‘Bet you wish you hadn’t had me.’ Tori was standing at an open bedroom door, and Morgan felt bad. How long had she been listening to their conversation?
‘Hey, how are you doing, Tori?’
She shrugged and walked to the sofa, flopping onto it and tucking her legs underneath her. She was a much better colour than she’d been in hospital and had a pale pink, fluffy dressing gown on.
‘Have you found Scarlett?’
‘Not yet, but we will.’
Tori nodded. ‘Alive?’
‘I hope so.’
Tori rolled her eyes. ‘Just like Scarlett to cause even more drama than there already is.’
Morgan sat near to Tori, her interest well and truly piqued at that statement. Maybe things weren’t as happy between them as she’d initially thought.
‘Does she usually cause drama?’
Tori shrugged. ‘Sometimes, she was all over Dawson in the car when he was driving. It’s her fault that he didn’t see the girl that ran across the road. If she hadn’t been flirting with him, he wouldn’t have almost run her over. Then we wouldn’t have gone out searching for her to see if she was hurt, and Dawson wouldn’t be…’ Her voice caught in the back of her throat, and Morgan reached out, gently clasping hold of her fingers, holding her hand.
‘It’s nobody’s fault, Scarlett didn’t know that was going to happen, neither did Dawson. Did you find the girl?’
Tori shook her head. ‘No sign of her, but it was so misty we couldn’t even see each other properly. It was so stupid being out there like that.’
‘Are you sure it was a girl? What makes you think it was?’
‘I don’t know, I didn’t see her, it’s just what Dawson shouted out.’
‘Did Scarlett see her?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Did Dawson say what she looked like?’
‘Just that she was really tall, thin and dressed in grey.’
‘Why did you decide to get out of the car if the weather was so awful? I’m sorry to ask you, Tori, but I need to get a clear picture of what happened before Dawson was attacked, so I can try and make sense of it.’
She shrugged. ‘Because we were idiots, that’s why.’
‘Could it have been someone running away and trying to escape from the person who killed Dawson, do you think? Could it have been another victim?’
Tori was shaking her head. ‘If she was, wouldn’t she have tried to get into the car and ask for help? I mean, if Dawson almost took her out, she would have been relieved to see us. She could have got into the car, and we could have locked the doors and got the fuck out of there.’ Tori glanced at her dad then back at Morgan, then continued. ‘Why would she have carried on running into the fields and towards that lake? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It doesn’t, although sometimes when people are scared, they can act out of character and the fear makes their thoughts cloudy. We can do stuff we wouldn’t normally dream of. Maybe she didn’t know who you were and thought that whoever was chasing her was in the car.’
‘Maybe, but?—’
‘But?’ asked Morgan.
‘Well, there was no sign of her, and we called out a couple of times when we got onto the grounds of the summer camp. Surely, she’d have known we weren’t the person chasing her. It’ssupposed to be haunted. What if Dawson saw a ghost and not a person? What if all of this happened because some ghost was going about their business and we interrupted them?’
She was holding Morgan’s gaze so intensely that Morgan wanted to look away. She couldn’t; she stared back at her and nodded. ‘Maybe it was.’
‘You believe in ghosts?’ Tori scoffed.
‘I believe that there are things out there we can’t explain, so yes, why not.’
