She looked around, certain he could hear the swell of voices. “I’m at school.”
“I think your father is on his way there. Stay put. Hang tight and I will be there in five minutes. Don’t do anything until I get there, okay? If you see him…run away.” Then the call ended.
The hall started to clear as parents followed their kids into classes. Bex was determined, speed dialing her phone as she jogged toward Chelsea and her father in D hall.
“Pick up, Chelsea!” When Chelsea didn’t, she tried Laney, Trevor, and Denise. No one answered. “Where are they? Where are they?”
Detective Schuster’s text came through as Bex rounded the corner into B hall. My men are two minutes from campus. Where are you?
Bex spun, looking at the hall of closed doors around her. The C hall was mostly metal shop and electives, classrooms none of the parents visited. The hall was dark. Bex’s heart thundered and skidded. She dialed Chelsea again and again and was greeted by her voice mail. She was about to dial her father when she heard voices.
They were muffled but still audible. And she knew they were girls, and then a boy spoke. One of the girls laughed out loud, and Bex’s stomach went to liquid.
Thirty-Six
It was Laney.
“Trevor! Stop, you’re hilarious!” Laney said.
“You’ll laugh at anything, Lane.” Chelsea.
Someone mumbled something that Bex couldn’t make out, and the laughter rang out again. Her heart thumped painfully, slamming against her rib cage, but relief gave her breath.
“Guys?” Bex called.
The voices immediately stopped, and Bex’s own voice echoed back to her. She continued walking, sliding her hand along the wall between the banks of lockers, looking for a light switch. The voices started again, but they were heavy whispers and low murmurs. Bex was certain they were whispering about her.
“Bexy!” It was Laney, her voice cheerful and friendly.
“Where’s my fox?” Trevor chimed in.
Bex glanced over her shoulder, her fear starting to fall away. Her heartbeat slowed to its normal rate. “Guys?” she called again.
She could see a light coming from one of the classrooms up ahead; it was where the voices were coming from.
“Oh thank God.”
Bex ran toward Mr. Rhodes’s room and stopped in the doorway, her blood turning to ice in her veins. Her friends weren’t sitting in the classroom waiting for her. They were projected on the movie screen in the front of the classroom.
“What?” Bex walked toward it, then away again, following the light from the projector.
“I love you, Bexy!” she heard Chelsea call.
“The Wife Collector has struck again.”
Bex stepped back as Loretta Harris, the Raleigh Super Eight news anchor’s concerned face flooded the screen. A picture of Erin Malone flashed on the screen over her left shoulder. Bex could feel the bile at the back of her throat.
“Bexy!”
The image on the screen flashed back to Laney, Chelsea, and Trevor sitting on the beach, the bonfire illuminating their faces. But now Bex was in the scene too, wrapped in Trevor’s letterman’s jacket, curled underneath his arm. She was mesmerized, watching as Trevor leaned close to her, laying a quick kiss on the part of her hair.
“Okay,” he roared, holding up his red Solo cup. “Bex is here. Now the party can begin!”
There was a flood of raucous laughter and cheers, then Loretta Harris’s serious voice breaking in. “…Monroe’s body was found by employees at the beachfront restaurant where she worked. She had been dumped outside and when found—the sight was gruesome.”
“Oh God.” Bex crumpled into one of the empty desks, knowing she should run but unsure where. Her eyes were glued to the screen. There were a few more flashes, a few more pictures, then a computer screen.
A log-in.
IMHIM_HESME.
Bex’s heart was in her throat.
The next picture showed the full log-in screen, Detective Schuster’s avatar lined up under IMHIM_HESME’s.
Bex clapped a hand over her mouth. IMHIM_HESME was Detective Schuster.
Someone you love is going to die.
“Bex!”
The hall was dark, but the silvery flashes from the screen illuminated the man in the doorway. Schuster.
He was dressed all in black, a bulletproof vest bulking his slim frame, a gun more terrifying than any Bex had ever seen strapped to his thigh.
Bex stood, surprised that her legs would even work. “Don’t come near me,” she said, her voice small but steady.
“Bex, we have to get out of here. You father is here. I need to get you somewhere safe.”