Ask Me (21 page)

Oh God, no
. It was going to be Will. I just knew it. Alex had already tried to beat him to a pulp once. Next time it would be a knife instead of his fists. He could be there right now. Neither of them was here at school, where all the police were. Will was home recuperating, and Alex was suspended. Will had no idea what danger he was in.

Before I could think about it, I was off and running.

The sole bit of luck on my side: Will’s house was only minutes from the school. I pulled into his driveway and scrambled out of my car. My heart was beating fast, way too fast. Was I too late again? I ran up the cobblestone walk and banged on the door, then noticed the doorbell and rang it instead. I was about to ring again when I heard footsteps. Please let it be him.

Will opened the door, his hair messy like he’d just gotten out of bed. I let out a shuddering breath and grabbed him in a hug before I thought about what I was doing.

“Aria,” he said, his voice hoarse and groggy. “What are you doing here?

“I had to see you, to make sure you were okay, my fear overcomes me today,” I said into his chest. I didn’t even care what a loon I sounded like. He wrapped his arms around me, and I felt safe for a moment. His heart thumped solidly in my ear, a slow, calm drumbeat. I took
another deep breath and pulled back to look up at him. “Shelley’s dead,” I said. “The police are at the school now.”

His bruised face twisted. For a second, I wondered if he might start crying. He shook his head and drew in a shaky breath. Then he pulled me inside and shut the door.

“I shouldn’t have waited,” I said. “I should have done something yesterday, said something to the police, or done
something
.”

“You couldn’t have known.” He sounded wide-awake now, leading me by the hand into their living room. It was a far cry from my own, tastefully and expensively decorated with oil paintings on the walls and fresh flower arrangements on nearly every table. Even with everything going on I felt a pang of shame that he’d been inside my house. He sat down on a solid red couch, packed with plump, floral-patterned pillows, and pulled me down to sit next to him.

My Salvation Army-issue dress was floral too, faded and pale next to the vibrant colors in the room. I took my hand from his and put them both in my lap, spreading my hands flat, covering my thighs. It made no difference. What did it matter what I looked like anyway? I shook my head. This wasn’t what I was here for.

“He’ll come for you next,” I said, clenching my hands. “I’m sure of it.” I turned to face him. I had to make him understand.

He raised his eyebrows and then winced in pain. His eye looked a little better, but it was still swollen and dark purple, tinged with an unhealthy-looking green.

“We have to do something,” I said.

“You can’t go directly to the police,” he said. “Surely you’re not thinking of doing that. They’d eat you alive.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know anymore,” I said. “They’d probably think I was crazy, but if they did believe me, maybe it would stop Alex.” I searched his eyes. “You’re in danger, Will. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you when I could have done something.” I’d definitely had no love for Shelley, but I knew her death would haunt me forever. Even she deserved better. I shut my eyes and took another deep breath, trying not to let it shake as I let it go. “I have to do something.”

He was silent for a minute. “The problem with the police is that they wouldn’t stop questioning you. They’d want to know how you know so much. I bet they’d even hold you until they could clear your name. And if they couldn’t for some reason … There’s no telling what they’d put you through. I can’t let you do that, not for me. Not for anyone.”

“But—”

“No arguing,” he said, touching a finger to my lips. “I know what we can do. Just let me get dressed and we’ll go.”

“Dressed?” I said stupidly, blushing as I finally noticed he was still in his pajamas and his rumpled bedhead hair really was from him being fresh from bed. His pajama bottoms were a blue paisley silk, though he wore only a plain white undershirt on top. I wondered if I should avert my eyes, but it wasn’t as if he were naked. I flushed a deeper shade of red at the thought and found a magazine on the table to concentrate on.
Field & Stream
. His dad must be a hunter. Most dads around here were. It looked out of
place surrounded by the very female touch everywhere else in the room.

He stood up, apparently not having noticed my sudden discomfort. “Yes, we’ll go to where Jade was killed and see if we can use your gift to find a clue that the police might have missed. After all, they’ll all be over at the school today. The crime scene in the woods will be empty. Safe. If we find something, we’ll leave them an anonymous tip or something, like you did before.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded. The thought of going to where Jade had died made my stomach sink, but it was something. He patted me on the shoulder and left to go change. I sat in the silence of the room, surrounded by the cheery floral patterns, staring down at the muted flowers covering my own dress. They would never be a match.

WE LEFT MY CAR
and took his instead. I didn’t argue. I couldn’t picture him sitting in the Colt anyway. Besides, the day had ripened into a blinding heat, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Air-conditioning would be preferable. It was even warmer than normal, but you could see the threat of rain in the darkening sky.

There was no breeze either. Everything lay still and heavy in the heat, eerily like the calm before a hurricane. I’d been through enough of those to know how that felt, though I hadn’t heard that one was expected anytime soon. During the season, it sometimes seemed like one was headed towards Florida every other week. We weren’t that close to the coast, but it didn’t really matter. Nowhere was safe, really, from the storms.

Will drove out of town and headed straight for the Laurel Creek preserve. He’d changed into a pair of jeans and a dark grey T-shirt. He’d run a wet comb through his hair, too, and it was back to its normal perfection. From the passenger’s side I couldn’t see the bruised side of his face at all. At this angle, it was as if the fight had never happened.

“Do you know where to go?” I asked.

“I think so,” he said. He turned on his stereo, and I recognized the song from The Damnwells that I’d heard just that morning. It seemed forever ago. I closed my eyes and listened to the words as we drove deeper and deeper into the woods.

Four songs and three different dirt roads later, Will pulled off the side of the road and parked.

