Betrayal (20 page)

“We have to,” he said. He handed over his phone. “Take out my SIM card and then remove yours.”

“That seems extreme,” Brianna said. “What if I only read my feed? I'm actually getting some support from a few friends at Kingston.”

He looked at her. “You can't read it. The towers are collecting every little click. Even when your phone is off they can track us.”

Reluctantly, Brianna pried open the back of her phone with her fingernail, and pulled out the battery and the delicate SIM card underneath. She repeated the procedure with Drew's phone. She handed both cards over to Drew, who stuck them gently into his jacket pocket.

“I'm not letting anything happen to us,” he said. “I'm not taking any chances.”

The sky had darkened by then, and Brianna turned on the radio to try to find some decent music. She looked out the window as the rain streaked the glass. She made a face. Driving without texting was
so
boring.

Chapter 20

HAYLEY WOKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, just past 1 a.m. The movie she and Colton had seen was about a town full of possessed teenagers, and while it was scary,
Little Town Dripped in Blood
wasn't the cause of her insomnia. Something else was. Her heart was racing. She wasn't thirsty, but she knew that she needed a big glass of water. Water fueled the gift she shared with her sister. Somehow the fluid made the messages flow in the way electric current passes through water.

She threw a robe over her nightgown and quietly went downstairs to fill a glass from the tap. Hedda, who didn't like to be alone for even a second, followed her. After she drank, Hayley carried the dog to the overstuffed sofa that her mother always said was too big for the living room. The night was still. She could hear her father's light snoring from her parents' bedroom. The clock ticked. An animal rattled the Jameses' trash cans left out on the street for pick-up later that morning.

Hayley sank into the cushions and waited. It was 1:23 a.m. and for some strange reason that particular time always seemed to hold a little power for her. Hayley softly closed her eyes.

“Hedda,” she said, petting the dachshund's wiry coat. “I wish you could talk to me. I know you feel things too. Unfortunately for us,” she continued, “this doesn't work that way.”

With that, she waited. The waiting felt a bit like sitting on the shore and staring out to the flat line of the horizon, squinting hard for the mast of a ship, or maybe the dorsal fin of an orca, something, anything. Just a hint that something lay just beneath the murky surface.

Her eyelids fluttered as she held on to the dog, thinking, concentrating, hoping for relief from whatever it was that was keeping her awake.

The first image was unmistakable. The low-slung expanse of the concrete ribbon that traverses the Hood Canal channel, the floating bridge,
her
bridge, came into view. Hayley held the image a second, scanning for something new, something recognizable, but it was empty. Just the bridge. No cars. A second later, she saw the back of a school bus. The Olympic Mountains were in the scene, so Hayley knew the bus was headed west, away from Port Gamble. On the back of the yellow bus were the words
NORTH KITSAP SCHOOL DISTRICT
. The bus was small, a short bus, and in that moment Hayley knew it was going toward Indian Island and that Girl Scout Daisy Troop picnic. She was seeing that fateful day more than ten years prior.

Hedda squirmed in her arms, but she held the dog tightly. She could feel her anxiety escalating, almost choking her as she braced herself for whatever was next.

Suddenly, the scene changed. The flash of a man's face came into fleeting view. It was a face that was unfamiliar to her. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and a swarthy complexion. He was average in height, maybe a little stocky in build. She couldn't quite grab how old he was. Then, like a slide show on its fastest speed, another man—this one older with sandy hair and light eyes, holding a folder or an envelope—appeared. Hayley felt a flash of terror.

He shoved the envelope at the first man who took a step backward, nodding unhappily. Hayley's heart rate, already fast, had started to accelerate more. Even in the midst of the images coming from behind her shut eyes, she could feel the dampness spread across her brow. It was the kind of moisture that came with rigorous physical activity—or fear.

The scene changed to an office with a view of the water from both sides. A nameplate flashed, but it was too fast and Hayley couldn't make out what it said, except for the first letter,
T
. She strained to look closer. It might have been a
J
. The swarthy man, wearing a different shirt than in the first image, took some pills from his desk drawer. He returned his nervous gaze to the bridge as a storm moved in.

