Set Me Free (19 page)

“What if you talked to them about it?” I asked, turning towards him in the front seat. “The people in town. You could tell them some of what you’ve told me about Suze.”

“It wouldn’t help.”

It was the answer I’d expected, but it still made me unhappy. “Maybe if everyone knew about what you’ve done for me, how wonderful you’ve been, then they wouldn’t think—”

“You know what everyone’s going to think, M.” He didn’t sound angry, just tired. “They’re going to think I did it to you.”

“No—no. They won’t think that. I’ll tell them about Rhys—”

“It won’t matter what you tell them.”

I frowned at the floor of the cab, trying not to be hurt. I’d known he would think that, and I almost couldn’t blame him, because I had a sinking suspicion that he was right. Officer Lacroix had practically said so. If any other cop besides Nick Lacroix had showed up, would Owen be in jail right now instead of Rhys? A different cop would have taken Rhys’ side, just like everyone always did, and they would have blamed Owen, like everyone always did.

It wasn’t
right
. I wanted to fix it, to change things. I’d never felt so strongly about anything before; it was like a tidal wave.

“M.?”

I looked up. I’d been so deep in thought I’d almost forgotten where I was.

“You aren’t mad?” he asked.

“Well—no. Not really. Not at you.”

“‘Not really,’” he said. “All right.”

“I’m just thinking. I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

I leaned across the console and kissed him again, a goodbye kiss this time. His fingers clenched in my hair, as if I might evaporate into the night.

“I’ll call you,” I told him.

He nodded, looking away.

I walked up the driveway. As I opened the front door, I realized he was still there, watching me go inside. He was worried about me. I waved to him from the front stoop while he started up the truck, and I worried about him, too.

W
hen I walked
in the front door, Kaye was chopping vegetables at the breakfast bar while Andy unloaded the dishwasher.

“All I meant was that you should trust her to make her own decisions—” Andy was saying.

Kaye looked up at the sound of the door closing. “Miranda! You’re back!” She dropped the knife on the cutting board with a clatter and ran over to me, throwing her arms around me. “Oh, your face!” she added in dismay, pulling back and peering at the ugly bruise on my jaw.

I laughed. “Thanks.”

“I’m sorry—I just can’t believe someone would do this to you! So it was your ex? Is that what this was all about—the way you just sort of showed up here? You were—?”

“Running away from him,” I supplied. “Yeah.”

Kaye sat down on the arm of the couch, her fair eyebrows furrowed with concern. “He found you, just like he said he could in that text.”

“Yeah, he did.” I sighed.

“I’m so sorry we weren’t home. I feel terrible.” She paused, tugging on a spike of white-blonde hair. “I heard that Owen Larsen came over.”

“Yeah.” I plunked down in the chair by the couch. “My phone called him, somehow.”

“Your
phone
called him?”

“Yeah, Rhys grabbed it from me and it fell, and it must have dialed Owen somehow. He said he could hear Rhys and me…so he raced over here, and he tackled Rhys. It was…”
The most amazing thing anyone has ever done for me.

“Wow,” Kaye said. “That’s weird. My phone doesn’t call people when I drop it. It just breaks.”

I hadn’t gotten a chance to think about the mysterious phone call much, what with everything that had happened, but she was right, of course. An uncomfortable feeling prickled at the back of my neck.

“Can I help with dinner?” I asked Kaye, trying to shake it off.

“If you want to.”

I insisted that I did, so eventually she let me help bread the chicken. I tried to act normal, but I couldn’t focus on their sprawling conversation. My mind kept going back to what Kaye had said—how strange it was that my phone had dialed Owen when it had hit the floor. As if it had read my mind. Mechanically, it didn’t make any sense: the phone hadn’t been opened to my list of contacts or recent calls. It had been locked.

Once again, I had that squirming, unsettling feeling of being scooped up, played like a chess piece. It wasn’t just the mysterious phone call to the person I’d wanted and needed most. There was the cut on my leg that came out of nowhere, on a day when Owen just happened to feel like walking up a path that normally he never used. Then there was the door leading into Suze’s room: how could it have been locked one moment and unlocked the next? I hadn’t done anything but turn the knob; it was as if someone had let me in.

