CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The words tumble out of my mouth: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Don’t kill me.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Cliff tilts the bow twenty degrees downward. Still close enough to send the arrow flying into a less vital part of me.

“I don’t know.” My inner thigh is wet; I must have peed a little when I saw the crossbow. “What were you doing in the shed?”

“Fueling up the snowblower. What are you doing on my property?”

I can’t stop my knees from shaking. “It was nothing—just let me leave. I swear to God I’ll never come back.”

Cliff’s upper lip twitches. “You’re not going anywhere until I call the police so they can find whatever you left back here for them to find.”

“What? I didn’t leave anything. I swear to God.”

“Just like you didn’t leave Bailey’s phone?” Cliff rubs his upper lip. Nervous. He thinks I planted Bailey’s phone on his property.

“I swear I didn’t do it,” I say. “Please let me go.”

“Nah. I don’t think so. Because someone’s fuckin’ framing me,” Cliff says. “And I think it’s you.”

He lifts the crossbow; I yelp again, but he’s just switching arms. He digs a cell phone out of his pocket and dials. I sneak a glimpse at the screen—he’s calling his father, not 911, which almost makes me piss myself all over again.

My heartbeat thrums in my ears, drowning out what Cliff mutters into the phone. I’m going to pass out. When he ends the call, Cliff turns to me: “My dad’s calling the sheriff. He says not to let you leave.”

My teeth are chattering. The pounding in my ears dissolves to white noise. “I need to sit. Can I at least—can we go inside?”

Cliff grabs me by the arm. Pulls me with him around the shed, then pushes me inside the open door at the other end. He must have been in the house the whole time, watching me through the window.

Crossbow still cocked on his shoulder, Cliff moves to a stack of lawn chairs. He grabs one off the top with his free hand and drops it in front of me. “So, sit if you want.”

I sink into the chair and dip my head between my knees. When I come back up, Cliff is staring at me. “You’re one strange bitch, you know that?”

I lick my lips. They’ve gone numb. “Why do you think I planted Bailey’s phone?”

Cliff shrugs. “I heard you know where she is, and you’re trying to make sure everyone’s looking at me.”

“Who’s saying that?” I demand. “That I know where she is?”

“People. Around.” Cliff shrugs. “Everyone knows you keep magically finding evidence.”

“I didn’t find the bloody sweatshirt.” Something about the way that crossbow is pointed at me is making me bold. He’s not going to shoot me: not with Sheriff Moser on his way here. “Speaking of, you’re not missing a sweatshirt, are you?”

Cliff snorts. Shakes his head. “Yeah, cops showed me a picture of the sweatshirt. Not mine.” Cliff stares at me. I notice for the first time how far apart his eyes are. I will never understand the bewitching effect he has over girls like Bridget, who could do so much better.

“You didn’t answer me,” he says. “Why the hell are you here?”

The lawn chair is ice-cold beneath my butt. “I came here looking for Bailey.”

“You think I’m keeping Bailey in my shed?” Cliff blinks at me. “You really must be out of your skull. She’s dead, haven’t you heard?”

“You seem pretty confident about that.”

“Whatever. I feel bad about it and all, but it’s time to face facts. And I’m so sick of people trying to pin this shit on me because of what happened last year.”

I keep my eye on the crossbow, my teeth chattering. “Maybe they think losing a scholarship is big enough of a deal to kill someone.”

“Yeah, maybe. But I already told the cops I let it go. I didn’t give a shit about Bay anymore.”

“Then why wouldn’t you let the cops search your backyard?”

“Whatever. My dad is a private person.” Cliff shifts his crossbow to his other shoulder again. “Besides, my Jeep is at the crime lab right now. I let them search it because I got nothing to hide.”

So stupid. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that Cliff would turn his Jeep over. I’m fumbling; I can’t take my eyes off the crossbow. I’m sure he’s not going to use it—it’s all about control with him—but it’s still nerve-racking to have it in my face. I decide that whatever happens when Jim Grosso gets here, I can’t leave without answers.

“Bailey was here, wasn’t she? A week ago,” I say.

Cliff’s expression darkens. “How do you know about that?”

“Bridget told me.”

Cliff’s shoulders rise. “Don’t talk to me about Bridge.”

I would be perfectly content not to talk to Cliff Grosso about anything, but grilling him is a distraction from how completely fucked I’ll be once his father gets here.

