Find Me (18 page)

It’s Carson.

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HarperCollins Publishers

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When people ask me how I am, I have to struggle
not to scream.

—Page 15 of Tessa Waye’s diary

I can’t stop worrying about Griff. I leave school fully expecting to see cops waiting for me in the parking lot, but there aren’t any. None on my way home. Or at the house.

I have no idea what this means, and it kind of makes my head want to explode.

I unlock our side door quietly, but Bren catches me before my feet even hit the stairs. Swear to God, the woman must have supersonic hearing. It’s like her superpower or something.

“Wicket, are you home?” Bren comes down the hallway from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a pale pink dish towel. She makes it about four feet in front of me before her nose wrinkles.

“Why do you smell like meat loaf, Wick?”

Oh God. The cafeteria served meat loaf on Wednesday. Now wearing cafeteria meat loaf is bad enough, but wearing five-day-old cafeteria meat loaf is grounds for vomiting.

I try to nod like it’s no big thing. “Yeah, I’ve been recycling.”

Bren’s brows rise, and I nod harder., mentally willing her to believe me. I don’t know if she does, but thankfully, she doesn’t push it. The last thing I need is my foster mom streaking down to the principal’s office to complain. If that happens, Jenna will make sure No Neck holds me under the garbage bags until I stop kicking.

“Maybe you should take a shower,” Bren suggests.

“Or ten.” I offer her a slight smile, and to my surprise, Bren smiles back. Poor Bren. They don’t cover this shit in her parenting magazines.

I don’t think this really qualifies as A Moment, but it’s still kind of nice. She doesn’t even remind me to put my clothes in the hamper.

Doesn’t even bring me a vat of bleach to douse myself in either, which, honestly, is pretty generous of her. If my kid (or, you know, whatever I am to her) came home smelling like meat loaf, I’d probably hose her off in the yard.

I shampoo my hair for the second time and decide I might be making progress on the Bren front. Until I dry off and realize she’s thrown away all my clothes from today.

Including my Converses.

Scowling, I turn my computer on, wait for the internet browser to load. Plenty of time for me to worry about what’s happening to Griff, what I may have done by telling him about Tessa, and what Griff may do by telling Carson. I rub my eyes, sudden exhaustion making me want to curl up in a ball.

Then there’s Tessa’s attacker. Griff’s right after all. I am taunting a psychopath. He’ll retaliate. I know he will.

But that’s how I’ll catch him.

Or at least, that’s what I tell myself, because the alternative is pretty horrifying to admit. He could come after me. Worse, he could come after Lily.

My Google home page populates, and I use my Gmail account to send Tally a quick message. We need to talk. I want to know more about what Tessa meant when she wrote her mom loved this guy. Maybe Tally will have a few ideas, but I don’t want to explain myself over email, so I ask her to meet me tonight at the path by her house instead. I hit send and feel a little better.

Even though I know I’m obsessing,I type in the Facebook web address. My computer’s history takes me to Tessa’s page, and I’m almost surprised her parents haven’t taken it down. Tessa’s profile picture still grins at me and I scroll, quickly, to get away from it, heading down the page to find my comment and his reply.

It’s still there, but so is something else. Michael Starling’s written to me again, added a picture, and the image makes a sob claw up my throat.

It’s a picture of Lily. And when I scroll down to the comment below, he’s written:

See who’s next?

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HarperCollins Publishers

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I can’t really eat around him anymore, but it doesn’t
stop him from eating. Sometimes, it’s like he’s
empty, and nothing can fill him up.

—Page 44 of Tessa Waye’s diary

In the picture, Lily’s coming down the front steps of her school. She’s smiling. Whoever took the photo is close to her . . . or maybe it’s taken with a zoom lens. Doesn’t matter, he could be a hundred feet away and it would still be too close.

“Wicket? Are you okay?”

I jerk, minimizing the website and spinning around to meet Todd’s gaze. Freaky, sometimes, the way he can move without a single sound. My foster dad is standing in my doorway, but I can’t guess how long he’s been there. Long enough to see the Facebook site? Long enough to see Lily’s picture?

I sit up straight. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Really?” Todd’s face screws up in disbelief. “You look like you’re going to be sick again.”

You have no idea.

I smile at Todd and dig my fingernails into my palms until I feel blood well up. “I have everything under control.”

Todd nods. “I’m heading to the church for a while, and Bren’s on conference calls for the rest of the afternoon.” He turns to go. “Will you be okay on your own for a bit?”

“Sure thing,” I say, and smile at his retreating back like it’s all fine and Michael Starling isn’t a three-hundred-pound weight sitting on my chest.

This is why Tessa jumped.

I’m not a jumper. It’s not in me. But I can run. I am my father’s daughter after all. I can make it so this man who wants my sister will never find us.

Even though Lily’s
home by five, I have both of us packed and ready to go. My sister says nothing until I get to the end of my explanation, which isn’t really an end, I just run out of steam.

