Thornbird

Chapter Twenty-Nine Make Wise Choices

twenty-nine

Make Wise Choices

There’s one good thing about my constant nightmares.

Jasmine has gotten so sick of them that she’s resorted to wearing earplugs to bed. Which means she doesn’t even stir when I slip out of bed and change into my jeans and hoodie. Using the flashlight from my phone once I’m far away from the house, I break into a run toward the edge of the driveway.

Chase might not like to follow the rules, but he’s followed my rule, at least—he’s standing next to the mailbox, by his bike, like I asked him to. When the beam of the flashlight hits his eyes, he bats it away.

“Stop that,” he grumbles.

I grin at him. “Oh no. Poor baby’s allergic to light.”

That gets me a snort. I feel like Chase is the kind of guy who can laugh off any joke, even one at his expense.

“Helmet?” I prompt, and this time he’s brought a spare so we both have one.

Ignoring the nerves fluttering in my stomach, I straddle the bike and loop my arms around Chase’s waist. When I take a breath, I inhale the scent of him, and I can’t deny it makes my head feel a little foggy. I’m grateful when we speed away and the wind cools my flushed face.

As I suspected, the Thorn property is deserted when we get there, all those pesky sleuths scattered for the night. Chase and I round the side of the house, our path illuminated by the heavy-duty flashlight I brought along. We’ll need more than our phones for this hike.

“We’re not going in?” He looks startled as I bypass the main house.

“No. I want to see the studio.”

We enter the trail, which is barely visible under the thick cover of trees. Moonlight slips through gaps in the branches, casting eerie shadows on the path ahead of us. It’s mostly silent, except for the occasional hoot of an owl or the sound of leaves and twigs cracking under our feet.

“How do you know where you’re going?” Chase asks warily.

Memory.

“I mapped it out online,” I say.

We walk quietly for a while. Much as I hate to admit it, it’s…nice. I welcome the silence, but in my experience it’s rare to find someone who can comfortably exist in it. Everett would be blabbering up a storm right now.

“Who was that guy you were with this morning?”

Chase’s question seems to come out of nowhere.

I give him a sidelong look. “A friend’s brother. She was at boarding school with me, and when she found out I was moving to Tennessee, she told me to look her brother up.”

“Really. And he drove all the way from Nashville just to have breakfast?”

“Contrary to what you believe, Chase, there are people in this world who consider me delightful,” I say sweetly.

I’m rewarded with a laugh.

“Have you traveled much?” I ask curiously. “Outside of Tennessee, I mean?”

He kicks a rock in front of us, watching it tumble down the path. “No, I’ve been wanting to get the hell out of this town forever. See the world, you know?” He makes a disgruntled sound. “But I promised my mom I’d graduate high school first. That’s the only reason I’m still here.”

“Where would you go?”

“Everywhere. I’ve been saving up for a cross-country trip. Gonna hit the road as soon as I can.”

“That’s actually my dream too,” I confess.

He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Only, I’d want to photograph nature along the way. Different landscapes. Wildlife.”

Chase looks at me, really looks at me, for what feels like the first time. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the type to do something like that.”

“When I was a kid, I spent hours outside, just watching,” I say, smiling at the memory. “I would lie in the grass and listen to the wind, try to mimic birdcalls. I don’t know…it felt like this whole other world. Like a way to escape all the madness around me.”

He’s watching me. Waiting.

“I’ve always wanted to be a photographer, maybe even work on nature documentaries. I want to show people all those little things that go unnoticed. The way shadows change on the forest floor, the way birds look like they’re dancing when they take off together.”

“Nature documentaries, huh? Like on TV?”

“Or independent ones. Anything that gets people to see the world the way I do.”

“Didn’t expect that from you, Shipley.”

“Guess we’re both full of surprises.”

A small grin tugs at the corners of his mouth, and for a moment the tension between us melts away.

I sweep the flashlight over the trees. When I see the first birdhouse, I step off the main trail and hurry among the trees. “C’mon. We’re close.”

Even closer than I realize. Ten steps later, the cabin appears in the yellow beam emitted by my flashlight.

The studio sits small and stark against the trees, barely visible beneath the tangle of overgrown vines and brambles pressing in on every side.

