Four Found Dead, page 10
Goose bumps prickle up my arms, and I rub them with both hands.
“I hate this,” Naomi says. “I don’t know how much longer I can just sit here.”
“I keep thinking of that saying about offense being the best defense,” Quincy says.
“We can’t sit here all damn night,” Hudson says.
“Well, we can’t go after Clayton,” I say. “He’s killed two people, and he didn’t need a gun to do it. From here we can see him coming.”
“I don’t want to hunt the guy down,” Naomi says, “but I want to get the hell out of here.”
“I hear your point, Jo,” Quincy says. “Isn’t there a way to do both? Can we get out of here without necessarily putting ourselves in a corner?”
“If we stay together, we can still keep watch and we can handle him if he manages to sneak up on us somehow,” Hudson says. “He’s a fitness freak, not a pro fighter.”
Quincy sighs. “But the goal isn’t to handle him, it’s to escape, right?”
“Yes!” Naomi says. “Let’s just go.”
I squirm in my seat because I’m not convinced. Every door we’ve seen is behind wood or down a corridor, and while I want to get out, I don’t want to give him the chance to sneak up on us.
But is that all it is? Or am I back to that same girl I was all those years ago, my hands over my sister’s eyes and my body still as stone?
“I’m ready when you are,” Hudson says. “Beats the hell out of sitting here like fish in a barrel.”
“But as soon as we move, we give him the chance to sneak up on us,” I say. “We should all vote. What do you think, Summer?”
She doesn’t answer. I don’t hear her back there squirming or thinking on it either.
“Summer?” I ask.
“Um…” Quincy’s voice is low and concerned, and I spin around in my chair. Summer is not on her bench. And she is not on the stairs. My eyes sweep the area to the left and to the right. I spot padded benches, the edge of Hannah’s feet when I crane my neck far enough. I look farther to see a covered kiosk, the empty planters by the stairs.
“Summer?” My voice is loud and sharp, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no one there to answer.
Summer is gone.
Chapter 17
We bolt out of our seats like they’ve been lit on fire. We search around the general area, looking in ridiculous places. Behind a kiosk. Under chairs. As if she’s going to pop out with a laugh and confess she thought a little hide-and-seek would be fun.
“What the hell?” Naomi says. “She was just here.”
“Is she hiding?” Quincy asks, his voice high and nervous. “Or maybe hurt? Do you think she could be hurt?”
“I—I don’t know.” I scan the second-floor balcony, looking for movement. Clues. There’s nothing. I turn back to the mall, which is a yawning, shadowy cavern. Could she be out there somewhere? Could she really have slipped past us? My eyes drag to the stairs by Hannah’s body. She could have gone up the stairs without us noticing. In truth, the plastic-draped storefronts and skeletal remnants of this mall could be hiding anything or anyone.
“She can’t have just disappeared,” Naomi says.
“Funny, ’cause it sure looks like that’s exactly what happened,” Hudson says. He looks unsurprised.
I open my mouth, but there’s nothing to say, so no words come. Hudson meets my eyes, and there’s no missing the told-you-so look he gives me.
“We’ll find her,” I say. “She can’t have gone far.”
“Summer!” Naomi shouts.
I grab her arm. “Don’t. Don’t yell.”
“Why not? You just yelled.”
“Yes, but calling someone’s name once or twice could be anything,” Quincy says. He’s pacing now, scanning the shadows around us. “We don’t want to announce that she’s missing.”
Hudson exhales heavily. “He’s probably watching us and has already heard every word we’ve said.”
“He could have seen her leave,” Naomi whispers. “She could be in real danger.”
“Naomi’s right,” Quincy says. “We have to find her.”
But Hudson narrows his eyes and makes no move to look around. “You know, anyone with a speck of common sense would be scared shitless to go off on their own. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Naomi asks.
Sound overhead cuts us off. A door? I’m not sure. I crane my neck, but it’s so dark up there. I can see the second floor some, but the third? Anything could be up there—anything or anyone.
