Ask Me (28 page)

Alex stared at me blankly, a study in confusion. I didn’t blame him. We had to get out of here and get to the police. Or the hospital. Or both. How to do it? I could probably manage to get Delilah into my car once I went and got it, but what about Alex? Did I even have time to get my car? How close was Will?

“Can you walk at all?” I asked Alex.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. What did he do to me?”

“He injected you with a horse tranquilizer,” I answered. At least the inner oracle had stopped speaking in rhymes. Will’s uncle was the town vet, so that made sense in an insane kind of way. Maybe if I got my car and moved it as close as possible to where Alex was he could manage to climb in with my help. Or should I just call the police on his cell phone and hope they got here in time? We were pretty deep in the woods here. The nearest gas station
wasn’t too close, maybe twenty or thirty minutes round-trip, but I wasn’t sure how long Will had been gone. The police would be coming from town if I could get them to believe me and get out here. It would take them at least twenty minutes, maybe more.

My decision was made for me when I saw headlights flickering between the trees that faced the road. I was sure it was Will. Who else would it be this time of night?

“Will’s coming,” I said to Alex, who couldn’t have seen the headlights down where he was, his back to the Chevy. “He’s back to finish the job. He was trying to pin the murders on you. Here’s ‘your’ suicide confession.” I crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it in his lap. A piece of my heart broke as I said the words, and I shook my head. No time. Never enough time. We had maybe five minutes before Will’s car found the turn off and entered the parking lot.

“Look, just stay put. Play dead. Don’t move, don’t say anything. I’m going to—” I stopped. I had no idea what I was going to do. Alex opened his mouth, but I waved a hand at him to shut up. He was in no condition to help me. It was up to me to save him and Delilah.

I took Alex’s phone out of my pocket where it had been clanking against Granddad’s knife and my keys. I couldn’t overpower Will and neither could Alex, not right now. We needed help. There was only one bar, but I hoped it would be enough. I dialed 9-1-1 for the second time that night.

Someone answered after the first ring. Was it the same woman I’d talked to before? “Nine-one-one. What is—”

“Stop,” I said, speaking quickly, my voice low and urgent.
“Just
listen
. We’re at the lake, at the Three Oaks parking lot. We need an ambulance and the police. Two people have been drugged and may have carbon monoxide poisoning, too. And Will Raffles is coming to—” I choked a little on the words, “—to kill them.” I didn’t doubt he was only coming back to finish the job he’d started. “I’m going to try and distract him as long as I can.”

“Wh—”

“Please
. He’s here.” I took the phone from my ear and hung up. I took a last look at Alex. His eyes were dark and unreadable, but he held out a hand to me. I squeezed it and then handed him the phone. “Stay out of sight, Alex,” I whispered. “You can’t save me this time.”

I quickly slammed the doors of the Chevy. I walked forward, hoping to meet Will as far away from Alex and Delilah as I could. His car turned into the parking lot, the headlights surrounding me in a nimbus of light. I kept walking and waved my arms at him like I was flagging him down.

This was all my fault. Maybe if he believed that they really were dead I could get him away. And then … and then I didn’t know. But it was a start. One thing at a time.

The headlights bounced toward me, tires crunching gravel. When the black car lurched to a stop and the headlights died, I knew for certain it was Will. Maybe I’d clung to one last desperate remnant of hope. We were a good twenty or thirty feet away from the dark hulk of Alex’s Suburban. Was it far enough? In the stillness left behind after the engine had stuttered to a stop, the cicadas had started their ceaseless whine. It sounded like a dirge to me.

“Aria,” said Will as he opened his door. “What—”

“Will!” I interrupted, breaking into a run. I couldn’t let him ask me anything. “Oh, God, Will, they’re dead! Alex and Delilah, they’re dead!” My foot screamed in pain with each step but I plowed forward. “I got the doors open, but it was too late. They’re gone. I found a note.” I crashed into him and buried my face in his shirt. Just hours ago, the smell and feel of him had turned me inside out. It felt like forever ago. Now it made my stomach clench in fear to have him so near.

He wrapped his arms around me. “Aria. Aria, I told you to stay at home.” He patted me gently on the back, soft as a whisper.

