The Summer We Forgot, page 31
What the heck did Spooner write in his journal?
“Our warrant permits us to search Darby’s bedroom for documentation and items pertaining to Spooner’s location, Camp Choctawhatchee, and Horowitz’s death.” Detective Sutter glances at shoe bins and family photos. “Let’s hope Spooner didn’t commit murder for Darby’s sake. A judge would consider her an accessory, perhaps an accomplice.”
The detective looks at me a final time before trudging upstairs with the officers.
“Her room is down the hall,” Mom calls after them. She clutches her mouth and weeps, and I cry, too, because I can’t make this bad stuff disappear.
Dad approaches me, his brow furrowed into a dash. “Where’s Spooner?”
“I can’t tell you.” Because sharing the truth would lead police to Camp Choctawhatchee and a hostage situation. I must keep my mouth shut, not only to guard myself, but to protect the other counselors. At least I have an alibi for the night Spooner disappeared. Detective Sutter may charge me with obstruction of justice, but she can’t lock me up for kidnapping or murder.
Well, not yet.
“Be honest, Darby. Are you hiding stuff in your room?” Dad asks.
A hollow sensation carves into my belly. I whirl toward the staircase. My legs shake, and a voice deep within me says it’s too late, I’m out of options.
Detective Sutter will find the bin. She’ll log into evidence my list of suspects, research, the blackmail, every dirty little secret. I wasn’t calculated enough to predict a search warrant. I should’ve had the foresight and transported my bin to a safer location.
“Yes,” I whisper, tears streaming my cheeks. “I hid a lot of things.”
Moments later Detective Sutter descends the staircase. “You’ll hear from me in the next couple days.” She reaches the foyer, her dark eyes gleaming with triumph as an officer carries my closet bin from the second floor.
This is it, the end of the road.
Police will arrest the counselors once they read my case notes.
With a yelp, the officer misses a step and falls backward, sliding down the stairs. My bin tumbles from his arms in a firework explosion of papers and photos and clothes I wear in secret. My deepest and darkest, the very worst of me, raining from above for all to see. Diaries and bad report cards meant for my eyes only. Poetry I swore never to let anyone read. Evidence I’m messy and broken, someone who buried herself to become who she thought everyone wanted.
I stand frozen as the items land at my parents’ feet.
Dad lifts an old picture of Morgan and me off the floor, Morgan’s face haloed with a Sharpie heart. Mom scans the unorganized display of papers, her attention resting on a chart from the year I counted my calories and carbs like she did.
I take shallow breaths, a mixture of exhaustion and relief following the pain. I should feel embarrassed of the tearstained letters and notes passed in middle school. I don’t, though, not anymore.
In every scrapbook, regardless of stickers and smiles, pain writes between the lines. I went almost eighteen years of my life viewing hurt as a thing to hide, because no home décor from Hobby Lobby says, “You will cry, but your tears are worth remembering.”
Mess and all, I am worth remembering.
Detective Sutter locks gazes with me as officers scramble to gather evidence. She lowers her focus to my phone, which bulges from my pocket. If she attains a warrant for my cell phone data, she’ll implicate the counselors and me for sure.
“I’m late.” I turn on my heels and beeline to the back door, walking faster when Mom commands me to halt. I need to meet with the other counselors. We don’t have much time. Either we solve the case today or we risk never learning the truth.
I’ll run if someone tries to stop me.
With a swing and shove, I launch my bicycle from the garage and pedal onto Cerulean Park. I ride as fast as my legs will allow, veering onto side roads, cutting across lawns. Eliza and I never planned to hit the beach, and I can’t visit camp without the risk of police following me.
I’ll bike around for a while. After an hour or so, I should be safe to head to Grayton.
My left eyelid twitching from anxiety, I call Morgan and wedge the phone between my shoulder and ear. “Pick up, pick up,” I whisper as the line beeps.
“Hey, Wallis.”
“Detective Sutter came to my house with a search warrant. She logged my bin into evidence. All my research, notes, everything—police have it.”
Morgan swears.
“And that’s not all,” I say between pants. “Cops discovered Spooner’s hideout. They know I withheld information.”
