Thirty-Two #2
“No,” he says, raising his gaze to meet us. “I couldn’t get involved with the feds like that. But I still needed you.” He looks right at me, his eyes ice cold. “I brought you here because you saw the other one.”
He’s pointing a gun at us.
You saw the other one.
He’s pointing a fucking gun at us, and I need to be anywhere but here, but my brain goes to one place: the parking lot that night back in October.
I flash to the woman with the long hair. The one who stared at me like a blank animal.
The same woman who burst through the woods and onto the road.
She wasn’t the killer.
“You were going to kill her,” I say, still acutely aware of the gun pointed directly at me. “That’s why she was running.”
Beck looks between the two of us, eyes wild in confusion. “What’re you talking about?”
“I thought all this time that maybe she was the killer running away after hurting Paisley, Harlow, and Opal,” I say. My voice feels far away, like I’m narrating from above. I wish I were. “But she was running from you. She escaped.”
And Evan breaks out the most twisted smile I’ve ever seen. “I caught her after you left. She was so beautiful. I hated having to throw her to the coyotes.”
Everything solid in me melts away as it all finally comes together.
Ivy’s never going to find Vanessa’s body, because it’s sitting in a thousand-plus dollar coffin in Forest Lawn Memorial.
The ISB identified the wrong body as Paisley.
I bet I know which human destroyed that corpse’s teeth. Bile rises up my throat. I steal a glance at Beck, and she’s white as a sheet, a deer stuck in headlights.
We have to go. But there’s no way our pocketknives and pepper spray can beat a gun. My backpack is at my feet. He’ll shoot if I make any sudden movements.
“Where’s Paisley’s body?” I demand as Beck and I raise our hands and step toward the door. “Why move Paisley’s body and not the others?”
Does he have Paisley’s body?
Suddenly, all I can see is the only other door here, the one that leads into what I assumed was a bathroom.
He’s going to kill us. I can’t die without knowing what really happened to Paisley.
“Paisley’s here, isn’t she?” I ask. “You stole the videos off her phone, so where is she?”
“Stop talking!” He trains the gun right at chest level. “Stop talking!”
And he fires.
I cry out in shock. The sound is so much louder than I thought based on what I’ve seen in movies. It rings in my ears. My hand throbs, but—
—but nothing else hurts.
I look over to Beck. She’s not bleeding either.
I spare a glance behind us.
The bullet has buried itself in the wall.
He missed.
Beck springs for my backpack. She removes the pepper spray.
She sprays it right into Evan’s face, less than five feet from him.
Evan screeches as the gun clatters to the floor.
He drops to the ground, rubbing his face with his sleeve. Beck and I lock eyes.
Evan looks up, his eyes devil-red.
We all jump for the gun.
Everything happens in a blur. Bodies slam together, heat and rocked skulls. Fingers clasp in a frenzy. Mine touch the hot metal. Too hot, so hot I have to pull back.
The gun goes off again.
A splash of wetness hits me, the liquid hot.
Too hot.
And red.
As my stomach lurches, I pull away.
My hands and the front of my shirt are splattered in blood.
When I look up, I make eye contact with Beck.
The only person who can’t move is Evan. Blood pools around him in a crimson puddle, his teary red eyes still open.
He’s dead.
He’s dead, he’s dead, we killed him.
We just killed someone. After a weekend of talking about murder and death, we’re the ones standing over a dead body. The room spins violently out of control. I drop to the ground, forehead to the heater-warmed wood as my body reacts.
“Oh my god,” I say, my throat so thick I can hardly speak. “What the fuck? What the fuck?”
I try so hard to breathe.
I shut my eyes. Beyond the blood pumping in my ears, all I can do is listen.
A click. Beck turning the gun’s safety on? Shuffling sounds as Beck moves around the body on her knees.
Then, a gasp.
A hand on my shoulder. “Emma, look at this.”
Slowly, I lift my head. Beck’s over the body, Evan’s button-down partially undone so that his shoulder is exposed. Her face is straight, but her chest moves up and down rapidly, her arms wrapped around herself as if she still needs to protect her organs.
I gasp.
There’s a stab wound, bandage stained red.
“But the person chasing us had long hair…” I say.
I’m suddenly hit with an urge to cry.
“People can get haircuts.”
He was the one following us the whole time.
He really did lead us out here to kill us. He needed to tie up loose ends from the bloodbath he created back in October.
How could I be so stupid as to fall for it?
“We need to get out of here.”
Beck puts her hand on mine. “Well, we need to look for a phone.” She pauses. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to look around. To…see if there’s more of Paisley here.”
My stomach lurches. Literally.
But I know I need to be here for her for this. It won’t be like what happened at Paisley’s vigil again.
“Okay,” I say.
I swallow my tears and stand up. My friends still need me to uncover the whole truth. Paisley still needs me so her family can bury the right person. I was brave protecting Beck and myself from Evan at the watchtower. I can do it one more time.