Ghost Hand (32 page)

“These locations move in order from west to east. Portland is west of Fresno by a little, and then it keeps moving east to Colorado, Texas, Illinois and Indiana.”

“I noticed that too,” Marcus said.

“So, if it keeps to that pattern, Kaylee is somewhere east of Indianapolis.”

“Probably,” he nodded. “But I have no idea how we’ll find her.”

Samantha and Kaylee. They were girls like me. Girls with PSS and no idea their world was about to come crashing down around them.

“I want to help you do this,” I said to Marcus.

“Good,” he said, smiling.

I leaned forward, about to kiss those gorgeously curved lips, when I heard the shuffling of feet and muted voices just outside the tent.

“Hey, can we come in?” Emma called through the canvas.

Poor Emma. And Passion. I’d left them out there in the dark with a pack of strange boys.

“Come in,” I said, tucking the list back in the box and handing it to Marcus.

“I thought the three of you could sleep in here tonight,” he said, putting the lid on the tub as Emma and Passion entered. They glanced between me and Marcus, and I suddenly remembered my outburst in front of everyone where I’d rattled off every intimate moment Marcus and I had ever had.

“No,” I said, knowing my face was bright red. “What about you?” I didn’t want to displace him, but it was more than that. I’d gotten used to his tent being our place.

“I can crash in Jason’s tent until he gets back,” he said. “And don’t worry. We’ll have someone on watch all night.” Because Palmer was still out there somewhere. And he struck me as the kind of guy who had acquired a taste for revenge.

“If you’re sure,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed.

Marcus put away his keepsake box and crossed to the door. “Goodnight,” he said, slipping through the canvas flaps into the dark.

JASON RETURNS

“Liv,” Emma said, glancing around the tent, “you’re not actually going to go with them, are you?” Her eyes landed on
The Other Olivia
and she frowned. “I mean, are you sure they know what they’re doing?”

“No,” I said, sitting down in a chair and putting my head in my hands. “But I can’t stay here, and I think I’m safer with them than on my own.”

“What about your mom?” Emma said, sitting down in the chair across from me, just like Marcus had.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She won’t believe any of this. She’s been dating the guy who killed Marcus’s sister and then kidnapped you. She might still be dating him.”

“Yeah, that would be awkward,” Emma said.

I looked up and realized that Passion was standing over us, a girl I didn’t really know, and she was looking at me with some kind of weird worshipful awe in her eyes.

“What?” I said, staring back at her.

“I’m sorry,” she blushed. “I just think what you can do is amazing. I wish I had something like that. Some special power.”

I couldn’t believe it. Passion Wainwright was some kind of groupie. My groupie. Was it possible she didn’t know what my hand had done to her? Dr. Julian had said she knew. He’d said it right in front of her, but then again, she’d been drugged out of her mind. And he could have been lying. I looked up, searching her face. If she didn’t know, then I had to tell her.

I looked across at Emma, hoping for some help.

She raised her eyebrows at me.

“I—thanks—it’s not that great,” I said to Passion, lamely. I couldn’t do it. Not like that. The timing just wasn’t right. At least, that’s what I told myself.

That night we had a very awkward slumber party in Marcus’s tent.

* * *

Jason came back during breakfast the next morning. One minute we were all eating bacon and eggs, and the next minute there he was roaring up on his ATV.

He got off the wheeler, marched up to the couch where I was sitting, and said, “What’d you do with him?” leveling his gun at my head. There was alcohol on his breath. A lot of it.

Next to me, Emma cringed against Yale, terrified.

Passion stood frozen, like a deer in the headlights.

Nose looked ready to jump Jason, but Marcus caught his eye and gave a little shake of his head.

I just sat, looking down the barrel of Jason’s gun. It was becoming a regular thing. I was practically used to it.

“Put the gun down,” Marcus ordered. “She didn’t do anything.”

“Oh, she did,” Jason insisted, his finger hovering over the trigger. “She disappeared them. They weren’t there. Nothing was there. It looked like they’d been gone for days.”

“They have been gone for days,” Marcus said.

“What are you talking about?” Jason demanded.

“He’s talking about this,” I said, reaching into my sweatshirt pocket and pulling out the cube.

