1
GRAYSON
The Blackwell Lake University band was known for hyping up the crowds at football games.
Not today.
Today, they seemed like a small, somber group, clad in black, the eerie, mournful notes of their instruments echoing across the field. There had been too many people to fit inside the church, so here we were, in the meadow next to the graveyard, seated in rows with an aisle down the middle.
The Zeta Gamma Theta sorority girls were all huddled together in their rows at the front of the opposite side to where I was seated with the hockey team and Micah. Some of them were openly sobbing, and every single one of them looked distraught.
We stood to face the coffin as it came up the aisle, the pallbearers grim and serious as they slowly passed us. The casket was closed—it had to be, with the?—
Fuck. Bile rose in my throat as I thought about the mutilation of her body.
“I wish she was here,” Micah whispered. “I wish we were all together.”
He was on the farthest end of the row, next to me, and I had Smith on my other side. Coach sat in the row in front of us, along with some of the other faculty members. We were surrounded by my teammates, so all I could do was give him a tiny nod, pressing my thigh into his in a futile effort to provide comfort.
I still couldn’t believe it. And it had happened at the Halloween party.OurHalloween party.
I wished I’d been quicker. I wish I’d done something.
I wished.
But wishes were fucking futile when we had a deranged stalker out to get us.
I felt as if I were drowning, like the depths were swallowing me.
“Gray! Cruz!”
The sheer panic in Micah’s voice, coupled with his sudden appearance right next to us, had my heart beating right out of my chest.
“What? What is it?” Shrugging Cruz off, I moved to grip Micah’s shoulders, fear rising as I took him in. With his mask pushed up on top of his head, there was nothing to hide his wild eyes and the fear in his expression.
“I can’t find Ava. She—she was heading toward you. But you’re here. Not there.”
“What are you saying? I don’t understand.”
Cruz came up next to me, curving his fingers around Micah’s bicep. His breaths were coming faster than they had when he was up against me, giving away how worried he was. “Where’s Ava?”
“I— We were in the kitchen. She saw you by the door leading out to the yard, Gray. I saw you, too, so I let her go. Last Isaw, Cruz was heading upstairs to look for you, so I left her and came after him. How are you here?”
My heart was in my fucking throat, and I could barely breathe, a heavy, nauseating pressure bearing down on my lungs, suffocating me.
“Micah,” I said slowly, forcing the words out in between shaky breaths. “I haven’t been in the kitchen since I left the three of you locked in the pantry. I’ve been circling the house, looking for anything suspicious, but I haven’t made it back there yet, and I haven’t been anywhere near the door to the yard.”
“Fuck,” Cruz whispered.
Micah’s panicked gaze connected with mine. “If it wasn’t you I saw in the kitchen, then who was it? And where’s Ava?”
The three of us ran for it, shouldering people out of the way. Our only concern was getting to the kitchen as quickly as possible.
I tore off my mask, staring around at my surroundings wildly. “I don’t see her.”
“Gray. What the fuck, bro? You were walking out to the yard a few minutes ago, and now you appear on this side of the kitchen? How did you manage that?”
I took in Johnny’s words, a chill going down my spine. “How did you know it was me?”
