CHAPTER THREE

Gabby Dahl had pushed the failed therapy meeting out of her head by the time she entered the locker room for last-period PE. When there were so many more pressing issues, it was easy to squeeze everything nonessential out of her brain.

As it was, she had just begun washing her hands when the sixth-period warning bell rang. She only had five minutes or she’d be marked late yet again. She was already in danger of receiving a failing grade, which boggled her parents’ minds. “How do you fail a class like PE?” Gabby had overheard her father grumble to her mother with a resigned sigh. He couldn’t conceal his disappointment anymore.

She let the water run for exactly fifteen more seconds before turning it off and grabbing three paper towels, wiping each finger with precision.

Satisfied, she began counting the twenty-seven steps to her locker, taking care to avoid the cracks in the aging cement floor, her eyes catching sight of her reflection in the full-length mirror that lined the wall. She was smaller than most girls her age, with so much blond hair that it was easy to hide behind it.

She reached her gym locker, tapped on it three times and twirled in the combination, opening the dilapidated metal door, then shutting it quickly. She’d have to do this five more times, assuming of course that nothing went wrong, before she could leave her locker open and begin to change.

A few feet away, a group of girls were clustered at the end of the wooden bench.

“My parents have been so freaked out. They didn’t even want to let me go to the football game last weekend,” Hannah Phelps said, pulling on her socks. As Gabby slammed her locker shut for the second time, she wondered if Hannah remembered that she’d ever been friends with Gabby. It all felt so long ago.

“I know,” Emily Price agreed. “Mine want to drive me everywhere. I mean, I get it. I don’t want to end up like poor Lily. I’m scared to go anywhere by myself right now. But I wish they’d catch this guy already so my curfew could go back to midnight.”

Gabby shivered at the mention of Lily Carpenter’s recent murder in her cabin on the edge of the Arapahoe Woods. Gabby had been stunned when she’d initially heard that the sweet woman known around town for her handmade cedar-scented candles had been shot point-blank. She’d visited Lily’s stall at the farmers’ market more than a few times and always noticed how calm and patient Lily was, even when Gabby had to count her dollar bills eight times before handing her the money. Who would murder someone like that, and for seemingly no reason?

Despite the admittedly loose connection Gabby had with Lily, she couldn’t help feeling affected by her murder, hoping for justice for such a nice person. She read every article she could about the case, and by this point she’d heard every theory out there. Did Lily’s murder have something to do with Steven Chapman, who wanted to buy her land to build a commercial development? Or was she the victim of a transient — some kind of serial killer popping in and out of towns targeting single women? Or was the murderer someone homegrown, a Cedar Springs resident, now eager for his next victim? It was the latter option that was freaking out most of the town, Gabby included. Everyone’s parents had been vigilant lately, buying high-tech alarm systems, instituting neighborhood watches and new curfews. Not that Gabby needed to worry about that. It had been years since she had anywhere to be after school, returning straight home at exactly 3:47 each day. Her memories of long practices at the ice rink and slumber parties with friends had mostly faded away.

The final bell rang.

Gabby willed herself to stay calm. She couldn’t let the stress of the bell get to her. If she could just make it to the hallway quickly, she might have a shot at getting to class on time. But the maze of complicated cracks near the entrance of the locker room formed a particularly challenging gauntlet for her.

Luckily, the outer corridor floor was covered with wide black-and-white linoleum squares that required fewer acrobatic feats than the locker room did.

As she leaped between the white squares, she could almost taste the relief in her mouth, the gym door just feet away. Then several members of the football team emerged from the boys’ locker room in workout gear, including Justin, the brawny guy who had stormed out of that therapy group.

As they spilled into the hall, they jostled Gabby, knocking her firmly into a black square.

This couldn’t be happening.

But if any of the guys realized the disaster they’d caused, they didn’t let on. Not one of them looked back as Gabby began her retreat to the locker room.

*    *    *

Justin Diaz was having a crappy day.