“Olivia,” Marcus warned.

“What the fuck is that?” Jason asked, lowering his gun a little.

“I don’t know exactly,” I said, “but I pulled it out of Dr. Julian. That’s my ability. It isn’t disappearing people. It’s reaching into them and pulling things out.” From the corner of my eye I could see Passion staring at the cube, hanging on my every word. Yale and Nose and Emma were listening too. Jason just looked confused. “My hand pulled those blades out of—someone.” I could at least give Passion that much anonymity. “And when I needed something to protect me from the minus meters, they started blocking minus meters. They took on that power.” This was harder to explain than I’d thought it would be. “Then I stuck my hand into you,” I said, staring into Jason’s eyes.

“You took something out of me,” he whispered, his eyes looking past me as if he were remembering it.

“Yes,” I said.

“You took something out of me,” Jason repeated, his voice growing louder, rougher.

“Yeah, but I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s in there, isn’t it?” Jason asked, looking at the cube wide-eyed.

“How did you—”

“I can feel it,” he said, taking a step back, his left hand clutching at his chest. “Ever since that day you grabbed me, I could feel it on you. Like you had a hold on me.”

“Here, take it,” I said, trying to hand the cube to him. I didn’t want a hold on Jason, or Dr. Julian, or Passion.

“You keep the fuck away from me,” Jason said, raising his gun at me again, warning me back. Marcus had circled around behind him while we’d been talking.

“But it’s yours.”

“I don’t want it,” Jason said, looking away from me, swaying a little. “I don’t want shit from you. Just tell me where the CAMFers went.” He sounded tired. He looked dazed. “I asked someone in town,” he said, letting his gun slant toward the ground. “One of the neighbors.”

“What did they say?” Marcus asked, and Jason turned, looking at him.

“They said an ambulance came. They said that CAMFer doc was up at the hospital in a coma, that he’d been like that for days. That’s when I knew she’d done something. That’s when I came back.”

“What about the other CAMFers?” Marcus pushed.

“Looked like they’d run. There wasn’t no sign of them in the house. Wasn’t no sign of anything. Not even the hole or the stairs or the room underneath. The freezer was full of food,” Jason said, looking at Marcus. “There was a cement floor under it. Like she made it never happened. Like she disappeared it all.”

“They got rid of the evidence,” Marcus said. “Covered their tracks so we couldn’t prove anything if we reported them. Olivia didn’t do that.”

Except, really, I had.

I hadn’t meant to, but not only had I stolen Jason’s bullet, I’d stolen his one chance for revenge.

* * *

We all stood at the ATVs, except for Jason. Marcus had taken his gun from him and escorted him to his tent where he’d fallen into a drunken sleep. Even from the other side of the camp, we could hear him snoring.

The others had already said their good-byes to Emma. Yale was helmeted up and sitting on his four wheeler. Emma was standing next to it.

I reached out and hugged her, trying not to cry.

“It’ll be fine” Emma said, patting my back. “I’m an actress, remember? And I’ll keep an eye on Dr. Fineman for you.”

“Just stay away from him, okay?” I said. “No heroics.” The thought of my best friend living in the same town with that guy, even if he was in a coma, was hard to deal with. But it was even harder to imagine my mother sitting at Dr. Fineman’s bedside, just like she’d sat at my dad’s. What a fucking joke that was, because this time it really was my fault. I’d done that to him.

“I gave her one of the blades,” Marcus said from behind us. “It should warn her if any of the CAMFers come back into town.”

I wanted to turn around and hug him. We only had two blades, and he’d given one to Emma. But I resisted the urge and handed a folded piece of paper to Emma—a note for my mother. Marcus had helped me write it. Made sure I didn’t give any important information away. It said simply:

Dear Mom,

I am safe and I love you, but I could not come back with Emma. She doesn’t know where I’m going, so don’t bug her or blame her. I’m not doing this to hurt you. It’s just something I have to do. And I know you love me.

Olivia

“I’ll give it to her first thing,” Emma said, pulling me into another embrace. “And I’ll be fine. It’s you guys I’m worried about. Be careful,” she said, pulling away. “And let me know you’re still alive once in a while. You’re the only best friend I’ve got.”