“Just tell me why Bailey was here,” I say. “If you weren’t hooking up with her, what did she want from you?”

Cliff’s shoulder muscle twitches under the weight of the bow. He won’t answer me; if it was sex Bailey wanted from him, why not admit it? Cliff Grosso is not known for his modesty. Before he started dating Bridget, when someone was saying his name, it was usually accompanied with the name of whatever girl he bragged about sleeping with most recently.

And besides, Bridget already broke up with him. It’s not like he has anything left to lose. So why the stubborn silence?

Why does he look scared?

Outside, someone shouts Cliff’s name. His eyes flick to the shed door. “In here!”

Cliff hangs up the crossbow on the rack next to a bunch of gardening tools. Sheriff Moser, the hood of his parka pulled over his leathery forehead, is standing in the doorway. He looks back and forth between us. “Well, what in Sam Hill is going on here?”

Half an hour later, I’m still sitting on a couch in the Grossos’ living room. Sheriff Moser is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, and Jim Grosso is standing off to the side. Jim is even more frightening than Cliff; he was a linebacker too, back in the day. It’s not hard to imagine his enormous arm muscles slamming a cleaver through a slab of meat.

Cliff is on an armchair catty-corner to me, and everyone seems generally unconcerned that he was pointing a crossbow at me thirty minutes ago.

There’s a commotion outside the front door; through the living room window, I spot the back of my father’s head, his hair rumpled from sleeping. The deputy posted outside the Grossos’ house—the same loudmouth who blurted the news about blood being in Bailey’s car—raises his voice to match my father’s. Sheriff Moser’s gaze darts back and forth between the door and me, as if he’s weighing whether it’s a good idea to leave me alone with the Grossos.

“Uh, you all wait right here.” Moser steps outside. “Jim, why don’t you come with me and we’ll sort this out.”

When his father is gone, Cliff folds his arms across his chest and stares me down. I avoid his eyes, trying not to think about what will happen if his father presses charges for trespassing. What the sheriff will do to me for showing up somewhere I don’t belong for the second time this week.

Some muttering outside. Moser steps back in the house, waves me over to him. I feel like a criminal, even though Cliff is the one who rear-ended Ellie Knepper when he was drunk.

“Alrighty. Jim here has agreed not to press charges for trespassing as long as you stay away from his house and his son.”

“His son—like I’m stalking him or something?” I ask.

“I think I’ve got it from here, Bill,” my father says sharply. “Kacey and I are going to go home now, if that’s all right.”

Moser tips his hat. “You take care, you hear? All this just makes me want to go home and be with my daughter.”

My father nods and guides me with a hand on my back to Andrew’s car, which is waiting several hundred yards from the house.

When he speaks, his voice is sharp. The sort of sharp that’s usually reserved for Lauren when she’s acting like a brat. “Follow me home. Straight home.”

And that’s all he says. He never has much to say to me, anyway.

Ashley and Andrew get home from the search not long after my father and I get home. The search was supposed to run until five, but the weather made it too dangerous for people to be walking up and down the winding roads between Broken Falls and Pleasant Plains.

When I saw Ashley’s SUV pull into the driveway, I ran into my room like the coward that I am. Which is where I’m hiding when the arguing in the kitchen starts. I can’t help myself; I crack open my door so I can hear.

Ashley’s voice carries down the hall: “What the hell was she doing there?”

My dad’s response is measured, even. “I don’t know, Ash. No one tells me anything that’s going on around here.”

“Maybe if you were home, ever!”

The sound of a fist hitting a hard surface makes me jump. “I was home all day with Lauren!”

“I asked you to check on Kacey at the café,” Ashley says. “Make sure everything was all right.

“I didn’t know she required twenty-four-hour supervision.” His voice is almost inaudible compared to Ashley’s.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about your daughter, Russ.”

I don’t know what my father’s response would have been, because the sound of the phone ringing interrupts him.

“Hello?” There’s a pause that goes on for days. A Thank you, we’ll be there as soon as possible, end call. I know it’s the sheriff’s office by the polite panic in Ashley’s voice.

“They want to talk to her,” she says.

“Again? They just talked to her!”

“I don’t know, Russ. Do you blame them after what happened today?”

I grab my coat and head down the hall, my heartbeat drowning out the sound of their bickering. When I step into the kitchen, both of them turn and stare at me like they’ve never seen me before.

