Brooke

He makes me drop him on a gloomy corner in Franklin City. He melts into the shadows as soon as he’s out of the car, like a shark disappearing into the murky depths of the ocean.

We only spent a couple of hours together, but it feels like I lived a lifetime in those hours.

I head toward the freeway that will take me back home, a deep suburb as far east as you can get from west.

I put my phone back together while I’m stopped at a light just before the freeway entrance.

The texts and voicemails flow in. Mom asking where I am. She hadn’t gotten my voicemail. Then it’s Mom saying I’m not at Chelsea’s. Mom angry. Then Dad.

I quickly give them a call.

“Brooke!” Her voice is high, the way it gets when she’s drinking or mad. I’m thinking she’s a little of both. My throat clenches with worry—or maybe just grief. She’s like this more and more.

“I just got your messages,” I say. “I’m fine, I’m okay.”

“Where are you?”

“Just driving around,” I say. That’s what the man said to tell people. I wanted to drive around and think about my school project.

“You lied to us!”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand, so I—”

“You lied! You frightened us out of our minds! Not to mention wasting the time of the police!”

A bolt of fear shoots through me. “I shouldn’t talk while I drive,” I say. “Everything’s fine.” I hang up, thankful for the excuse.

But everything isn’t fine.

Detective Emilio Rivera is there when I arrive.

My pulse kicks into overdrive. He smiles at me in a kindly way, like an uncle.

My mother embraces me—partly for the benefit of Detective Rivera, I’m sure. I’ll get the freeze or worse once he leaves.

Dad looks stern. “You gave us quite a scare, young lady.”

I murmur something about not having ideas for my prehistoric village. “I thought I’d be home before you noticed.” Part of me does feel guilty for all the fuss. I’ve been taught to be small and silent, to take up as little space as possible.

The other part of me is scared of what Detective Rivera sees. His eyes are sharp despite the vague smile on his face. I have the impression of a mirror, one of those one-way things they put in interrogation rooms. He can see me, but I don’t know what he’s thinking.

“I’m sorry to waste your time,” I tell him, heart beating too fast.

“It’s no problem,” he says smoothly. “I’d actually like to ask you a few questions.”

“Questions?” My voice sounds as high and thin as my mother’s.

“About the incident last fall. Your birthday.” His tone is sympathetic, but I’m not fooled. He’s observing me. Recording every detail in that whirring computer he’s got inside his head. “We have some new leads that I need to follow up.”

“This again?” Mother gives me a hard look, as if I asked for it to be brought up. “The incident is best forgotten, Brooke, you know that. You can’t let it ruin your future. Or this family.”

She leaves the room in a flurry of silk and Chanel No. 5. The guilt sits heavy in my gut, churning like rocks. Like boulders. I don’t want to ruin this family. But how can I forget him? I can’t.

You don’t want to forget him, a voice inside my head whispers.

It’s my darkest secret.

My father glances at his phone. “I’ve already missed two meetings.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, because he pours everything into his work, and missed meetings can be disastrous.

He’s already on the phone by the time he leaves the room.

I’m alone with Detective Rivera, which is both a relief and a source of fear. At least I don’t need to put up an act for my parents’ sake. On the other hand, Detective Rivera won’t have to put up an act, either. Nothing about his outward appearance changes, but I feel the shift in the air, the hardening.

“Driving around?” he says, almost mild. “Where?”

“I don’t remember.”

“For two hours.”

“I was focused on my school project.” I remind him of the lie. “Lost in thought.”

“Ah,” he says with a patronizing agreement. “The prehistoric village. That’s all right. I’m sure a car as new and nice as yours has a GPS system. We can pull up the logs, find out where you went. Maybe find some surveillance cameras along your route.”

I hadn’t thought about that. Worry mixes with something else—a sense of protectiveness. My eyes narrow. “Does it matter where I went? What does this have to do with the prior incident?”

“What indeed,” he murmurs. “But yes, you’re right. The prior incident. We got a hit on a partial fingerprint at a different crime scene. One that matches the one from your party.”

My blood races. A different crime scene? A partial fingerprint? All I can picture is another white dress with pink flowers, another girl. Did he take her hostage, too? Did he make her drive him around? Did he kiss her? Of course those thoughts are crazy. He doesn’t spend his days making lost little girls drive him around. And even if he did, I don’t care.