Hayley wondered if the man was worried about the weather just then.

The phone on the edge of his desk rang, and the man picked it up. He held it to his ear and nodded.

As Hayley watched the scene, she saw the man press a button and then put his face in his hands. He started to shake.

Is he crying? What is he crying about?

The next image came from above, like a bird rising over the water and the bridge. Hayley could see the bridge sliding open amid a storm that was a mix of an angry wind with a fury of raindrops splashing the bridge deck. The infrastructure rumbled as it slowly opened.

Hayley watched the short school bus approach. But it wasn't just any bus. It was
the
bus. She wanted to scream just then at the driver, a young woman with a big smile and the longest braided ponytail she and her sister had ever seen. She remembered her as Ms. Margie the driver.

“Girls!” Margie called out as she swiveled slightly to face the passengers in the bus. Her eyes were filled with terror. “Brace yourselves behind the seatback in front of you. I don't think I can stop in time!”

Margie was screaming, then, in the chaos of the moment, she simply stopped. Hayley watched as Katelyn and her mom were thrown out of the bus and onto the roadway from the open emergency door in the back of the bus.

The images went black. Then red. Then yellow. Then black again.

The bus was on its side, slipping in the water like a summer day into night, slowly, evenly. Quietly. The screams had stopped. Switched off. Suddenly. The lid over Hayley's head seemed made of lead. It was gray, heavy, and impenetrable. She reached up through the cold water of Puget Sound and pushed at it, but it stayed out of reach of her flailing fingertips. Her tiny, five-year-old fingertips. A stab of white light passed over her. She looked for her sister, but she wasn't there.

She was in the water.

Both of them were in the water.

Words came, not from her mouth but from her brain.

“Help us. Get me and my sister out of here.”

As a hand touched her shoulder, she saw another figure in the murk.

Is it Taylor? Where is she?

The saltwater gnawed at her eyes, but she refused to shut them. She was sinking, falling, into a swirl of silt as the wheels of the short yellow bus continued to spin.

She glimpsed a man's face, but she couldn't see who it was.

A beat later, Hayley watched four daisies, their cheerful yellow-and-white forms, floating against the dark waters of Hood Canal. Inside the center of each blossom she could easily make out the faces of the girls on the bus: Christina, Sarah, Violet, and Emma.

Hayley opened her eyes and tried to catch her breath. Hedda was shivering in her arms. She felt sick to her stomach, her throat tired and tight like she'd been screaming. She touched her throat. It felt hot and achy.

“It's okay, baby,” Hayley said, stroking Hedda as the dog burrowed into her lap, shivering, shaking. “Everything is okay. I'm all right. We survived. Good girl,” she said.

When she finally looked up, her sister was standing in front of her.

“You look like crap. What is it?” Taylor asked, finding a spot next to Hayley and Hedda.

“What happened to us . . .” Hayley said, her voice fading a little.

“What? What are you talking about? What did you see?”

Hayley's heart was pounding like a carpenter's hammer at the end of the day when that last nail just wouldn't go in straight. It was as if everything she'd ever believed was some big, fat lie. It was like finding out that the world wasn't what it was supposed to be. That people weren't as they seemed. History was wrong.

“The day our bus was on the bridge,” Hayley said. “That's what I saw.”

Taylor tilted her head, her eyes sharpened onto her sister's. “I knew it. I felt the weirdest feeling about you. I didn't know what it was. Talk to me.”

Hayley swallowed, but it hurt. She took her time in answering, not because she didn't want to tell her sister every single detail. She simply didn't know where to begin. She wasn't exactly sure
what
she'd seen. The images had come at her faster than fast-forwarding through commercials on a favorite TV show. There was no pause. No way to go back and replay the images. She looked up at the mantel clock. She had been on the sofa for more than an hour. It seemed like two minutes.

