Chapter 7
It was a Saturday, which meant no school, and which also meant she had two whole days ahead of her when she wasn’t the focal point of 282 teenagers and 38 faculty members.
It also meant she had two whole days in which to figure out her next move.
The Riverview library was small and, Evie guessed, not a priority for funding if the three ancient, yellowing computers were anything to go by. She pulled out a chair and switched one computer on and, while she waited for it to boot up, she rummaged in her bag for the papers she’d stolen from Victor’s store. Five minutes later she was staring at the website of a business in LA. It looked like the kind of place people used to redirect their mail or as a front for an office.
Evie sighed back into her chair. She had been hoping the address would lead straight to Victor. But it was a start. She would just have to go there and see if she could find any more information on him. It didn’t matter if it took her the rest of her life – she was going to find Victor. And then she was going to do what she should have done two months ago.
While she was waiting for the map to print she rested her hands on the keyboard and stared at the blinking cursor. She thought about it for a few seconds and then, before she could lose her nerve, she typed the words Bradbury Building Fire into the search bar.
Over four million hits came up. She hovered the cursor over the first one. It was a newspaper article. She clicked on it.
Historic Landmark Engulfed by Fire
Evie scanned the article. It quoted a fire investigator laying the blame for the blaze on arsonists. There was a mention of the two policemen who’d died, though no details of exactly how – nothing that hinted at how their dismembered bodies had been discovered lying in a swamp of their own blood in an elevator, nor that their throats had been ripped out by Thirsters.
There was no mention either of the explosion in the basement or of the piles of ash the police must have found down there, and not a word about the arrows sunk into the lobby walls where Vero had nailed three Thirsters. The article wrapped up by saying that the building was closed for the foreseeable future while repairs were being carried out. The final line mentioned that no arrests had yet been made.
‘Why are you looking that up?’
Evie spun around in her chair. Kaitlyn Rivers – Tom’s new girlfriend – and another girl who she recognised from the year below her in school, were standing behind her. She had been so engrossed in the story she hadn’t felt them sneak up.
Her fingers clicked the header bar. ‘No reason,’ Evie said as the home page loaded.
‘Ooh, have you heard about that?’ Kaitlyn asked, pointing suddenly at the screen.
Evie turned back to the computer. The front page of the paper had appeared. A headline running in bold print across the top screamed:
Serial killer strikes again.
Evie felt a funny spasm in her gut, like a knife that had been sticking in there since Lucas died had just been given a further twist. She scanned the piece.
Police fear more than one killer at work
‘It’s like so totally scary,’ Kaitlyn was saying to her friend. ‘What if they come here?’
‘To Riverview?’ her friend asked drolly. ‘Really?’
‘Well, it’s not like we don’t get our fair share of mental cases,’ Kaitlyn said, jerking her head in Evie’s direction.
Evie stood up abruptly from her seat at the computer, switched off the screen and snatched the piece of paper with the map on it from the printer tray.
‘No wonder he broke up with her,’ she heard Kaitlyn whisper as she strode past them.
Evie shook off her anger as she walked to her truck. Kaitlyn Rivers was not worth getting upset about. She had other things – other, far worthier people – to focus her anger on. She threw her bag into the back of the truck and turned over the engine. She needed to follow the trail on Victor before it got cold and there was no longer any point in hanging around in Riverview.
She had wanted to skip town even before Lucas arrived, before Victor had shown up, long before she even knew she was a Hunter. And she owed it to Lucas to find Victor. He would have done the same for her. In fact, he probably would have already found Victor and killed him. He wouldn’t have moped around for two months in a darkly fuelled depression, half-comatose on sleeping pills.
Her biological parents had tried to tell her, through a cryptically worded message, that she could choose not to be a Hunter – that she could choose to walk away. Yet here she was – she glanced at the map on the seat next to her – hunting. Victor had been right all along and they had been wrong. She couldn’t fight what she was. She didn’t get to choose. She was a Hunter through and through.
Though this time her prey wasn’t an unhuman. This time it was one of her own.