Betrayal (24 page)

And there was no way either girl was going to do that.

In two short minutes their world had shifted. The bright sunlight and safety of friendly neighborhood backyards and the town playground had disappeared, replaced by dark, ominous shadows. The glint of the blade as he pulled it out from behind his back was all they saw before they hit the asphalt.

Their legs pumped, faster and faster, past an empty swing set, over perfect Port Gamble lawns, straining against the temptation to stop. Hayley and Taylor knew they had only three options: run, hide, or escape. When they reached the last house and the forest tree line, they didn't hesitate for a second before plunging ahead.

He was coming after them.

Hayley and Taylor thrashed wildly through the forest, their footfalls landing hard against the packed dirt in escalating rhythm with the blood that was jack-hammering through their bodies. They were on the run in a place where screams melted into the green folds of the woods. They knew they should stay together and tried not to look over their shoulders, hoping they wouldn't get caught, wondering what horrors would happen to them if they did.

The lumbering sound of a large body crushing decaying leaves underfoot and brushing past mossy logs told the teens their pursuer was closing in. Then they heard the bristly sound of his thick voice.

“Stop! This is just a big misunderstanding. I only want to talk. I won't hurt you.”

Lies.
The word floated through Hayley's mind as she imagined his real intention:
Come here. Closer. So I can take this knife and slit your pretty slender throat like a chicken.

As she tunneled through a tangle of salmonberry bushes, small circles of red bloomed across the white field of her T-shirt.

Berry juice?
Hayley wondered. In her heart of hearts, though, she knew it wasn't. Salmonberries are bright orange, not red. Besides, it was autumn, and the berries were long gone.

In the terror of the moment, she paused mid-stride and realized that she and Taylor had become separated. She touched her fingertips to the damp fabric. It was blood. Hers? His? Her sister's?

Hayley could hear the man's heavy breathing, though she was sure he was not near enough to see her. She imagined the stink of his smoky breath and how he'd spout more lies. She was determined not to let him get any closer. Because if he did manage to find her, jump her, grab her, she knew that she would have to fight for the knife and do to him what he planned for her.

Just like a chicken.

As she passed through that thicket, not feeling the thorns or the branches lashing against her face, Hayley wondered one thing above everything else.
Was her sister safe?

SPRAWLED FACE-DOWN ON THE GROUND, Taylor Ryan froze. She had no idea what was happening, but she tried to remain calm and still. Not move. Not breathe. She even tried to force her own heart to stop its drumlike beating. She'd tumbled over a fallen tree, gashing her right hand on the broken knob of a branch. Crimson muddled the knee of her jeans—Meks that she'd saved all autumn to buy. If this had been any other time, any other moment, she would have examined the jeans for tears. But not then.

Besides the maniac chasing her, only one other thing was on her mind as she crouched in the crook of that fallen hemlock. She wondered about Hayley.

Her twin.

Her other half.

Taylor could feel tears running down her face as she struggled to stay composed in that dank, dark forest. It was dead silent—the kind of silence that she hoped would conceal her location.

He appeared suddenly, from nowhere, begging, cajoling.

“Come out now. I won't hurt either of you,” the man called again.

Either of you
, Taylor thought with relief.
Hayley must be alive.

Taylor rolled on her side and took cover in a ratty nest of sword ferns, trying to make sense of what had happened to them and why. First, there were the text messages. Then Hayley had mentioned something about Moira?

The twins had followed their dad's rules, if only partially. They had gone together. They didn't get into anyone's car. They agreed to meet in a public place. They did all of that. They were not stupid. They were raised on Bundy, Manson, and that dopey-looking Craigslist Killer. They understood that evil didn't always look the part.

And yet there she was, hiding from sure death, literally scared stiff. Wondering if she deserved this. If she'd been good enough to the world. If what happened to Moira was their fault. If karma had knocked on their door with a poisoned Edible Arrangement.