“That day on the bridge, Taylor,” she said, “wasn't an accident. I think what happened to our bus was on purpose.”

Taylor leaned forward, her hand stroking the bump on the top of Hedda's head. “On purpose? That's stupid. There was a big investigation. We saw the clippings.”

“I know,” Hayley said. “Electrical or mechanical failure.”

“Right. That was an accident. That's why the state settled. It was the equipment's fault. Equipment they designed and built.”

Hayley shook her head and held their dog a little closer. Hedda continued to dog-purr. “The person I saw was responsible for the electrical failure. He waited for our bus.”

“That bridge doesn't open like a mousetrap, Hayley. It takes fifteen minutes to get it open. We've been stuck there waiting, and it's never a short wait. You know that.”

Hayley shook her head and got up. “Look, I know what I saw. Some evil-looking guy called the bridge operator and told him we were coming. The operator didn't want to open it. I'm sure of that. The skeeze made him do it.”

“Made him kill four girls and a bus driver?”

“That's what I'm saying.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“He was threatened with something. I don't know. The evil guy had something in an envelope and showed it to him. When he saw whatever it was, he didn't seem to have a choice.”

“Who are they? So they're both to blame?”

“I guess they are. But I think the one who opened the bridge really didn't want to. The other man made him do it. I think he was being blackmailed.”

Hayley thought for a moment.

“It would have to be pretty awful information to make someone do something that terrible. I can't even think of what it could be. But I think I know who it was.”

Taylor waited. “Who?”

Hayley retrieved the name she'd seen on the news clippings Taylor had pulled out for her stupid class project. “Timothy Robinette. The man who was investigated and then, you saw the clipping, died four days later.”

Taylor nodded. “Right after a hunting accident or something.”

“That was no accident.”

“And neither was the bridge opening.”

“That's what I'm saying.”

IT WAS AS DARK AS STARBUCKS over-roasted coffee when Drew Marcello maneuvered his mom's half-pint car up the rutted driveway of house number 7734, a dingy gray-and-white clapboard two-story on the edge of Port Gamble. It wasn't considered the town's haunted house—that was reserved for the 1888-built Walker-Ames House—but it was a decent stand-in. One of the front windows had been shattered and repaired with a big piece of plywood. A barren maple tree, with the remnants of a tire swing, framed the empty space of the backyard with its jagged scaffolding of black branches.

“We're staying here?” Brianna Connors said from the passenger's seat.

Drew looked over at Brianna and grinned.

“Told you, Bree, hide in plain sight and no one will ever find us.”

Brianna wasn't convinced. “I'd rather go home,” she said.

Drew parked the car behind a woodpile. “Then I guess you're saying you'd rather be arrested for something you didn't do.”

Brianna was tired, and her neck hurt like it had been twisted around
Exorcist
-style. The day had been an excruciatingly long one. She was ready for bed. There was no way she could sleep in that silly little car. That much she knew.

“I guess I kind of expected something better than Port Gamble, for sure. Who lives here?”

Drew got out and opened her car door. “No one. It's as empty as a tomb. My buddies and I used to come here and get baked when we cut class.”

Brianna lingered in the seat.

“Come on,” he said. “It'll be fun.”

“None of this has been fun so far,” she said, stepping onto the mud and gravel path to the door. “I wish none of this ever happened. I want to feel sorry about Olivia, but she's dead and there's no way she's going to benefit from my grief. I think I feel sorrier about me. In a week's time the forces of the universe have conspired to ruin my life.”

Drew put his arms around her. “We'll get it back on track. Once
Mannie
Garnett catches whoever killed Olivia, the heat will die down.”

“Don't call the police chief that,” Brianna snapped, pulling away in an uncharacteristic moment of kindness. “She's pretty nice. She's just doing her job. How are we going to get inside?”

Drew held up a key. “With
this
.”

Brianna regarded the tarnished key, one that had been hanging on his key ring the whole time. She'd never noticed it before.

“Where'd that come from?” she asked.