And okay, I was definitely biased when it came to Garrett. To fully overcome my negative view of him, he’d have to rescue a busload of orphans, puppies, and kittens from a fiery and certain death. In other words, never gonna happen.
Despite that, even
I
was convinced that his concern for Jilly was real. He cared about the girl—enough to put himself at risk to try to find her.
And that was not nothing.
Even Milo smiled as Garrett returned with a dramatic leap over the back of the couch. He landed with his feet already up on the coffee table and proceeded to give his full attention to his cell phone.
“So what’s your good reason for being late?” Dana asked me, but then she straightened up and both she and Calvin looked over at Milo. “Try the wireless now.”
Milo was holding both our surveillance tablet and the remote, and when he clicked the latter, the TV came on. Instantly, the three real-time shots from inside Rochelle’s house—the ones that we’d previously only been able to see on the tablet—appeared on Cal’s giant TV.
“
Yes!
” Garrett yelled out triumphantly from his spot on the couch. He’d done nothing to help, manatee removal aside. In fact, he was still busy scrolling through his phone and didn’t even bother to look up. “Uh-oh,” he said.
“What?” I asked, moving closer to the TV. Rochelle was nowhere in sight. The sofa was empty, as was the kitchen. The third camera was still focused through the open doorway to the home gym, aimed at that dead-bolted closet door.
That
was the side of the screen that Milo was watching.
“My dad’s been texting me off the hook,” Garrett announced. “He’s pissed. Rochelle must’ve called and left him some big, long thank-you for the flowers and how nice it was that I’d brought them over, and he’s basically all WTF.
CALL ME RIGHT NOW
—that one’s in all caps, like he’s gonna pop a vein.” Garrett studied his phone for another second. “Eh.” He shrugged and clicked his cell to silent mode and then dropped it onto the couch beside him. “Damage done. He’ll get over it. Another two, three weeks, he won’t even remember.”
“Has Rochelle been up yet this morning?” I asked, looking around at my friends, uncertain whose turn it was to monitor the video feeds.
“She crawled off the sofa at around five a.m.,” Calvin reported. “Hasn’t been back downstairs since. But she and Miles have been—” He cut himself off, as if he suddenly realized that I might not welcome a sentence that started with the words
She and Miles have been
.
He was right.
“Texting.” Milo quickly spoke up from the sofa. “Via my new burner phone.” He held it up. “I told her I got her number off Garrett’s phone and…I just sent you a text, too, with the new number.”
After
he’d exchanged texts with Rochelle.
Milo no doubt was able to read my mind despite our lack of contact, and he coughed. “I didn’t really care about waking her, so…I was trying to get her to meet up earlier. For lunch instead of dinner.”
My heart was pounding. “So you’re actually going to go through with meeting her for
lunch
now.”
“No,” he said. “Well,
no
because Ro’s not available until seven. Tonight. For dinner.”
Ro?
Give me a break.
“So,” Dana prompted Milo to continue, “did you make solid plans with her?”
“We’re on for dinner at seven sharp.”
“Good boy. Rochelle will definitely be ready. She wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Dana had
that
right.
“Gonna be interesting to see what’s on her busy, busy schedule for today,” she continued, settling onto the sofa between Garrett and Milo, and putting her steel-toed boots up onto the coffee table.
Thump
and
thump
.
Now that we no longer had to peer at the tiny tablet to monitor the feeds from Rochelle’s house, Dana turned her attention to me. “Good reason for being inexcusably late?” she prompted with her usual tact and grace.
I definitely deserved bonus points for not taking my frustration with Milo out on her.
“Yes,” I said politely instead of screaming at her. “It occurred to me that my mother’s been in touch with Sasha’s mother, so I asked my mom to give her a call, see if we could set up a visit. You know, instead of me homing in on her, and then Sasha’s parents wondering how we found them and getting all freaked out and probably not even letting me see her—”
“A normie approach,” Dana said, nodding. “Smart. When will we know if you’re cleared to visit?”
“Right now,” I said. “I’m cleared. Calvin, as well. I told my mom that he wanted to see Sasha, too—and that he could drive me. She already called and set it up. Well, almost set it up. We’re working out the best day and time for Sasha, but it’s definitely going to happen before the end of school vacation.”