And finally, there was Jenny’s split lip at the party. She had said something about Suze, and Violet had snapped at her, and then her lip had just started bleeding the exact same way my leg had bled—out of nowhere.

My skin crawled, and I had to stop myself from making the sign of the cross with a piece of breaded chicken.

I had to be imagining it. The phone call was just a freak accident. Owen walked everywhere, so it wasn’t too surprising he’d wandered across me in the woods, and Jenny must have been so angry that she’d bitten her lip.

And the doorknob?

It must have been broken, that was all. Just a busted lock.

* * *

T
he next morning
, I went in early for my first shift as a hostess so Emily could show me the ropes. Ten minutes later, we had already finished and were making a pot of coffee in the back. “You’ll be fine,” Emily told me, pouring herself a cup. “This isn’t exactly the Ritz. Anyway, I’m the one who’ll be screwing stuff up.”

“No, you won’t,” I assured her. “Kaye will be here to help you.”

“Yeah, and so will—”

Before Emily could finish her sentence, the doors to the kitchen slammed open, and Miserable Margot stalked inside. She scowled at me, her gaze settling on the bruise on my jaw. “Looks like somebody got what was coming to her.”

I gaped at her. “I’m sorry?”

“I tried to tell you. Even
you
should’ve thought twice about hanging around with Owen Larsen.”

My heart pounding in my ears, I placed my coffee cup down before I could smash it in a rage. “Owen
did not
do this to me.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever. All I want to know is—do you still like him? Maybe you like him more because of it, is that it?”

I straightened up from where I’d been leaning against the counter. “For your information, my ex-boyfriend did this, after stalking me for months. And he would’ve done a lot more than this, if Owen hadn’t stopped him. So, Margot,” I added, stepping closer to her, looking her straight in the eye, “maybe you should shut the fuck up about something you know nothing about.”

“Wow,” Emily said from behind me, sounding impressed. “Go, Miranda.”

Margot’s face flushed, but she didn’t say another word. She stalked back out onto the floor—probably to tell on me to Bill.

“You are 
awesome
,” Emily said. “That was a horrible thing to say to you.”

I glanced at her. “Your dad’s going to be pissed that we were fighting again, isn’t he?”

“Nah,” Emily said. “He knows what Margot’s like.”

I exhaled through clenched teeth. “So why does he
keep
her?”

“Feels bad for her. She’s nuts. Like, properly nuts. Dad hired her on a few years ago as a sort of favor to her folks. To give her something to do, you know?”

“Oh. That’s…kind of sad.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be part of Margot’s therapy anymore. She’s horrible to everybody, even the customers.” Emily paused, a sly grin spreading across her face. “Are you really dating Owen Larsen?”

“Yeah.”

“
Hot
,” Emily said. “He looks like a Viking.”

I laughed sheepishly. “God, I know.”

Emily excused herself and wandered off, leaving me standing awkwardly in the back room by myself. Margot’s awful comment had hurt—and yet, despite everything, I felt sorry for her. I couldn’t help it. There was so much sadness to Margot, underneath her icy exterior.

The door swung open again, and Kaye walked inside. “Emily said you and Margot had another argument?”

“Yeah, she is…”

Kaye started to say something, but her phone buzzed. She frowned at it. “Scott wants to know if you’re okay. He’s convinced—” She stopped herself.

“He thinks it was Owen.” I sighed. “So did Margot.”

“He’s just worried about you.”

I shook my head irritably. “I should go.”

Kaye watched me leave, looking anxious.

At the hostess stand, there was literally nothing to do. I had no idea how Emily could stand it. I stacked and re-stacked menus, made a neat line of pens on the stand, doodled—with my left hand—on the back of one of the daily specials print-outs.

But once people started coming in for lunch, I wished I were still bored to death. Every single person looked at the bruise on my face and the brace on my right wrist, and muttered Owen’s name.

After six hours of standing at the hostess stand with a smile so forced it ached, I was ready to snap. I just had a few more minutes to get through before I could go home, and…

And face the whole thing again tomorrow. And the day after that. And every single day for as long as Owen and I were together in Fall Island.

W
hen I got home
, the house was dark and silent. Andy had gone into work about an hour ago, and Kaye was working a double. Scott’s truck was in the driveway, but if he was home, he hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights.