“Did you hear that?” Quincy whispers.
I nod, but all is quiet now. Still, none of us speaks. Something in the air has changed.
My skin prickles with that wordless feeling that danger is near. I search for a flicker of movement, but there is nothing. Everything is still. Quiet. There is—
Something moves.
My pulse skitters like tires on black ice, and then the rhythm catches. I lock my gaze on the space where I think I saw something. “Did anyone see that?”
“See what?” Hudson asks, but even he keeps his voice low. So he senses it too.
I strain my eyes and ears. My heart thuds so hard, I feel it in the tips of my fingers. We turn in circles, staring up into the darkness, waiting for something to happen.
“I think we should go,” Naomi says. “I have a bad feeling.”
“What do we do about Summer?” Quincy asks. “We can’t leave her.”
I think of Cara’s little-girl arms around my neck, all those years ago. I think of her eyes so round and frightened when I pushed her deep into that space beneath the counter. When I held my finger to my lips and tried to keep her safe.
Some part of me feels like I should have kept Summer safe too, and maybe I would have, but Summer didn’t stay still or hidden like Cara. Summer didn’t listen; she ran.
“We’ll have to come back for her,” I say. “We can try the food court. There might be a way out.”
“It’s behind the stage, right?” Quincy asks.
I nod, and we fall into a line and start moving through the atrium. The stage is maybe fifty yards away diagonally. We cut through the mall with our eye on the hazy plastic curtains barely visible behind the stage. That’s where the food court should be. Even with everything boarded over or draped like a haunted house, I can still make sense of this part of the building. The stage is in the center of the mall, a giant half circle between the long-gone Macy’s on the right and the food court on the left. The audience would sit on one of four rows of sunken carpeted stairs, all angled to allow a good view of whatever singer or marching band was putting on the show. Sometimes, I’d listen too—usually lurking with my Auntie Anne’s pretzel at one of the tables set far back from the stage seating.
We hesitate at the kiosk for Christmas ornaments and face creams, pressing ourselves to two of the sides. I pause, listening for Clayton. For Summer. For a miracle rescue I don’t have much faith in. We have to cross one of the bridges to get to other side of the mall, but before I can debate which one to suggest, Hudson leads the charge, marching right for the fancy arched bridge that empties directly at an entrance to the stage seating.
The others quickly follow, so I bring up the rear. Halfway to the bridge, I hear a tapping and a creak, up on one of the balconies.
I can’t place it, but after a few seconds of silence, it starts again. A creaking, clattering noise. Like bottles rattling on a tray. It’s just a sound. There is nothing inherently dangerous in what I hear, but it sets the hairs on my neck on end. I stop.
“Wait,” I say.
Because there was nothing sinister about the jangling bells over the convenience store door either.
There was nothing evil in the heavy footsteps that approached the counter.
There was nothing deadly in the hissing sound of my sister’s dress when I pushed her under the counter and climbed in after her.
Quincy stops mid-step and cocks his head. “Do you guys see—”
A long, high-pitched scratching interrupts him. It’s like a fork scraping a porcelain plate but louder. Longer. Something’s happening. Something is coming. My lungs shrink and my muscles tense.
“It’s up there,” Hudson whispers, and that horrible nails-on-a-chalkboard shriek continues.
I nod and swallow even though my throat feels parchment dry. It’s definitely above us, but it’s not the second floor. It’s higher. The third floor. The noise goes and goes until my teeth ache and my ears ring. Naomi covers her ears with her hands. Quincy grunts miserably. And the sound scrapes and scrapes.
And then it stops.
The silence is so sudden and shocking that I hold my breath, my whole body tensed and waiting. But nothing happens. The quiet continues, and we stay frozen in place, the bridge no more than ten feet away. My knees wobble, and a cold sweat has broken out on my back and under my arms.