“This is it?” I asked. The trees were thick and close together here, but most of them were fairly young, and almost all were pine trees and scrub palms. That meant there’d probably been a fire here some years ago. It took a devastating fire to take out the oak trees and release the seeds from the pinecones. Probably before my time, given the age of the trees, but this spot had seen its share of tragedies. Unless, I supposed, you were one of the new young trees given a chance at life.

He nodded towards a swatch of yellow plastic almost hidden in the brush. “See, there’s some police tape left over there.” He opened his door and got out, coming around to meet me on the other side. He waved off to the left of the road, even deeper into the trees. “I think that’s where they found her, and I imagine past that is where she, um,
crawled from.” He bowed his head, and we held a moment of silence together, broken only by the cooing of a dove.

When he lifted his head, I climbed out and then nearly tripped over a rotted out stump. He reached out a hand to steady me and then took my hand. “Be careful,” he said. “It’s dangerous out here.”

I let out a nervous laugh. The sky had continued to darken, and with the added cover of the trees, it felt like dusk out here. The air was like soup. It was going to be a heck of a storm. “Are you sure we should be out here right now?” I asked. “Looks like it’ll come down cats and dogs.”

He glanced up at the sky. “Better now than later. The rain could wash away some evidence. And we know the police are preoccupied with Shelley right now.” He set off into the trees and abruptly stopped, turning to me. “Um, I have no idea where I’m going,” he said. “I should have asked … Aria, which way should we go to get to where Jade was murdered?”

“East, then north,” I said, my voice deepening as I spoke. “You will know it when you come to it. Death was there.”

He squeezed my hands and set off in what was presumably the right direction. I wasn’t sure which way was actually east. I loved to walk in the woods, but I relied mostly on my inner compass, not on which actual direction was which.

He guided me between the trees, making sure to point out roots and thorny bushes along the way so I wouldn’t get caught. It wasn’t necessary, but it was kind of nice all the same. I’d never walked in the woods with anyone other than Granddad and I was a better woodsman than he was. I let myself be pulled along.

He stopped after a while and peered into the gloom. A few fat drops of rain fell between the tightly packed branches above us. “Which way?” he murmured.

“Twenty paces ahead, past the oldest oak.” That rang a bell with me, with what I’d said before about where Jade was located. He led me on and soon we did come to a massive and gnarled trunk scarred by flames. Whatever fire had come through years before, this tree had survived it. Now it was alone and surrounded by upstart pines.

“We’re here,” he said. “This must be it.”

I nodded. Now what? The storm hadn’t really started yet, but more drops were falling. A big one fell directly on my head with a wet plop.

“Well,” Will said, looking at the sky, “I guess let’s be direct. It doesn’t look like we have much time. Is there anything of Alex’s here?”

I let myself go as loose as I could. This was no time to hold back. “Something borrowed, something blue.” I blew out my breath, frustrated. That made no sense. Wasn’t it some sort of hokum people said at weddings?

Will sighed along with me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was afraid this would happen.”

He dropped my hand and turned slowly around. “Okay, how about this … which direction should I go to find whatever the blue thing of Alex’s is?”

“Left, three steps,” I said. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe this had a shot of working.

Will walked left a few steps forward and stopped by a fallen tree. “Which way now?”

“Down,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows at me, and I shrugged. Then he dug into his pockets and carefully removed a pair of household gloves out of his pocket, like the kind Gran cleaned with. He was so prepared. I never would have thought to do that, but it was smart. If Alex had left something, we didn’t want to contaminate the evidence. And as he pulled them on, I realized with a flutter that Will had probably done it for me. He wanted to keep me away from the police and didn’t want to risk anything that could tie me to this place.

As he got down on his hands and knees and dug a bit into the decaying leaves and pine needles, a dank rotting stench rose into the air. “Ah,” he said after a minute. He stopped digging.

I came closer and bent down next to him. Some cloth was caught under the dead tree. Blue and white. I recognized the pattern immediately. I had seen Alex wipe the sweat from his face with the twin of this handkerchief, the day he’d run to our house. Will stared at it a moment and then covered it back up, leaving a small corner of it sticking out.

“What are you doing?”

“The police should find it themselves,” he said. “Otherwise, they might think someone planted it.” He avoided my eyes. Once again, he was trying to protect me. “We just need to figure out a way to get them to look here again once they’re done with Shelley.” He stood up and brushed off his hands. “You did it, Aria. Once they find this, it will tie him to Jade’s murder.”

I wanted his eyes to catch mine, to smile, but it felt like
a hollow victory, considering that it was too late for Shelley to benefit from the find.

“It’s weird that he would have left this,” I said, almost to myself. “It’s almost asking to get caught.”

“Maybe it’s like on those TV shows. Maybe he wants to be found. Maybe it’s got blood on it, and he didn’t have time to get rid of it or something. Maybe he’s planning on coming back for it. But I’ll bet he probably doesn’t even know it’s missing. I mean, imagine what was going through his mind at the time …” He didn’t finish.

“I guess so,” I said. Alex didn’t seem that stupid to me. Of course, Alex had never seemed like a murderer to me before either.

The rain began to fall harder and harder, breaking through the canopy of trees, drenching us. Lightning flashed in the sky, and thunder rumbled seconds later, so close I could feel it in my chest, knocking around in my rib cage like another heart. Will grabbed my hand and pulled me underneath the lone oak tree, up against the thick slabs of greyish-brown bark. The branches were so thick that only a scattering of drops made their way down to us.

“Aren’t we supposed to avoid tall trees in a storm?”

“We’re probably supposed to avoid crime scenes, too,” he said.