“Sooner is better,” Dana reminded me. “Today, in fact, would be—”
“Yes, I know, but we’re trying to find a time that’s best for
Sasha
,” I said a bit testily.
“Also?” Cal chimed in, aiming his words at Dana. “A delay gives us more time to meet with Morgan and convince her to go with.”
To my surprise, Dana nodded. I looked at Cal, confused. “I thought that was a dead end.”
After leaving the CoffeeBoy last night, Calvin had attempted to email Morgan, but his message had bounced. Her email account had been deleted. Just like that. Same thing happened when we tried to call the phone number from which we’d received those texts. It was disconnected. Even the Internet message board where he’d first made contact was shut down.
“Is her email working again?” I asked.
“Noooooo,” Cal said, drawing out the vowel in a way that clued me in to the fact that he and Dana had done some strategizing without me. “But we’ve been brainstorming ideas for how to do a face-to-face.”
He wasn’t kidding. But before he could elaborate, Garrett pointed to the TV screen. “Guys! Heads up!”
Sure enough, Rochelle had come into view, via the kitchen-cam.
I sat down, tailor-style, on Cal’s floor and held my breath, studying the Destiny addict’s petite and perfect body. She moved like a dancer—all grace and elegant lines—and it was weird to think she was, in truth, a total monster. Today, she was wearing a pair of jean cutoffs, along with a white spaghetti-strap tank top. Her hair was, of course, perfect, too, and her tanned skin glowed as she went directly toward what looked like a programmable coffeemaker, opening the cabinet above it to get a mug.
But the cabinet was bare—she was going to have to give in and do the dishes. But as we watched, she took a mug from the pile of dirties in the sink, dumped out whatever had been in it, sniffed it, then poured herself some coffee.
“Ew, not even a rinse?” Garrett asked. Apparently he, of the toilet manatee, was squeamish about
that
.
That obvious discussion Cal and Dana had had about Morgan—and probably quite a few other things before I’d arrived—had left me feeling out of the loop. And last night’s bad dream was still a vivid memory, so I asked, “Has anyone come out to the house? I’m thinking male, ginormous, hairy shoulders, scabby knees…?” I turned to look at Milo and found him staring at me as if maybe my words had rung a bell. “It definitely wasn’t Man-in-Black from the spa parking lot money-drop. He was big, too, but it wasn’t him.”
Now Dana, Garrett, and Cal were also looking at me.
“Who wasn’t him?” Garrett asked, confused.
“No one’s come to the house,” Dana said. She looked at Milo and Garrett. “Right?”
“Not that I saw,” Milo said.
“Nope. It’s been all Ro, all alone. So where do you get
scabby knees
?” Garrett asked.
“I had a weird dream last night,” I reported.
“How weird?” Dana asked, eyes narrowing. “And was it a dream or a vision?”
Milo turned to look at me again, and now he was frowning too. But really, his expression was more sad than anything.
I studied the tops of my hands and shook my head. “I don’t…know. I feel…felt…like it was real. But I don’t think it was in
real time
, you know, like a psychic event. It felt more like a memory, but through someone else’s eyes…if that makes sense. It wasn’t
my
memory, but at the same time, it kind of was. For most of it, I was in a closet, so I was thinking I was picking up something from Jilly, because… Well. But there was this giant man with a belt and, yeah, really nasty knees.”
Milo made a noise deep in his throat, like he’d been wounded. Just as quickly, he cleared his throat and reached into his pocket to pull out a piece of Smok’B’Gon gum.
Garrett did his creepy-laugh thing and looked from Dana to me and back again. “Do you seriously mean
visions
? Like, your dreams actually come
true
?”
“Not all of them,” I replied. “Sometimes. It’s kind of hard to explain.” I then told Dana and the guys the details—well, most of them—about the dream, focusing on the man with the belt and the smell of evil. As I spoke, I was even more convinced that I was somehow seeing the world through Jilly’s traumatized eyes.
“But since there’s been no giant, hairy, scabby-kneed men showing up here,” I pointed out, “maybe Dana’s theory is right. Maybe Rochelle sold Jilly to her dealer, who sold her to some Destiny farm, where she’s been thrown into their version of solitary because—”
“No.” Milo interrupted me.
