I straighten, slide back the floor-length blinds with a clatter, and peer into the backyard. Just a small patch of grass, a dilapidated wooden fence keeping most of it contained. The lawn needs cutting, the porch outside the balcony is tiny, and there’s nothing out there but scattered cigarette butts that seem to have blown from an ashtray perched precariously on one of the porch’s ledges.
I reach beside me and flick off the light to the bedroom, knowing if someone is out there, they can see me just fine and I wouldn’t be able to see them.
I blink my eyes to adjust to the new darkness as Grey calls my name.
There’s nothing.
I use the back of my hand to nudge the screen door open just a little more. The fall air greets me and I breathe it deep into my lungs.
It must be in my head, but I swear I catch the familiar scent of something on the breeze.
Dark like deep red flowers and freshly brewed espresso.
The same scent I inhaled Friday night when I tackled Lydia Flynn to the ground.
“Storm, what are we going to do?” Grey’s voice is hoarse at my back.
“What exactly happened?” I don’t face him.
“She went out.” He answers me quick, like if he says it all at once, it’ll bring her back to life. “Some club or something? I don’t know, I was working. I wasn’t paying attention. I should’ve fucking paid attention?—”
“Keep going.” I can’t let him fall apart now.
“Said she got an Uber back, so when she text, I left to get pizza for us?—”
“You didn’t see who dropped her off?”
A pause. Then a quiet, “No.”
I don’t say anything, my mind spinning all the facts over but nothing is concrete, not without proof.
“What do we do?” Grey asks again, his tone desperate.
Mine is dead when I answer him. “Get Hawthorn on the phone.”
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
STORM
“Why wouldn’t you tell me she was here?” I don’t look at my dad as I ask the question. The tang of blood is still in my nose and the freshwater scent of Coven Lake through Dad’s cracked BMW windows does nothing to erase it.
I feel sick, and in my head, I see Indie’s hair spreading out around her before she sunk into the lake and we lost sight of her. If she’s ever found, the stones will announce the murder.
“She didn’t do this.” Dad’s only words. He doesn’t answer my question and he doesn’t convince me of his statement at all.
I clench my teeth and close my eyes, blanking out the mountain range beyond the scenic overview Dad pulled onto when the silence between us grew too thick, only half a mile from where we dumped Indie’s body.
“I didn’t ask if she did or didn’t. I asked why you didn’t bother to tell me she was here.”
Dad is quiet.
He gets like this.
I don’t open my eyes or I will scream at him. I’ve kept that in for five long years now. Since Sloane in the hallway, asking aboutmy necklace. Since the weekend before, watching my father play with something he had no right to. Something that wasn’t his, breaking a heart which wasn’t mine.
But it was that too, wasn’t it?
