Richard Morrell shook his head and turned face forward. “Look, Eve, I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but I’m not your enemy,” he said. “I’m trying to find out how much trouble my sister’s gotten herself into. If she did this, I’ll be happy to put handcuffs on her . . . but I don’t think she did. She’s not a good person, but she’s not that bad.”
It sounded like the kind of explanations she and Shane traded back and forth about their fathers. He’s not that bad. Sure, he gets a little crazy, but you know, just when he’s drinking. It was the coping mechanism of someone trapped in a dangerous relationship, according to all those self-help books she checked out of the library. It had never occurred to her until then that someone like Richard Morrell might feel the same—but why wouldn’t he? His arrogant dad was probably a pig to live with, and his sister had grown up an entitled bitch made in Daddy’s adoring image. Maybe Richard was the odd one out, just trying to be normal.
She’d given up the idea of that a while ago, being normal. Who wanted that? Sure, it meant you blended in, but personally, she felt like there was a hell of a lot more safety in being seen. Especially in a town where the number of missing persons kept going up. She’d never just vanish. People would notice.
Eve cut the thought off, because it was entirely possible that she might just vanish by accepting this ride tonight. She shut her mouth and watched the streets glide by. Empty sidewalks. No cars on the road. Most of the houses completely dark, except for security lights. Some dogs barking. Morganville was deeply creepy in the dark with that vast, cloudless Texas sky curving overhead with its blanket of white stars.
And then the car pulled up to the curb of her house. Richard Morrell got out and opened her door. He even offered her a hand out, but she didn’t take it. He could be okay, but she wasn’t prepared to concede it yet.
“Want me to walk you to the door?” he asked her. She shook her head. The last thing she needed was for her dad to wake up and see cops with her in the middle of the night. God. That would be the start of a very unpleasant conversation that would end in tears.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, and hurried off around the house to the back. She wondered about Jason, but like he’d said, he was out at night all the time. Going out to look for him, or waiting around in the dark for him, was victim-stupid behavior. Maybe, as a big sister, she should have been more worried, but Jason . . . Jason always just looked after himself. Had since he was ten. It made her feel horrible that she was okay with that, but Jason wasn’t . . . wasn’t quite normal. And she was afraid of him, sometimes.
She let herself in and tiptoed to her room. Her dad was still snoring like a chain saw, thank God, and her mom was in bed, too, so Eve locked herself into the Fortress of Solitude with real relief. She undressed and slid into bed, realizing only then how exhausted she felt, body and soul.
Her hair reeked of toxic smoke, but even that couldn’t keep her awake for long.
Her dreams were of fire.
? ? ?
Eve tried Shane the next day but got no response at all; it was possible his phone had been lost in the blaze, she supposed. She called Michael, who said he hadn’t seen Shane since the cops had loaded the family into a car. The news spread around town that Alyssa’s body had finally been recovered from the ruins of the house, and a quiet, private funeral was held a few days later. Eve wasn’t invited. She knew only because Michael had been there.
When she saw him at school the morning after the burial, he told her that Shane was gone.
“Gone?” she repeated, horrified. Michael looked . . . lost. Shaken, as if he couldn’t believe it, either. “What do you mean, gone? You don’t mean—” She couldn’t help but think that gone was the word people used for dead when they weren’t brave enough to say it outright. Had he offed himself?
“No, God. He’s alive,” Michael said, and leaned in closer to her against the lockers. It was rush hour in the school hallway again, so that might have been partly just the pressure of the chattering crowd, but she didn’t think so. It felt . . . deliberate. Like he was making a safe space for just the two of them. “I mean he and his parents got the hell out of Morganville last night. Somebody helped them. I don’t know how, or who, but they’re . . . gone.”
“Jesus,” she breathed, and grabbed his arm. “Do you think they’re going to get away with leaving like that?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “Depends on whether the Founder let them go, but my gut feeling was they were on the run. So I don’t know. I hope they’ll be okay.”
“Can you call him?”
“No phones,” he said. “They went dark. I don’t think we’re going to see him again, Eve.”