I PULLED MY HAND FREE from Parvati’s and gave it a fierce wipe against the safe darkness of my pants. My fingers came away clean. “Blood? How could you possibly know that?”
“I tasted it,” she replied. “Salty. Metallic.”
“Gross,” I said. “And not exactly scientific.” My voice was sharp with doubt, but there was a part of me that believed her. She was usually right about weird things. Hell, she was usually right about everything.
Without warning, Alexis Destroyer started singing again, the tinny ringtone surprising me so much that I dropped Preston’s phone. Parvati and I both watched as it landed facedown in the trunk next to a larger smear of brown on the upholstery.
More blood.
She wrapped her hand in her sleeve and reached out for the phone.
“Wait,” I said. “It’s mine this time.” I fished around in my pocket, but the caller had hung up. The icon for a new voicemail message appeared. It was from Special Agent McGhee. He and Gonzo were on their way over to my house. One of my teachers had probably told them I skipped school. “The feds are looking for me. I have to get home.”
“No,” Parvati said. “You can’t go home.” She headed back toward the passenger seat.
“What? Why not?” The world blurred in front of my eyes. My brain felt like it was barely functioning, like someone had put me on frame-by-frame advance while Parvati was operating on fast-forward.
“Because they have something on you, or they wouldn’t be so hell-bent on questioning you again. Maybe they GPS’d this phone while your car was parked at home.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t put it in my trunk,” I protested.
“I know,” Parvati said. “But what makes you think the feds will believe you?”
“You’re being paranoid. They’ve been waiting for me to call them all day. Maybe they just have new information,” I said. “Or someone at school blabbed about Liars, Inc. and they figured out what happened. Anyway, I should fess up about Pres going to Vegas to meet Violet, just in case she’s some crazy stalker who has him chained up in her basement.” It had been stupid not to tell them earlier, but they had treated me like a criminal from the second they saw me—especially Gonzalez—and I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of admitting any wrongdoing. Plus, back then I still thought Preston was going to show up any second and have a good laugh at my expense.
But what about now?
The phone. The blood. Parvati could be wrong—it didn’t have to be blood. The trail leading down to the beach had clay mixed in the dirt. It could be that. Or it could be rust from my camp stove. Or maybe it was blood but Preston just had chapped lips or a cut on his hand. It wasn’t a big pool of red, after all. Just a couple of brownish smudges. Somehow Pres’s phone had gotten mixed up with the camp stuff he brought for me, and that’s how it got in my trunk. He was probably fine, just sleeping off a sex-and-alcohol hangover.
Still, it would be shitty of me to let his parents worry. I could tell the FBI about the alibi without mentioning Parvati or Liars, Inc. That way they could make some calls, check out Violet, and see if Preston’s car broke down or he got arrested for underage gambling.
“Don’t worry, I won’t bring up your name.” I headed back to the driver’s seat.
“I’m not worried about me,” she said. “If you’re going home, I’m coming with you. I want to hear what they say.”
“We’re supposed to be broken up, P. They could tell your dad—”
“They don’t have to know I’m there. I’ll hide in the kitchen or a closet or whatever.”
“What about the Grape?”
“My car’s still at school. I walked to your house.”
I knew her well enough to know that when she got an idea like this into her head I wasn’t going to be able to change her mind. “Fine,” I said. “We’d better get going or they’re going to beat us there.”
Parvati slipped her tiny frame into our overstuffed living room coat closet, adeptly straddling a bouncy seat and other assorted baby stuff. The feds showed up a few minutes later. Gonzalez let the door slam shut behind him, and I twitched at the sharp noise.
“What’s the matter, kid?” Gonzalez asked. “Awfully jumpy.”
“I guess I’ve been a little on edge since my friend disappeared, jackass.”
“Watch your mouth,” Gonzalez barked.
I rolled my eyes at him. I was pretty sure calling an FBI agent a jackass wasn’t against the law. Especially since it was true.
McGhee eyed the seating options and selected the overstuffed armchair. That left the sofa and the rocking chair. Gonzalez sat on the side of the sofa nearest to McGhee, and I plunked down in the rocker.
No one said anything for a moment. I swore I could hear Parvati’s breathing, slow and steady, from the closet. Then McGhee flipped open his notebook and pulled a nubby pencil from the pocket of his shirt. My heart started pounding, getting bigger with each beat, crowding out my lungs so it was hard to breathe. What the hell was going on?
McGhee cleared his throat. “I just have a couple follow-up questions for you, Max.”
“Yeah?” My voice actually squeaked. I wanted to kick myself. Or better yet, kick Gonzalez. I could see him fighting a smile. I raked a hand forward and then backward through my hair, leaving one of my eyes obscured by bangs.
“Did you and Preston argue the night of your camping trip?”
This again? I shook my head. “The answer is still no. Why?”
Gonzalez started to say something, but McGhee cut him off. “We received a call from someone who says they saw two boys arguing at the top of Ravens’ Cliff Saturday night.”
“Bullshit. We were walking along the cliff and Preston got too close to the edge for me. I told him to stop freaking me out. I wouldn’t call that arguing.”
“So there was no physical struggle? No pushing and shoving?”
“Preston outweighs me by at least sixty pounds. If there had been pushing or shoving, my broken ass would be floating out to sea right now.”
McGhee abruptly changed the subject. “Did Preston take your ex-girlfriend to homecoming?”
I almost blurted out that Parvati and I were still together. “Yeah. So what? They went as friends. We’re all friends.”
“So Ms. Amos isn’t dating Preston?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said. “They’ve never dated.”
McGhee nodded. “And Preston’s car. You said he parked it next to you in the overlook parking lot?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a problem, Max,” McGhee said. “We have multiple witnesses that swear Preston’s car wasn’t at the beach parking lot on Sunday morning.”
“Well, yeah, not after he went home.”
McGhee flipped back in his notebook. “According to you, Preston left about nineish.”
“Uh—” A wave was brewing inside my stomach. McGhee had set me up when I was leaving the station with Darla and Ben. He waited until my guard was down to ask about the parking. “I might have been a little off.”