“Ready when you are,” I say, then add, “to go to the sheriff’s station.”

Ashley and my dad look mortified. They know I must have heard everything, but it doesn’t bother me.

For some reason, I want them to know I heard every word.

Ashley brings me to the station so my father can get some sleep before his night shift. This time, there’s no negotiating Ashley being in the room for the interview. She plunks down on the chair in the corner, one protective eye on me as Ellie Knepper puts a hand to my lower back and guides me to the table.

“Detective Burke will be right in. Can I get you folks anything? Coffee? Water?”

“Maybe some water,” Ashley says. As Ellie disappears, Ashley points up at the camera in the corner of the room. A light pulses twice.

“Just be honest.” Ashley’s voice is clipped. Like I haven’t been honest up until now.

My chest constricts. What does she think I’m hiding?

There’s the fact that I snuck out Friday night, but that hardly feels relevant right now. I’m in way deeper shit.

I’m sweating by the time Ellie returns with two bottles of water. I want to twist the top off and shotgun the whole thing greedily, but Burke is with Ellie, and I don’t want him to see that I’m nervous.

“Thanks for coming in.” Burke slides into the seat opposite mine. Moser drags a chair across the room to join us at the table. Burke cringes at the metal legs scraping against linoleum.

“You understand why you’re here, don’t you, Kacey?”

I lick a raw spot on my upper lip. “The Grossos are pressing charges after all?”

“No,” Burke says. “Sheriff Moser is handling that matter. I want to talk more about Bailey.”

My stomach goes into free fall. Sheriff Bill’s got his eye on one of the girl’s friends. I want to ask if I’m a person of interest, but I can’t bring myself to do it with Ashley sitting in the corner.

But Ashley must sense the change in atmosphere, because she pipes up. “Does Kacey need an attorney?”

Burke looks over at Ashley. “That is entirely up to you two. I still think Kacey is a witness, and not a suspect. I just need her help convincing me.”

“No lawyers,” I say. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Burke sets down a photo on the table in front of me. It’s the blood smear on the wall in the barn. “I want to talk about this. We matched the blood type to what we found on some other evidence.”

The sweatshirt. Probably, her car. My throat goes dry. “Is it hers? Her blood type?”

Burke’s chin quirks.

“Oh God.” I shift in my seat. The blood is rushing from my head; I have to rest my head in my hands. Ellie Knepper gives my back an awkward pat.

“The tread marks from your boots,” Burke continues. “We found matching ones all over the barn.” He gives a final-sounding crack of his knuckle, like it’s the period at the end of his sentence. “It doesn’t match the story that you went up to the barn, stepped through the door, saw the blood, and turned around.”

He’s got me—there is literally no way to lie myself out of this without making it seem like I’m the one who made that blood smear.

“The other morning wasn’t your first time in the barn, was it, Kacey?” Burke says.

My mind goes blank. I can’t think about Jade, and how we agreed not to mention being in the barn. I can’t think about Ashley, and how pissed she’ll be that I snuck out and dragged Lauren along.

There’s literally no way out of this mess but to tell the truth and hope that Burke believes it.

“Okay,” I say. “We were there Friday night. Before Bailey went missing.”

Burke leans forward on his forearms. “Who’s we?”

I swallow. Tamp down the urge to look at Ashley. I only have one option if I’m going to keep any semblance of peace at home. I’ve already lost one of my best friends. I can’t lose my family too.

“Bailey, Jade, and I,” I say.

“Just the three of you?”

“Yes. It was just the three of us.”

“Okay. What were you three doing up there?” Maybe I’m imagining it, but he emphasizes the word three, as if to let me know he thinks my story is bullshit.

I have to force the words out: “We held a séance.”

Burke blinks at me. “A séance?”

Ellie leans in to him: “Like communicating with the dead.”

Annoyance flits across Burke’s face. “I know what a séance is.” Still, he’s staring at me like I’m making the whole thing up.

“It was Bailey’s idea,” I say. “I know—it was stupid. She wanted to try to summon the Red Woman. Jade and I aren’t into that stuff, but you’d have to know Bailey. If you don’t go along with her plans, she gets really—pissy.”

“Did Bailey get like that often?” Burke blinks at me. “Pissy? I’m just trying to get a better sense of what she’s like.”

Possessive. “She would get mad at me if I didn’t do stuff like sneak out with her and Jade. If I said no, she’d just show up at my house anyway.”

