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and walk up to 2B.

Trev knocks, and a few minutes pass before the door

opens. Matt looks like an older, worn down version of

Adam. His skin doesn’t have Adam’s healthy glow, his

cheeks are sunken, and there are fading red marks on his

jaw. But he’s got some weight on him and his eyes are clear.

It’s possible he’s clean.

“Trev, my man.” He and Trev do that one-armed hug

thing that guys do, and he smiles at me. “Who’s this?”

“This is Sophie.”

“Hi.” I hold out my hand, and Matt takes it.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

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“I’m friends with your brother. And Kyle Miller.”

“Oh yeah.” Matt’s smile widens. “Come on in.”

Matt’s place is neat and clean. Two brindled pit bulls

jump and wiggle up to me, trying to lick my face as we

walk through the doorway. He calls them off, and opens

the back door for them. I search as subtly as I can for any

sign that Matt has relapsed. The house smells like smoke,

there’s a china bowl with burn marks almost overfl owing

with cigarette butts, but when I look down, I don’t see any

roaches, just yellow fi lters. There are no beer bottles or caps,

no mysterious baggies in plain sight, no pipes—not even a

bottle of Visine or NyQuil.

All of it could be hidden somewhere. When getting high

is the only thing you can think about, you get pretty smart

about keeping it a secret.

“How’s your mom doing?” Matt asks Trev.

“You know.” Trev shrugs. “It’s better for her, being with

my aunt, I think.”

“That’s good. What about you?”

Trev shrugs again. Matt reaches out, claps Trev on his

shoulder. “I’m sorry, man.” He looks at me. “Hey, you guys

want something to drink? I’ve got soda and water.”

“I’m okay,” I say.

“So what’s up?” Matt asks after we’ve settled on the

peeling vinyl couch. He sits down across from us in an

armchair.

“Well, it’s kinda weird,” Trev says. “I’m going through

Mina’s stuff; I want to have it packed up when my mom

comes home. I found this list of names in her desk, and

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235

yours was on it. I was wondering what the list was about. I

didn’t know you guys were friendly.”

“We weren’t,” Matt says. “Not really. She didn’t tell you

about the story she was doing on Jackie?”

“No,” Trev says.

“It was for the
Beacon
. She said it was gonna be a big

profi le on the case for the anniversary and asked me for an

interview. I said okay and talked to her. When I never saw

anything come out in the paper, I just fi gured she hadn’t

fi nished it before . . .” Matt trails off uncomfortably.

“What did she want to know?” Trev asks.

“Normal stuff. How Jackie and I had started dating,

what our plans had been.”

“Did she ask you about the case?” I ask.

“Nah,” Matt says. “Mina knew I had nothing to do with

it. Detective James is an asshole on a power trip.”

I keep my expression neutral, thinking about how Mina

had Matt as Suspect Number One on her list.

“What else did you guys talk about?” I ask.

“Um, she asked how long we’d been together. We talked

about soccer, how Jackie ran for student body president

sophomore year. She must have bought a case of glitter glue

for all those signs we put up.”

Trev grins. “I forgot about that. She freaked out when

she ran out of pink.”

Caught in the memory, Matt laughs, then sobers sud-

denly, running a hand through his black hair. “Sometimes

it’s like she was here just yesterday,” he says. “She always

made me laugh, even when everything else sucked.”

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F A R F R O M Y O U

Absently, he digs something out of his pocket, fl ipping it

over in his fi ngers, and I see it’s a six-month sobriety chip.

“Six months is awesome.” I gesture at the chip.

His fi ngers tighten around it. “You in the program?”

“I’ve got a little over ten months.”

“Good for you,” he says. “The meetings are a big help,

but it’s still hard sometimes.”

“Yeah, it’s tough. But you know, it’s just one—”

“‘One day at a time,’” He fi nishes the slogan and looks

up at me with a rueful smile. “That’s all we’ve got, right?”

“Something like that.” I smile back, letting it be my

excuse to stare into his eyes. Had it been him that night? It’s

so hard to clearly remember the killer’s voice, to remember

exactly the shape his eyes through that mask. Three little

words punctuated by gunfi re, and I . . . I can’t be sure.

But I can be sure of one thing: addicts lie.

Matt rubs his fi ngers over the edge of the chip, like he’s

drawing strength.

“Did you happen to mention to anyone that Mina was

doing a story on Jackie?” Trev asks.

“I think I told my mom,” Matt says. “She thought it was

nice that the
Beacon
was doing a feature for the anniversary.

Mom loved Jackie.” His green eyes go bright, and he grips

the chip tightly, swallowing hard. “It’s just tough,” he says,

“thinking about her. Not knowing what happened.”

“Do you think she ran away?” I ask him.

Matt shakes his head, his eyes still moist. “Nah, Jackie

loved her family—she’d never leave them, especially Amy.

Jackie was excited about college. We even talked about us

T E S S S H A R P E

237

getting an apartment near Stanford, me going to commu-

nity college. She wouldn’t have run—no reason to. Someone

took her,” he takes a deep breath, his chip clutched tightly

in his hand. “And all I can do is pray she’s out there some-

where, that she’ll get away if someone’s got her, that she’ll

come back home.”

“You think she’s still alive?” The second it’s out of my

mouth, I know it’s a mistake. He looks like he’s about to

burst into tears; pushing this way won’t do any good.

“I hope so,” Matt says. “More than anything.”

There’s an uncomfortable stretch of silence when I don’t

know what to say. He could be lying, laying it on thick to

mislead us. He could be telling the truth—he could really

believe that she’s alive after all these years, because he can’t

stand to imagine the alternative.

“We should go,” I say. “I don’t want to take up any more

of your time.”

“You cool, Matt?” Trev asks. “I can hang out.”

