The killer wanted me to find Reece, or he wouldn’t have led me this far. There had always been a clue. A bread crumb. A message somewhere to point me in the right direction. Why not now? Or had I missed it?
I dragged my sleeve across my forehead, clearing the sweat from my eyes. Then I scooped up an armful of mashedup newspaper and began stuffing it back in the box. One piece of newsprint stuck flat against the floor. I scraped up the only piece that hadn’t been crushed into a ball of stuffing. This one was smooth, torn at the taped corners where I’d ripped it from the inside flap in my hurry to open the box. An obituary.
Catherine Schr?dinger. Dead of a heart attack at eightyeight in Alexandria, VA, in 2007. I skimmed the memorial and viewing information. Funeral services had been held at the family mausoleum . . . in Respite Meadows.
That was it. The clue from the ad that morning. Respite in a box, a toxic paradox.
Dead or alive when you find him?
Reece was at Respite Meadows Cemetery. I stuffed the obituary into my pocket. Then piled the filling back in the box, rotated it so the writing faced the wall, and shoved it under the shelf. If the police managed to get this far from the ad, I didn’t need them arresting me before I could find Reece. I turned off the lights and shut the closet door, grabbed my backpack, and righted my stool.
The room was pink with twilight shadows.
Found a stray cat.
Think he belongs to you.
Tonight @9. The answer’s in the box.
I checked the clock and pulled out my phone.
Less than one hour to find him.
43
The sun dipped under the horizon and the headstones glowed white against an indigo sky. In the cemetery directory I thumbed through last names beginning with S. The Schr?dinger family mausoleum was located in a private section of the grounds, set far back from the highway. I crunched over a gravel trail through sculpture gardens and dark roundabouts until I recognized the grove from the directory map.
I stepped off the gravel path to the first stone structure, checking the nameplate before moving on to the next. Every trace of sunlight was gone. Monuments were lit by upturned bulbs hidden in the landscape, illuminating angels and crosses that cast creeping shadows across the mausoleum gates.
A branch crackled in a grove of trees behind me. I turned, and my heart jumped into my throat.
“What are you doing here?” I breathed as the figure came closer.
Jeremy stood in a low beam of light. It cut across a shimmering blue cummerbund over a crisp tuxedo shirt. His expression was murderous as he swiped twigs from his lapels.
“I followed you,” he growled. “I saw you get off the bus outside the gates. But the damn parking lot was roped off.” He kicked grass clippings off the toes of his high-gloss shoes.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. “Why aren’t you at prom?”
“I got stood up!” Jeremy’s hands clenched at his sides. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? Anh was supposed to meet me at the dance. I waited. She never showed up. I called her brother from a pay phone. He said she got a phone call from you. That she went to meet you! Then you came running out of school and I followed your bus here. So where is she? Why isn’t she here? What did you say to her, Leigh?”
My mind raced. Someone called Anh posing as me. And now Anh was missing. I might already be too late . . .
He shook his head, his voice loud and tremulous. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. Because I didn’t want to go to the dance with Anh. I wanted to go with you!” Jeremy was shouting now, pacing and agitated. “I’ve been chasing you since eighth grade, Leigh! Chasing you and you didn’t even care! You’re too busy falling for criminals to notice!” Jeremy turned to me, dropping his voice low and pleading. His face was streaked with tears. “Do I have to kill someone to make you chase after me like you chase after Reece?”
I backed away at the mention of Reece’s name. I was running out of time.
“Jeremy, you have to leave. You can’t be here . . .”
He stepped toward me. I stumbled, my heel connecting with a low stone bench and my momentum throwing me backward and over it. My elbows dug in the ground, breaking my fall, and I struggled to get my feet under me. I looked up into Jeremy’s face as he advanced, one hand outstretched toward me. A shadow passed behind him.
“Jeremy, watch out!”
There was a muffled thud and he crumpled to the ground. Oleksa stood behind him, breathing hard, the butt of his gun turned outward. I scrambled backward, hands and shoes slipping in the mulch.
Oleksa swiped his sleeve across his forehead and rested his hands on his knees, straining to catch his breath. He nudged Jeremy’s shoulder with his foot. Jeremy didn’t move. Oleksa rotated the gun, righting it in his palm as he straightened to look at me.
“I told you to be careful. Your friends are dangerous.”