First, some idiot took forever to load his bike on the bus, which made him get a tardy demerit first period. If that wasn’t bad enough, while he was rushing to get to class, he bumped into Mr. Wincott, who spilled hot coffee all over Justin’s shirt. If hitting a teacher wasn’t an offense that would get him expelled, Justin would’ve punched that half-assed apology right off Wincott’s face.

Then he’d had to deal with that dumb therapy meeting. In what world was it supposed to be surprising to Justin that his mother had given up on him? He’d known that since before kindergarten.

And now he was late for weight training, thanks to his half-deaf English teacher who kept droning on about Tender Is the Night because she didn’t hear the bell ring.

But his irritation peaked when he entered the stale-aired weight room and saw that tight end Adam Dodson had beaten him to the leg-curl machine. Everyone knew Justin liked to start on that machine.

With clenched fists, Justin maneuvered past his other teammates and approached the rack of dumbbells instead. He effortlessly picked up some heavy weights and began a series of bicep curls, his annoyance fueling every rep.

“Hey, man,” his buddy Greg Hindenberg — Hindy — groaned as he struggled through a curl, his shaggy blond hair plastered to his face.

Hindy was a foot shorter than Justin, like most players on the team. Justin had always been the tallest and strongest in his grade, the kind of kid other parents thought was a sixth-grader when he was just in third grade. His size was intimidating as hell on the football field and one of the reasons he made such a kick-ass tackle.

Justin nodded at Hindy, then looked back at Adam, who was still hogging the leg-curl machine. Finally, after an agonizingly long ten minutes, Adam rose and Justin quickly turned to rerack his weights.

But he wasn’t fast enough. Their quarterback, Mike Silvestri, slipped onto the machine and was already adjusting the settings. The heat rose in Justin’s cheeks as he approached Silvestri and stood over him aggressively.

“I was getting ready to use that,” Justin said.

Silvestri shrugged. “Too bad, man. You can go after me.”

Silvestri might be quarterback, but everyone knew this team wouldn’t be undefeated without Justin.

“I don’t think so,” Justin snapped. He didn’t move.

Silvestri stood to look at him.

“What’s your problem?” he asked. “Can’t you just wait your turn?”

Fury funneled through Justin’s body and he drew back his fist, connecting it with Silvestri’s jaw. It was only one hit, but the release made his entire body feel lighter. For a brief moment, he was taken back to the meeting earlier that day. Sociopathic proclivity to violence, they’d said.

More like constantly surrounded by idiots who need to be taught a lesson.

He raised his fist again, to throw an extra punch for good measure, but he felt two bear-size hands on his shoulders, pulling him away.

“Justin! That’s enough!” Coach Brandt, the team’s defensive coordinator, ordered. With a muscular lumberjack build, Coach Brandt was probably the only guy in the room with the pure strength to take him on.

He dragged Justin toward the small office attached to the weight room and closed the door once they were both inside.

“Sit down,” Coach Brandt said calmly. Unlike the other coaches, he never lost his temper. “What was that about?”

Justin shrugged noncommittally. “Silvestri’s been drunk with power ever since he became starting QB.”

“So you punched him in the face? Come on, you know you can’t lose it like that,” Coach Brandt responded evenly. “Even if it’s true.”

Justin allowed himself a hint of a smile.

Coach Brandt settled into the tattered black leather chair across from Justin, his forehead creased in concern. “Anything else on your mind? Everything okay at home?”

He asked it casually, but Justin knew what he was getting at. Coach Brandt had just come on staff over the summer, but the tale of Justin’s crappy life had already made its way to him.

“Yeah,” Justin mumbled quickly.

“You know, I didn’t have a great relationship with my parents. My dad left, traded us in for a new family and never even bothered to —”

“Everything’s fine,” Justin interrupted. Though he was mildly intrigued by the revelation that Coach Brandt had grown up without his dad around either, Justin was aware that he’d be expected to reciprocate and share his own feelings. And that wasn’t going to happen. “Can I go now?”