Her phone rang. “Chris,” she said, answering it.
“Emma. Sorry I didn’t call earlier, things have been a bit hectic around here,” Chris said in his resonant baritone. In the background she could hear several small dogs barking.
“What’s going on over there?” Emma asked.
“I made the mistake of taking a little mutt in off the street. She gobbled down enough dinner to sate a pack of wolves and then gave birth on a five-thousand-dollar rug,” Chris said.
“That’s what you get for taking in strays,” Emma replied, laughing a little.
“At least you never whelped a litter in my living room,” Best said, with exaggerated gravitas. “You’re back at the house.”
Emma’s smile dropped. “Yes. Juliette was here, too, actually. She dropped by.”
“Ah,” Chris said. “That must have been difficult.”
“That’s one word for it.” Emma let out a breath, bracing a hand against her lower back. “I’m not sure why I even texted you, really. It’s just—being back here, and trying to explain things to Nathan, I’ve been wondering a lot about what happened. What really happened.”
“You never asked for answers about your parents’ deaths. I assumed there was a reason for that,” Chris said, voice free of judgment. For all that he’d done for her, she’d never told him the whole truth about that night. He had accepted that, and done his job.
“Chris, did my dad have enemies? I know he had affairs. Maybe there was an angry husband, or something,” she said, speaking too quickly.
“I promise you the police investigated those angles,” Chris said. “Emma. The investigation was never closed. Please don’t give the police or the DA a reason to start thinking about you again. You are safer forgotten.”
“It might be too late for that,” Emma said, thinking of Hadley’s hard stare. “Is there anything you can give me? A bad breakup, a business deal…”
Chris paused. The silence was a beat too long to mean nothing.
“Chris. What aren’t you telling me?” Emma said, pulse thrumming.
He sighed. “It’s probably not connected. I told the police all of it back then, and nothing came of it. But your mother approached me, a couple of months before her death. She told me that she had information about something illegal. She wanted to turn it over, but she was worried she might get in trouble as well. I got the impression it had something to do with your father, and so I told her I couldn’t be involved personally, but I gave her the contact information for someone else at my firm. She never contacted him.”
A memory shivered to the surface. Emma gripped the edge of the windowsill to steady herself. “Chris, did you write that number on a green Post-it note?”
“I have no idea. It was fourteen years ago, Emma.”
“But did she show you—was there a flash drive?” Emma asked.
“She didn’t show me anything. We just talked. Why? What flash drive is this?” Chris asked, concerned.
“It’s nothing,” Emma said. And it probably was nothing. A flash drive and a green Post-it note with a phone number scribbled on it, hidden away where no one would look for it. No one except a nosy teenager.
Something smacked hard against the back window. Emma startled, letting out a cut-off yell.
“Emma? What’s wrong?” Chris asked.
“I have to go,” Emma said. She hung up and dashed into the hall in time to see two figures sprinting into the woods behind the house, one of them giving a whoop. She caught an impression of a red shirt and a mop of blond hair.
She growled a curse under her breath and, before she thought better of it, shoved her feet into her shoes. She stalked out the back door, still in her pajama shorts and T-shirt, and ran across the back lawn toward the trees, her phone still in her hand.
She angled toward the familiar path on instinct. She couldn’t see the kids anymore—if they were kids—but she didn’t slow. She passed under the tree house, which sagged, probably rotten through. Footsteps crashed up ahead. Still she ran after them, not sure what she was doing, not sure why, her pulse thudding through her and her breath coming hissed between her teeth.
Then she slowed. She looked around. The path had petered out. There wasn’t much undergrowth here, and it was easy to navigate, but she couldn’t tell where they might have gone.
A voice broke through the low chatter of forest sounds. It was high and excited, and followed by a lower voice that burbled with laughter. Off between the trees, Emma could make out the graying side of a building. The old Saracen house. Hadley had said kids still hung out there.
She crept forward slowly. As she drew closer, the house became visible. It was low and narrow, the roof gaping on one side and sagging on the other. Nothing about it looked structurally sound, but voices were coming from inside.
“Oh come on. You were scared. Admit it,” the higher-pitched voice was saying.
“I wasn’t scared! You’re the one who took off running.”
“Yeah, because I didn’t want to get caught.” Both voices were male and young. Through one grimed-over window, an upper pane knocked out entirely, she could see two boys sitting on the leaf-strewn floor, posed like they’d collapsed in exhaustion.
She kept moving, around to the front door, which was hanging off its hinges. She stepped right over the two rotten steps, not trusting them with her weight, and onto the spongy floor inside. The walls inside might have once been white but had faded to a grotesque yellow, covered liberally in scrawled graffiti. The frames around the doors were carved with more scratching, names and words and symbols—pentagrams and anarchy symbols and others she didn’t recognize but that looked vaguely occult. A moldering couch slumped in one corner, pale blue with the cushions chewed through. Another door led out the back, past a narrow galley kitchen, but given the way it was swollen in its frame, she doubted it was functional.
She walked toward the sound of voices, still congratulating themselves on their own daring. When she stepped into the doorway, one of the boys, the one with the mop of blond hair, yelped and jumped up to his feet. The other one was a second behind but quicker to realize there was nowhere to go, unless they wanted to try busting through the window.
“Hey, lady, we, uh, we weren’t,” the second boy said nervously, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He was Black, heavyset, wearing a red T-shirt with a dragon curled around a twenty-sided die. The other boy was white, and about the color of a sheet of printer paper at the moment, his hands opening and closing at his sides with nervous energy.
She imagined how she must look to him. Hair wild, shoes unlaced, wearing cotton shorts and a T-shirt that had clearly been slept in. The murderer, chasing them through the woods. “What were you doing at my house?” she asked. Her voice came out rough.
They glanced at each other. “We were just messing around,” the first boy said. “We didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Was it you? Last night?” she asked.
They looked at each other again, eyes wide. “No?” the second boy said. “I was at home last night. Swear to God. Whatever happened, we didn’t do it.”
“He’s telling the truth,” the other boy said desperately, and she laughed. Both of them looked startled. She combed her hair back from her face.
“Criminal masterminds,” she said. The Black boy smiled nervously. “So, what? You wanted to scare the evil murderess? Then what?”
“I dunno. It just seemed … fun?” the white kid suggested.
“What are your names?” she asked them.
“Travis,” the blond boy said immediately, and his friend gave him a dirty look. Travis didn’t notice. “And this is Abraham.”
“Travis. Abraham. Don’t throw any more rocks at my fucking house, okay?” she said calmly.
“No, ma’am,” Abraham said immediately. “Look, we didn’t really think…”
“Yeah, I gathered,” she said. She crossed her arms, looked around. “This where the cool kids hang out?”
“Well, we’re here. So … no?” Abraham said.