Trying to steady herself, Taylor started to stand. A fan of dark-green ferns parted, and a patch of apricot, a color so wrong for the dank cedar- and fir-laden forests of Washington State, caught her eye.

Apricot?

She leaned closer, feeling the earth shift under her feet as icy fear swallowed her into the heavy black soil.

Apricot.

It took every ounce of self-control she had to keep from screaming. It was a bra. Lacy and torn. A garment in a place meant to conceal it forever.

Taylor touched it with a fingertip, and she knew—she felt— immediately what she had stumbled on.

Brianna Connors. The bra belonged to her.

Twigs snapped, and the sound of boots sloshing through a creek a few yards away ricocheted over the forest floor.
Hayley?

Then, the voice again.

“I just want to talk to you,” he said.

Like hell, killer.

What Taylor didn't allow herself to think was what she already knew. A truth that was deep in the marrow of her bones. He had answers. Answers to questions about their past that nobody else had ever dared give them. He held a piece of the puzzle that had only started to take shape, she now realized.

There was only one way to find out what they wanted to know. But how was she going to make sure she wouldn't be on the losing end of the man's knife?

Exhaling slowly, Taylor paused, then took a deep breath and stepped away from Brianna Connors's lingerie, out into the clearing.

Chapter 24

FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, Annie Garnett scoured the Olivia Grant file, backtracking to the murder scene as captured by the crime-scene photographers and the cell-phone cameras of the partygoers.

She picked through the dozens of photos and pulled the wide-angle view of the scene from where she had taped it to her whiteboard. Everything was as it had been imprinted on her mind: dead girl on the floor, blood pooled underneath the body and into the cracks between the floorboards, a pile of clothes next to the bed, mirror, dresser, and another pile of clothes across the room on a chair. She had looked at the photo so many times Annie knew she could probably draw it by memory.

Sliding it slightly to the right, the tired police chief retrieved the forensics report and placed it next to the picture. Could she have missed something? The evidence was staring her in the face, but what was it telling her?

Annie looked from the report to the photo and back again. Reading down the list of items, she noticed something that she had disregarded before. The discovery made the hair on her thick, muscled arms rise up. The crime lab had found a single black fiber on Olivia's shoulder, sequins in her hair, and white threads—none of which matched what she was wearing when she died.

Where did they come from?

Annie grabbed the photo on her desk with her right hand and dug around in her top drawer with her left.

Where was that magnifying glass?

As soon as her hand closed around its handle, she held it and the photo under her halogen gooseneck desk lamp. On the chair across the room where the officer had offered up a pair of day-old brown jeans to Brianna, lay a crumpled white sheet. It wasn't an ordinary bedsheet. The camera angle had been such that Annie could just make out a pair of roughly cut eyeholes in the ghost costume.

And next to the bed, closest to Olivia's body, was a sparkly dress. With sequins. There was also one other item on the floor. It was a black cape and mask. It was Darth Vader.

Annie dropped the photo and flipped through the loopy handwriting on the pages of her notebook. Beth had said Olivia had worn a ghost costume to the party. Brianna had said she went as a mail-order bride but changed into a second costume.

Annie couldn't make sense of the disparity.
What happened with those teens? If Olivia had both sequins and thread from the ghost costume on her body, it was possible that she wore both costumes. But why on earth was Olivia wearing Brianna's mail-order bride costume and vice versa when each had her own? And who did the Darth Vader costume belong to?

As Annie pondered that information, she had no idea that something dark was going on quite literally in her neck of the woods.

Chapter 25

“I HEARD YOU SCREAM. ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

Taylor Ryan stood still at the edge of the clearing. Her heart pounded so hard that she was going to have a heart attack—even though she was just sixteen, ate mostly the right foods, and was on the school's swim and diving team. She didn't want to die. No one wants to be one of those kids who are mourned with flowery lettering decaled on the back window of a friend's Kia. She had come to face the man and save her sister, whom she was certain had been captured.