I stepped inside and switched on the floor lamp, bracing myself. The space between the breakfast bar and the living room lay vast and empty, and even though someone had scrubbed the pine floor until it shone, I saw drops of wine and blood splashed across it every time I blinked. I could still hear his voice, feel his grip on my wrist, see that light in his eyes.

I’d been so eager to leave work, but now I wished I were anywhere else. I could text Owen—he was probably home from work by now. But first I had to shower off that restaurant smell of pickles and stale beer, which had somehow attached itself to my clothes even though all I’d done was stand in the front all night. Being stared at. Being judged, or pitied, or both.

I tried to fix myself a quick snack before my shower, since I’d skipped lunch, but everything tasted like ash. A sense of foreboding pressed at my ribs.

Maybe Scott’s home
, I thought, glancing up at the stairs. Truthfully, I didn’t know if Scott being home would be better or worse than being alone. It had to be better, right? He was my housemate; we were friends, sort of, even if he didn’t understand about Owen.

But with each step, my sense of foreboding increased, like a thorn digging in deeper with every breath.

The death threats.

The words materialized as if someone had whispered them in my ear, but I knew instantly what they meant. Everyone thought Owen had hurt me. That wouldn’t just bring more gossip and stares and interfering comments. The death threats he got would get worse.

Scott’s door was cracked open, though his room was dark. My stomach clenched. “Scott? You here?”

I knocked. Keeping up the pretense of normality felt important.

He didn’t answer, so I pushed the door open. The days were still short enough that his room was in almost complete darkness, with just the faintest wisp of twilit clouds outside his window.

“You in here?”

When I flipped on the light, his room looked normal. A typical guy’s room—band posters on the walls, an unmade bed, laundry scattered on the floor. Only one thing struck me as strange: the top of an ornate, scrolling picture frame in the narrow space between Scott’s bed and the far wall.

I crept across the room and tilted the picture frame backwards against the wall. All of the breath left my body.

It was one of Suze’s paintings from the Artist’s Lodge. It hadn’t been destroyed in the fire after all.

There had to be some kind of rational explanation. Scott must have bought it or borrowed it from Matthew, sometime between when I had seen it hanging at the Lodge and when the Lodge had caught fire.

The thing was, Scott didn’t strike me as an elaborately framed oil painting kind of guy. And even if he was, why had he left it on the floor, half-hidden behind his bed? And why this painting, out of all the ones at the Lodge?

I remembered seeing this one my first day on the island: it showed four people standing on a cold, rainy beach. Back then, I hadn’t been able to make out much about them, but now that had changed completely. The tall woman on the right had white-blonde hair. It was pulled back in a ponytail instead of in a pixie cut, but still, she had to be Kaye, didn’t she? And the man standing beside her was heavier than Andy was now, but he had dark hair and gauges in his earlobes. He
had
to be Andy. Suze had even captured the way Andy looked at Kaye—the amused smile, the calm set to his eyes, the sense that, just by looking at her, he was completely and totally happy in the universe.

Kaye wasn’t looking back at him. She stood ankle-deep in gray-blue water next to a dark-haired woman with elegant shoulders and an expressive mouth. She had to be Kaye’s friend Violet.
Suze’s
friend Violet. They had all been friends, hadn’t they? Suze, Violet, Kaye, and Andy had all been in the same year in high school, while Owen, the outsider, had been a year below them.

I leaned in to peer at the last figure standing on the beach. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his gray sweatshirt. At first, I thought he was staring down at the pebbly sand. Leaning closer, I realized he was staring straight at the viewer, with a gaze just as intense as the one Suze had given herself in her self-portrait.

He wasn’t staring at the viewer. He was staring at the painter. At Suze.

I recognized that fascinated expression, as if he wanted to capture you and put you under glass. Something about it was especially disconcerting considering his baby-faced prettiness.

I straightened up with a jolt.

Surely I was being paranoid. There had to be an explanation for why Scott had one of Suze’s masterpieces tucked behind his bed. It was partially of him—maybe it had belonged to him, and he had lent it to the Artist’s Lodge. Maybe… Maybe…

A glimmer of light caught my eye from inside Scott’s closet, just visible past the cracked door. Without stopping to think, I crossed the room and flung the closet door open.