“We have to get out of here,” I said. I pulled back, not daring to look directly at his face. I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward his car. I could barely stand to touch him. All of it had been a lie, every touch, every kiss. How stupid he must have thought me! How had I let myself be taken in like that? I’d told him I loved him! But my inner oracle had known. “Too much,” I’d said. Well, there was no love left in me now.

“Let me just see,” he insisted, not budging. “I don’t want anything that will connect us to here. You should have left them alone.”

“No!” I pulled at him again. “Let’s just go! The police will never know we were here. I barely even touched them.” It was damning to me that his only thought was to conceal evidence and that he showed no surprise at the fact I was telling him they were dead. But of course he knew; he’d put them there. Was he even going to pretend that he hadn’t?

He was silent for a moment, rubbing a circle on my hand with his thumb, making my skin crawl. “Wait,” he said. “You said you found a note.”

In Alex’s pocket. Crap. “It was sticking out of Alex’s pocket,” I babbled. I had no practice lying. “Other than that, I didn’t touch them. I mean, other than to check whether they were breathing or not. But they’re not. They’re dead. Let’s get out of here, please, Will,
please.”

“Where is the note now?” he asked tersely.

“In Alex’s hand,” I answered. He’d asked too quickly, and I hadn’t been prepared. Stupid. I was so stupid. I couldn’t let that happen again. Alex must have picked the note up when I’d thrown it at him. I tried to cover over my mistake. “I put it there. After I read it.”

He inclined his head and looked in my eyes. “You put it in his hand,” he said slowly, softly.

I held his gaze, willing myself to not look away. He had to believe me. I had to make him believe me. “Yes,” I said. “Once I read it, I put it where the police would be sure to find it. When they find the bodies. You were right all along, Will. It was Alex and … and Delilah.” I choked back a sob. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.

Will held my eyes for a long beat. Did he trust in my words? Why wouldn’t he? I’d only ever told him the truth.

“Are you sure they’re—”

“Will, let’s go.
Please.”
My voice broke. I didn’t need to act my desperation. It was there, all through me. I backed a step away.

“Aria … why—”

I opened my mouth to interrupt him again. He quickly
closed the small distance between us and put one hand over my lips, the other on the small of my back, gathering me close to him. My eyes widened as he stared down at me with those stormy grey eyes of his. They had a hard edge in them I’d refused to see before.

“Aria,” he repeated slowly and deliberately, “why do you keep interrupting me every time I try to ask you a question?” He loosened the hand over my mouth so he could hear my reply.

I tried to bite my answer back, but it was already coming out. The best I could do was whisper the damning words.

“I don’t want you to know that I know what you did.”

His hand tightened against my back, pinning me even closer to him. He closed his eyes for a long moment, his long eyelashes visible in the moonlight that had finally broken through the cloud cover. What was he going to do? My heart thudded in my chest. He was too close, too close. I couldn’t breathe. At least I hadn’t let slip that they were alive. Maybe I could still salvage this. I just had to get him away from them.

Without opening his eyes, he leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. I let out a small gasp. Out of everything, I hadn’t expected that.

“Aria, Aria,” he whispered against my forehead. “You don’t understand. I did this for you.” He pulled his head back enough so that he could look into my eyes again.

“What do you mean?” I asked in spite of myself. He sounded so sincere. But he always sounded that way.

“Can’t you see—this is the only way. I didn’t
want
to kill Delilah, but you had to go and tell her about your gift. I
had to think of a way to get rid of her and close the case on the murders, too, once and for all. I killed Alex and Delilah to protect
you.”

I gaped up at him dumbly. I didn’t know what to say, what to think.

“To protect
us,”
he continued, his eyes staring deeply into mine, searching for something. He seemed to find it, because he gave a small nod and kept going. “Once we get past this, everything will be fine. The craziness will blow over and then we’ll be free. If we just left without the case being closed, they’d come after us. They’d suspect something. Now we can go anywhere, do anything. With your gift and my … talents, no one will be able to stop us. Don’t you see that?”

