Nothing. The house is quiet except for their echoing footsteps on the old wooden floors.
“Do you—” Ash stops. She bites her lip. “Do you feel like we’re being… guided?”
“By Hope?”
“No.” That’s not quite it.
“Like by God?” Caro asks, sounding profoundly skeptical.
“No,” Ash says. Her eyes dart back and forth. She’s searching for words. “Something not as… benevolent.”
Caro waits.
“Directed,” Ash says finally. “Like, without our knowledge.”
They leave the house and walk down its splintered steps.
The one next to them has a barbed-wire fence around it and aPRIVATEPROPERTYsign, though it doesn’t look like it’s been well taken care of or visited in years. Caro walks right up to the fence.
“Don’t you feel it?” Ash says, and Caro looks over her shoulder, her eyes flashing.
“Yeah,” Caro says. “I do. I’ve been feeling it the whole time.” She finds a spot in the fence without a barb, presses it down, and climbs over. Her injured leg almost catches on a barb farther down the wire, and Ash’s breath hitches in her throat.
“Caro,” Ash says, “be careful,” and then she notices where Caro’s heading.
There’s a shed behind the house. Dilapidated but intact. And there’s a car inside.
You’d only park inside that shed if you didn’t want anyone to know you were here.
It can’t be Hope who’s here. Can it?
“Caro,” Ash says, low. “Come back. Let’s call the police.”
“You do that,” Caro says. “Now. Keep your voice down. Tell them we’re in Afton and that we might have found Hope Hanover.” She’s still now, her body wired, tense. Can she hear something Ash can’t? Ash is frozen in place.
And then Caro goes into the house alone.
“Wait,”Ash says. This is a very, very bad idea. Ash puts her hands on the fence to climb over. Can she do it? Caro’s so much taller, and the fence is high.
But it’s only moments before Caro is back out. “Nothing in the house,” she says. “The shed—”
And then the screaming begins.
65
CARO
THE SCREAMING IS STILLcoming from the church, tearing through its porous walls and howling through Caro’s ears. She races up the steps three at a time and yanks open the splintered wooden door, Ash on her heels. They almost crash into one another as they stop short at the sight of what’s inside. Beyond the sparse wooden pews, lying on a surprisingly well-varnished wooden floor, is a body.
It’s not Hope.
It’s the young woman from Sonnet. Page.
If she was the one screaming, she’s not anymore. She’s lying flat on her back and her hands are tied. Is she dead? Unconscious? Somewhere else in the church—below them?—a door slams.
Caro dodges between the pews, slipping on the floor. The varnish is still wet and smells so strong that Caro’s head instantly begins to ache. She drops to her knees next to Page.Alive. Thank goodness.There’s a pulse. But it looks like she’s just been knocked out, a small pool of blood already forming beneath her head. There’s a backpack near her, Caro notices.
“Did you get the police?” Caro asks Ash. She carefully lifts Page’s head. Page stirs. The wound doesn’t look terrible. Everything might be okay.
