29:27
Nothing.
How was it possible? Had she been wrong all along?
Ana pushed the thought away. Too much depended on her theory that Bates had a secret hideout under one of the outbuildings. If she’d made a mistake…
They’d started in the food store. It didn’t have any secrets. She’d searched every inch with Alex, starting at the air vent and working their way out. No hiding psychos, no secret doors into hidden lairs. No cameras or microphones; clearly Bates hadn’t wasted time wiring the locked outbuildings. Nothing at all, just the vent, a cool breeze whistling through it.
There was only one other outbuilding close enough to be connected to the vent.
Now she was standing in it, with Alex.
This one must have been the motel dumping ground. It was packed full of furniture piled in dangerously teetering stacks. Bed frames, mattresses, tables and chairs, shelves and shelves of dust-covered appliances, and boxes filled with yellowed sheets and towels. There was a single three-foot-wide pathway meandering about thirty feet into the dark. Shafts of brilliant sunlight broke through rusty cracks in the corrugated metal roof, spearing through the air. The curved walls echoed every sound back and forth.
Ana switched off her phone flashlight and quickly checked the time, a sinking feeling in her stomach. Less than half an hour and counting. Too little time. Always too little time.
Junk—a shack full of junk. It didn’t seem possible that anyone would be hiding here. Alex must be feeling it too. He hadn’t spoken to her since they’d arrived. She glanced over at his back. He was squatting down, looking under pieces of furniture and boxes, moving them out of the way, checking behind them for something, anything.
“I’ll take the right side, okay?” Ana said, trying to keep her voice upbeat. She walked over to an insurmountable wall of metal bed frames and started nosing around, moving things, peeking around. She wasn’t expecting to find anything, but she would use the time to think. No way around it, she needed to come up with a plan B before Ellis did.
For several minutes they worked in silence, shifting piles as they made their way deeper into the dark space. Despair settled on Ana like sweat and dust, but she pushed it away.
A loud crack was followed by an immense crash as an entire pile of chairs fell, wooden legs and arms splintering on the floor. Alex jumped out of the way.
“Shit, sorry,” he muttered.
“Are you okay?” Ana moved over to see him. He was standing in one of the shafts of light, spotlit from above.
Hopelessness. It hung on him like a shadow. Ana could see it weighing him down. He pushed his hair back, tucking it behind his ear, then letting it fall forward again as he nodded.
Ana watched him. Every fiber in her wanted to walk over to him, to curl up in his arms and sink down on the floor. To sit, wrapped together, in that one pool of golden light and stay forever. No more strength or fear. No more sadness or guilt. They could give up the fight. They could let the clock run out on them.
They could just be.
But even as she thought it, she knew she couldn’t. Giving up, as delicious as it felt, meant giving up on Alex and Raya. That wasn’t going to happen.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s look back there.” She nodded towards the darkness at the far end of the building. “If I was trying to hide, I’d start in the shadows.”
She forced a smile. Alex nodded and climbed out of the pile of broken debris.
They started digging around, this time working side by side. Passing things back and forward, lifting heavy pieces out of the way together. They covered the area in sections, five feet, ten. Keeping busy. Ana’s mind was wandering again, pushing at the edges, trying to figure out who could be behind this. One thing kept coming back to her. Whoever it was knew them—knew their guilty secrets. But who?
“Alex, you know the mandatory school counseling?”
Alex paused, chair leg in hand, and looked across at her.
“Yeah. Why are you thinking about that now? It was such a waste of time.”
“I know. Dankman’s incompetent.”
“I think he’s worse than that. He kept trying to get me to say stuffthat I just wasn’t ready to say. You know? About Danny. About my feelings.” Alex rubbed his hand over his face, pushing the sweat out of his eyes. “Then I don’t know. It’s like when I finally talked to him, he just did nothing. Wrote me a prescription I didn’t bother filling and thought his job was done. Told me to come back if I was having suicidal ideation. I’m not sure I even know what that means.”
Ana nodded. No question, Dankman could do more harm than good. He was totally unqualified to help a group of kids dealing with real trauma and very real grief. But he had got her talking, and from the sounds of it, Alex too. Maybe they weren’t the only ones?
“Do you think the others told him stuff too? Secrets and things?”
“Ana, you don’t thinkDankmanis behind this, do you?” Alex was watching her. His skepticism was obvious.