In the dark, it looks like an abandoned skeleton, its weathered wood as gray as bone.

It’s cordoned off by police tape, but that’s no real deterrent. We easily slip underneath.

Inside, the air is musty and the silence is heavy, broken only by the faint creaks as the floorboards adjust under our weight.

“You know,” drawls Chase, “if you wanted to get me alone in the dark, you could’ve just asked me.”

I scowl at him, then shine the light right in his eyes on purpose. “You wish.”

He laughs. He knows he’s getting to me. That’s the last thing I want, because it means he’ll only be more of a jerk.

It doesn’t take long for me to realize I’m not going to be making any breakthroughs here.

The studio is completely bare, stripped of anything personal or familiar.

It’s nothing but rough wooden planks lined with lingering shadows.

In the center of the floor is a gaping hole where the boards were pried up, leaving behind splintered edges and nails jutting out like teeth.

This is where the police discovered my father’s sketchbooks and a small cache of items belonging to his victims. Now it’s just an empty pit, a dark scar in the heart of the cabin.

It feels like a tomb, gutted and abandoned, and I can’t fight the sinking disappointment in my chest. Naively, I’d expected a barrage of memories to come flooding back. Moments with my dad, some forgotten clue, some hint as to why he thought I knew what he’d done with the bodies.

But the studio was probably cleared out a decade ago. There’s nothing here now.

“What’s wrong?” Chase asks.

“Nothing,” I mutter, avoiding his gaze. “Let’s go.”

“Seriously? We hiked all the way out here for, like, three seconds? That’s it?” His voice carries a note of irritation.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would be empty.” I turn toward the door.

This time, the walk back is completely silent. When we emerge from the path, the big house coming into view, I stop for a moment, staring at the back porch. Then I square my shoulders and walk toward it.

“What, we’re going in here now?” demands an increasingly annoyed Chase.

The back door is boarded shut, so I hurry around to the front of the house. I push open the storm door. It looks like the lock was broken a long time ago.

I glance over my shoulder at Chase. “You coming?”

He joins me on the porch without a word.

I step inside my childhood home, hovering in the doorway for a moment because my feet cease to move.

But then, as I arc the beam of the flashlight around the living room, I feel surprisingly fine.

It doesn’t look like my old house, which always had a roaring fire in the fireplace this time of year.

I barely recognize it with all the furniture gone or in splinters on the ground.

The piles of debris everywhere. Nothing here reminds me of the place I grew up.

That gives me the confidence to take the next step. And then the next.

My heart beats faster when I reach my parents’ bedroom.

I shine the light inside. The bed I hid under is gone.

It’s just a room, filled with trash. Unrecognizable.

I remember Zed saying you could still see the bloodstains.

The spot where my mother bled to death. But it’s too dark for me to make out anything.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Chase says from behind me.

I shrug. I don’t really know. I was hoping the studio, and now the big house, would jog my memory. That I’d recall a secret compartment or something. A special nook in a closet somewhere, a loose floorboard, a forgotten spot where my dad might have left me a clue.

But I have nothing. No recollection of any such thing. The general layout of the house is as I remember, but that’s all. I have a hard time believing I ever lived here. It’s cold, impersonal.

“This was a stupid idea” is all I manage to say. I brush past him and head back to the living area.

Suddenly, Chase reaches out and grabs my arm. At first, I don’t know why, but then I hear it—the sound of an approaching car.

Headlights slash across the main room, temporarily blinding me. Chase takes my flashlight and clicks it off, bathing the room in darkness. Then he sidles closer to the window and peeks out.

“Shit. It’s the police.”

“What?” I rush for the door, but he holds me back.

“Too late. He already saw our flashlight. This way. There’s got to be a back way out.” He pulls me toward the bedrooms, but I drag my feet.

“The back door is boarded,” I remind him. “Our only way out is—”

“Maybe there’s an open window.” He yanks me into one of the bedrooms, the spare room my parents used as their home office. Chase curses when he finds three walls, all solid. No window. We’re trapped.

I creep to the door and peer out, swallowing a gasp when I see a man’s form, silhouetted by the police car’s headlights, filling the front door. He holds a flashlight in one hand, something else in his other.