But the voice didn't belong to the man who had chased them into the woods. The voice was not menacing. It was full of concern and sincerity. It was Port Gamble's Segway Guy, who had been testing his brand-new all-terrain people mover near the park when all the commotion started. Taylor had never heard the middle-aged man speak before, and she wasn't quite sure she could trust him. She scanned all around for her attacker, but he was gone. She felt somewhat safer, but was terrified at the same time. And still very much out of breath.

“My sister,” she said, trying to pull herself together. “There was a man. I think he took my sister.”

Jumping off his machine, Segway Guy shook his head. “No. He didn't. He ran off when I arrived. She wasn't with him. I'm sure of it.”

Taylor felt a wave of relief. She knew she looked terrible. Blood trickled down her face from the thorns that had clawed at her with the fury of a thousand angry cats.

“Did he hurt you?” Segway Guy asked, powering off his machine and striding toward her.

He was much shorter without his embarrassing mall-cop vehicle. His eyes were kind, and he was there to help her. Taylor felt bad for all the times she and her sister had made fun of him. He leaned closer to examine her. Her scratches stung, but they were superficial.

She shook her head. “No. But I don't know where Hayley is. I thought for sure that he took her or maybe really, really hurt her.”

She didn't want to use the words that hung in her throat.

Kill. Stab. Murder.

“I'll find her,” he said. “You stay here.”

Before Taylor could answer, she heard the snap of a twig.

Branches parted, and Hayley emerged from the green gloom of the woods. She ran into Taylor's arms, and the pair convulsed in tears.

“Do you want me to get your folks?” Segway Guy asked. “House number 19, right?”

“No,” Taylor said, looking over her sister. “No. We're fine. But we do need help. We need the police.”

Segway Guy nodded. “I was thinking something along those same lines. This kind of thing needs to be reported. No place is safe anymore. Not even little Port Gamble. I sometimes wonder what is happening to the human race that makes people do the worst possible things to each other.”

“We don't need the police for
us
,” Taylor said, looking back at the woods. “I think I found something they need to see back there.”

Hayley, also scratched up, but not nearly as badly as her sister, looked over at the woods.

“What is it?” she asked.

Taylor wasn't sure how to phrase it. She stumbled for the words. “I think . . . I'm pretty sure I found something of Brianna's.”

Hayley looked at her twin. “What was she doing in the forest?”

“She's . . .” Taylor struggled to clarify. “I think Brianna's dead.”

WITHIN THIRTY MINUTES, half of Port Gamble had convened in the clearing by the swing set and jungle gym made of smooth, peeled cedar logs. Beth Lee and her mother, along with Colton James, Starla, and Mindee—and, of course, Kevin and Valerie Ryan—were among those who watched Annie Garnett, her deputy, and a K-9 Unit from the Kitsap County Sheriff's Department search the woods. Annie had decided not to call Brianna's parents until there was something definite to report.

A cadaver dog, a tail-wagging German shepherd named Ava, had no trouble finding her way back to where the pretty apricot bra had been discovered in the brambles in the woods. In fact, it took one of Kitsap County's finest canine officers only fifteen minutes on the trail through the woods to locate a shallow grave that held the body of Brianna Connors.

Hayley and Taylor, wrapped in blankets, sat on a bench that faced the playground. The girls had plenty to discuss with their parents later at home, but with just one look between them they had agreed not to tell anyone that they'd willingly met Text Creeper at the water towers. Colton put his arm around Hayley and held her close—which left Taylor in the arms of both parents.

“He just accosted you here?” Kevin asked.

“We were out walking and he came up to us asking for directions,” Hayley said. She hated lying to her dad. She just didn't think he'd understand why they would break one of his rules and meet a stranger.

“Yeah,” Taylor said. “He said he wanted to know where the playground was. We were walking that way anyway.”

“He got real weird, and then we saw his knife,” Hayley added.

“Did he threaten you with it?” Valerie asked.

“Not really, Mom. I mean, it looked like he might reach for it. I don't know for sure. We started running,” Hayley said.