Bex’s stomach roiled. “Why me? I have nothing to do with… I mean…”
Chelsea’s eyes bulged. “Are you kidding? Yeah, you do. You’re a teenager. Darla was a teenager. This guy could be after any of us. Or all of us.” She leaned in, hissing, “There is a crazed killer on the loose and your house gets ransacked and the police think it’s just kids. Oh no, seriously, no. I’d call the brigade or the army or whatever. When you die, you should seriously sue for negligence or noncompliance or something.”
Laney rolled her eyes. “I’m sure Bex is fine, Chelsea. It’s not like they took anything, right, Bex?”
Bex didn’t trust herself to talk so she meekly shook her head, her hands going to her backpack. She touched the zippered pouch where she had stuffed the Black Bear Diner menu, the gentle crunch of the paper giving her a strange sense of calm.
“Ladies!”
Both Chelsea and Laney groaned when Zach approached the table, but Bex was happy for the distraction. He had his GoPro camera in front of him, the red Record light glowing.
“Do you have any comments that you would like saved for posterity? Perhaps some advice or information for the incoming freshman of, say, 2089?”
“Hopefully, the people of 2089 will be so advanced that they’ll have done away with high school.”
Laney cocked an eyebrow. “You realize 2089 isn’t that far away, right, Chels?”
Chelsea batted at the air. “Whatever. We’re all going to be dead by then.”
“Anything to add, Bex?”
Bex had suddenly gone cold, the din of the cafeteria noise overwhelming.
“I-I’ve got to go.”
Twenty-Three
Bex paced a worn spot in the grass behind the gym. She was only about twenty feet behind the school, but the thick, tall brick wall of the gym separated her from the rest of Kill Devil Hills High and all of the students inside.
If there really were a brick wall between me and the world, Bex thought, then no one else would get hurt.
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed, counting the rings, waiting for the overly cheerful receptionist to pick up the receiver and announce she had reached Dr. Gold’s office. She would talk to Dr. Gold, and Dr. Gold would remind Bex that the only thing she had to do was take care of herself. Dr. Gold would make everything okay with her psychology speak, and Bex would hang up the phone and cut the line to Detective Schuster and her father and get to work pretending that nothing had ever happened.
But Darla… Bex’s mind kept humming even as she tried to stamp out the voice and concentrate on the ringing phone. On the fourth ring, a series of chimes and an automated voice came on to tell Bex that the number had been disconnected. The disembodied voice suggested she check the number and call again. Bex did just that, only to be greeted with the same message. She frowned at the phone, then swiped on her browser, groaning when an emoticon frowny face popped up telling her that she was out of Internet service range.
When the bell rang, Bex jogged to chemistry class, arriving out of breath.
“Hey,” Trevor said. “I was beginning to think you changed schools again.”
Bex offered him a weak smile. “No, I’m just…super busy with an assignment.” She saw the hurt and confusion in his eyes but turned away anyway. “Mr. Ponterra, I’m really behind on my assignment. Can I go to the computer lab and finish up?”
Mr. Ponterra nodded and scribbled off a pass.
Bex was the only person in the ancient computer lab. She fired up one of the machines and tapped her fingernails on the desktop, waiting for the thing to load and connect to the Internet.
“Come on, come on,” she groaned.
Finally, she pulled up a search engine and typed in Dr. Gold’s information, desperate to find a new phone number for the office. The old machine seemed to practically chug and spit out smoke, taking way too long to pop up Bex’s results. But when the page started to load, Bex wished that it never had.
Social Psychologist Elliot Gold Found Murdered near Wake County Home
Social psychologist Dr. Elliot Gold, who had been reported missing two weeks ago, was found dead on the banks of Harris Lake on Sunday afternoon. Her body was discovered by two Raleigh-area residents who had gone fishing.
“We nearly couldn’t recognize what it—what she—was at first,” said Tucker Spayeth, one of the fishermen.
Gold suffered antemortem blunt-force trauma, but authorities say that she was killed by asphyxiation, strangled by a scarf that the murderer left tied around her neck. Her left ring finger was removed. Though that is the signature of North Carolina’s infamous Wife Collector, whose case Gold was closely involved in before he went missing ten years ago, the work was likely that of a copycat’s.
Bex felt her lower lip tremble as tears burned in her eyes.