3:59 (2 page)

“Oh,” Madison said. Then her eyes widened as reality dawned on her. “Oh!” She paused. “Okay, well, I’m taking my demon little sister to dance class, but I’ll be home by the time you’re off work. So call me, okay? If you need to talk?”

Josie smiled weakly. “Will do.”

Madison nodded, then turned and headed down the hall. Josie’s smile lingered as she watched Madison go. Her friend might be a bit of an airhead upon occasion, but she was also incredibly sweet and thoughtful. Two things Josie desperately needed in a best friend these days.

Nick leaned down and whispered in Josie’s ear. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Josie took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She
so
didn’t want to drive all the way to her dad’s new condo by herself. The thought was so depressing. “Any chance you can ditch track practice and come with me?”

“Sorry, gorgeous,” Nick said with a shake of his head. “Regionals are in two weeks. Coach would kill me if I miss practice.”

Josie tried to hide her disappointment. “Oh.”

“Walk me to the gym, though?”

Josie nodded absently. “Yeah, okay.”

They navigated the halls in silence, Josie wrapped up in her thoughts. Her parents’ separation had hit hard. One day they seemed like their normal, happy selves, but practically overnight things had changed. Small fights at first, then before Josie knew it, her parents’ nightly screaming matches were the new normal around the Byrne household. In less than six months, her dad had moved out. Now Josie’s home life was a hot mess. Her dad was still in shock and, like a lovesick teen, spent most of his time trying to get Josie’s mom to take him back. Her mom had thrown herself into her work, going so far as to have a home lab constructed in their basement to avoid charges of child abandonment while she worked twenty-four-seven on her new experiment. Meanwhile, Josie could count on one hand the number of conversations they’d had in the last week that weren’t about work or—

“Did you hear me?”

Josie’s head snapped up. She and Nick were standing in front of the entrance to the boys’ locker room. His hands were folded across his chest, and his dark brows were pinched together.

“Huh?”

Nick sighed. “Josie, were you even listening to me?”

“I’m sorry,” Josie said. “I was just . . . I don’t know. Lost.”

“You’ve been like that a lot lately,” he said quietly. “Between your parents and your science project, it’s like you don’t have time for anything else.” It wasn’t an accusation so much as a statement of fact. “Do you even remember what today is?”

Josie caught her breath. Was it Nick’s birthday? Had she forgotten Nick’s birthday? No, that was in October. Josie relaxed. Forgetting her boyfriend’s birthday would have been a disaster.

“Never mind.” Nick shook his head and stepped toward her. “Look, there’s something I need to talk to you about. Something important.”

Josie looked up at him. There was an edge to his voice that made her heart beat faster. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said quickly. “I mean, there’s just a lot going on and I needed to—”

Deep in Josie’s purse, an alarm went off. Her cell-phone reminder that she needed to be in the car on the way to her dad’s if she was going to make it back to work on time. She’d already received a written warning because of her tardiness—usually because she was lingering at the track, watching Nick practice—so she needed to motor. “Crap,” she said. “I have to go.”

“Oh.” The muscles around Nick’s mouth sagged, reflecting more dejection and pain than his clipped, monosyllabic response. What was going on with him?

“Call me,” Josie said. “After practice, okay? We’ll talk tonight.”

“Okay.” Nick flashed his crooked half smile, the sadness of a moment before evaporated. He was his old, carefree self again. “Don’t let any monsters attack you on the way back from Landover, okay?”

Josie snuggled her face into his chest. “I’ll try.”

JOSIE’S ANCIENT HATCHBACK SHUDDERED IN protest as she stepped on the accelerator.

“Come on.” She leaned forward in her seat, willing the old car to go faster. “If I’m late again, I’m going to get fired.”

As if in answer, the Ford Focus lurched forward. A hand-me-down from her cousin, it was almost as old as she was, and the engine screeched in protest as she held the pedal to the floor. The speedometer flickered, desperately grasping for forty-five miles per hour, and for a fleeting moment Josie thought the Teal Monster, as Madison had dubbed the car, might actually have some kick left in her.