“No, I have been blinded,” I whispered. I didn’t see, couldn’t see what he was telling me. “You killed Jade,” I said finally, slowly, each word like a weight on my tongue, “and Shelley. And that man, you ran him over, too, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes,” he said, the ghost of a smile on his face. “But that doesn’t matter now. I’ve learned from my mistakes. I was … sloppy. I didn’t think things through. That won’t happen again. And now, now I’ve got you.” He kissed my forehead again, gently, his lips lingering too long.

I shivered. I was the one who’d told him that Shelley would be next. It was my words that had killed her. Would she have died if I hadn’t said her name? My head swam. Shelley. Alex. Delilah. All my fault.

“With your gift and me asking the right questions, we can do
anything
. We’ll be unstoppable.” He glowed with a
satisfied happiness, the kind that made you think of white picket fences.

I couldn’t help it. I had to ask the question. “You want me to help you get away with killing people?”

His grip on me tightened, lost in his plans for the future, our future. My hands were trapped between our bodies. “Sometimes,” he said. “But not just that. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I figured you out … we can start small. Work our way up. Win a few Quick Picks, work our way up to a lottery jackpot. Gather information about people.” He sounded so casual, like killing someone was on the same level as winning some extra cash, like blackmailing people was an everyday occurrence.

Perhaps he saw the doubt in my eyes. “Aria, don’t you remember? I asked. You said you’d do anything for me.
You love me.”

“I remember,” I said. He’d asked that before I knew who he really was. I don’t know what my inner oracle would say now, but I knew where my own heart lay, and it wasn’t with his. All those lovely little daydreams … they were as good as dust. There would be no bright sunny kitchen, there would be no lazy breakfasts, there would be no
us
. And I could see now it had never been an
us
. It had always been
him
.

I fought off the urge to push him away. I cleared my throat, trying to focus on the now. I had to get him away from Alex and Delilah. I couldn’t trust that the police were actually coming.

“Why don’t we … let’s go. We should go in case someone comes. We can talk about … about your plans.”

I tried to smile, but it wouldn’t quite stick. He didn’t seem to notice. Was he that oblivious to everything but his own desires?

“I knew you’d understand,” he said. “I would have told you before, but I wasn’t sure you’d get it. Then, this afternoon …” He bent down to kiss me. I recoiled.

“Aria,” he said, his breath tickling my lips, “what’s wrong?”

“Everything,” I said before I could stop myself. I tried to recover from it. I wanted to curse my “gift” now more than ever. “We need to get out of here.” I pulled away, and he dropped his hands. “Come on, Will, we have to go.”

I wondered how much Alex had heard. Would he stay silent? I had to protect him and Delilah. I already had one death on my hands. I couldn’t bear to have two more.

“What’s the rush?” he said. “The dead can’t see.”

“The police are coming,” I answered. He let me go then, and I stepped back from him. Maybe the truth would work for me for once. “I called them,” I said. “I told them I’d found Delilah and Alex, and they had to send an ambulance.” I took a deep breath. “I didn’t realize it was too late.” It had been too late from the start.

I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Are you lying to me?” he asked, like he couldn’t believe it possible. And why would he?

“The voice cannot lie,” I said.
Thank God
. They had listened to me. They were coming. I was never wrong. I knew that now. I remembered. The first time we’d talked, Will hadn’t asked me if he’d killed Jade. He’d asked me if I
thought
he had and no, I hadn’t thought so.

But now I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. It had
been him all along. It had always been him. And me. It would have stopped with Jade if only I’d been able to keep my cursed truths from him.

Will’s face showed the first sign of panic I’d ever seen there. “Okay,” he said, “but I have to look first. I was going to do one last check when I came back. I’m not sure I wiped everything down.
Shit
. Did you give them your name when you called?”

“No,” I said. Thank goodness I hadn’t the second time I called. But I couldn’t let him go near them. What if he had his knife on him? He could easily overpower Alex right now, and I didn’t trust my strength against his, not even with Granddad’s knife. I grabbed his hand. “Just ask me.
Ask me
and we can go.” I clenched the hand that wasn’t holding his into a fist. I could do this. I would do this. I would be stronger than the voice that lived inside me.