See Jane Run (11 page)

Riley shook out a tiny envelope, her heart thundering in her throat. Another weird message? A note from Trevor explaining the cards?

Her name was written on the front of the envelope in blue ballpoint pen and underlined twice. She popped the envelope open and a gift card to Sweet Retreat fell out.

“Riley Spencer” was written in the “TO” portion; “FROM” was “The ASB.”

She read:

Thank you for volunteering for the HHS Winter Carnival. Enjoy a free ice cream cone courtesy of Sweet Retreat Ice Cream. The Associated Student Body.

Riley started to breathe hard.
That's
the card that Trevor was talking about when he asked if she had “gotten hers.” He didn't know anything about the postcards.

He wasn't the one who dropped them into her purse.

SOMETHING LOST HAS NOW BEEN FOUND.

Riley felt a tightening in her chest as sweat pricked at her hairline. She felt the familiar pins and needles feeling in her hands and feet. She was starting to panic.

Outside, the wind cut a wild path, and within seconds, the rain started like a snare drum, an insistent rhythm against the window. Her curtains caught and fluttered up, and Riley went to the window, slamming the one-inch open section closed.

A
good
gust
of
wind…

The hairs on the back of Riley's neck stood up, pricking electricity into her skin. Someone had come into her house. Someone had pulled the webpage of a missing child up on her computer and walked out of the house, leaving the front door open.

Someone who knew who she was.

• • •

The house was deathly quiet when Riley woke up the next morning. When she padded down the stairs, hers was the only place setting on the table—the usual bowl-plate-spoon, a glass of juice, and the little white pill. She hadn't had any reaction since she stopped taking it. She hadn't felt better or worse. She didn't want to believe that maybe her parents were drugging her, shoving pills down her throat that might make her forget things or make her more compliant, or whatever they did. She rolled the pill between her forefinger and thumb before dropping it into the sink and flipping on the garbage disposal. The gurgling, chopping sound of the blades felt like they were eating their way through Riley's life, her normalcy. Everything was a chopped-up mess.

There was a note propped against her juice glass:

We're at the farmers' market. Eat breakfast!

There were the usual
x
's and
o
's, and her mom's flowery signature on the bottom.

Riley put her unused bowl and spoon away, her stomach turning in on itself, anxiety and uncertainty turning her saliva sour.

She nearly dropped her juice glass when her cell phone started blaring.

“Hey, Shelbs. You totally made me jump.”

“That's because you're living in the neighborhood that technology forgot. I'm picking you up. I need a Cinnabon and a new backpack. One of the twins barfed in mine.”

“Gross. But my parents aren't here. I can't leave.”

Shelby groaned into the phone. “Call them. Tell them I'll pick you up and make you wear a seat belt and take your Flintstone vitamins. Seriously. It's a matter of puke or death.”

Riley sucked in a breath, one that bolstered the nagging suspicion in her gut. “You know what? Head over. I'll be waiting outside for you.”

Riley shimmied into her jacket and hiked up her purse before settling on the porch steps. The sky was a bright, crisp blue, all evidence of last night's pounding rain gone. The sunshine bounced off the windows, giving the impression that the half-empty Blackwood Hills Estates was a cheery, bustling neighborhood.

Riley shivered. Her cell phone chirped.

TWIN BARFERS R TWIN BARFING. C U IN 20.

She looked at the locked door behind her then speed-walked to the empty house across the street. If someone was peering into her window, or even just staring her down the night she left for the school trip, she wanted to know who they were.

She knocked and waited, pressing her ear against the door. Silence. She found the doorbell and mashed that too, the same chimes as her house had making a muffled ring inside. Riley was peering into the first-floor windows, her eyes scanning the empty foyer, the desolate living room, when she heard a twig crack behind her.

She stiffened immediately.

“Are you moving in or something?”

Riley whirled. A girl was standing on the stretch of dirt that should have been landscaping, her hands on her hips. She looked to be about Riley's age.