“We have to go. Tonight.” I haven’t told her the truth, of course. I told her it was Dad. It was Joe. But somewhere, I underestimated my sister . . . or overestimated myself.

Probably both. Because she’s not buying it.

“We don’t need to go anywhere,” Lily says. “We have Bren and Todd now.”

Bren and Todd. Like they’re our parents. Like they care. Does she think if she repeats it enough, somehow it’ll make it real? I start to ask her and stop. After all, for her, it might be real. Or real enough.

An unwanted thought flickers: Would Bren and Todd adopt Lily if I weren’t in the picture?

Yes. No doubt.

she’dS be safer without me.

Then again, how safe are any of us? Look at Tessa. Safety depends on everyone playing along, and not everyone does. Tessa’s abuser didn’t.

I look at Lily. “We need to leave, Lil.”

“Why?”

“You have to trust me.”

“And go where?”

“Wherever you want. Seattle? Miami?” My eyes skip around the room for inspiration and fall on a National Geographic calendar. “What about Europe?”

“What about
here
?” Lily’s voice scrapes up. “I want to stay here, Wick. I want to go to school. I want to go to college. I don’t want to run.”

“It isn’t running. You want to go to school? Fine. Seriously, Lil, where do you want to go? I can make it happen.”

“No, you can’t. Not for real. You can only do it by hacking.”

Well, duh.
“I can enroll you in any school you want to attend. And I can put on the rosters that you graduated with straight As.”

Lily gives her head a quick, tight shake. “It would be a lie.”

“Better than lying to yourself that we’ll ever belong.” I’m being evil now, but I can’t seem to help it. Hacking is really all I have to offer, and it’s not good enough. Not like Bren and Todd. good Not like this borrowed life we’re living. “Look around you, Lily. We don’t belong here.”

“I do.” Her chin hitches up. “I will.”

And what about me?
I thought I belonged where she was. Lily drags her bag out of my room, slamming the door hard behind her.

How can she
want to stay?

How can she
not
want to stay?
Our lives are supposed to be perfect now.

Tessa’s attacker might think he’s above all this. He might think he won’t be caught. But he can think again. I can do this. Everything just feels different because it hits so close to home, because it involves Lily.

It feels different because it is different.

Then comes Griff’s voice in my head:
He’s a fucking psychopath.

“Yeah, he is,” I whisper. “But I can’t trust you either. I have no idea what you’re going to tell Carson.”

It’s another problem. In the meantime, though . . . I scan the other posts below Michael’s. People are spooked, and two of them say they’re going to contact the police—and yet I can’t seem to stop myself from reaching for the keyboard and typing into the comment box:

I’m going to make you pay for that.

And I will.

I hit return, and there’s something satisfying about seeing my response . . . but at the same time, my insides feel hollow.

He’s close enough to take pictures of my sister. I need to make my threats a reality.

I check the time stamp on Lily’s picture. It’s almost six now, so it was posted nearly three hours ago. At that point, most of Tessa’s friends were still in school, so there’s a good chance not all of them have seen it, but, even if one or two people did, this could be a serious problem. Lily and I keep a low profile out of habit, but still . . . people know us. Rumors will spread. Someone will call the Wayes or Bren.

She’ll bring in the cops, and with everything I’m doing for Joe, it’s too dangerous.

I have enough weak spots in my defenses.
And even though I don’t want them to, my thoughts cling to Griff again. He still hasn’t called, hasn’t texted. Something’s very wrong. Have I opened myself up for betrayal?

My computer blips again. A new message loads into the comment box below mine:

Not if I find you first.

My hand clenches the mouse as my feet hit the floor. He’s pissed, but so am I, and briefly, it flattens my fear. Angry people make mistakes, and I cannot afford to screw this up.

He replied to my message in less than a minute. That’s not much time to secure your identity. Any mistake, even a small one, would help. I just need a little information, a small tear in his anonymity so I can rip him wide.

I open another window, log on to Tessa’s webmail account. There must be forty or fifty new messages, but the notification from Facebook about the latest posting is right at the top.

I copy the long series of numbers at the email’s very top. Then I pop onto www.myiptest.com and input the copied numbers into a search.

Holy shit. I stare at my screen and think I can’t be seeing what I’m seeing . . . but I am.

The bastard didn’t use his hiding software this time. That’s an IP address.

Stifling a war whoop, I paste the physical address into Google. IP addresses are like phone numbers for your computer. Track them to their server and you can locate the owner. I have to drill down through the information, but it takes me less than thirty seconds to find it.

Only what I find isn’t what I want.

Shit. I squint at the screen, my excitement trickling through my feet. I have my location. It has fifteen computers, running seven days a week. People are moving through pretty much constantly. This doesn’t narrow my focus—it throws it wide open

Lily’s picture was uploaded at the Peachtree City Library.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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