Bloodlust (10 page)

“Can I walk with you?” Jason asked.

Sienna shrugged. “If you want,” she replied.

The sun was sinking as they made their way across the velvety sand in silence. Jason suddenly realized they were only about a hundred feet from Sienna’s house. He didn’t have much time left. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“For what?”

“I said some horrible things last night,” Jason answered. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but he knew he’d hurt her.

“The word I’d use is
‘dirty,’ ”
Sienna corrected. She stopped and turned to face him. “I’d call them
dirty
things.”

I saw you up there with Kyle. Dirty!
The words sliced into Jason’s brain. Suddenly, he could hear himself saying them to Sienna. But the words brought back something else: the memory of Sienna and Kyle together on that couch, Kyle’s hands sliding over her curves. Jealousy crashed over Jason, like one of those waves that knock you to the ocean floor.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he told Sienna.

“But you meant it. You still feel that way. I can see it on your face,” Sienna accused, her eyes darkening until they were almost black. “As if you weren’t doing exactly the same thing with Erin.”

“Yeah, okay. But I wasn’t cheating on anyone,” Jason said.

“Right,” Sienna snapped back. “So when you saw me with Kyle, you were thinking about Brad? How I was treating Brad so badly?” she inquired, wrapping her arms around herself.

“No,” Jason admitted with a sigh. “No, I wasn’t thinking about Brad at all. And what I said…it was because…” But he couldn’t continue. How could he tell her that he’d said what he had because the sight of another guy’s hands on her had made him insane with jealousy? Jason knew that Sienna was right: He really didn’t know her. Yeah, she was beautiful. But so was Belle. So was Erin. Malibu was filled with beautiful girls. What made Sienna so different? It was like she could reach into his chest and touch his heart. “I was an idiot,” he said helplessly.

“Yeah, you were,” Sienna agreed, but she smiled and took a step closer to Jason. “You wanted some time with me last night. You’ve got time now. Are you finished?”

She stood so close, he could smell that apple-ocean-vanilla scent of her. “No,” he murmured. “No, I’m not finished.” He reached out, wanting to touch her face. But hesitated, his fingers inches away from her, close enough to feel the heat of her skin.

Sienna turned her head slightly, closing the distance between his hand and her cheek.

He was touching her. That was all the invitation Jason needed. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, tasting her, taking her in. Sienna’s mouth responded to his, and she ran her hands up his chest to lace them around his neck.

And then…Jason forced himself to pull away. They stared at each other for a long moment before Sienna wordlessly turned toward her house on the cliff above them. Jason watched her climb the steep stairs cut into the bluff. Then he turned and raced down the beach, his body alive with heat and passion and hope.

He veered toward the water, picking up speed, needing it, needing the motion to channel all the emotion and energy those few minutes with Sienna had created. Fast, faster. His arms pumping, his heart pounding with the rhythm of his feet on the wet sand. Spray from the ocean hit his face as he ran along the shoreline. It cooled his skin, which still burned with the memory of Sienna’s touch. Now he was sprinting, running flat out—so fast that he had no chance to stop when he saw it.

Jason’s bare foot hit the chilly flesh and sent him sprawling onto the cold, wet sand. His mind spun, shock filling his body. What had he tripped over? It couldn’t have been…

He scrambled up and turned around, praying he’d been wrong about what he’d seen. But the girl’s body still lay there. Facedown. Her flesh cold and blue.

CPR,
Jason thought frantically.

He dropped to his knees next to the girl and tried to roll her onto her back, but she felt heavy, water-logged. A wave splashed onto the shore, its undertow pulling her out of his grasp. Jason felt the setting sun hot upon the back of his neck as he reached for her cold arm again.

He waited for the next wave and used the thrust of the water to help him roll her over. Carrie Smith’s blank eyes stared up at him.

It was too late for Jason to help her. Too late for anyone.

She was dead.

J
ason climbed out of the police car and headed up his driveway. His mom, his dad, and Dani were waiting for him on the front lawn. Mrs. Freeman wrapped him in a tight hug and didn’t let go. He hugged her back, then pulled away, trying to muster up a reassuring smile for his mother. It didn’t work—the concern remained in her eyes. He had the feeling she was imagining
him
lying there on the sand, with blue lips and fingernails. Cold. Dead.