“He’s coming in!” I hiss. “I think he has a gun!”

“Hello?” The officer calls tentatively, and the floor creaks under his weight. “If someone’s in here, come on out. This is a restricted area.”

“Get back,” Chase whispers, looking around, maybe for a weapon.

I grab his arm, digging my fingers into his skin. “Don’t do anything crazy.”

He looks at me like I’m the crazy one, and for a moment I think he really is going to lunge at the officer.

My heart jumps into my throat as I hear the cop moving toward the hallway.

His footsteps get closer and closer, and I pray for him to turn around and walk away.

When his shadow appears in the doorway, I hold my breath, afraid of what will happen in the next two seconds.

Instead of lunging at the cop, Chase turns to me, pulls me flush against him, and kisses me.

His lips meet mine before I even have time to gasp. This is no ordinary sweet kiss. It goes from zero to a hundred in the blink of an eye. Chase slides his hand down to my waist, steadying me, and he tilts his head, deepening the kiss with a confidence that thrills me.

It’s exactly what I’d expect from a guy like him.

He instantly renders me breathless, not because I can’t believe it’s happening, but because it feels so good.

While his tongue teases mine, his thumb brushes the side of my neck, igniting sparks that seem to run from my skin to the very core of me.

The scent of him, leather and soap, captures my senses, blurring everything else.

My hands have somehow tangled in his shirt, clutching at him, and for a second, I forget everything. The cop, the house, even my own name.

“Ah. Mr. Hedlund. How did I guess?”

In the next instant, Chase breaks away from me. He sounds as calm as ever, a little surly too, as he says, “Deputy Price.”

The flashlight shines in my face and I squeeze my eyes shut, hugging myself to keep from trembling. Why are my knees so weak?

“Come on, come on out of there,” the deputy commands, motioning us forward.

I step out into the living room, cheeks scorching and still trying to catch my breath.

I look over at Chase and blush even harder when I notice his hand dip down to rearrange his pants, but he doesn’t seem at all embarrassed.

His posture is relaxed, and he’s even smirking a little. Why is he so calm?

We stand shoulder to shoulder as if in a police lineup while the deputy now shines the light on Chase’s face. “Switching it up, eh, Hedlund? I’ve caught you with girls a bunch of places, but this is a new one for you.”

Chase chuckles. “It was the police tape. I can’t keep away.”

“Well, for the last time, I’m going to ask you to try. Don’t make me bring you in again,” Deputy Price barks. When he turns to address me, his tone is kinder. “Honey. You need to make wise choices. Don’t go along with this guy. He’ll only drag you down.”

I bristle. As if. I suppose it makes sense why he would believe it—Chase did have his tongue down my throat, after all—but I don’t like what he’s insinuating. That I’m stupid enough to be one of the legions of gullible girls who fell for Chase Hedlund.

The deputy escorts us outside. “Where’s your vehicle? Do I need to drive you home?”

Chase digs his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and rocks innocently from toe to heel. “No, sir. We’re good. My bike’s stashed near that tree over there.”

“All right,” he warns, wagging a finger at us. “Don’t let me catch you here again.”

As the deputy gets in his cruiser, we head toward Chase’s motorcycle. He doesn’t say a word as we don our helmets and climb on. I’m pretty sure he’s intending to make it the whole way home without discussing what happened between us.

So I blurt out, “You bring girls all over town to hook up, huh?”

I mean it as a joke, but he doesn’t laugh. He grunts.

“Or do you just use them to get out of tight squeezes with the law too?”

“Oh, come off it, Shipley. That kiss was probably the best thing that ever happened to you.”

My jaw drops. How freaking egotistical is he?

“Says the guy who just kissed the girl Everett likes,” I shoot back. “Right, Chase? Because you’re the one who’s been going on all this time about me being untrustworthy. And you kissed your best friend’s girl. What does that make you?”

Those silver eyes flash in the darkness, his nostrils flaring. “I did that to save our asses.”

“Right, sure you did. Don’t give me that. You liked it.”

He shakes his head. I wait for him to say the words. To deny it. But he doesn’t. Instead, his scowl deepens.

“Fuck,” he mutters, and then he kick-starts the bike and lets the rumble of the engine drown out my answering laughter.