Only She Came Back, page 23
I dashed for the door, tore it open, and hurtled back up the slate path. By the time I reached the gravel, the car was already at the mouth of the driveway, turning onto the road.
“Kiri! No!” I was out of breath from my useless yelling, and Owen’s car was too far away for me to catch, but I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t let her go. I lurched forward.
And stopped dead as a voice said behind me: “Whoa. What happened there?”
It was a voice I knew—casual, friendly, a little drawling. Not gravelly like West’s. Not embarrassed.
I turned to find a tall man standing in the open doorway of the cottage, with dark hair and an unruly beard that covered most of his face. He wore indigo jeans and a crimson polo shirt and a white bandage on his right arm, and he looked sleepy and slightly annoyed.
The beard confused me, but only for an instant.
“Hey, Sam,” Callum Massey said. “Nice to meet you finally. Was that Kiri?”
Before I could answer—it must have shown on my face—he shook his head and said, “Looks like she ditched you, huh? She must think I went on ahead to the caves.”
27
AUGUST 14, 10:00 AM?
When you hear stories of true crime, you always think that at the crucial moment you would have done things differently. You wouldn’t have followed the stranger’s directions just because he had a gun. You wouldn’t have believed his lie that he just wanted your cash and phone. You wouldn’t have let him tie you up and take you to a second location.
You’ll never be a victim. You’d know better.
What you don’t realize, hearing these stories, is how hard it is to adjust when life suddenly blasts you out of one reality into another. One moment, you think you’re finally putting the pieces together and figuring things out. The next moment, every fiber of your being is straining toward a car that’s disappearing down a road, a car that holds someone you care about too much—where is she going?
And then a person who should be dead is standing right there in front of you.
I didn’t move. I stared at Callum, noticing in a detached way that his feet were bare, as he strode toward me up the slate path. When he took my arm, I went limp. I let him tug me all the way to the door of the cottage, which hung open.
My heart was with the car, though I couldn’t hear it anymore. Where was Kiri going? Had she spotted him? Did she know?
Had the fact that he was alive vanished into one of those gaps in her memory?
When we reached the door, I finally found the presence of mind to grab hold of the frame. I wasn’t going in there alone with him.
He let me go. Smiled in a casual way, as if we were old friends. “Don’t worry. We’ll catch up to her.”
Off balance, I tottered backward, reminding myself that Callum had never killed anyone. “She’s getting away,” I said in a low voice. “She’s ditching you, too, and now you’ll never find her.”
“What?” His smile faded for a moment, then returned—a charming smile, but with a touch of reproach in it. “No, you’re all confused, aren’t you? Who did you think you were meeting in Canada?”
My gaze caught on the length of white gauze wrapped around his upper arm. Was that where Kiri had stabbed him?
“West,” I murmured, as if his name were a secret.
“West’s out of the picture now.” Again the friendly smile. “Kiri knows that. I’m the one who left her a note setting up a meeting in the caves. She must have recognized my writing.”
“Your writing.” I’d seen three notes in the same distinctive handwriting: one in Kiri’s backyard, one in the motel room, and one on Tierney.
On Tierney. As the truth sank in, I took a wobbly step down off the stoop, away from him. If Callum had written the notes, then he was the one who’d ambushed Tierney, knocked him over the head, and dumped him into the trunk of his own Range Rover.
And Kiri had known he was alive as soon as she saw the note, if not much sooner. She knew the whole time she was “confessing” to me.
How was he alive?
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Callum’s gaze probed my face—the alert gaze of a predator. Cords of muscle stood out on his neck and forearms. “Like you’re seeing one now. I guess she didn’t tell you everything.”
Nothing he was doing was overtly threatening, yet my knowledge of what he’d done to Tierney was like a red alert flashing in the air between us. I took another step backward, but where could I go?
“She’s not going to meet you after all,” I repeated, still hearing the rumble of the car in my memory.