My eyes wouldn’t settle on it; it just didn’t make sense. Steel tubes—pipes, I realized stupidly, corner pieces of pipes—jumbled together with empty glass bottles, a few white rags, boxes of what looked like fireworks. A stack of magazines sat on the floor beside the pile of pipes and bottles. They were cut to pieces, their innards spilling out.

I began to panic.

Backing blindly out of the closet, I fled Scott’s room and raced downstairs. Scott wasn’t home. Scott knew about me and Owen. Scott was—

I dialed Owen. The phone rang and rang, but he didn’t answer.

“Owen,” I groaned, “where are you?”

I called Lacroix’s office—he’d given me his direct line because of Rhys—and I told him what I’d seen. Weird, terrible words floated through my head as I did so: pipe bombs. Molotov cocktails.

I hung up on Lacroix while he was still trying to convince me not to go to Owen’s myself. I was already in my car, starting up the engine. I had to drive one-handed because of my wrist, but at this point, I could have flown there. I tore out of the driveway and took the corners of Fall Island’s winding, narrow roads as fast as I could, making it to Owen’s in record time.

As soon as I pulled into his driveway, I leapt out of the car and ran up to his front stoop. I banged on the door, calling out for him. Music was playing somewhere inside—probably his workshop. I shouted his name this time, and abruptly, the music stopped. A moment later, he opened the front door.

“M.? What’s wrong?”

He was okay, he was okay—I could have cried from relief.

Stepping onto the front stoop, he pulled me into a hug. “What is it?”

“We need to go—”

A deafening crack—louder than a Florida lightning strike, louder than anything I’d ever heard. The cement stoop trembled, shaking me off my feet. I threw my hands out to grab onto the railing, but everything was moving too fast. I tumbled to my knees, and Owen came down with me, wrapping his big arms around my back, covering me with his body. I thought he was saying my name, but I couldn’t hear anything except a tinny ringing. Apart from the dark blue of Owen’s T-shirt and the strong curve of his neck, I couldn’t see anything, either. My eyes wouldn’t quite focus, and there was dust everywhere. Why was there dust everywhere? Then I realized: I’d been right. Someone had tried to blow us up.

Slowly, my senses cleared. My sprained wrist ached from trying to grab the railing, but I didn’t care. In jerky, twitchy movements, I put my arms around Owen.

He was alive. Unhurt. Thank God.

That tinny, ringing sound grew louder—more like a thin wail now. Owen glanced over the top of my head, towards his driveway, and belatedly it occurred to me that the wailing was a police siren.

“Lacroix’s here,” he said, and although he sounded muffled, it was a relief that I could hear him at all. “Jesus. Are you all right?”

I nodded. I had to swallow a few times before I could say, “Are you?”

“I think…I think you just saved my life.”

Our eyes met. Dust skimmed the left side of his face.

“Why?” he breathed. “Why would you risk your life for me?”

“We should move away from the house,” I said.

We walked cautiously down the stoop, which seemed to be fine. Maybe it hadn’t been shaking after all. I glanced at Owen’s house, but that looked fine, too, just dusty. I couldn’t see any damage, except…

His garage—his workshop. I edged across the driveway. The far side of Owen’s garage had been blown to pieces. Chunks of wood and cement were scattered across the side yard. The damage was much worse towards the back, as if the bomb had been put against the back wall of the garage. If Owen had been at his workbench when it went off—

But he hadn’t been. He was okay.

What would I have done if something had happened to him?

Behind me, car doors slammed. Boots thudded on asphalt. I turned.

“You all right?” Lacroix barked, as he strode towards us, glancing from the two of us to the blown-out side of the garage, with Officer Palmer a step behind him. Owen and I both nodded, too shocked to do or say anything else. Lacroix released a tight breath. “Okay. Stay back. Bomb squad has to clear the scene.”

Lacroix’s radio buzzed, and he turned away, muttering a response. A second cruiser pulled up a moment later. One of the cops I didn’t recognize, but the second I remembered from the Artist Lodge fire.

I took Owen’s hand. “We need to go.”