“Let’s go,” I whisper urgently. “Move. Move fast.”
“Look out!” Quincy shouts, and then he’s backing up, his neck craned. He’s watching something, and then I see it too. Something is falling from the balcony. My eyes rush to track it, but it’s falling too fast. It hits with a splintering crash, and we cringe together, our bodies curling toward one another. Safety in numbers.
“What the hell was that?” Naomi asks.
I cannot answer. I am staring at the thing that hit—a wad of broken glass and gold pieces and parts. Whatever it was, it landed ten feet away from us. We’re lucky it didn’t hit us.
Crash.
This time we don’t see it coming. It hits the roof of the kiosk we just left, and we shriek and jump back, but it’s not done. There’s more. Something else hits the steps leading up to the stage. The carpeted stair seats. The floor just behind us.
Whatever plan we had now vanishes. We run like hell, sprinting to the bridge and toward the wall on the closer side of the stage. Things are crashing left and right, raining down from somewhere above.
We don’t stop. Something else explodes just behind us. There is glass and noise, and we hurl ourselves over the bridge, heading to the right side of the stage because cover is the only thing that matters now. We are mice running from a raptor. We knock into piles of construction debris and stumble down and then back up some of the sunken stage seats. We run until we’re under the cover of the second-floor balcony, until we’re pressed against the rough black wall, my cheek brushing the prickly plastic leaves of a fake plant.
Three stacks of rusting chairs to our left provide meager shelter, but I still see glass raining from above. Something crashes on the swirling carpet inches from Quincy before he ducks behind the stacks of chairs with us. It’s barely ten feet of shelter. Hardly enough for the four of us, yet what choice do we have but to ride it out?
Crash. Into metal bars that form the shell behind the stage.
Crash. Into a table.
Things continue to hit. With horror, I watch one of the objects fall. It explodes, leaving nothing more than glittering shards, one that juts up from a circular glass base. I realize what it is. It’s a drinking glass. Looking around, it looks like most of these things are drinking glasses. Where the hell would Clayton find something like that? Because this has to be him. Another glass lands next to my foot, and I yelp and lift my hands to shield my face.
Glass rains down over and over and over. And then it ends.
Time passes while we breathe and tremble against the gritty surface of the wall. Slowly, I uncover my ears, not remembering when I covered them in the first place. There is quiet for the span of a breath. And then another. And then I hear the muted rhythm of footsteps far above. Someone is moving fast.
Where the hell are they going? Who is it? Clayton? Summer? My head hurts from trying to pick apart all these noises. We are not creatures made for the darkness, and my senses ache for a reprieve.
Naomi whimpers and moves like she’s going to run, but I hold her arm. Not yet. We have to listen. We have to be smart, or he’ll kill us. He’ll kill us all.
A door opens and closes, and there are distant bumps and bangs. I don’t know where they’re coming from. It could be a stairwell. Furniture in one of the offices on the third floor. The only thing I know for sure is that it proves this wasn’t some bizarre failure of an overhead lighting fixture or a nameless poltergeist whirling glass from the balconies.
These glasses were thrown. We were targeted.
We cling together, braced for what happens next. But nothing comes. The atrium is eerily quiet, except for an occasional tinkle of glass or creak in the giant skylights overhead. I look up to see the moon, full and bright in the lower edge of the middle skylight.
“What is all this?” Naomi asks. “What was he throwing?”
“Glasses,” Hudson says.
“Why would there be glasses upstairs?” Quincy asks.
“For the banquet rooms,” Hudson says. “They had two or three event spaces and enough coffee cups and glasses to hydrate an army.”
I look across the floor and spot the round edge of a glass bottom. The carpet glitters with shards like it’s been raining diamonds. All is still quiet above us. I feel the muffled thump of my own heart. A high-pitched whine behind my ears. Everyone is ashen and shaky, but we’re okay. We’re alive.
Except that’s not really true, is it?