I looked over at him, eyebrows raised. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I mean, maybe you were just, you know, dreaming. Jilly’s in that closet”—he pointed at the TV screen—“in
that
beach house. I know it. There’s no giant hairy man, just Rochelle, who, believe me, is awful enough.”
“You
know
it,” I countered flatly. “Because
your
G-T talents include omniscience—oh, wait, except you’re not a Greater-Than. You’re just a normie.”
As the words left my lips, I wished I could take them back, even before the hurt flashed in Milo’s dark eyes. There was no such thing as
just a normie
, and even if there was, he was anything but.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as Milo looked away from me. “I didn’t mean that.”
And there we were, sitting there in silence, while Dana, Cal, and Garrett all tried to be invisible.
“I know,” Milo finally said, glancing back at me.
“Guys?” Garrett pointed to the TV.
Rochelle had left the kitchen, and for a moment, we all just stared at the video feeds, trying to figure out where she’d gone.
“There!” Dana said, pointing.
As we watched, Rochelle went into her playroom-slash-home-gym and headed directly for that dead-bolted closet door.
“She’s going to open it,” Cal started in a hushed voice, as if Rochelle could hear us from his rec room.
“Open it, dammit!” Milo hissed through clenched teeth. He was leaning forward in his seat on the couch, his eyes glued to the screen as though his life depended on it. “Open the closet, Ro!”
Dana also leaned forward as she, too, watched Rochelle. And we all heard the click of the lock as it opened.
The door creaked, and Rochelle quickly went inside. Despite the high quality of the camera, everything beyond the door was completely dark.
“Do you see anything—” I started. But Rochelle swung the door closed behind her, leaving us as clueless as we were a minute ago.
“
Shit!
” Milo breathed.
“She’ll come back out again,” Garrett said. “She did last night.”
All four of us whipped our heads around to look at him.
“I’m sorry,” Dana said in a normal voice, but then leaned in close to shout, “
What?
”
“
Heh-heh.
” Garrett thought she was kidding. “She went in, she came out; she went in, she came out. You know?”
“Rochelle went into that closet
twice
last night?” I clarified, and he nodded.
“When?” Milo asked.
“It was when I was watching the tablet,” Garrett said. “Dana was sleeping in the backseat of my car and you—”
“Went to get dinner,” Milo grimly finished for him.
“It didn’t occur to you to wake me up?” Dana was incredulous.
“Or to tell me when I got back with the food?” Milo asked.
Garrett looked from Milo to Dana to Cal to me. It’s possible I was making the least-angry-looking face, because he explained to me somewhat plaintively, “But we were looking for any sign of Jilly.” He turned back to Milo. “You came back and you said,
Any sign of Jilly?
And there wasn’t. Any. Jilly.”
“And you didn’t think the fact that Rochelle went into that closet—twice—was worth reporting?” Dana asked.
“Well, no,” Garrett said, “because she didn’t bring Jilly out with her.”
“You told us about the
very important fact
that Rochelle farted,” Dana pointed out. “You even wrote down the time code for when it happened.”
“Well, yeah, because that was funny,” Garrett said. “It was like a trombone solo.” He imitated the sound, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Calvin making a mental note to rewind to that part of the digital recording.
“What is she doing in there?” Dana asked. “And what was she doing last night?”
“I don’t know,” Garrett said. “All I know is, she went in and after a few minutes, she came out. And then she did it again.”
What was behind that dead-bolted closet door?
I found myself leaning forward, too, but on Cal’s TV nothing moved.
The waiting was terrible. Seconds passed, and then minutes, and nothing happened. And nothing happened. And…
“Here she comes!” Cal exclaimed.
Sure enough, the door to the closet was moving, Rochelle’s talon-like fingers wrapped around the edge as she pushed the door open and came back out into the hallway. Her body was positioned so that, once again, there was no way for any of us to spot what lay beyond her, inside that very dark closet. Cal grabbed the tablet, opened a fourth window, and used it to rewind the footage from that camera’s feed. He played it back and even took several screenshot stills, zooming in close in an attempt to see into the darkness. But all we saw were close-ups of darkness.