual bodies had any kind of radiation residue—as if the bodies had been dumped somewhere else after exposure.
“All the nuclear plants nearby were searched, and nothing was found amiss.” I jump and drop the folders back into the box. “And the victims were never identified. Not even by dental records.”
When I turn around, my dad is leaning in the doorway to the office. He’s in sweatpants and an old army T-shirt—one that he doesn’t quite fill out the way he used to—his tattoos peeking out from under the sleeves. The lines in his face are starting to show, and his hair is starting to gray. He wears “tired” like an old friend.
“So they just stopped investigating?”
“I’ve got boxes full of theories and investigation notes,” he says with a shrug. “But they never found anything, and there were only three victims. After that, it seemed like just the Bureau’s presence stopped whatever was happening.”
This bothers me more than knowing that there are people out there who we know are guilty, but can’t prove it. This is more than just a flaw in the system. Because no one figured it out. These people died alone, and they’re the only ones who know how it happened—them and whoever was responsible. Someone else should know.
I’m about to say something when I see a photograph on top of a stack of papers on my dad’s desk. It looks like the body of a man—I think—and I can’t tell how old he is, because his body is so badly distorted by the radiation burns that he doesn’t even look human.
Nausea rolls through me. This photograph isn’t from the eighties. Based on the time stamp at the bottom corner, it’s from last week. Six days ago.
“Don’t ask,” my dad says before I can open my mouth. He moves farther into the room and flips over the photograph. “You know I can’t talk about active cases.”
The distorted image of the dead man in the photo is burned into my retinas, and I have to blink a few times to try to see something else. And that’s when I realize there was something else in the photograph—a set of numbers, written in marker on top of the picture.
29:21:33:21
.
“W
hat are the numbers?” I ask as I reach for the photo and turn it over. For a minute I feel a sense of déjà vu, like I’ve seen them before. Then I realize why. They’re similar to a set of numbers I saw out of the corner of my eye when I walked in, written on top of another picture—one I hadn’t really looked at.
There are photos everywhere in this office. Reaching across the table, I grab a different one. This one is the body of a woman. The whole right side of her body is covered in burns that render her unrecognizable. The left side of her body looks pristine. It makes it even harder to look at her.
The numbers are there, though, in my dad’s handwriting. Written in black Sharpie in the top corner of the image.
44:14:38:44
. I look back at the other set of numbers and the photograph of the dead man. The dates of the incidents on the time stamps are fifteen days apart. “It’s a countdown, but to what?”
A quick look of surprise flits across my dad’s face before he looks even-keeled again, and I know I’ve hit it right.
He shakes his head the way he does when he can’t figure something out.
“You’re counting down to something. I mean, what’s the end date?” Because that’s the bottom line—what’s important. Countdowns lead to something. What and when are the important questions to answer first. The how and why will come later.
He doesn’t answer. Not that I really expected him to. The fact that he hasn’t shooed me back upstairs to bed yet means he’s frustrated enough to forget the rules.
I set down the photograph and reach for one of the reports, skimming for numbers. I see them—
46:05:49:21—
and a reference to forty-six days only a sentence later. But I see something else too—
UIED
—before my dad remembers himself and pulls the report from my hand, placing it back on his desk.
“There’s something off about this one.” I have no idea what he means by “off.” He’s investigated thousands of cases, and there’s always one keeping him up at night.
But I know what UIED means—Unidentified Improvised Explosive Device.
How a countdown factors into a UIED is relatively easy to deduce. The countdown is a timer for some kind of explosive. But what it has to do with the bodies and the radiation is well beyond me.
“Where did you find an unidentified explosive device?” I ask. “Is it a bomb?” I grab the report back from him and flip through it.
“San Diego PD followed a lead and found it in an abandoned motel room after the first crime scene two months ago. They called in the bomb squad and us.”
“And?” But I’m still flipping through the report, and one line catches my eye.
So far all attempts to stop the countdown have been unsuccessful
.
“This thing isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen,” my dad says, but it’s clear from his quiet, distant tone that he’s talking to himself. Then he sees the look on my face and adds, “The bodies and the UIED might not be connected,” but I can tell he doesn’t believe that.
I gesture to the countdown on the photographs. “You’re keeping track of how it relates to these deaths. How does it?” He must at least think it does, if he’s gone to the trouble to cross-reference them down to the second of the countdown. But even with my photographic memory and affinity for numbers, I don’t see an obvious connection. “Is there some kind of pattern?” If there is, I don’t see it.
My dad shakes his head, and for a minute I think he’s going to tell me—to say something else about the case. But instead he nods toward the door. “Go on, go back to bed.”
My skin itches—or rather, something
underneath
my skin itches—everywhere.
“You have to be exhausted, J-baby,” my dad says. “Don’t worry about this one. You know I’ll figure it out.”
I nod and leave the room, even though I’m not convinced the way I usually am.
I
was
exhausted. But now I’m not. Because I have the same feeling I did when I watched Ben Michaels ride his bike up Highway 101. Deep-seated conviction. A feeling of absolute certainty I couldn’t ignore even if I wanted to.
I glance at my watch and hope being resurrected from the dead didn’t affect my ability to do math in my head. Based on the time stamps of the photographs, we’re at twenty-one days, seventeen hours, thirty-nine minutes, seventeen seconds. And counting.