Five of us are alive. And currently, one of those five is missing. I stare into the darkness. “I don’t know what we should do about Summer.”
“Jack shit, that’s what,” Hudson says. When I shoot him a look, he shrugs. “What the hell do you want to do? She took off.”
“She’s probably terrified,” Quincy says.
“He’s right,” Naomi says. “It’s not like she’s a worldly sixteen-year-old, right?”
No one argues with Naomi, and no one spells out the facts any further. We all know Summer’s…sort of different. Naomi thinks it’s because she’s never around other people her age. I think it’s more than her parents’ isolation-based homeschooling methods, but now doesn’t seem like the time to pick her apart.
“What if she didn’t run away from us?” Quincy takes a deep breath. “What if Clayton took her?”
The idea slithers through me, cold and sickening. Clayton creeping down the stairs. Clayton plucking her out of her chair, his thick arm around her waist. His hand over her mouth.
“Without her making a single sound or screaming?” Hudson scoffs as if that’s all the answer he needs.
Naomi chews her lip. “Yeah, I feel like we would have heard something.”
Hudson throws up his hands. “Except she obviously didn’t want us to hear.”
“Do you have a problem with Summer?” Quincy’s voice is hard and flat. “You seem perfectly comfortable with her being alone.”
Naomi clucks softly. “Yeah, you’re throwing nothing but shade at that girl. Why?”
Hudson shrugs. “She was the physically closest person to the two people who died tonight.”
“Wouldn’t that be all the more reason to be worried about her?” Quincy asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Especially since she’s the one who pissed off Clayton earlier. Remember the whole soda machine debacle?”
“True,” Naomi says, looking distraught.
“It’s just weird,” Hudson says. “I’m not saying she’s an accomplice or whatever, but it’s weird for her to run off.”
Is it, though? When we’re terrified, there’s nothing left but instinct. Some fight. Some run. Cara would have run. If I hadn’t stopped her and tucked her under that counter, back by the cleaning rags and the extra boxes of receipt tape—what would have happened to her?
“She’s a kid,” I say, and I mean Summer, but I’m picturing my sister’s face. “She’s alone out there somewhere in the dark. Shouldn’t we do something?”
Hudson cocks his head. “Like what? You can’t fix everything for everyone.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, tensing.
Hudson watches me in a way that makes me wish I hadn’t asked. Not because he’s right—he’s not. Not quite. But it shows me he’s been paying attention to me.
“It means you’re going to be a kick-ass doctor,” Naomi says, sounding defensive.
Hudson smirks. “Guess you are going to fix things.”
“That’s really cool,” Quincy says.
“Yeah, she’s a rock star,” Naomi says.
My tongue feels thick and dry, and my cheeks burn. I don’t want to talk about me or my plans. Me wanting to be a doctor isn’t cool. I’m not a good person or a Florence Nightingale type. What if they knew the truth? That I don’t feel like I have a choice. A doctor might have saved my dad. Maybe could have saved Lexi. When I’m a doctor, I’ll know how to stop my worst nightmares from happening.
That’s the truth. That’s why I want to do this. I have to know everything I can about saving a life. Because I can’t stand being the helpless, frozen little girl who let my dad die.
“Jo?” Naomi’s voice is a worried squeak. It’s the way you’d say someone’s name if you saw an oncoming train, or if you realized your plane was about to crash.
Naomi raises a finger to point at me. But then it’s not at me; it’s at something above and behind me. I turn around, my eyes catching movement on the second floor, back behind the railing. Someone is there, just above us, but they are too far from the railing to see them clearly. The shadow steps forward, and I see the drape of a long skirt, the silhouette of stringy hair and slender elbows.
She stands at the railing, looking down at us, and I don’t know if it’s the mild expression she’s wearing or the shock of seeing her up there, but chills roll up my spine.
“Summer.”
Local News
CITY IS CONSIDERING LEGAL ACTION AGAINST PDG DEVELOPMENT