Or not. The engine sputtered, momentum slowed, and Josie had to downshift to third gear.

“I hate you,” she said, slapping the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. “Just so you know.”

Josie’s phone rang. Keeping one hand on the wheel, she reached into the center console and hit speakerphone. “Hello?” she said loudly, over the roar of her car’s engine.

“Did you get it?” Her mom’s voice was crisp and businesslike.

Josie whizzed around a turn and hoped her mom couldn’t hear the screech of tires on the other end of the line. She eyed the rearview mirror, sending a death stare bouncing to the back of her car, where the oversized rococo monstrosity sat covered in a fluffy blue blanket, wedged into the flattened backseat through a feat of advanced car yoga.

“Josie, are you there?”

“Yeah, sorry.” Glancing right and left, Josie careened through a yellow light just as it turned red, praying there were no state troopers around as she barreled through the intersection. A speeding ticket was the last thing she needed. “I’ve got the mirror,” she said, before her mom could ask again.

“Good.” Her mom cleared her throat. “I just had a shipment delivered at the lab. So I’ll—”

“Be home late,” Josie said, finishing her thought. It was a conversation they had at least twice a week, whenever her mom got a shipment of materials delivered to her lab at Fort Meade. Top secret stuff, but Josie guessed it was the ultradense deuterium her mom used in most of her experiments. If so, it might be a few days before her mom surfaced from the lab.

“Right.” Her mom paused. “Okay, well, drive safely. I’ll call you later.”

Josie clicked off her phone. Part of her was relieved when her mom worked late: the tension between them recently had been almost unbearable. But since her dad had moved out, the house was lonely, and the idea of spending another night there by herself was incredibly depressing.

Her mood sinking like lead in water, Josie flipped on the radio. It was programmed to the AM news station.

“From the evidence at the scene,” a man said in a cool academic voice, “we have determined that the attacks were not caused by a bear. They appear to be the work of a predatory cat of some kind.”

A reporter cut into the prerecorded statement. “When pressed for information, Captain Wherry stated that local investigators are targeting known collectors of exotic animals in hopes of finding the cause of the recent attacks. For WPTN, I’m Morgan Curón.”

Josie rolled her eyes. A cat? Really? Sixteen dead bodies and all the authorities could come up with was an exotic cat?

Maybe Penelope was right: it
was
a cover-up.

“Time for weather on the nines,” the news anchor said in his overly cheerful radio voice. “And we’re looking at glorious weather for this April fifteenth.”

Josie’s stomach dropped. Today was April fifteenth?

Holy crap, no wonder Nick had looked so upset when she left. Today was their one-year anniversary.

And Josie had completely forgotten.

Shit, shit, shit. Major relationship screwup. How could she have forgotten? It was just a few weeks ago that she and Nick had been at the mall and he’d pointed out a necklace he thought she might like in the window of a chain jewelry store. Entwined hearts with little red stones at the apex of each. No wonder he’d been acting so weird that afternoon. He was waiting for her to wish him a happy anniversary so he could give her the necklace.

She reached for her phone; she needed to talk to him right that second. But he’d be in the middle of practice. Damn. She’d have to wait until after her shift and then maybe they could celebrate tomorrow?

She was the worst girlfriend ever.

Josie sped around a corner, tapping the brakes as lightly as possible so as not to lose momentum, and veered onto Leeland Road. Another glance at the time. 3:50 p.m. Ten minutes. She pushed Nick and their anniversary from her mind. There was nothing she could do about it, and right now she had to focus on getting to work. As long as she didn’t get caught at the railroad crossing she was totally going to make it.

Wishful thinking. Josie heard the peal of bells before she even saw the flashing lights. Train coming.

Crap.

Option A: slam both feet onto the accelerator and pray her car had enough power to slip under the rapidly descending crossing arm. Option B: slow down and wait for the train. Option A: decent chance of a gruesome, fiery death. Option B: decent chance she’d get fired.

