Ollie was staring at the floor, so Makani spared him the embarrassment of responding. “Have you caught him yet?” She didn’t have to specify the him.
Chris’s blond eyebrows pinched together, which darkened his appearance. “Not yet. There are a lot of places to hide around here, but he couldn’t have gotten far. He’s probably tucked up in someone’s barn or grain bin.” Chris sounded frustrated, and he paused to regain a measured control. “Everyone’s looking for him, and everyone knows what he looks like. We’ll get him soon. I promise.”
He asked her grandmother how she was feeling.
Ollie knows. Chris knows. Everybody will know.
“How many stitches?” Chris asked.
It took a moment for Makani to realize that this question was for her. “Twenty-six.” She was unaware that she was cradling her wounded arm. “It’s nothing.”
“Your nothing and my nothing are two very different things.”
His tone was light, but her lungs tightened.
A nurse rolled something bulky past their door. The noise reopened Grandma Young’s eyes. Her gaze locked on to Ollie, and she ushered him to her side.
Reluctantly, he complied. Each step seemed gingerly taken, evoking Makani’s memories of his cut-up feet. He bit his lip ring, and the gesture revealed the truth: Her grandmother was making him nervous. Not her. He looked troubled because her grandmother had discovered him naked inside her house.
Makani felt a rush of temporary relief as Grandma Young reached for his hands. Ollie accepted them. “Thank you.” She said it as emphatically as she could, meant with every cell in her body. “I’m so glad you were there.”
Chris’s eyes grew misty, betraying his professional stoicism.
Ollie nodded, but he lifted his chin. It quivered.
Grandma Young, still gripping his hands, shook them up and down. She inhaled deeply. “All right, then. That’s that.” And then she turned to Makani and asked, befuddled, “What time is it?”
In the hospital’s unremarkable and unadorned waiting room, Ollie produced Makani’s phone. It had been hidden in the pocket of his hoodie. “I grabbed it before the police could confiscate it. They’ll pull your records and call logs, anyway.”
Chris had to ask her grandmother a few questions, so they’d been banished. Makani’s eyes widened as the precious object returned to her grasp. “Thank you.”
“I think you have a few messages,” he said wryly.
Entering her password revealed dozens of texts from Darby and Alex: Are you okay? Where are you?! We are SO SORRY for suspecting Ollie!!! Scrolling through their frantic apologies was comforting, until she remembered Rodrigo’s phone. Had David texted him that morning to maintain the pretense of innocence? What kind of person could murder their best friend? Perhaps they’d never been friends at all.
Makani texted Darby and Alex to let them know that she was safe and that she’d call them later. She couldn’t handle talking about it now. Not tonight. Not again. Even though she was staring at the call button beside her mother’s name.
Ollie acknowledged her hesitating finger. “You should.”
She moved near the elevators for privacy. There were three other people in the waiting room—a conservatively dressed elderly couple and a scruffy-faced man in an orange construction vest—and she didn’t want them to overhear her, either. They were caught up in their own emergencies, and none of them had realized that they were sitting with the latest victims of the Osborne Slayer. Soon enough, the town would think of her and Ollie as nothing else. Makani wanted to hold on to this normalcy for as long as possible.
Her mother’s voicemail picked up. “Hey, Mom. It’s me. I don’t know why you and Dad aren’t answering your phones. The hospital and the police have been trying to call you for hours. Grandma and I are all right, but . . . just call me back, okay?”
The same thing happened when she tried her father. She left a similar message.
“No luck?” Ollie asked on her approach. He sounded numb.
She shook her head, slumping back into the chair beside his. They zoned out and watched the television mounted on the opposite wall. Blissfully, it wasn’t the news. It was a rerun of Friends, and Chandler was in a box. Some kind of punishment for hurting Joey.
“They’re using our names,” Ollie said in a low voice.
Makani tilted her head as she turned to him. “Huh?”
“Snaps, tweets. The whole town knows that you and I were attacked.”
He wasn’t looking at his phone, so he must have seen it earlier. Outwardly, she remained blank and unsurprised. Darby and Alex had known, either from hearing it online or seeing her house on the news. But internally, the confirmation nauseated her. People Googled. People talked.
“At least they won’t know that I was naked,” Ollie said.
Sweat collected along her hairline. Behind her knees.
I should tell him.
“There are certain details that we, at the station, believe are best kept private,” he said, in an accurate imitation of his brother. “Believe me, no one will know . . . the nature of your visit.” Ollie switched back to his own voice. “Believe me, no one will know . . . until someone writes a book.”
The image hurled her into the future and slackened her jaw. He was right. Someday, their story would be a chapter in one of those sleazy, mass-market, true-crime paperbacks that were shelved in the cobwebbed corners of used bookstores—the types of paperbacks that boasted about the number of crime-scene photographs inside.
Ollie winced at her expression. “So, we’re not joking about it yet.”
“Just tell me something good.” She put her head in her hands. “I need to hear something positive.”
He considered the assigned task, taking it seriously. “They’ve called in a team of dogs to help with the search. They think he went into the fields near the school. There’s a huge manhunt happening right now—at least half of Osborne is out there searching for him.” When she didn’t respond, he added quietly, “It’s almost over.”
Her brain swayed inside her skull. “I won’t feel better until it’s actually over.”
Ollie sank deeper into his chair. His long legs splayed out, and his hands folded over his stomach. “Yeah.” He sighed.
“It’s weird,” he said, several minutes later. “I’ve known him my whole life. Our families went to the same church. We were on the wrestling team together in middle school. He didn’t seem like a killer. He didn’t seem like . . .”
“. . . anything,” Makani finished. Briefly thinking about Ollie as a wrestler.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think that’s why?” Ollie asked. “Because he feels invisible?”
She buried her head back into her hands and shrugged.
“I just don’t understand why he would target you.”
Her breath hitched.
I should tell him. I have to tell him. I can’t hide anymore.
“Hey.” A hand on her back.