“How?”
“They found my water bottle at the RV. I must’ve left it there by accident.”
“Good thing Spooner hung around camp.”
“Detective Sutter plans to arrest him for Horowitz’s murder—”
“What?!”
“He kept a journal. Police read it. We don’t have much time, maybe a few hours. Once Detective Sutter looks through my bin, she’ll request more warrants.” I brake at a stop sign and bite my bottom lip to still its quivers, tears welling onto my lash line. “We’re going to jail, Morgan.”
Forget prom and senior prank day. We won’t graduate from Emerald Coast High. Instead, we’ll spend the next year in juvie.
Our relationship will consist of letters and phone calls from detention centers.
I can’t watch my life fall apart. Too much. All of it. The thought of losing Morgan again sucks the air from my lungs. And my family. Dad won’t call me his good girl anymore. He and Mom will view me as another Christian, an embarrassment, and I won’t blame them for lying about my whereabouts to their friends.
“Don’t go down that path, Wallis,” Morgan says as if he senses my thoughts.
“Yeah.” I blink water from my eyes and fill my lungs with air, sweat gluing the phone to my cheek when I resume pedaling. “Alright, we need a plan.”
I tell Morgan about the property group, cash offer, and my theories involving the Aldriches and O’Neils. All speculation, of course, but it’s a thread to follow.
We must confront the Coastal Bay Property Group. If we can prove insurance fraud or embezzlement, maybe Detective Sutter will offer a plea bargain as incentive for testifying against whoever threatened us. Granted, my hunches may prove false.
One way to find out.
Dr. DiMarco’s role in what happened could work in our favor, that is, if he agrees to give a confession. Detective Sutter knows about Horowitz’s criminal record. Claiming the teacher assaulted a minor, which led to students killing him in self-defense, shouldn’t come as a total shock. On the other hand, a psychiatrist helping teens to repress a summer might.
A course of action spells itself out as I bike circles from Watercolor to Seaside.
Dad still works as a real estate agent for Coastal Bay. He must have their contact information stored in his inbox. Eliza should be able to access the account. Weeks ago, she used Dad’s email to get another free trial of a streaming service.
He gave her the password so she could login to verify the offer.
Step by step, Morgan and I go over the plan.
Eliza will email Coastal Bay from Dad’s account and, promising the utmost discretion, ask them to visit camp to meet with its owner, who hopes to sell fast because of the location’s tarnished history.
In this fictitious scenario, the owner intends to sell at a substantially lower price and wishes to negotiate in person. A sketchy situation, but if Coastal Bay is who I suspect, I doubt they’ll care.
The counselors will then stake out Camp Choctawhatchee and wait to see who arrives.
Morgan says we’re taking a risk. I don’t disagree, but to confirm whether the property group was involved with Horowitz, we must identify them, and the best way to do that seems meeting the anonymous investors face-to-face.
“What if no one shows up?” Morgan asks.
“They’ll come,” I say to convince myself, sweat burning my eyes as I do a U-turn and pedal onto a dirt road. “Text the other counselors—”
An object barrels from my periphery.
The world goes sideways, then winks black.
My neck jerks. I slam against a hard surface, gravel against my ear, sand on my lips. A ringing sound vibrates my head. Inside my head.
Pain sears me. I squirm and gasp, my lungs paralyzed. A scream. It comes from me. My right leg pulses a crushing ache.
“Help,” I wheeze, a metallic taste on my tongue. I wiggle from beneath my bicycle and feel around for my cell phone.
It lies shattered to my left.
“Someone, please,” I sob, the pain in my leg so intense, I go dizzy. My vision blurs. Every nerve and cell in my body fires bullets and knives and hot coals.
Nearby, a car engine hums.
A trunk clicks open.
Footsteps approach me.
With a groan, I claw at dirt and lift my head a few inches, but whatever hope swelled inside me now breaks like a wave on a sandbar.
The gray Porsche idles a meter away, its grill and hood dented.