But then I remembered what Kiri had told me long ago—that if Callum were alive, he would have returned to help her clear her name. Now here he was. Maybe she thought that if she did meet him at the caves, she could persuade him to turn himself in.
Callum moved—a long arm reaching for me, an iron hand on my bicep—and before I knew what was happening, we were inside the cottage and the door was shut and we were standing apart again. I staggered backward, trembling so hard my vision blurred.
“Don’t feel bad,” he said. “I don’t think Kiri meant this to happen. She probably wanted to ditch you here, a place she thought was empty, so you’d be out of her way when she went to the caves.”
“She thought I’d be safe here.” I had to believe that. Kiri might have gaps in her memory, all right, but she’d also done some “creative fictioning” of her own. She knew I would never let her go off with Callum, so she’d made up the story about West and the knife, then waited until I left the car to make her escape. Even her sleep must have been feigned.
“Yup.” Callum folded his arms behind his head, grabbing his elbows. Stretched so that every muscle bulged against the polo shirt. “She must have told so many lies by now she can’t keep them straight. But don’t worry, you haven’t seen the last of her. She’ll be there at noon on the dot. Mind giving me your phone?”
Again, arms moved in a blur. His hand stretched toward me.
This might be the moment. Run. But if he was staying in the same amazing shape Kiri had, then he would catch me in a flash.
I couldn’t fight or flee my way out of this. I had to figure out what he wanted.
So I took out my phone and gave it to him before he could get any closer. “Sorry,” he said, pocketing it. “Gotta be careful—you’re into the true-crime scene, and I don’t need any postmortem pics of me out there.”
My head shuddered like an over-heavy flower on its stalk. I couldn’t seem to breathe when he was within a yard of me. “How did you know that about me? You’re DodgerBlodger, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but Kiri told me about you months ago, back when we first met. She thought you were hot shit because you had a podcast about murder.”
“When you met?” I couldn’t seem to breathe again. “But I barely knew Kiri in those days. She didn’t know about the…”
Or maybe she had known about the podcast. My heart sank as I thought of all the times I’d rehashed my latest episode to Owen and Lore in the lunchroom or read a true-crime paperback in study hall. Quietly, in the background, Kiri must have been watching.
And so, when we collided in the park, she knew exactly what she was dealing with. She knew I might just be obsessed enough to help her.
The betrayal hurt like the smack of the water when I’d jumped off the cliff. But I couldn’t deny that I’d been trying to use her, too—at first.
“Are you okay?” Callum peered at me, head on one side. Cat with a mouse. “Based on everything Kiri and West said, I kind of expected you to be a cooler customer. You spooked West so bad he started trying to convince me to turn myself in, which pretty much forced me to ditch him and deliver the note to Kiri’s house myself, which you know was risky. But I guess at the end of the day you’re just a kid, like her.”
“I’m okay,” I said faintly. All that seemed to be left of the chill I thought I had was an icy sensation in my palms and at the base of my neck.
“But West’s always been jittery,” Callum said. “I had to twist his arm to come back to Burlington, and he wouldn’t stake out Kiri’s street—I had to do that myself. Anyway, we should get a move on if we’re gonna make the meeting. Where are my shoes?”
While he put on his sneakers in the mudroom, I made myself hold a breath and let it out slowly. Every lie that Kiri had told me burned like a brand on my skin.
She had chosen me on purpose to confide in. Pretended to be shocked when she discovered my true-crime interest so that I would feel guilty enough to break the law for her.
And all for what? For Callum? If she were setting a trap to lure him into the open, she should have told me.
Maybe she hadn’t dared. Or worse, maybe she still wanted to be with him. That possibility threatened to engulf me; I had to push it away.
He rose from tying his shoes and came toward me again. This time I flitted away from him, but not far.
If I was ever going to have an advantage over this man, even the tiniest one, he needed to think I was reeling, harmless, potentially even on his side. “I still don’t understand. She told me you were dead.”
