Page 74 of People Like Us

I smiled tightly back at him, tasting metal at the back of my throat. “I have jeans in my car. I’ll change.” I folded my arms across myself. “I’d really like to help look for my friend.”

My father’s brows lifted slightly. “I wasn’t aware you were friends with the O’Kinzy boys.”

Emily’s father snorted softly beside him. “Well hopefully only the youngest one. That older O’Kinzy boy’s headed straight for prison.” He scratched at his beard. “Anybody know where he is tonight? I’d bet my last dollar he’s got something to do with this.”

Something ugly rolled through me at that. The ease of it. The way adults in this town could condemn somebody like they were discussing weather.

“We aren’t close,” I said carefully. “But we’re all friends in Christ, right Pastor?” I looked directly at Spires when I said it.

Something flickered in his eyes.

“Brothers and sisters,” he corrected softly. The words settled over my skin like an accusation.

Emily’s mother suddenly looked around the parking lot. “Lola, I didn’t see Emily get out of your car.” Her voice tightened immediately with concern. “She said she was riding with you?”

Panic flashed hot through my chest.

I couldn’t tell them Emily had gone home earlier. Emily once told me her mother tracked her menstrual cycle in a planner beside the grocery lists and church potlucks. Said if she was even a day late, her parents started quoting scripture at her over breakfast.

My mouth opened uselessly.

But before I could say anything, Emily appeared from the far edge of the crowd like she’d crawled right out of the woods herself. The hems of her jeans were soaked dark with mud nearly to her knees. Damp blonde hair clung to her cheeks from the misting rain.

“Sorry, Mom,” she said easily, brushing past her parents before they could question her too hard. “I ended up riding with the cheer squad instead.”

Her eyes met mine for one sharp second. A warning. Then she hooked her arm through mine tightly enough to hurt.

“Come on,” she said brightly. “People are already heading in. You can be in my group.”

I managed one last polite wave toward the adults before Emily steered me away from them and toward the edge of the woods where adults were handing out flashlights.

The floodlights from the church only reached so far before the trees swallowed the dark whole. Beyond them, the forest waited silently, wet and black and breathing.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ishould’ve changed into the jeans, but instead, my shins were coated in thick, clinging mud as I stomped defiantly through the forest, my flashlight from the safety station cutting a harsh swath of light through the dense woods. Emily seemed unfazed by the dirt, her strides steady and sure.

We trekked far enough from the nearest group that their shouted calls for Shannon became distant echoes. Once shrouded in the woods’ depths, I finally voiced the question burning within me, “What were you doing out here earlier, Emily?”

Her mouth was a grim line. “I was searching for the rock,” she admitted quietly, her voice barely audible over the rustling leaves.

I nodded, a chill running down my spine. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “Did you find it?” I pressed, my heart pounding.

She nodded again, her eyes scanning the underbrush.

“And?” I urged, panic surging.

Her gaze flicked to mine, then away. “There was still dried blood on it. You definitely hit something with a heartbeat,” she stated, her voice too calm.

I froze, my breath catching. Emily’s fingers dug into my elbow, tugging me forward, her grip insistent. “I scrubbed it, and buried it. It’s fine, Lola.” Her voice was stern, as if she hadn’t just become an accomplice to my crime. “You don’t know what you hit.”

A choked gasp escaped me as I struggled to breathe evenly. “Emily, it had to—“”

She silenced me with a harsh glare. “It had to have been a deer. That’s it. Andy said he saw a deer. It was a deer. Say it, Lola.”

“It was a deer,” I breathed, nodding, my voice barely a whisper.

“Good. Now keep moving. You’ll drive yourself mad if you stand still too long.”