“Help!” I yell louder, my heart stampeding when a masked figure advances from the vehicle. I dig my elbows into the ground and crawl toward my bicycle. Pain slashes and gnaws, but I push forward, grasping at the bike’s crumpled basket. My purse. I need mace or a Taser.
Gloved fingers clamp onto my shoulders and heave me upward. I scream. I kick and hit and reach for my waistband. Knife in my shorts. Morgan’s knife.
“Let go!” I shout as the man drags me toward his car. My skin goes cold. Agony distances itself, buried under this raw, primitive fear that squeals at me to fight harder.
If he takes me, I don’t think he’ll bring me back.
Screaming for help, I knee his groin and stagger toward 30A. I must reach the highway. Someone will come to my aide once they drive past or glance from their home.
The man yanks me to a stop. He cups his gloved palm over my lips and wrestles me backward. I can’t unsheathe the knife, so I scrape my fingernails against his torso.
He wears a lot of clothes.
Without a word, he shoves me into the Porsche’s trunk and slams its lid. My hair gets caught in the door. I beat my fists against the interior, press my heels against the top, and push with all my strength. I’m dead unless I escape. That realization echoes through my mind. Dead. Me. Another corpse for someone to find.
My stomach drops when the car lurches into motion. I feel along the walls, carpet fibers digging beneath my fingernails. Stalker guy must’ve tailed me from Watercolor, which means his attack was premeditated. What does he plan to do now?
I don’t want to find out.
A sweet, disinfectant-like scent tickles my nostrils. I cough, the aroma suffocating when paired with the compartment’s heat. My eyelids droop and my pain numbs.
“No, no,” I pant, the darkness spinning as I bloody my knuckles against the hatch.
Stalker guy doused the trunk with chloroform, I’m certain. The smell and side effects match what I read online. Think, think. How long do I have until the drug knocks me out?
Five minutes, well, three subtracting the time I’ve spent breathing this air.
I nudge a couple of lockboxes aside, then position my feet at the car’s driver-side taillight. With a kick, I propel my heels against the space. A move taught in my self-defense videos.
The darkness spins faster.
My head lolls against the floor, too heavy to lift. Hot wetness soaks every inch of me. I kick again and again. I groan, scream, make sounds I’ve never made before, the pain in my leg fanging to my hips.
A crack sounds beneath my feet.
Fresh air pours into the trunk, followed by sun where a taillight used to be.
Sobbing, I rise onto all fours, press my face into the hole, and take deep breaths to cleanse the drug from my lungs. Stalker must’ve heard the crack. He’ll pull over soon.
I comb my hands along the door’s rim.
My thumb brushes a latch, the trunk release.
“Come on, please work.” I give it a yank, and the hatch pops open, revealing pastel homes and picket fences and blue sky. Without hesitation, I throw myself from the car. I should’ve looked down. Too late. I skid across rocks and sand, the flesh smeared off my right side. I hit so hard, my vision flashes red before refocusing.
Hurt everywhere. A pounding in my head. Cuts stinging.
The Porsche squeals to a halt, its tires slinging gravel as it reverses. My heart stalls. I twist onto my stomach and rise from the ground. Run. I will the command into my trembling knees, but they refuse to budge.
Porsche speeds toward me.
Without another option, I clutch my wounded leg, the pain almost blinding, and hobble into a patch of foliage between houses. I gasp and groan and shield my eyes from branches.
I must get someplace safe.
Dirt pillows my cheek. Soft potting soil that smells of gardens and petrichor. A sprinkler hisses somewhere in the haze. Gravity. It’s all wrong. Drool slips from my mouth and falls sideways across my cheek. I must wake up, call Morgan, go to camp before Coastal Bay arrives. But my head aches, and my skin numbs like it did after I had my wisdom teeth removed.
Perhaps this is where I die.
Chapter 25
Morgan
JULY 11
GRAYTON BEACH
“Any luck?” Eliza watches me phone Darby for the fifteenth time. She must hear the line buzz without answer, same as it has for hours, because her complexion ashes.
“My calls go straight to voice mail.” I lower the phone from my ear. “This isn’t like her.”
