When the memorial ended, someone began collecting chairs. Brynna watched Mr. Shaw slowly turning, his red-rimmed eyes scanning the horizon as though he were expecting Erica to come walking in from the woods.
When he turned to Brynna, he was pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing. “Christopher’s not here,” he said to his wife.
“We can at least thank God for that.”
Brynna split away from the Shaws, from her own parents, standing on the edge of Erica’s grave. The coffin had been lowered in, and off to her left, two workmen with shovels stood half-hidden in a clutch of trees, waiting to finish burying her. Brynna couldn’t help but think they were like vultures, circling their prey.
“Honey?” Her father’s touch was gentle on her shoulder. “We’re going to get going over to the Shaws now.”
Brynna nodded numbly, offering Erica a final good-bye in her head.
“I’ll meet you out at the car. I’m going to stop by the ladies’ room first.”
People were leaving slowly, milling in clumps around the cemetery grounds, and Brynna tried to avoid them all. She wound around the stone pathways that cut through the grounds, keeping her eyes on the path rather than the headstones that surrounded her. She didn’t want to think that they were leaving Erica there, among hundreds of people she didn’t know.
The crowd had thinned considerably when she came out of the little chapel’s restroom.
“Hello there.”
Brynna gasped then grabbed her chest and finally looked up, a relieved smile on her face. “Mr. Fallbrook! Sorry, you scared me. What are you doing here?”
He cocked his head in something that looked like amusement, but there was a weird, almost sinister smile on his face.
“You don’t know?”
Brynna fell in step with him, and they moved toward the parking lot. “I don’t know what? Did you know Erica? I know you were at a different school before you came to Hawthorne.”
He nodded, his smile still fixed. “I did know Erica. Rather well.” He paused and Brynna waited for him to go on. He didn’t.
“Um, from another school or something?”
“Not exactly. We were much closer than just a teacher and student.”
Brynna glanced up, a dark pit forming low in her belly. “I—I don’t understand.”
“She was a very, very special girl, Erica.” There was a slight, faraway look on Mr. Fallbrook’s face, and Brynna’s nerves started to hum.
“I—I don’t think I know what you mean.”
Mr. Fallbrook snapped toward Brynna. “You don’t think she was special?”
“No, of course she was. She was my best friend. My best friend in the world. How did you say you two knew each other?”
A slow smile spread across his face. “We were very close. Like family.”
The pieces started to fall into place, but Brynna had to shake off the fog that covered them.
“I know you too, Brynna. Really well.”
Brynna swallowed, her fear growing. “You’re—are you—her stepbrother?”
“Ding, ding, ding!”
The look on his face was chilling. His ice-blue eyes were shooting daggers. His handsome face morphed into a mask distorted in anger. Hate rolled off him in waves, and Brynna stepped backward, ready to run.
But Mr. Fallbrook already had her.
She twisted over her own feet as he flipped her so her back was firm against his chest. His one arm clapped both of hers down, his other hand tight against her mouth. She could taste the blood as her teeth dug into her cheeks each time he gripped her harder.
“You’re going to stay very, very quiet, do you hear me, Brynna? As quiet as my sister is over there in that big pine box.”
Christopher.
He jammed her against the door of his car, pinning her there with a knee to her back. He moved his hand from her mouth, but her scream died in the air when he pulled the glistening silver blade in front of her eyes, then held it against her neck. She could feel her skin give into the blade, could feel the hot itch start as her blood started to bubble.
“I’m just holding the knife here, Brynna. If you move, it’s probably going to cut you. It’s probably going to slit your throat. But it won’t be my fault, will it? It’ll be yours.”
She felt him lasso her hands with a zip tie, then he pulled it so tightly she winced. The blade cut into another layer of skin while the tie cut into her wrists.
“Why—why—why are you doing this?”
Fallbrook pulled Brynna’s head back by the hair; she could feel the individual strands breaking in his grip. She pinched her eyes shut, waiting for the feel of the cold, steel blade as it ripped into her flesh.
But it didn’t happen.