Hemlock (34 page)

“I would have, you know,” he said. “Fought Jason. I would have fought anyone for her.” He stared straight ahead, not taking his eyes off the road. “Amy was the only person I’ve ever been tempted to tel I was infected. Ree made me promise not to. She said Amy didn’t realy care about me and was just using me to get back at Jason, but I didn’t care.”

Somehow, I thought he actualy cared a great deal. I remembered Serena’s warning about how I might not like some of the things I found out about Amy. “Did you love her?”

Trey didn’t answer, which was, of course, an answer in itself.

I was starting to wonder if love was just the universe’s idea of a Kick Me sign. Amy, Jason, Trey, Kyle, Tess, me—al love seemed to do was mess things up and hurt you. Maybe not being able to say those three words wasn’t such a bad thing after al.

able to say those three words wasn’t such a bad thing after al.

“Was it true?” Trey suddenly asked. “Did someone realy drug her?”

The heaters were on ful blast, but I was stil achingly cold.

“Yeah. Unless the detective was lying.” I closed my eyes. “I think he was teling the truth, though. He said the GHB would have kiled her with or without everything else.”

I opened my eyes as we took a turn so sharply that I had to grip the door to keep from faling against Trey.

He shook his head. He was so tense that I could actualy see the pulse jump in his throat, pushing at the skin like it was trying to break free. “You don’t die from GHB.”

“You do if the dose is big enough,” I said softly.

Trey took his eyes off the road. “How big was the dose?” The muscles in his arms began moving, like snakes writhed just underneath the skin.

Al of a sudden, there wasn’t enough air in the Jeep. My heart raced as I turned in my seat, franticaly pushing myself as far back as I could in the smal space. “Trey . . .”

The bones in his hands cracked and lengthened. “How big was the dose?” The plastic of the steering wheel groaned in protest as he flexed his hands around it.

“Stop the car!” I tried to make my voice as commanding as possible, but it was hard to sound authoritative when you were less than three feet from a distraught werewolf on the brink of shifting.

“How big was the dose?”
Trey’s voice was an ear-splitting howl.

howl.

The Jeep swerved, careening perilously close to the trees on the left.

I reached for the wheel, but I couldn’t grab it without risking a scratch from Trey’s claws. “Enough to send her into cardiac arrest!” I yeled. “Stopthecarohmygodstopthecar!”

I screamed as the driver’s-side mirror clipped a tree and was torn away from the car. Trey slammed on the brakes and the Jeep slid into a 360 degree skid on the mud-slick road.

The trees blurred together and became a solid wal of brown-green color as branches scratched the paint job.

Finaly, the Jeep shuddered to a stop.

We were completely perpendicular to the road, and the front tires were in the bushes.

I flung open my door and staggered out, legs shaking like I’d been at sea for a year. The ground seemed to tilt at crazy angles as I stumbled to the nearest tree trunk and gripped it for dear life as I threw up.

After a couple of minutes, something touched my back and I shrieked.

“Sorry,” muttered Trey as I whirled.

I stared at his hands, arms, and neck. They were al completely normal, completely human.

He cleared his throat. “I think maybe you should drive,” he said, voice hoarse.

I nodded, too queasy to make a sarcastic remark about understatements, and folowed him back to the car. The keys were stil in the ignition and, miraculously, the steering wheel had stil in the ignition and, miraculously, the steering wheel had survived with only a slight crack.

Stil shaking, I started the car, turned off the heater, and roled down my window. Even though Trey seemed normal again, I was feeling claustrophobic at being in a smal, confined space with a werewolf. “How about we forget talking and just listen to the radio on the way back?” I suggested.

Trey closed his eyes. A slight sheen of sweat covered his face and he looked exhausted. “Sure.”

I turned on the radio and flipped through the stations, trying to find classical music because I figured that would be the most soothing. Eventualy, I gave up and just settled on NPR. There was something familiar about the voice coming through the speakers, even though the signal wasn’t great and whoever
was
talking was interrupted by intermittent bursts of static.