Darby wouldn’t drop off-grid, especially now that our plan is in effect. Something happened. I have a gut feeling. Earlier she hung up too abruptly. She hasn’t contacted any of the counselors since morning. I texted and called, even swung by her house.
“We don’t have much time,” Cyrus says as we trek across Camp Choctawhatchee. “The property group will arrive in—” He glances at his dive watch. “Thirty minutes.”
“Is Kip on his way?” Annabelle asks.
“He texted me an hour ago.” Eliza turns her face toward the western horizon, where late afternoon settles as an orangish haze. “He should be here by now.”
And Darby too.
I tap her name in my phone, her profile picture smiling as if our lives aren’t held at gunpoint. I call her number and leave another voice mail, same worried ramble begging her to contact me. If Eliza hadn’t convinced Coastal Bay to visit camp, I would drive at max speed to Watercolor and Seaside—heck, I’d racecar down 30A—and search until I found Darby.
Our blackmailer might’ve attempted to kidnap her again.
The possibility sours my stomach. I gulp down burger-flavored acid, remnants of the lunch Dad and Brent insisted on grilling. My eyelids lower, then snap back up. I can’t lose my nerve. Focus, focus. I should’ve chugged an energy drink on my drive here.
Eliza, Cyrus, Annabelle, and I go to the outpost. We scale its lopsided steps and nudge open its door, bombarded with TV static, dust, and the rancid smell of Fritos. And not just Fritos. No, this scent matches greasy napkins and Cyrus’s jock shorts.
I cough to keep from gagging.
“What’s up, my dudes?” Spooner lounges on the floor with his back propped against the life-jacket closet. He cradles a book about knots, a mound of vending machine snacks beside him. Fritos. Bags and bags of them. So old I don’t recognize their packaging.
Spooner may need to get his stomach pumped.
“Let me out!” Dr. DiMarco screams from the closet.
“Chill, Kip’s dad.” Spooner flattens a granola bar—it must be years past its expiration date—and shoves it through the door crack. “Here’s your dinner.”
Yeah, I must give Spooner credit. Guy’s kind of a genius. He ran the tube of a hydration bladder under the door to provide our hostage with water.
What did he do about the no bathroom situation?
“You’re the most obnoxious human being I’ve ever met!” Dr. DiMarco bangs the door and rattles its knob. “I’d rather go deaf than hear you talk another second.”
“Are you reading to him?” Eliza motions to Spooner’s book.
“Oh yeah, I thought he’d appreciate the entertainment.” Spooner chuckles and flicks the tail of his coonskin cap over his shoulder. “You like story time, right, Kip’s dad?”
“I do not appreciate it.”
My lips stretch into a smile, I think because Spooner’s pettiness seems payback for how the doctor treated us. We all want justice, but Spooner needs closure, and if reading a book on knots for twelve hours will help him get it, then I support the endeavor.
I won’t explain just yet that Sutter wants to arrest him.
“You decent with a camera?” I dig through my backpack and remove a fancy camcorder Dad bought during his “I want to be a professional videographer” phase.
“Sure, why?” Spooner accepts the device from me and peers through its viewfinder.
“Eliza told Coastal Bay to meet in the dining hall. I need you to guard from outside and record everything. The more proof we have, the better.”
“Where’s Kip and Darby?” He clicks the shutter button, a flash blazing.
“Um, we may have to do this without them.” Annabelle eyes the phone still clutched in my palm, maybe hoping it’ll buzz and put our fears to rest.
Her tone must alert Spooner because he shoots me a puzzled look. “On a scale of one to totally screwed, how bad off are we?”
“Let’s just say we don’t have much to lose,” Eliza says.
But we do. Our futures hinge on what happens tonight. If we don’t secure a confession from Coastal Bay, we’ll face charges without hope of a plea bargain. And what about Darby?
I pocket my cell phone. “Does everyone know the plan?”
“Get a confession. Don’t end up dead.” Cyrus drags fingers through his dark curls and groans at the ceiling. “This is so dumb.”
Dr. DiMarco rams the closet door.
“That’s it.” I unbarricade the panel and yank it open, Dr. DiMarco stumbling backward with eyes bulging. “I’m not letting you out, so don’t ask.”