Kind of a close call, but after a moment’s hesitation, Josie hit the brakes and screeched to a stop just as the railroad-crossing arm locked into place across the road.

It didn’t take long for Josie to regret her sensible decision. Immediately, she realized it was a government transport train leaving Fort Meade. Probably the same one that had just delivered the shipment to her mom.

Oh, the irony.

Josie counted the cars as they ambled by.
Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen
. She checked the clock. 3:57 p.m. “Come on!” she said through clenched teeth.

Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four
. Josie leaned over the steering wheel and craned her neck, trying to get a view of the rails stretching south through the thick greenery of forest that hugged both sides of the road. She could barely see twenty feet down the tracks. Was there an end in sight? She couldn’t tell.

Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight
. Josie reached for her cell. She’d call work and explain. See? It wasn’t her fault. She would have been on time if it hadn’t been for the stupid train. How could she control that?

3:59. With a heavy sigh, Josie scrolled through her contacts to the coffeehouse’s number and hit the green button.

Josie wasn’t quite sure what happened next. The Teal Monster idled at the crossing, the occasional shudder of the strained engine rumbling beneath her. Then, suddenly, the car lurched so violently that Josie’s head smacked into the roof. She screamed—half from surprise, half from fear—and smashed her foot onto the brake pedal. Had someone hit her? She frantically looked into the rearview mirror but saw only the barren expanse of Leeland Road twisting into the woods. Confused, she turned all the way around to make sure a deer hadn’t accidentally rammed her. That’s when she noticed the mirror. It lay cockeyed in the back, and the blue blanket had slid to one side. The mirror must have shifted in the backseat while she was stopped at the crossing.

She reached back to see if the mirror had been damaged, when a light flashed—fierce, white, and so intense that a searing pain shot through her eyeballs to the back of her skull and left her irises screaming for mercy. It was a clear, sunny afternoon in the middle of April, but the light that filled Josie’s car blinded her as if she’d been sitting for hours in utter darkness and someone had suddenly shone a spotlight in her face. She slapped a hand over her eyes, desperate to block out the blinding flash. Blood thundered through her temples, and her eyes ached against the piercing light. Josie buried her face in her hands, and felt the car shudder . . .

Then everything went dark.

A HORN BLARED. IT SOUNDED CLOSE, YET MUFFLED.

Then a voice. “Hello? Josie? Are you there?”

Josie blinked her eyes open, half expecting to still be blinded by the mysterious flash. Instead, Leeland Road stretched before her, open and empty. The train was gone. The crossing arm sat vertical and inert, the warning bells dead silent.

Her car was still running, her cell phone still gripped in one hand, and her manager’s voice pierced the haze that had settled over her brain.

She absently lifted the phone to her ear. “H-hi,” she said lamely.

“Josie, do you have any idea what time it is?”

Another horn blast. An irate driver in a pickup truck swerved around her through the oncoming traffic lane, flipping her the bird as he passed.

“I said,” her manager repeated. His voice was steely. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

Josie shook her head, trying to jar her brain back into working order. Time? What time was it? Her eyes drifted to the dashboard clock.

“Four oh-nine?” She couldn’t keep the question out of her voice. Ten minutes? She’d been at the train crossing for ten minutes? That was impossible.

“Exactly,” he said. “You’re fired.”

She heard the phone go dead, yet Josie didn’t move. She stared at the digital clock display wondering what the hell had just happened.

Josie eased the Teal Monster onto the soft shoulder of Leeland Road and cut the engine. She felt disoriented and confused, and her head still ached from the blinding flash of light that seemed to come from nowhere. She sat in the car, her heart pounding, and tried to figure out what she was going to do next.

She could have gone home, but to what? An empty house and no one to talk to. Not what she needed.

Other options: Penelope would be home, posting on one of her favorite online forums, but she’d immediately theorize that Josie’s experience at the train tracks was part of a government mind-control experiment gone haywire or something equally off the rails, and Josie wasn’t quite in the mood for that. Nick would still be at track practice. She hated bothering him while he was training for regionals, but maybe if she texted to explain what had just happened . . .