“No, no, it’s fi ne.” He waves us off. “Just . . . bad

memories.”

“Thanks for talking to us.”

Matt nods and walks us to the door. “See you around.”

He smiles, but his eyes aren’t in it. The door shuts behind

us, and I hear the sound of the bolt sliding into place as we

head to the stairs.

“Well, what do you think?” Trev asks when we get to

the truck.

“He’s tall enough to be the killer,” I say, stepping up

into the cab. I fasten my seat belt and turn the key in the

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F A R F R O M Y O U

ignition. “I know he has guns. Adam goes hunting with

him all the time.”

“Just about every guy has a gun around here,” Trev

points out as I back out into the street. “I have a gun.”

“You have your dad’s old pistol. Have you ever even

shot it?”

“Sure. It’d be stupid to have a gun I didn’t know how to

use. I taught Mina, too.”

“When was this?” I don’t remember Mina ever mention-

ing it.

“When you were in Portland. She asked me to. She . . .”

Trev frowns. “She asked me right around Christmas.”

“When she was getting the threats.”

“So why didn’t she take it with her that night?” Trev

asks, and there’s this angry note in his voice that makes me

fl inch. “She knew where it was, how to use it. She could’ve

protected herself.”

“She didn’t bring the gun because she didn’t suspect

whoever she was meeting,” I say. “Pieces of that night are

so clear in my head. She’d been shaking. She’d been more

scared than me, because she’d fi nally gotten her answers.

She knew exactly what was going on. She knew what he

was capable of. What he’d already done.

We slow to a halt at the stoplight at the end of the street,

and out of the corner of my eye, I can see a muscle in Trev’s

jaw twitching. It’s eating at him, that Mina knew she was in

enough danger to want to learn how to shoot, but had kept

her secrets too long.

“Matt doesn’t think much of Detective James,” I say,

T E S S S H A R P E

239

because I hate how well Trev can blame himself. I need to

steer him away from this.

“Neither do you,” Trev points out.

I roll my eyes. “That’s because Detective James gets

an idea in his head and won’t budge from it. How much

progress has he made in all these months chasing after non-

existent drug leads? If he’d done his job the fi rst time, Mina

wouldn’t have had to go after the guy who took Jackie. He’s

failed to catch the same killer twice. That’s his fault, too.”

“Look, I’m pissed at him too, but eventually, we’ll take

all of this stuff to him. We’ll have to get along.”

“He’s an ass.”

“Well, let’s say that Matt is responsible,” Trev says.

“What’s his motivation for getting rid of Jackie?”

I fl ip the turn signal at the stop sign, looking both ways.

“Did they fi ght?”

“Sometimes. I think she was pissed he was smoking so

much pot. She was trying for a scholarship so her parents

wouldn’t have to pay for college. Spent a lot of time work-

ing out, running drills, studying so her grades were good

enough. She wanted him to keep up.”

I raise an eyebrow. “So, what—he kills her ’cause she’s

bugging him about weed?”

“Maybe it was an accident,” Trev says. “She disappeared

out on Clear Creek; that’s getting into the woods. Maybe

they went hiking or they were fi ghting and she fell?”

“Then why wouldn’t he just call the rangers and tell

them it was an accident? Accidents happen in the Siskiyous

all the time. No, someone took Jackie and killed her and

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F A R F R O M Y O U

probably dumped her somewhere. That’s why no one’s ever

found her body.”

“This is so messed up,” Trev says under his breath.

“I know,” I say. We sit in silence for a long moment. “You

still up for going to talk to Jack Dennings?”

“I can’t let you go alone.” He says, which isn’t really an

answer, but I’ll take it.

“Then get my phone out. I have the directions on it.”

We’re quiet on the drive to Jack Dennings’s place out

in Irving Falls. Trev fi ddles with the radio, fi nding an old-

school country station, and Merle Haggard’s worn voice

fi lls the cab of the truck as I focus on the road.

I don’t know what to say to him when it’s about nor-

mal stuff. So I keep quiet and roll down the window, trying

to get some relief from the heat, but the hot air blasts me,

blowing my hair back in my face. The truck’s AC has been

broken for as long as I can remember, and though it’s not

even noon, it’s in the triple digits already. Sweat collects at

the small of my back, and I pull my hair off my neck with

one hand, slinging it over my shoulder.

He watches me out of the corner of his eye. I pretend not

to notice. It’s easier.

The air cools as we keep driving. Climbing up and out

of the valley, we’re surrounded by mountains on both

sides, thick with pines, the houses set in the far reaches

of the woods where privacy is paramount. About twenty

miles ahead is the waterfall the town is named for, but Jack

Dennings lives on the outskirts, a real backwoods sort of

man.

T E S S S H A R P E

241

“This is it,” I say, slowing down at the life-size iron

turkey nailed on top of the wooden mailbox. We weave

through thickets of digger pines and barbed wire fencing

that line the dirt road, and it twists and turns for a few

miles before we come across the house, set far back in the

taller trees. It’s a simple little one-story rancher, stretched

out low on the hilly terrain.

Trev and I get out of the truck and walk up to the door to

knock. Dogs bark frantically inside, but there’s no answer.

After a minute, Trev steps back and shades his eyes against

the sun. He gestures to the old two-tone Ford parked under-

neath an oak tree. “Maybe he’s around back?”

I follow him, a foot behind as we circle around the

house. There’s a neat vegetable garden with sunfl owers

planted around the border, and beyond that a huge chain-

link enclosure, brimming with lush green plants.

Then I hear it.

A click.

It’s familiar.

Dread surges through me. I’m blocking Trev. Maybe I

can save him, like I should’ve saved her.

I spin around, instinctually, towards the noise, and for

the second time in my life, I’m looking down the barrel of

a gun.