He didn’t respond, but he let me pull him past the cop cars to the end of the driveway. The dust hadn’t made it this far down yet. Facing away from the house, I could almost pretend nothing had happened.

I looked up at Owen. “Your workshop—” I began hoarsely, knowing he would be devastated and wishing there was something I could say to make it better.

He cursed and pulled me into a tight hug. “Forget about my workshop. I only care about you.” He kissed my hair and tightened his hold on me. “How did you know about the bomb?”

“Lucky guess.”

“And you came anyway.”

“I came to warn you—”

“But you could have been hurt.”

“So could you,” I retorted.

He looked at me, his dark eyes troubled, and methodically swept the dust from my face with his fingers.

A third cop car, siren blaring, drove past us onto Owen’s lawn. A few minutes later, state police rolled up, followed by a K-9 unit, and, finally, the island’s chief of police. The Chief shot Owen a dark look, as if he didn’t think Owen was worth this amount of effort. I ground my teeth, but I’d known some of them would act like that. That was why I’d wanted Lacroix here, too.

“Owen!” Claire was running up the street towards us, wearing her flowery coffee shop apron. She threw her arms around her much-taller son, while tears seeped out from under her cat’s-eye glasses. “Bob Foster—you know him, he’s at the shop all the time—he listens to the police radios, and he said there was something about a bomb at your house!”

Owen gently pulled away from his mother. “It’s okay. We’re fine now.”

Claire stared at him, her face utterly white. She peered past him to his house and, if possible, turned even paler. “Your workshop!”

I reached out and squeezed Claire’s arm. “We don’t know how much has been damaged. A lot of the violins and tools might still be okay.”

Claire hugged me. “Oh, Miranda!” She pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “So—neither of you was hurt? You weren’t inside when it happened?”

Before I could explain, a dog barked excitedly on the opposite side of the house.

“Stay here.” Without another word, Owen started across the yard.

“Owen!” Claire cried. “Where are you going?”

Casting Claire an apologetic look, I ran after him and caught up to him just past the police cars parked on his front yard.

Owen stopped walking mid-stride. I stepped out from behind him and realized he was staring at Scott.

Lacroix had cuffed Scott’s hands behind his back and was shoving him forwards, while the other officers and the K-9 dog clustered around them. Scott was snarling and red-faced, jerking his arms backwards against Lacroix’s tight grip, fighting Lacroix with every step.

“Scott—” I darted forwards, stopping only when Lacroix shot me a severe look.

Scott’s roving gaze fixed on me. The color drained from his face. “Miranda—what are you doing? I told you to stay away—I
told
you he was dangerous!”

“He’s not the one who tried to blow me up, Scott,” I said softly.

Every sound around us faded into nothingness. Even the K-9 dog stopped barking.

“Don’t you understand?” Scott said. “I tried to warn you. Owen killed her. He killed Suze and got away with it. I had to punish him. Don’t you see?”

“No, I
don’t
—”

“You wouldn’t listen to me, Miranda,” Scott continued earnestly. “I tried to frame him for the fire, but—”

“You set the Lodge on fire to get Owen in trouble?”

Scott smiled. “Partly that. And I knew Suze would’ve wanted me to do it. She wouldn’t have wanted
his
portrait—” Scott jerked his chin towards Owen, “—to be there with the rest of her work. Her killer’s portrait! Have you ever heard of anything so crazy?”

I swallowed. “But first you stole the one she did of you and Kaye and Andy, didn’t you? Before you set the fire.”

“It was mine. She did it for me. She—she never loved me,” he confessed, “but she could
see
me in a way that no one else could. She understood me. And I thought that maybe you could, too, Miranda. I just wanted to protect you.” His eyes shimmered, as if he were about to cry. “When I heard about what Larsen did to you…”

“Owen did
not
do this,” I insisted, for what felt like the hundredth time. I scowled at the other police officers, including the Chief. Some of them exchanged uncomfortable glances. The Chief frowned back at me, then at Owen, but Owen was expressionless.

“You’re wrong about him. You all are. Officer Lacroix,” I said, my voice trembling, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard enough.” Lacroix met my gaze and nodded. He started pushing Scott forwards again, steering him towards one of the cruisers parked in the driveway.