I fix my eyes on the black car. Its driver is faceless behind the windshield.
My hands fog up the screen of my phone. I wipe the sweat off the screen. Maybe I should tell someone why I really came up here—Chloe Strauss said there was a bloody woman. Even if Chloe was full of shit, there’s real, actual blood in the barn now.
The slamming of a car door jolts me. The driver of the black car finally steps out: a man, probably midforties. Curly hair slicked down, cheekbones for days. He’s wearing a suit, no jacket. His gaze rakes over the scene, resting on the windshield of Moser’s cruiser. Making eye contact with me.
I shrink into the seat. Look down. There’s a lima bean–sized tear in the upholstery near my thigh.
Minutes later. Rapping at the window. Moser’s face, his breath fogging up the glass. He motions for me to come out. I hesitate. “That guy took my boots.”
“Oh. Yes, he did.” Moser makes a phlegmy noise. He waves the man in black over to us. I turn in the passenger seat as Moser clamps a hand down on my shoulder. “Detective, this is Kacey Young.”
I didn’t know Broken Falls had detectives. But then, the man doesn’t look like he’s from Broken Falls. He doesn’t introduce himself. “Good to meet you, Kacey. Can you tell me what happened this morning?”
No accent there. Definitely not from Broken Falls, then. FBI? “I—told Sheriff Moser. I was out for a hike. I went up to the barn, and I saw the blood.”
The detective tugs a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket, holding eye contact with me as he slides a hand into one of them. A shiver rips through me.
“You’re aware there’s a girl your age missing?” The latex glove snaps against his wrist.
“She’s my friend,” I say.
The detective’s eyebrows lift. “I didn’t know that.”
The sheriff turns pink. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t either.”
I think I spy a bead of sweat above his mustache. I don’t like the way the detective is looking at me. “Bill, could you check to see how the road blockade is coming along?”
Moser frowns and putters off. When he’s out of earshot, the detective squats so we’re at eye level. “Kacey, I need to know, were you out here looking for Bailey when you found the blood?”
“What?” The sounds on top of the hill roll around in my head like pinballs. Shouts back and forth. Radios crackling.
“Kacey, look at me, sweetheart. I’m over here.” He waggles a finger in front of his face. I bite back the urge to swat it away. “Why did you come up here?”
“I just did. It’s quiet up here. Sometimes I come to get away and think.”
He nods. I can’t tell if he’s buying the grief-stricken-friend thing. “See, Kacey, if you have a reason to believe that Bailey might be up here, I need to know. You won’t be in trouble. You understand the most important thing right now is finding her, right?”
My toes clench in the paper booties. “Of course I know that.”
Barking, up on the hill. Frenetic, loud, found something barking. The detective acts like he can’t hear the dog, but I can see it on his face: the slightest quiver in his upper lip. “I’m gonna need you to sit tight for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
I watch the detective trot up the hill, meeting the deputy who took my shoes and two other officers.
The deputy says, loud enough for me to hear: “We called the crime scene unit from Madison to come swab the blood.”
One of the other officers, a woman, says: “You think it’s gonna match what we found on those clothes yesterday?”
My blood freezes. I forget I’m in paper shoes and stumble out of Moser’s cruiser. Yell over to them: “You found bloody clothes? Where?”
Three heads prick up. The detective turns to look at me, then back at the big-mouth deputy. Nice job, asshole.
“Kacey, why don’t you get back in the car so you don’t get frostbite.”
I can’t move. “I heard her—how much blood was there? Is Bailey dead?”
The detective drops his voice. “Please get her out of here.”
The deputy who took my shoes starts coming toward me. A flap of panic in my chest. Cornered.
“C’mon, sweetheart.” When the deputy grabs me by the elbow, something in me snaps. Everything I’ve been tamping down comes flowing up.
“Get the hell off me.” The voice doesn’t even sound like mine. It belongs to the ugly thing that lives in me. The creature that goes berserk when it’s cornered. One I haven’t seen since I left New York.
“Hey!” The deputy steps back, but he doesn’t let go.
I start to scream. “Don’t grab me—get off.”
More shouting—the other deputy, the woman, comes running toward us. Everything goes black—if I fight back, I’m going to be arrested for assaulting a police officer. I let my body go limp and I fall to the snow.
I’m not here anymore—I’m in my mom’s old apartment, I’m lying at the bottom of the stairs, and all of the fight is leaving my body.
“Get off her.” A firm voice.
Two pairs of hands release me. I regain my breath, numb to the cold seeping through my thin pants. Off to the side, Moser is watching me, his jaw open, his stoats, foxes, and ermines forgotten.
I am the only animal up here.
CHAPTER NINE
Sheriff Moser insists on driving me home, even though navigating the blockade the police have set up takes as long as it would have taken me to walk.
My father answers the door. He’s in his scrubs; he lives, breathes, and sleeps in them. I’m the one with the last name Young, but my father looks like a well-preserved blond frat boy. A college student playing doctor in those scrubs.
He looks like he must have when he met my mom, a waitress at a hole-in-the-wall wings place in Buffalo, where he was getting his degree in pharmacology.
My father’s eyes move from me to Sheriff Moser, and his jaw goes slack. “Kacey. Are you okay?”
My teeth are chattering and my feet are numb. “I n-need to warm up.”
My father’s hand goes to his chin. Runs a thumb along his jaw nervously as he turns to Moser. “What on earth happened?”
I can’t stand around and hear how the sheriff fumbles to relay my lousy version of why I was in the barn. Why I was at a crime scene. I rush past him, not even bothering to take off my jacket.
I’m so cold I feel like I’m drunk. I stumble into the bathroom and strip. Turn on the faucet and wait until the water starts to steam. I sit in the bathtub and pull my knees to my naked body as the tub fills with hot water. It shoots up my nose, making me choke and sputter. I rotate the handle all the way to the right until the water scalds my skin, until it’s almost unbearable. But maybe if I stay like this for long enough, I’ll disappear into steam too.
When I burn all the cold from my body, I get out of the tub. Lock my bedroom door behind me and crawl between my comforter and sheets, naked. The house is silent, Moser’s cruiser gone from our driveway.