“Werewolves are a real and credible threat to our nation’s security and our way of life,” the voice said. “The new legislation we’re proposing wil make it more difficult for wolves to evade internment and would also level stricter penalties—including possible jail time—for aiding and abetting any person known to be infected with lupine syndrome.”

Great. I’d turned on the radio to calm down a werewolf and hit the one station talking about how dangerous werewolves were. I reached forward to find something else, but the voice suddenly clicked. “That’s Amy’s grandfather. It’s Senator Walsh.”

“Senator, how do you respond to critics who claim that the camps are inhumane?”

John Walsh cleared his throat. “The rehabilitation camps alow John Walsh cleared his throat. “The rehabilitation camps alow werewolves to live out a semblance of a normal life—albeit somewhat restricted. They are a regrettable necessity and I assure you that the conditions are adequate. The camps are the most humane way we have of restricting the spread of lupine syndrome.”

“Senator, what about people who claim your new stance is the result of grief?”

Trey reached out and flicked off the radio. “Talk about a complete one-eighty.”

“His granddaughter
was
murdered,” I reminded him gently.

“Senator Walsh was the one who puled the strings to get the Trackers into Hemlock, and everyone’s saying he’s behind the reward money Derby told the students about. I bet Derby started working on him right after the funeral . . .” I trailed off as bits of information slid into place and created a horrific picture.

Amy’s death had been bigger than any of the others. It had given Derby access to Senator Walsh and had resulted in the Trackers taking over Hemlock. And it had—

“The new legislation.”

Trey shot me a puzzled glance.

“Before Amy’s death, her grandfather supported increased werewolf rights. Her murder is the reason he switched sides.

Before that, people thought he was the best chance at getting more rights for werewolves.”

I puled to the edge of the dirt lane and, hands shaking, turned off the ignition. I might not be a werewolf, but I was stil perfectly capable of wrecking a car. “Someone slipped Amy the GHB—

capable of wrecking a car. “Someone slipped Amy the GHB—

way more GHB than they would have needed to just spike her drink. What if they did it so they could somehow leave her where the werewolf would find her?” Bishop thought a human had murdered Amy and made it look like a werewolf kil, but Trey had said he smeled a wolf in the aley. What if they were each sort of half-right? “What if someone orchestrated Amy’s death so that her grandfather would drop his support for werewolf rights?”

“You think Amy was murdered for
politics
?” Trey squeezed his eyes shut. He breathed in and out in long, measured breaths.

“So if someone did kil Amy to get to her grandfather, who?

Derby?” His voice was lower than normal, each word faling like a threat.

“Not Derby himself. He would never have risked getting his hands that dirty. It had to have been someone working for him.

Someone who . . .”
Could get close to Amy
.

“Dobs?” Trey opened his eyes.

I dug my nails into the cracked steering wheel. “I have to go to Amy’s.”

“Why?”

I tried to think past the roaring in my head. “I have to talk to her parents about something. It’s just an idea. It might be nothing.”

Trey frowned. “What is it?” When I didn’t reply, he reached out and gripped my shoulder. “Dobs,
what is it
?”

I swalowed. “It might be nothing,” I repeated. The suspicion that was slowly building in my chest was too awful to say out loud.

Besides, I might be wrong. I’d never wanted to be so wrong about anything in my life.

anything in my life.

Ben might have lied about being in Dayton the week Amy died.

And he’d been different when he turned back up. For a few days, he’d been almost like a stranger. And the one time I’d mentioned the funeral since—the night Ben had come upstairs to check on me and told me about his brother—he’d shot me such a piercing look that I immediately regretted saying anything. Hank had gotten like that sometimes, when he’d seen or done something realy bad—

withdrawn and guarded.

If someone had slipped Amy GHB, it would have been in a drink. And Amy was way too paranoid to leave a drink with someone she didn’t know—she had lectured me about doing it more times than I could count.

But she wouldn’t have hesitated to leave a drink with Ben while she got up to use the washroom or make a cal. And there’d been a witness statement in the file—a woman had seen Amy with a blond man. The police had thought it might be Jason, but Ben was blond. And only an inch or two taler.

Ben couldn’t have hurt Amy. He was
Ben
.