“Mom, it’s okay. I’m okay,” Jason said. His mother slowly nodded, and his dad took over, giving Jason the father-patented rib-busting special.

“You’re not going to have to hug me too, are you?” he asked Dani when his dad let go.

“No. Don’t worry. I’ll let you off,” she teased, but her gray eyes were serious.

“When the police called…” Mrs. Freeman shook her head. “I knew we were right not to let Dani go to that party. I shouldn’t have let you go either. Where were the parents? That’s what I want to know. They just waved from the dock as a bunch of teenagers and enough alcohol to kill a—”

“Mom,” Jason interrupted her, “not now.”

“I can’t even imagine how that poor girl’s mother is feeling. Did either of you know her?” his mother asked.

“A little,” Jason admitted.

“We talked about surfing once,” Dani said. “She promised to show me the best boards.” Jason suspected that that conversation had taken place at the party, hours before Carrie died. But he wasn’t going to rat out his sister. “She was only a year older than me,” Dani added, her voice choked with tears.

Now Dani got the parental hug treatment. “You see why we didn’t want you at that party?” Mr. Freeman said.

“Yeah,” Dani answered quietly. “You were right.”

“Well, we were going to fire up the grill and have a barbecue,” Mrs. Freeman announced, clapping her hands together. “We have those steaks.”

Jason appreciated the change of subject, even though he doubted he could eat. His own emotions weighed pretty heavily right now: guilt over not telling his parents that Dani had been on the yacht, horror over the memory of Carrie’s dead body, and just a basic queasiness over the realization that he’d been making out with Erin and obsessing about Sienna when Carrie had fallen overboard to her death. “Barbecue sounds good, Mom,” he said.

“We’ll do the corn, too,” their mother said, “and a salad.”

Dani and Jason stood in silence as their parents disappeared into the house. “Thanks for not telling,” she said when they were out of sight.

“You think I want to kill our mother?” Jason asked. The joke landed with an almost audible thud. Right now it was way too easy to imagine any of the people he loved being snatched away from him. The world suddenly felt dangerous.

Dani just looked at him, her big gray eyes still serious.

Jason looped his arm over her shoulders. “Let’s go inside.”

“Was she…like, deteriorating?”

With the school day less than half over, this was the eleventh time someone had asked Jason about finding Carrie’s body. The morbid curiosity disgusted Jason. He probably would have gotten twice as many questions, except that Zach Lafrenière had chosen today to reappear at school, and that was also a big topic of conversation. Almost as big as a classmate washing up dead onshore.

For the first time, DeVere High struck Jason as being a pretty twisted place. Somehow, with all of its sunshine and beauty, it had seemed above this type of sordid gossip. But it obviously wasn’t.

Jason slammed his locker shut and turned around. A tall girl with long, golden brown hair stood there looking at him, biting at her lip, eager to hear the details of what he’d seen. It took a moment for him to realize that she was Harberts’s friend, Maggie, from the girls’ swim team. He’d met her at the party.

Do you want to hear about the crab that had eaten off part of Carrie’s left little finger?
he thought. He didn’t say the words out loud. He was afraid Maggie might say yes. “I didn’t really look that closely,” he told her.

“You’d have to be completely out of it to fall off the yacht. I mean, the rails are
rails,
” Maggie said. “How much do you think she’d had to drink?”

“No idea. Got to go,” he replied, and pretty much racewalked away from her toward the cafeteria, even though the last thing he wanted to do was eat. His stomach had been doing a slow roll every time he’d looked at food since yesterday. He grabbed a smoothie from the juice bar, figuring he could deal with that without puking, and a peanut butter sandwich that he thought he’d be able to choke down before swim practice.

“Zach, here’s somebody you should know. This year’s new guy.” Jason didn’t have to look to know it was Sienna speaking. Her voice alone made his pulse quicken.

“That’s me,” Jason said as he turned around, cafeteria tray in hand. “Jason Freeman, new guy until the next one comes along.”

“Jason’s on the swim team with Brad,” Sienna added. She stood next to a tall guy with short, kinda spiky black hair. Clearly the famous Zach Lafrenière.