I shouldn’t care.

I twist my hands together, remembering how the man looked in the car. Dark and mysterious. Forbidding. “A different crime scene. That’s scary,” I manage to say. It’s the right answer for someone like me. A victim.

It’s also true. I’m scared of him, even though he excited me. Took me over. Reached inside to my pounding heart.

How much is it worth to feel alive? A little fear seems like a small price to pay.

Detective Rivera nods, studying me intently. “That’s right. It is scary what he’s capable of. And how they found the print—smeared in blood.”

The words slither down my spine, cold and thick. “Blood?”

“There was quite a lot of it,” he says conversationally. “That’s the typical result when you run a human body through a wood chipper. It pulverizes everything, but it’s messy. Don’t know why they did it. It doesn’t get rid of the DNA. We got enough tooth fragments and bone chips to test. Even fingernails.” He’s looking right at me, testing me.

My stomach turns over, vision darkening around the edges. The image is so gruesome it takes me a second to realize how callously the detective is talking about death. How pointedly. He’s doing this on purpose.

“That’s horrible,” I say, heat pricking behind my eyes.

“Horrible,” he agrees. “Have you been to a lumberyard recently?”

No, but I can imagine what they look like. I can imagine the fine white specks of wood that gather against a blade, how the sawdust might hang in the air. How it might sprinkle over the green shirt or jeans of a man who visited. Could some sawdust have fallen off in my car? What if they test it?

I swallow hard against the dryness in my throat. “Never,” I whisper.

Sawdust. I thought he might have a hobby. Building furniture in his garage or something. Like a regular man.

He isn’t a regular man. He’s a killer.

“These are dangerous people,” Detective Rivera says. “The man who took you last fall—he’s part of a very violent group. The accomplice of a convicted cop killer, Brooke. Not somebody you can trust—not ever. Certainly not somebody you’d want to know.”

“He put a bag over my head,” I say, voice rising with panic, because we didn’t think of a lie for me to tell this time around. A cop killer? Tears heat my eyes. “Why do you think I know him?”

He looks right at me. “I don’t know. Do you? Know him?”

I feel my spine straighten. I know how he kills. I know how his lips feel when he kisses. I know how his green eyes can burn bright as cut emeralds, but then how they can turn soft and sweet when you least expect it. But I don’t know his name. You don’t really know somebody if you don’t know their name, right? “Of course I don’t know him.”

Detective Rivera waits a long time. Does he want me to say more? Does he really not believe me? But he doesn’t know for sure. He’s not a mind reader. He can’t make me tell anything. He can’t make me say anything at all.

Suddenly Rivera stands, making every muscle in my body tense. “I think you know more than you’re telling me, Miss Carson. And when it comes to Stone Keaton, that’s a problem.”

Stone Keaton. It takes me a moment to register that that’s his name.

So I know his name now. The knowledge doesn’t soothe me, not with the image of sawdust on his arms still fresh in my mind.

Stone Keaton.

“He’s a suspect in multiple homicides,” Rivera continues. “And I’ll tell you, he’s the kind of guy with nothing to lose. The kind of guy who’ll do just about anything to avoid arrest. Including hurting people—friends, officers, family. Makes him very dangerous. Very dangerous to know.”

“I understand,” I say. Though part of me doesn’t—not really. He could’ve killed me that night, but he let me go. You’re mine, he said, like I’m something that belongs to him now. He’s a dangerous killer, but I’m his. Maybe I should feel scared.

Or maybe he’s the one who should feel scared. The police think he has nothing to lose, and that he’ll never let himself be taken in. It seems like that’s the kind of person they might shoot. Does Stone know? Probably. He knows all about the cops. He said so.

Rivera gets a call. He says he has to go. I ask him whether he wants to say goodbye to my parents, but he doesn’t—he seems like he’s in a hurry, so I show him to the door, smiling politely and saying goodbye as if he’s a family friend who dropped by to borrow the boat hitch instead of a man who thinks I’m protecting a killer.

I shut the door after him and press my nose to the beveled glass window that’s set into the massive mahogany door. I watch him head down the walk. He gets into his car and leaves, and all the while I’m turning his name over and over in my mind. Not Rivera’s name, but Stone’s. Stone Keaton.

Stone.