I can practically feel Ashley cringing behind me. Her obedient stepchild, leaving through her bedroom window to do God knows what.

Burke taps his forefinger to his chin. “But she didn’t just show up at your house the night of the party?”

I shake my head. “I told you. I didn’t want to go.”

“That’s not what Jade Becker says. She says you seemed upset on Sunday that Bailey never texted you about picking you up and bringing you to the party.”

Fucking Jade. All she did was tell the truth, but it feels like a knife in my back. Of course Jade would tell the truth—she’d do anything to get Bailey back safe.

Burke studies me. “You realize that contradicts your earlier story that you decided not to go to the party on your own, and went to bed?”

Don’t you fucking cry. “I didn’t really want to go to the party. So when Bailey didn’t text me, I was relieved, I guess.”

“And you’re sure she didn’t just show up at your house anyway? While you were sleeping.” Burke adds the last part as if it’s for my benefit. As if he doesn’t really buy that I was asleep.

Panic corners me. “My stepmom told you I was home all night.” I turn in my chair to face Ashley, who nods. But there’s something else in her expression.

Distrust.

“I don’t get why you’re doing this to me.” A tear leaks out of my eye when I look at Burke again. As I wipe it away, Ellie Knepper materializes over my shoulder with a box of tissues. “I don’t know anything. Shouldn’t you be talking to Cliff Grosso? Someone saw Bailey at his house just last week—people are saying his dad is lying for him about where he was Saturday night—”

“Cliff Grosso is not a person of interest at this time.” Burke cuts me off.

I clamp down my mouth before opening it again. “Why? Because he was dating the sheriff’s great-niece? Because his family owns half the businesses in town?”

Burke smiles. “I can assure you there’s no law enforcement conspiracy regarding the Grosso family. The investigation is simply taking us in a different direction.”

“In my direction.” My hand forms a fist under the table. “That’s total bullshit.”

“Kacey.” Ashley’s voice is like the crack of a whip.

Burke removes a photo from the folder in front of him and sets it on the table between us. It’s a grainy image, probably from a security camera. I recognize the gas station at the corner of Mills Pond Road and Sparrow Road.

Passing by is a blue Honda Civic. It’s too dark to see the driver’s face, but there’s a clear shot of the license plate. GRR. It’s the same license plate I looked for a thousand times in the BFH parking lot in a sea of blue Honda Civics while I waited for her after school.

It’s Bailey’s car. The time stamp in the corner reads 11:31 p.m.

I do the math in my head: Bailey left the party at a quarter after eleven. Prairie Circle and Kevin Sullivan’s house is about a ten-minute drive from our house.

“Notice this?” Burke taps Bailey’s right headlight. “Her blinker is on. Like she’s headed down Sparrow Hill.”

“You think she left the party to meet me?” I shake my head. “No. She could have been going to Sparrow Hill—back to the barn—”

“And why would she do that?” Burke watches me, expectant. I have no answers for him. Only pieces of information that grind to a paste in my brain. Had she been coming for me, and something stopped her?

Ashley pipes up. “How much longer will this take, Detective? I’d really like to get Kacey home. It’s been a long day for all of us.”

“Of course. Just one more thing for now.” Burke thumbs through another file folder filled with sheets of paper. “Can you verify your cell phone number for me?”

“Are those Bailey’s phone records?” I don’t mean to blurt it.

Burke’s eyebrows meet in the middle. “They are. She liked to text quite a bit. We haven’t gotten the content of those messages yet, since they were deleted, but it’s only a matter of time. The crime lab has ways of recovering them.”

Relief settles over my shoulders. Because those phone records will show that Bailey and I had no contact at all on Saturday. As I recite my number, I think, This is it. He’ll see I never called or texted her. He’ll see I couldn’t have gotten her to leave that party.

Burke repeats my number back to me, thumbing through the pages in the folder. “So if I’m not mistaken, the last time you texted Bailey before she went missing was Friday night.”

“Right.” I nod. “Like I said, we snuck out. She texted to tell me she and Jade were coming to pick me up.”

“Right.” Burke smiles. “Then I guess we have nothing more to discuss at the moment.”

I exhale for what feels like the first time in hours as Ellie escorts Ashley and me from the interview room to the front doors. Outside, the snowfall is picking up. I want to shout it into the sky: The phone records will set me free.

So why was Burke holding them to his chest like they were a winning hand of cards?