Zach nodded. He didn’t say anything. But he seemed to take in everything about Jason with one sweep of his dark brown eyes. His expression wasn’t exactly unfriendly. It was more like…impenetrable. Jason stared back. He’d been hearing about Zach since day one at DeVere High; people talked about him constantly, and today, especially. Jason couldn’t help feeling curious about him.

The most popular guy in school—here he was at last—possessed an almost tangible intensity. He seemed to radiate energy and life.

“Line. Not moving,” Van Dyke called cheerfully from a couple of people down.

Jason nodded to Zach and Sienna, quickly paid for his food, and then headed to what had become his regular place. He was surprised to see Adam sitting there. He’d been MIA in history this morning, but he clearly hadn’t used the free time to shower or comb his hair. His clothes looked slept in, while Adam himself looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

Adam stood up before Jason could grab a seat. “Take a walk with me.”

“Okay,” Jason said. They didn’t walk far, just over to the edge of the cafeteria terrace.

“You doing all right?” Jason asked as they stared out at the surfers dotting the ocean.

“She’s never going to be out there again,” Adam said grimly, and his words hit Jason like a punch to the gut. He’d been thinking about Carrie’s body pretty much constantly, unable to force the vision of her dead eyes out of his head. But he hadn’t gotten as far as thinking about
her,
and the things she’d never do: surf, graduate from high school, turn twenty-one, have any kind of life.

“Did you see anyone doing drugs at the party?” Adam asked.

“What?” Jason tripped over the sudden change of subject. “No. I wasn’t really looking or anything, but no.”

“Me neither. But that’s what the police are thinking. I heard my dad talking about it on the phone with one of the deputies. They don’t think she got drunk and took an unplanned dive. They think that she shot up and—” Adam pressed his palms together and made a diving motion.

“Shot up? Why shot up?” Jason asked.

“Needle marks on her arm,” Adam replied. He glanced over his shoulder, then pulled a photo out of the front pocket of his backpack. “I snagged this from my dad. There were a bunch in the file he brought home. He probably won’t miss it.”

Jason lifted an eyebrow.

“What?” Adam asked defensively. “Don’t worry—I’ll put it back tonight. I just wanted to show it to you.” He handed the photo to Jason. It showed a close-up of a girl’s arm—Carrie’s—with two small red marks, not much bigger than pinpricks, on the smooth, pale skin inside her elbow. A little bruising surrounded the punctures.

“Needle marks. Hardcore,” Jason commented, running his finger lightly across the picture of the wounds as if that would tell him something.

“I didn’t see anything like this on Carrie when I was with her last week. She didn’t seem like she was on anything the night of Belle’s party, either, even though it
was
a party.” Adam shook his head. “But what the hell do I know? It’s not like we were even friends.”

Not true,
Jason thought. Maybe Adam and Carrie hadn’t been exactly exclusive. But they had definitely been friends.

“I keep thinking it could be something else,” Adam continued. “I keep thinking…I could be crazy here, but I’ve seen some things. If I’d put it all together faster. If I’d had the balls to actually accept the truth, maybe I could have saved her.”

Jason didn’t know what Adam was talking about. But he knew one thing. “This isn’t your fault,” he told his friend, gently but firmly.

Adam turned away from the water and faced Jason. “I want you to look at something with me.”

“Sure. Now?” Jason asked.

“No. The video editing suite is full of Tarantino wannabes during lunch. But meet me there after school. Oh, but I guess you have practice?”

“I can get out of it if this is important,” Jason told him.

“It is,” Adam said. His eyes glittered and his cheeks were flushed, almost like he had a fever. He turned his face away for a moment, and Jason saw his jaw clench. When he looked back, his expression was grim—and filled with pain. “That footage I shot at the party?” Adam muttered. “I think it might prove what really happened to Carrie.”

Jason stepped into the dim video editing suite after his last class of the day. He spotted Adam at the station in the back corner, hunched close to a monitor. Had Adam really caught something revealing on film? he wondered. Or was this just a reaction to Carrie’s death?

“Hey,” he said as he pulled up a chair next to his friend.