“Uh, no. I just thought that maybe someone lived here.”

The girl swung her head. “Not likely. My parents just looked at the place. There's a big gaping hole in one of the windows. Someone was squatting there. The real estate lady was super embarrassed.” The girl grinned. “She ran in front of us and dumped all his shit in the trash.”

Riley's skin started tingling. Someone had been watching her. It was true.

“Hey, Bryn!”

Riley looked over the girl's shoulder to see a couple standing outside of a car, waving.

“That's my parents,” Bryn said. “Maybe I'll see you around.”

Riley stared after the girl as her stomach started to roil. Someone was squatting there. Someone was watching her. She edged around the front and tugged at the garbage bag on the curb, yanking until it tore open. A tattered blanket fell out, a crunched up sweatshirt that looked like it had been used for a pillow. A couple of Big Gulp cups and Snicker's bar wrappers and, shoved way in the back, a cheap pair of binoculars. Riley reached for them, her entire body feeling slimy when her hand closed over them. She pulled them out and the case came with them, a Big Mac wrapper stuck to the side.

“Gross.”

Something rattled as she went to toss the binoculars back. There was something in the case. Riley rooted around until her fingers closed around the tiny metal charm. It looked like a silver angel—or it would have, if its wing and head hadn't been broken off. She studied it until Shelby's beast-mobile coughed up the street. Then she jammed it in her pocket.

“You look like you've seen a ghost. Or your parents having sex,” Shelby said when Riley belted herself into her seat.

“I think someone has been watching me,” Riley said, turning down the radio. She jabbed a finger toward the house. “From there.”

“Like a new neighbor? Is he hot? Please say he's hot.”

Riley shook her head. “I'm not even completely sure it's a guy. I couldn't see anything. This is getting creepy. I think a guy was following me in Granite Cay too.”

“You think, or you know?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Shelby flipped on her blinker, gunning the old car onto the highway. “It means you tend to lean toward the paranoid.”

“
I
do? You're the one who's sure I've been kidnapped.”

“And that turned out to be nothing, right? What did your parents say?”

Riley bit her thumbnail. “I didn't ask them about Jane.”

“Let me get this straight: you jump on a train with a total delinquent to go searching for a girl on a birth certificate, and when that turns up zilch, you don't even bother to ask your parents. James Bond you are not.”

Riley stared out the windshield, pressing her feet firmly against the floor. She needed something solid; she needed something to connect to.

“They wouldn't let me see my birth certificate.”

“What?”

Riley swallowed. “They said it was in a box somewhere and they would ‘take care of it.' My mom told me all my baby stuff was ruined in a flood, but my dad told me it was a leaky roof. My mom gives me pills every morning, but I can't even look at the bottle.”

“There has to be logical explanations for all that, Ry. I was totally messing with you. I didn't think you'd take it so seriously.”

Riley sucked in a breath. “There's something else. I was at home the other night and the doorbell rang. When I came back upstairs, there was a poster of a missing kid on my screen.”

“Who was at the door? Who was the kid?” Shelby rolled to a stop and gaped at Riley. “My God, I didn't think it was actually true. Was the missing kid you?”

“No one was at the door. I don't know who the baby was.” She reached into her purse and handed Shelby the second postcard. “And then there was this.”

“
I
know
who
you
are
,” Shelby read out loud. Her cheeks paled. “Ry, this is serious. You have to talk to your parents. Or go to the police or something.”

“I can't go to the police. What if they arrest my parents? And I don't know if I can talk to my parents. What do I say? ‘Did you snatch me off the street?'”

“Who sent you this?”

Riley swung her head. “I don't know. It's the same person who sent the other one, I guess. I mean, obviously. How many people send random, one-line postcards to strangers?”

“Whoever sent them is no stranger, Ry.
I
know
who
you
are
…”

They drove the rest of the way to the mall in silence, Riley's phone ringing as they stepped into the first store.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Where are you?”

