The helicopter passed over the forest, back and forth, coming closer and closer. It was almost as if someone guided it, pointingthe pilot in the right direction to search without knowing an exact destination.
This way, this way, this way.
Was Dad flying that helicopter?
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to be there for you, Reece. Please remember that.
Was Charlie with him, serving as a compass?
Suddenly, like a part of him really was with me after all and heard my thoughts, the spotlight dancing back and forth below the helicopter swung forward, pointing straight over the lake.
I squinted against the glare, the light reflecting brightly off the glacial-blue water.
Sapphireblue water.
Oh, no.We were on Lake Sapphire.
One of the deepest, coldest bodies of water in the whole country,my academic-fact-filled mind added unhelpfully, like a doll with dying batteries repeating the same phrase over and over.
If I tumbled over the side of this boat now, I’d never be found. Not even by the body recovery SCUBA team.
Leonard swore again, his calm, collected facade breaking as we both realized the helicopter wasn’t searching anymore.
Its pilot knew where to go.
Leonard yanked me by the shoulder. “Let’s go!” he shouted. I fought back, half-wondering why he hadn’t shot me already, but it was obvious that standing grew more and more difficult for him with his busted-up knee.
Maybe he couldn’t lift me overboard if he shot me while I was still in the boat?
I kicked out one last time, jamming my foot right into his bloody kneecap.
He groaned, and something wild came over his face. “It doesn’t matter anymore, anyway,” he said, detached, before he aimed the barrel right at my face.
“REECE!”
The yell came from the woods, distant, but echoing across the water.
“REECE! H—D ON!”
Charlie.That was Charlie’s voice. Was he in my head, still? Or was I hallucinating? Or maybe Leonard had already shot me dead?
He swore, attention pulled away to scan the trees surrounding the lake, swinging the gun around wildly. The helicopter closed in, nearly to the break in the trees.
“REECE?” Charlie yelled again. I could barely hear him now over the sound of the blades.
“CHARLIE?” I yelled back.
And then I saw him.
If he were alive, I wouldn’t have. In his ghost form, though, he glowed a faint, opaque white and appeared on the shore, just ahead of us.
“What the fuck?” Leonard asked, shaken.
Charlie blinked away, reappearing right in the middle of the boat, protectively standing over me while he faced off with Leonard.
He was barely visible at all—the outline of his body more of a suggestion of a person than anything else, and his face twisted in anger, flickering in and out of view.
Like this, standing face-to-face with his killer, he looked like a true harbinger of death.