“I know. I will.” I said. I hadn’t told Emma we were going to Indianapolis. The less she knew, the safer she’d be. Also, Grant was there. If she knew, she might contact him and try to get him to watch out for me, and that was the last thing I needed. “When we come back, we’ll tell you how we saved the world,” I joked.

“Cool,” Emma said. “I knew that first day back in third grade that making friends with you was going to pay off big someday.”

“You did not,” I said.

“Yes, I did,” Emma said firmly. “See you later, Liv.”

She put on her helmet and climbed on the back of Yale’s wheeler, wrapping her arms around him. The motor roared, the ATV surged forward, and Yale and Emma disappeared into the woods toward Greenfield.

I turned back toward camp. We had a lot of packing and planning to do. Indianapolis was two hundred miles away, and the CAMFers already had a head start on us.

But Marcus took my arm and steered me toward his wheeler. “We have one last stop to make,” he said, handing me a helmet. “The others can break down camp without us.”

I climbed on and wrapped my arms around him, burying my head in his back. I didn’t have to ask. I knew where we were going long before we pulled up to the wooded west gate of Sunset Hill Cemetery. We left the wheeler there and went the rest of the way on foot, winding our way, hand in hand, between barren trees and stumpy tombstones. The weight of the recent rain had pulled almost all of the leaves down.

When we got to my dad’s grave, I sat on Melva Price, and Marcus stood behind me, his hands warm on my shoulders. He had known I needed to come here. We understood each other in so many ways. Ways my father and I had understood each other. Marcus wasn’t replacing him. And I wasn’t taking Danielle’s place. But both of us were moving on. Together.

“Goodbye, Dad. I love you,” I said.

Then Marcus put his arm around me, we walked to the wheeler, and headed back to Piss Camp.

THE END

Available now:

Ghost Hold
, Book Two of The PSS Chronicles

Check out the first chapter FREE on the next page.

ALMOST TO CIVILIZATION

I had never been so happy to see a barn in my life. Yes, it looked like it was about to fall over, which had me questioning the wisdom of storing all our worldly belongings in it, but the squat red building had a roof and four walls, luxuries I hadn’t seen in over two weeks.

As our ATVs pulled up, their trailers rattling behind them, I moved my hand from Marcus’s waist and yanked my bandana over my mouth to keep from inhaling the cloud of dust that billowed around us. I still hadn’t gotten used to the constant grime of camp life, the way my clothes held a layer of dirt, like Pigpen from the
Peanuts
cartoon, or the grit I could always feel between my teeth no matter how many times I brushed them. They didn’t show you that in the movies; that the life of a fugitive was filthy and sweaty, especially in the middle of an unseasonably hot Indiana October.

Marcus cut the engine of our wheeler and, one by one, Yale, Jason, Nose and Passion cut theirs too. We’d replaced Jason’s stolen ATV fifty miles outside of Greenfield and gotten one for Passion while we were at it. I don’t think I’d truly grasped the reality of Marcus’s million-dollar trust fund until I’d seen him pay cash for those ATVs. But I hadn’t missed the pained, quickly-masked look on his face as he handed it over. It was blood money, paid to him in a settlement for the untimely and accidental death of his parents, but it was money we desperately needed.

Marcus had offered to get me my own ATV as well, but I preferred to ride with him. I was a crap driver; that was the reason I’d given. But really there was just something about wrapping my legs around a thrumming motor while slipping my arms around Marcus’s waist that made the hundreds of miles of dust and dirt-eating worth it. Even so, I was really glad to be back to civilization.

Marcus pulled off his helmet, and I lifted mine off too. He looked over his shoulder at me, and we smiled at one another, not needing to say anything. We were here. We’d made it to Indy without any apparent pursuit by Mike Palmer or the CAMFers.

Well, we’d almost made it. We still had about thirty miles to go, but this was where we’d trade in our wheelers for a comfy rental van. We’d lock away all our camping gear and dirt-stained clothes in the barn and disguise ourselves as wealthy suburban teenagers. This was where the mission to save Samantha James really began.

I slid off the vinyl seat, set my grimy helmet on it, and stretched my legs. My ass hurt, as usual, but I’d learned not to complain about it. It seemed there was nothing in the world teenage boys liked more than making sore ass jokes.