Riley sighed. “I'm at the mall with Shelby.”

“No one gave you permission to leave the house. You didn't even call us or leave a note.”

She felt the heat flicker in the pit of her stomach. “I'm not a little kid, Mom. Shelby just picked me up and we're at the mall. No big deal.”

Her mother spat something back but Riley's eye was wandering, caught on a little girl and her mother. They were holding hands but when the kid—five or six years old at best—caught sight of the play structure in the middle of the mall, she dropped her mother's hand and took off running.

Maybe
I
just
ran
away, and my parents picked me up?

“Do you hear me, Riley? Tell Shelby to bring you home right now.”

Riley watched the scene in front of her. The mother of the little girl was immediately panic-stricken, her whole face crumpling in the seconds that her daughter disappeared then reappeared on the play structure. The mother had a hand splayed on her chest as if to stop her thundering heart.

Riley tore her eyes away.

“I'm not going to make her drive me all the way home. We just got here.”

“Then your father and I will meet you in front of the coffeehouse in twenty minutes.”

Shelby came out of the store, brows raised. “What's up?”

“The wardens are picking me up in twenty.”

“Seriously?” Shelby's face fell.

“Yeah. But you go find your barf-free backpack. I better do as I was told and tether myself to the coffee place.”

“Use your one jailhouse phone call to call me.”

The mall was getting crowded, and Riley wound herself through clutches of singles and groups when she felt fingertips brush against her bare arm. There was a man beside her, staring straight ahead. He was older, maybe in his twenties, and stood a head taller.

She saw the man's lips move, thought she heard him mutter, “Don't worry.”

“Excuse me?”

He didn't repeat himself, but Riley's eyes followed his fingers as they tightened around her wrist. Her heart was slamming into her ribcage, her pulse hammering underneath his thumb.

“I'll scream,” Riley said. “If you don't let me go right now, I'll scream.”

His grip tightened, every finger like a steel band digging in. “Don't do that.”

Her mind was racing. All around her people swarmed, chatting, shopping, moving right past without even looking at her. Their chatter was overwhelming. Even if she could scream, she didn't think anyone would hear her.

“There are police,” she said, “right after the next shop. Let me go and I won't say anything, I promise.” Her lower lip started to tremble, her eyes filling with tears—but she gritted her teeth. She wouldn't let this man see her cry. “The police—”

The man gripping her arm gave Riley a quick glance—just quick enough for her to memorize his thick jaw, his ice-blue eyes, and the scar that cleaved his lower lip. “You won't scream and you won't say anything to the police. You wouldn't do that to your parents.”

Riley stopped walking, everything inside of her running cold.

“How do you know my parents?”

He tugged her arm. “Keep walking.”

Heat, picking up speed as it sped through her veins, was breaking out all over her. There was a tightening in her chest.

“Who are you?”

A muscle flicked along the man's jawline but he didn't immediately say anything.

“Let me go right now.” Her voice sounded breathy, desperate.

“Hear me out. Trust me. We're in a public place, Riley. I'm not going to hurt you.”

“H—how do you know my name?”

He didn't answer or loosen his grip, and Riley fumbled, walking along. “Why should I believe you?”

“Because your parents aren't who they say they are.”

Riley's whole body went rigid. “What?”

“They're lying to you. They're lying to everybody. Your name is Jane O'Leary.”

She couldn't help but stop and look up. “Jane?”

“My name is Tim. Have your parents told you anything about me? Have they told you anything about the O'Learys?”

“N-no.”

“They won't tell you the truth. They'll tell you something crazy; they'll tell you that they're trying to protect you, but they're not. They're bad people, Jane.”

Riley ripped Tim's hands from her arm. “You're crazy. You don't know what you're talking about. My parents aren't bad.” She could feel the tears rimming her eyes but she gritted her teeth, refusing to cry.