I wondered if it was safe to hike back to my car and drive to the nearest town to get fast food. A crash of thunder and the sound of rain battering the corrugated roof put an end to that idea. I dug through the drawers and cabinets one more time, looking for anything edible. No such luck.
The digital clock on the microwave read five o’clock and I was ready to go to bed. Boredom will do that to you. I wondered if Parvati had managed to snag Pres’s hard drive, if she was on her way to the cabin. I wished I could turn on my phone.
“She can wake me up when she gets here,” I muttered under my breath. I unrolled my sleeping bag onto the cot in one of the tiny bedrooms. It was more comfortable than it looked, but it was low to the ground and only half the width of my bed at home. No matter which way I turned, one of my limbs hung over the side and onto the floor. After a few minutes of tossing and turning, I moved my sleeping bag out to the sofa in the living room. Slightly better, except my arm kept falling down in the cushions. One of the sofa coils was poking through the fabric and each time the sharp metal stabbed my hand I jolted back awake.
I pressed my hands to my chest, mummy-style, and was almost asleep when I heard the cabin door open. Even though Parvati was the only one who knew where I was, my heart slid up into my throat. I sat up quickly, praying she wasn’t wrong about hunting season being over.
Her slim figure slipped through the door, and I exhaled deeply. “Hey, P,” I said. “Find out anything interesting?”
“Maybe.” She shook drops of rain from her curtain of hair. “I brought you something.”
“Please let it be dinner.” My stomach was shrieking for decent food.
“Not quite.” Parvati pulled a black handgun from her purse.
SIXTEEN
“WHAT THE HELL?” MY JAW dropped.
She tried to hand me the gun, but I pulled away at the last second and it landed on the floor between us. She ducked out of the way like she thought it might go off.
“Holy shit! That thing is loaded? Have you lost your mind?”
“What good is an unloaded gun?” she asked, like I was completely dense. She picked it up and handed it to me again.
I took it reluctantly, angling the barrel toward the ground. “Is the safety on at least?”
She shook her head. “There’s no safety, Max. It’s a Glock, like your FBI pals use. You just slide the lever and pull the trigger. It’s made for dropping people.”
“What, are you a gangsta now? Who exactly am I supposed to be dropping?”
Parvati hopped up on the sofa and sat cross-legged next to me. “If someone snatched Preston, who knows what else the guy is capable of? I just think we need to consider all of the angles. We need to protect ourselves.” She tugged at the ends of her hair. “What if this wasn’t about politics or some crazy internet girlfriend? What if it was closer to home? Maybe we screwed someone with one of our alibis.”
The gun felt like a live grenade in my hand. I set it gingerly onto the coffee table. “What? Like some loser high school kid kidnapped Pres? I think this is bigger than that. Besides, he was mostly just our PR guy.”
“Did he ever say anything about having trouble with that David guy he was helping in calc class?”
“David Nephew? He’s about half Preston’s height and one-third his weight. Even if David had a baseball bat and a tranquilizer gun, I’d still bet on Pres. And didn’t you say he was all surprised when Preston didn’t show up at school yesterday?”
“True. Can you think of anyone else?” she pressed.
“I don’t think he set up many alibis by himself,” I said. “I had to hook up Quinn with an excuse note that Pres forgot about, but other than that we haven’t had any complaints.”
“Do you know who he was always texting?” she asked. “Or what he was doing on his laptop all the time?”
“I figured it was online gambling,” I said. “Or talking to this Violet girl. What was on his phone?”
Parvati pulled it out of her purse. The screen was dark. “I only turned it on for a few seconds, but everything before Saturday has been wiped. No videos. No pix. No texts.”
That didn’t make sense. Preston was always shooting videos and saving stuff on his phone. “So there’s nothing on it?”
“Only a handful of calls and texts from me, you, and his parents.” She slipped the phone back into her purse. “I just don’t want whoever’s gotten to him to get to you too, Max.”
She said this all matter-of-factly, like Preston being “gotten to” was no big deal, but I knew better. I knew Parvati. I knew that the more things bothered her, the more she acted like everything was fine. That was why some swim team girl talking to me at school was enough to rile her up, but the news of a friend’s disappearance didn’t even seem to register on her pretty face.
“What about you?” I turned toward her. “Any of your call-ins go wrong? Anyone get busted?”
She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
“Well, if I’m in danger, you’re probably in danger too.”
“I’m a brown belt, remember? Plus no shortage of guns at the Amos compound.” She raised her shirt just high enough to show me her shoulder holster.
I cringed at the thought of Parvati locked and loaded, but at least she wouldn’t shoot off her own foot like I might. Her dad had taught her how to handle rifles and shotguns in middle school, and she’d been practicing with a handgun for at least a year. I’d only seen the inside of her bedroom a handful of times, but I would never forget her proud display of paper targets, all of which had ten hits in the inner circle.
“Besides,” she continued, “no one is trying to kidnap me or frame me as far as I know.”
“Have you heard anything new?” I asked, dreading the answer. “Is there a ransom note?”
“No,” she said. “But I heard Astrid Covington say the Vista P cops were searching the water, that they think maybe Preston got pushed off Ravens’ Cliff.”
“So Astrid is telling everyone I killed him?”
“Well, she didn’t say your name specifically, but—”
I cut her off. “Did you get the hard drive?”
Parvati’s pupils widened, making her eyes look completely black. “Of course.” She pulled a flat, metallic rectangle from her jacket pocket. “Esmeralda let me in, and for a while no one knew I was there. I also took some pictures of Pres’s room.” She slid her laptop out of her backpack, plugged it into the wall, and turned it on. While we waited for it to boot up we scrolled through the photos on her phone, looking for anything unusual.
I squinted at the screen. There was almost no hint of Preston in the blank white walls and black lacquer furniture. For the most part, it could have been anyone’s room. Parvati and I studied the pictures one at a time. His bookshelf, prominently featuring a neat line of textbooks he probably hadn’t opened all year. His dresser, a mess of toiletries—aftershave, deodorant, contact solution.