“Kiri and her web of lies!” He crooked two fingers and headed for the door—loose, casual strides. Not worried in the least that I wouldn’t follow. Over his shoulder, he said, “Did she tell you she killed me?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
But inside, I knew she hadn’t lied about the most important things. Every slippery, condescending word out of Callum’s mouth convinced me he was the man she’d described in the diary, the man she’d finally come to know as her tormentor, not her lover.
She deserved so much better than that. I’d tried to show her that love shouldn’t hurt that way, shouldn’t make you feel small, but she hadn’t understood. Or it wasn’t enough.
Now all I could do was walk with Callum—out of the house and across the yard and tennis court. Beyond the row of cedars, hidden from the cottage, stood Tierney’s Range Rover.
“Why did you have to do that to my boss’s son?” I asked, not trying to hide my trembling. “He might have a concussion.”
“I needed a fast car, okay? Like I said, I couldn’t stick with West; he was useless. He pretended he’d set up a meeting with Kiri, but then he dragged his feet. I couldn’t trust him. And this dude”—Callum jabbed a thumb at the Range Rover—“seemed like a real douchebag. That car of his was practically an invitation.”
Funny how Reggie had said the same thing. The Range Rover beeped. Callum held the passenger door open for me—ever the gentleman.
That was how his groupies saw him. If I could convince him I was one of them at heart, he might let down his guard.
I got in and buckled up.
I didn’t have a prayer of running fast or far enough, but maybe I didn’t want to run anywhere. Even if Kiri was lost to me forever, I had to see her again.
“So you were the one who followed me?” I asked. “Not West?”
Callum chuckled, settling himself at the wheel. “I took his car keys while he was asleep at the motel. He was pretty pissed when he found out. I thought if I staked out her street long enough, I’d catch her on a run, but instead I caught you. I told West what to say when he met you at the theater. I thought suggesting Panera was a nice touch.”
“And the message he gave me for Kiri? That was your idea?”
“Message? I told him to set up a meeting.”
So the message about the footprints and the doomsday cabin had been West’s contribution. It must have been his way of telling Kiri that Callum was with him, so she would have all the facts before agreeing to a meeting.
And Kiri had received the message loud and clear. I remembered her standing with her hands against the slider, staring out at the lightning. The news had floored her, though she’d done her best not to let me know.
Then she’d demanded the meeting. It’s the only way I can ever be free.
“I still don’t understand.” I let my voice falter. “You said West wanted you to turn yourself in, but you haven’t done anything! Well, except what you did to Tierney.” And Arianna, but he didn’t know I knew about that. “Why are you hiding like this, letting everyone think you’re dead? Your parents must be in hell right now.”
“It’s not that simple.” Callum cinched his lap belt, the slightest edge of annoyance on his voice. “What about Kiri? Do you think she’s innocent? You didn’t when you drove her over the border, did you?”
I stared out the window at the cedars, avoiding his gaze.
He tugged a phone from his pocket and stabbed it with his finger a few times. “I’m gonna show you something, and it might shock you. But you need to know what we’re dealing with.”
He slotted the phone into a dashboard holder so I could see the screen.
Red rock. Blue sky. Two backlit figures were… dancing?
No. Callum turned up the volume, and I heard wild, high-pitched laughter. The smaller figure darted away from the camera, holding something red and yellow and shiny aloft like a prize. The larger one followed her, and I heard a second voice, low and almost moaning: “Give it to me!”
The larger figure had platinum hair—Kiri.
I pressed a hand to my mouth to hide my gasp of horror as I realized that I was seeing Kiri and Natalie fight for the bag of pork rinds. I knew what was going to happen, and I couldn’t stop it.
It was hard to tell what was going on, because Callum kept darting around as if he were trying to get a better angle. I couldn’t miss the final tug-of-war, though. Natalie’s words were muffled, the two of them a confusing tangle of limbs against the sunset, but I watched her teeter and lose her footing and fall. Kiri ran to the edge and peered over.