Thinking it—even for a second—was messed up and twisted.

But then I shoved my hand into my pocket, letting my fingers skim the receipt wedged in the bottom.

I looked at Trey, who was stil staring at me with a combination of worry and frustration.

I hadn’t known he was sleeping with Amy. I hadn’t known that both Jason and Kyle had feelings for me or that Serena was a werewolf. How wel did I realy know anyone?

I reached for the ignition, but Trey was faster. He covered the I reached for the ignition, but Trey was faster. He covered the keys with his hand.

“We’re not moving until you tel me what’s going on.”

I shook my head. Given how close Trey had come to shifting, I wasn’t sure standing up to him was the smartest idea. But I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t tel Trey the things that were going through my head—not when I might be wrong.

I summoned every ounce of stubbornness anyone had ever accused me of having. “I can’t tel you anything until I talk to Amy’s parents, so, the way I see it, you have two choices. You can play keep-away with the keys and I’l take my chances trying to walk the rest of the way, or you can come with me and wait while I talk to them.”

“And if I don’t like either choice?” Trey glared at me, waiting for me to back down.

My heart jackhammered in my chest and I broke out in a cold sweat, but I didn’t look away. By Hemlock standards, Trey was tough. But I hadn’t been raised by Hemlock standards.

After three minutes, when I stil showed no signs of backing down, Trey muttered a string of curses. “You know, sometimes I think you might actualy be as tough as you think you are.” He moved his hand away so I could start the car. “You
are
going to tel me what al of this is about after you talk to them.” It was an order, not a request.

I started the car without comment.

Eventualy the narrow back roads and hunting trails deposited us behind an abandoned soccer field on the north side of town As we behind an abandoned soccer field on the north side of town As we headed toward Amy’s, I tried to recal everything I knew about Ben. It wasn’t much. I had always assumed he was like me—that he didn’t talk about the past because he’d rather forget it—but what if it was because he was hiding something?

Like, say, the fact that he was working for the Trackers.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

STANDING IN FRONT OF AMY’S HOUSE, I GLANCED AT the sun and tried to figure out how late it was. The clock in Henry’s Jeep didn’t work, and I wasn’t sure how much time we’d lost with the two unexpected stops on the way to town. Jason wanted to make the checkpoint at six. If Trey didn’t get back to Henry’s by five, he might miss his chance to see Serena and Noah before they left.

My stomach twisted. I wanted Trey to get back in time, even though I wasn’t sure if I was going with him.

I rang the bel and studied the carvings in the massive wooden I rang the bel and studied the carvings in the massive wooden door that I knew had been handcrafted and shipped over from Europe. I’d passed through that entryway almost every day for three years, but this was the first time I’d stood here in five months.

The door opened a crack.

“Mackenzie?” Mrs. Walsh opened the door a bit wider and stared at me, confusion and concern sliding over her face as she took in my disheveled hair and the dirt on my clothes. “Are you al right?” she asked as she ushered me into the foyer.

I blushed, guessing how awful I probably looked after everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. “I was hiking with Kyle and Jason and fel into a stream,” I lied. It was sort of close to the truth.

Thankfuly, Amy’s mother had the worst truth-meter on the planet—a failing that Amy had never hesitated to exploit. I could practicaly see her relax as she accepted the lie at face value.

“I’m sorry to just show up,” I continued, stumbling slightly over the words. Amy had gotten most of her looks from her mother and I felt a little like I was staring at the ghost of a future she’d never get to have. “I need to talk to you about Ben Fielding.”

She herded me into the front living room—the room in which no living was ever to be done, Amy had always said—and steered me toward a white chair.

I sat on the edge of the seat, worried about the state of my clothes and the dirt I might leave behind, but Mrs. Walsh didn’t seem too concerned about the upholstery.

“A couple of days before—” I almost said
Amy’s murder
but caught myself and started again. “Around April second, Ben told caught myself and started again. “Around April second, Ben told Tess that he had to go to Dayton for a funeral. We thought he was gone al week, but now I think he might have been lying. I was wondering”—I took a deep breath—“if he came into work at al that week or if he told you where he was going.”