I
t’s been four days, and I still haven’t been able to figure out how the UIED fits in with my dad’s case. I’ve tried to do some more snooping, but Dad has taken to locking his office when he knows I’m around and he isn’t. I can’t stop thinking about it, though. Those radiation burns are all I see when I close my eyes.
But the first person I see when I get out of Nick’s car in Eastview’s student lot is Ben Michaels.
He looks exactly like the Ben Michaels I would have pictured
before
: standing with a group of other nondescript stoners, all wearing similar dark hoodies and grungy, no-name-band T-shirts, most of them smoking something more than conventional cigarettes, some of them drinking something
more
than water from a water bottle. Elijah Palma and Reid Suitor stand in the center of the group; Ben’s on the outskirts, shoulders slumped and his hands buried deep in the pockets of his baggy jeans while he half leans against some rich kid’s SUV. I can’t see his eyes under the mess of dark brown curls, but I wonder if he’s staring back at me.
And I feel like my forehead—the exact spot where his cool lips brushed my skin—is on fire, and I have this crazy urge to reach up and somehow wipe his touch away.
“Janelle, c’mon!”
Jared and Nick are a car’s length away from me, walking toward the school. I shift my bag and follow them, ignoring Nick’s raised eyebrow and the flood of heat rushing to my face.
Just like I ignore the stares from half the senior class when Nick puts his arm around my shoulder and we walk through the front gate.
Normally I’d be driving myself and getting to school early but I’m not allowed to drive. Once you have a seizure, even if it’s just one, you’re marked as a possible epileptic. Not that I don’t get it, I do. I’m just not a fan of this rule when it applies to me.
This means I’ve missed two days of school. Thursday Struz took me to see a specialist. She ran some tests, and hopefully she’ll clear me to drive when the results come back. And it’s not like anything ever happens on the first day of school anyway.
I missed an AP diagnostic and listening to the teacher read the syllabus? Oh, too bad. Friday my mother couldn’t stop throwing up, and even though I
think
she’s been taking all her meds, on days when her body has a physical manifestation of her depression, someone needs to keep an eye on her. And it’s not like my dad can do it.
“So, Bread Bites for lunch?” Nick asks when we’re standing outside my homeroom.
“I can’t,” I say, thankful for a legit excuse. It’s not that I don’t want to hang out with him—I do. I just hate that suddenly because I was injured he’s gone from goofy, immature, half-brained Nick to this skittish, hovering, insecure woodland creature who wants to attach himself to me at all times.
But Nick just looks at me, and he doesn’t jump to the obvious conclusion.
“Juniors don’t get off-campus lunches.”
A smile sweeps over his face, and he nods. “I can get you off campus for lunch. Or we can order delivery.”
And with that, the irritable, bitchy edge I’ve been walking around with the past few days melts away. Staying on campus for lunch as a senior is social suicide, and he’s risking it for me?
“It was awesome of you to bring Jared pizza, but you don’t need to worry about me like that.” Not that Nick’s popularity is going to suffer, but he never struck me as the kind of guy who’d forgo bullshitting with the boys to hang out with a girl. And I don’t need him to do that for me.
“Don’t look so surprised.” He laughs as he leans in and kisses the skin just beneath my ear.
Feeling his lips against my skin, I’m a little short of breath, and the smile on his face when he pulls back is almost enough to turn me into most girls.
Until I see Reid Suitor walk past us with his head down as he ducks into our homeroom. I don’t know exactly what I plan to say to him. But I know he was there when I died. He must know something.
“Gotta go,” I say to Nick before following Reid. He and I have been in Dockery’s homeroom since freshman year, and just like every other year, her walls are covered with old history posters—facts about US presidents, magazine collages about momentous dates or events. The only thing worse would be, of course, if the walls peeking out from behind the posters were painted something like a stifling bright orange. Oh wait, they are.
Per usual, Dockery’s animated face shines through her pile of platinum-blond hair, and she’s lost in a story about something embarrassing that happened to her while she was driving—seriously,
her
license should be revoked, not mine—but I wait, watching Reid, who’s perfectly in my line of sight.
He’s found the other two stoners in our homeroom, and the three of them are huddled together in the back corner as far away from Dockery as they can get.
I’ve never for the life of me understood Reid Suitor. Outwardly he doesn’t look like he’d have anything in common with Ben. His jeans seem like they fit, and he’s wearing a blue collared shirt and a gray V-neck sweater, which would look nerdy on most guys, but somehow it manages to look alternative on him. He’s always been cute—Kate’s probably still a little in love with him—and he’s got these bright blue eyes, eyelashes that extend for days, and sandy brown hair. Really, he could probably be some kind of Calvin Klein model.
But more than that, I know there’s a brain behind that pretty face. I had to proofread one of his essays in Honors Humanities last year—luck of the draw—and not only was his paper done, but it was actually good. Good enough that I had to struggle to edit it, which doesn’t happen to me often.
“Oh, Janelle!” Dockery says, handing me my schedule. “We missed you last week. I was so sorry to hear about your accident. I’m glad you’re okay!”
“Thanks,” I say before glaring at Alex, who’s already sitting at our usual table.
He just shrugs, like he can’t understand why I wouldn’t want Dockery—and thus the entire school—to know I got hit by a truck and came back from the dead. For someone so anti-drama, he’s clueless about how it starts.
With a sigh, I drop my bag next to him and flop into my chair before glancing down at my schedule. Once I look at it, I’m tempted to tear it into pieces.