Katie suspected that he actually cared about other people a lot, but he hadn’t had enough people in his life who cared about him. Despite Zachary’s abrasiveness, she had a soft spot for him. He was smart, and, if he applied himself, he could go on to do great things. It was frustrating to know that he probably wouldn’t. Most likely, he’d drop out and get a job on the floor at Nance, the town’s only manufacturer. It built machinery for food-processing plants. Or maybe he’d become a day laborer, detasseling corn and castrating piglets. Either way, it was unlikely that he would ever leave Osborne.
There was a creak on the basement stairs.
Katie’s heart juddered as she whirled around in her seat. Beside her, the refrigerator hummed and the dishwasher sloshed. Above her, the twins’ white-noise machine whirred. But below her, the basement remained silent. She picked up her phone—ears pricked—but set it down after another minute.
It’s just the house.
She tried to refocus on the essay. She read her last sentence five times, but she couldn’t shake . . . a feeling. Katie stared at the basement door.
Another creak.
She jumped up, the wooden chair legs scraping against the floor. Her pulse beat violently as she grabbed her phone and dialed 911.
Connecting, her phone said. Connecting. Connecting.
Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs. Katie’s senses exploded with terror as she threw herself against the door, which could only be locked from the other side. At the same instant, another body landed against it full force—just enough to open it.
They struggled. Open, shut, open. An arm and shoulder wedged through, and a knife slashed toward her body.
Katie pushed the door against the arm with all her strength. The arm flailed. There was another weighty thrust, and her side gave way. She fell, and her phone slipped from her grasp. It skidded across the floor as David Thurston Ware burst into the kitchen.
He was wearing jeans and a LION PRIDE sweatshirt. They were splattered with turquoise paint—the same color that her mother had meant to repaint the kitchen chairs last spring. The same color that Katie had propped against the basement window that evening. She took all this in, in an instant, as she scrambled to her feet.
He lunged for her. She ran toward the butcher block, reaching for the biggest knife as he stabbed her in the shoulder. When he yanked it out, she kicked him. David shoved her against the cabinets. His hands smeared her skin with red and turquoise. She was five foot ten, and so was he. Their weight was similar, and the same amount of adrenaline coursed through their bodies. But he was the one with the weapon.
Katie kneed him in the balls as David stabbed her in the upper right abdomen. They both buckled over. The knife pushed deeper into her liver.
She collapsed, frightened and crying. But oddly hushed.
David peered over her. His question was curious, though his voice was dead. “Why aren’t you screaming?”
Because I don’t want to wake up my brother and sister.
When she didn’t answer out loud, he finished her off. He didn’t have time to wait.
He checked her phone, which was still trying to connect to the police. David ended the call. The cops already knew he was in the area, and he was angry. He didn’t like having to rush. He sawed through the rib cage—stomping on the knife to help crack the bones faster—and ripped out the heart. He slammed it on top of the glossy college brochures that had been stacked on the table for months.
Because Katie’s heart had been set on college.
He was funny. Nobody seemed to get that.
Lights flashed outside the kitchen window. Red and blue, one street over. He tugged off the sweatshirt. It wasn’t camouflage, but it had acted as camouflage. Nearly everyone on the street today had been wearing school colors. He threw it as he ran, and it landed on Katie—the Katie-husk—crumpled on the floor, no longer of use.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Makani and Ollie had waited, terrified, in the cereal aisle until Officer Bev had escorted them out. Chris had tried to chase after David, but he’d already disappeared.
Makani and Ollie were interviewed and gave statements. Again. Now it was late, and they were back at the Larsson house, decompressing at the kitchen table and attempting to excise the horrendous image of Caleb’s grotesque prayer from their minds. Chris was on the phone in the next room.
Ollie stared vacantly at the oven. “Maybe we should have chased him,” he said. “Maybe we could have caught him.”
Makani’s knees were up in the chair. Her non-bandaged arm was wrapped around them, and her head was tucked down. She felt too broken to lift it.
“He killed Caleb,” he said. “Not Zachary.”
His words hung limply in the air between them. Out in the fields, the nighttime insects whirred and buzzed. The wind chimes on the front porch sang three notes.
“I don’t think this is about bullying,” he said.
She shook her head, but it was in agreement.
“So, what the hell is it about?”
It scared her to admit that she had no idea. She hadn’t realized that she’d taken a measure of comfort in at least knowing why she’d been attacked. There’d been a reason. Not knowing David’s motivation felt like everybody she knew was in danger again.
A shadow fell over them as Chris stepped back into the light of the room. His face was white with disbelief. “There’s been another one.”
The midnight sky wept in an unexpected drizzle. Chris moved his laptop, binders, metal ticketing notebooks, and food containers into the trunk of his car. Makani darted into the emptied passenger’s seat, and Ollie slid into the back. In the rearview mirror, his face was printed with diamond-shaped shadows from the metal dividing grate.
They’d been at the house for less than thirty minutes. Chris had to return to work, so he was driving them to the hospital to stay with Grandma Young. He refused to leave them alone.
Makani felt so exhausted that she wanted to cry, but she didn’t want to be left alone, either. As the endless rows of cornstalks rolled past her window—long corridors into murky blackness—she shivered with the unshakable feeling that David could be anywhere. Her lower legs pressed against the bulletproof vest resting on the floorboards.
Chris noticed her shivering and turned up the heat. The windshield wipers swiped at a slow and steady pace.
“She texted me this morning,” Makani said, remembering.
He glanced at her sharply. “Katie contacted you? About what?”
“She said she was sorry to hear what had happened to me, and she was there if I wanted to talk.” Another deadening inside Makani. “I didn’t text her back.”
“Did you talk to her often? Was she a close friend?”
“We weren’t friends at all. We were friendly. Sometimes we talked in class, but we never texted or hung out or anything.”
Chris frowned. “So, why start texting you this morning?”
“That’s just Katie being Katie.” From the backseat, Ollie dismissed the notion of there being anything odd or sinister behind it. “She was nice to everyone.”
“Who found her?” Makani asked. They already knew how she’d been found.
“Her mom.” It seemed hard for Chris to say it. “Apparently, she works the late shift at the hospital, and Katie wasn’t answering her phone, so she came home on her break to check in. Katie’s younger brother and sister were still asleep upstairs.”