Chapter 10 #2
The thing let go.
I sprang backward, falling onto my ass. My phone clattered out of my pocket and skidded across the patio.
Damn, there goes the screen. I breathed hard and sat for a beat.
Had the pool just tried to eat me? No. That wasn’t a thing that happened.
There had to be a reasonable explanation.
Maybe I’d gotten tangled in some kind of clear plastic net?
I rolled onto my hands and knees and crawled to the pool’s edge, then peeked over.
My distorted, wide-eyed reflection stared back.
There wasn’t anything down there. Just a whole lot of water, that deepened so much the bottom turned black.
Something had caught me.
Something I couldn’t see.
But that was impossible.
I straightened into a crouch and eyed the pool.
If there was something foreign in there, the chemical balance would be off.
But I needed my test strips to be able to look for any obvious warning signs.
I eyed the pump house. Unless the pump had an in-line indicator?
Some of them did, and the Elite system was the type to have all the bells and whistles.
I got to my feet, then scooped up my phone. The screen had a new diagonal crack, and showed thirteen missed calls from Pretty Boy.
What the heck did Theo want so urgently?
Twenty-three new text messages.
He’d have to wait. The neighbors’ pool had just tried to eat me, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. Not literally.
I hurried to the pump shed and flung open the doors again.
Alright, if the pool was severely contaminated, there’d be signs.
I grabbed the hoses and pulled them out of their snug brackets.
Yes, there it was. An inline warning indicator—a little window in a hose—showed red.
The pool’s chemical balance was off enough to trigger a visual warning.
“What are you doing?”
I jumped a foot away from Jeremy, pressed a hand to my heart, and laughed like I’d been caught with my hand in a cookie jar. “You startled me!”
“You look a little pale.” He moved stealthily for an older guy.
“Me? I’m fine. I . . .” I pointed at the transparent tube in the piping.
“You have a problem with your pool, see there?” A big problem.
A problem that tried to pull people into it and eat them.
A problem that may have killed Jay? A problem Jeremy was aware of, as he was looking at the little red window and didn’t seem concerned.
“It does that sometimes. It goes back to normal—”
As he spoke, the strip turned green.
“There, see,” he said. “It’s fine again.
But any problems are what I pay the pool boy for.
” He smiled, and for a second there were too many teeth behind his lips.
Not just a few, but a whole extra row. A blink, and everything was fine again.
Just like the warning indicator. Blink, and it’s all good.
Was I losing my mind?
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeremy said, his tone suggesting my interview was over. “Do you need someone to see you out?”
“Uh, no, I got it, thank you.”
“Great. I’m looking forward to seeing you, Owen.” He thrust out his hand. I automatically shook it, and felt the same pull briefly, as though the world around me was tilting while I stood still.
I tugged my hand back, and the dizziness passed.
Jeremy sauntered off and vanished back inside his house.
What in the heck was going on here?
I watched him go. Bet said my gut instincts were unreliable, but something was definitely wrong with Jeremy Briar and his pool. I just had no idea what.
Tomorrow, I’d come back and properly test the water—if I could get a sample without drowning. The pool would tell me its secrets. It would talk to me. Water never lied.
On the way back to my car, I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the string of messages from Theo.
got a problem
need u
come now
Owen??????
where r u???????
come to house!
Owen
Freckles
answer
some1 in pool
I stopped outside my car and immediately dialed Theo back.
“Shit, thank the fucking gods. Owen!” He spoke fast but quiet. “There’s someone in the pool again.”
“They’re still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Theo, are they moving? Alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t checked?!”
“I don’t want my DNA on all of this! Where are you?”
I could see their house from the Briars’ driveway.
If I told him I was next door, I’d have to go over there, and if the person was dead, then what? What was I going to do about it? Why’d he call me? Didn’t he have a procedure for accidental dead bodies?
I dropped into my car’s driver’s seat, tucked the phone against my shoulder and cheek, and started the engine. “Don’t you have people to help you with stuff like this?”
“With dead people?!” He hesitated. “Actually, yeah, there is a service. But then I’ll have to fill out a load of forms and claim diminished responsibility, and it gets real legal and complicated.”
“What do you think I can do?”
He breathed out hard. “Yeah, you’re right . . . I don’t know why I . . . Never mind.”
He hung up.
I stared at the phone. I mean, technically, I had told him I couldn’t help. But he was just going to hang up? I turned the car around, sped from the Briars’ box house, and a few minutes later, turned into the Witherbornes’ driveway. The gates clanged and heaved open, letting me pass.
I pulled up to the house, already hearing Bet complain in my head. Bad idea. Walk away. I knew this was a bad idea and I was doing it anyway. Whatever self-preservation ship I’d been on since jail had sailed off the edge of the map about a week ago.
I jogged up the side path, and came around the back, and sure enough, someone floated face down in Theo’s pool.
I didn’t hesitate. Probably should have—after what had just happened next door.
I dove clean into the water. Cold flushed through me.
Bubbles obscured my vision. A few kicks, and I came up fast under the floating figure.
A woman. Short blonde hair fanned out around her face.
I broke the surface, scooped her against my chest, and kicked backwards, taking her to the edge of the pool.
Theo was there. Had been there since my dive. He caught the young woman’s arms and heaved her out.
I gripped the pool’s edge and heaved myself out alongside them.
Theo had his hand over her chest, his face close to hers.
She had to be dead. She’d been in there too long. “Why didn’t you pull her out?” I panted, doubled over, hands on thighs.
He didn’t answer, just stared at her.
She was dead. So dead. Why had he wasted time calling me?
He could have saved her. “Theo? Why didn’t you pull her out?
” This was bad. So bad. Not just for him but for me too.
“We have to call the cops. We have to.” Cops meant jail.
I didn’t want to go back. I couldn’t go through that again.
Tiny cell, mind-numbing routine, casual violence, day in, day out.
“She’s alive,” he said.
“What?” I looked at her pale face. “She can’t be.”