The footage stopped there, but my heart was racing, thudding so hard I could barely draw a breath. Callum closed the clip and opened a second one.
Now the camera was at ground level, close up on a girl who had stringy brown hair and delicate features. Dark liquid puddled under her head, staining the red rock. Night pooled in her open eyes, their last spark of watchful life gone.
Natalie. My first real glimpse of her face felt like stepping into an empty elevator shaft with nothing to grab on to, just wind whistling in my ears. When I was younger, I went through a phase of daring myself to look at crime scene photos, with their raw wounds and lifeless gazes. But this was different, because I’d also seen her death through Kiri’s eyes.
In the right foreground, a figure knelt beside Natalie—shoulders hunched, hands clasped as if she were praying. Her back was to the camera, but you couldn’t miss the platinum hair.
Her voice rose above the dim buzz of static. She wasn’t saying anything, exactly. She was rocking back and forth and chanting the same words over and over: “You’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough.”
The clip ended. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, feeling tears swell and ache behind the lids.
The engine roared as Callum started the Range Rover. We drove for a while, each breath I took sounding impossibly loud in the red-tinged darkness, until he said, “So I guess you didn’t know.”
I opened my eyes. I got my face under control. “It was an accident.” Nothing in the video clips contradicted Kiri’s story. She had just left out a little.
“You think so?” Callum scratched the side of his nose, using the other hand to steer us back the way Kiri and I had come, toward the center of Saint-Aubin-Les-Pins. “Because, to me, it looked like Kiri chased Nat right off that ledge.”
“It didn’t look that way to me.” But you couldn’t be sure, given the angle of the camera and the backlighting. A jury might see what Callum saw, especially once they’d seen the second clip, with Kiri hunched over Natalie’s body and chanting those ugly words.
A jury wouldn’t know what I knew: She hadn’t been saying those words to Natalie. She’d been saying them to herself.
Callum asked, “Did you know about Natalie when you drove her over the border? Or did you think she’d just killed me?”
“I thought it was just you.”
“And you didn’t mind that?” Callum sounded amused, and maybe a touch admiring. “You figured it was A-okay that she murdered me, since I was such a bad boyfriend?”
I didn’t say anything.
“She really got you on her side, didn’t she? It’s hard to resist those big brown eyes.”
I fiddled with a loose thread on my cutoffs, winding it around my little finger until it sliced in hard. I remembered Kiri in the car this morning, coming so close I could feel her breath.
Lying to me, this whole time.
“I figured you were dead,” I said, “and whether you deserved to die or not, there was nothing I could do to bring you back.” And then I said the one thing that I knew would make him trust me, if anything could: “I wanted… to make a podcast about Kiri. I wanted to tell the whole story, the story nobody else could tell.”
Callum took a moment to absorb that. Then he laughed—a genuine, hearty laugh—as he turned off the main road into the woods. I took note of the sign: ROUTE DE LA GROTTE DE LA CASCADE.
“Sheesh,” he said. “All this for a little clout?”
I stared down at my bitten nails. “I guess that’s something you’d understand. Everything you said on your channel about stripping down your life, prepping for the end of the world—did you actually believe any of it?”
I hoped to God he was wrong and Kiri wouldn’t show up at the caves. I hoped she was gunning the Legacy way up north, headed for some kind of freedom. Because I didn’t get the sense that Callum cared about clearing her name.
“Well, civilization is ending. Just maybe not in our lifetimes.” Callum chuckled. He liked thinking he had my number. “Kiri believed it more than I ever could. I would tell her something, and she would just run with it. Honestly, she scared me sometimes.”
Me too. Maybe she had convinced herself she’d killed him, at least for a while. She’d told the lies she thought he’d want her to, then contradicted them with new lies of her own. The narrow road wound up, down, and around, with firs and rippling maples on both sides. I caught the flash of a creek—first on the left, then on the right.
