CHAPTER ONE
I’m really good at suspending disbelief while I’m watching a movie. Show me aliens erupting from stomach cavities or serial killers who only strike inside dreams, and I’m totally with you.
In real life, I’m not so ready to swallow the split-pea soup when it’s likely to turn into projectile vomit.
I can buy that somebody murdered the Black Widow, aka the greedy young woman who poisoned her rich old husband. The evidence supports it. Constance Hightower was found on the beach with her wrists gouged to the bone and no blood anywhere.
But it’s pretty hard to wrap even my horror-movie-loving mind around the Black Widow getting in touch with her sister from beyond the grave. Not through a séance or a ghostly visit or anything semi-logical.
Through a phone call.
“Did you hear me?” Leanne Livingston’s whispers compete with the wind that whistles through the outdoor patio of the White Pelican, the restaurant on the pier at Midway Beach, my North Carolina hometown. “Constance said she was in somebody else’s body. Said she was a dead ringer for her.”
I catch Max’s eye and try to convey that losing her identical twin sister has made this woman looney tunes. Understandable. She probably had to identify Constance’s body. Imagine looking down at a corpse that looks exactly like you.
That happened in one of the Halloween sequels. I confess I didn’t know Jamie Lee Curtis was dreaming, but, like I said, real life needs skeptics.
Max puts his forearms on the table and leans closer to Leanne, his expression grave. “Did your sister say whose body she was in?”
Seriously?
Max Harper is supposed to be working with me to solve the mystery of what happened to us when we went missing. Both of us lost time, although bits and pieces are coming back. I figured he was open-minded when he didn’t balk at my memory of being tied to a chair while an evil clown injected me with something.
But this Ringer thing is even crazier than that.
Worse, Max’s fascination with the Black Widow is taking time away from our real problem. Yeah, we found Constance Hightower’s bloodless body on the beach. And, yes, we were also first and second on the scene after somebody stabbed the newspaper reporter covering the story in the jugular with a ballpoint pen.
Finding out who murdered them, though, is a job for the cops.
“I don’t know whose body,” Leanne the Looney Tunes says. “I asked but she said it was better I didn’t know too much.”
Time to inject some sanity into the conversation, ironic coming from a girl who everybody in town thinks is nuts. “You mean the prank caller pretending to be your dead sister didn’t say?”
Leanne takes another swallow of her drink as ice cubes rattle. She almost misses the table when she sets the glass back down. “Your girlfriend doesn’t believe me,” she tells Max.
I raise my hand. “Hello. Sitting right here.”
I’m about to let Leanne know Max isn’t my boyfriend when I remember we’re pretending to be into each other. Our joint investigation is on the down low. We can’t let the bad guys know we’re teaming up and comparing notes.
“I believe you, Leanne,” Max says. If I wasn’t suspicious of everything he said, I’d think he’s sincere. “If you give me your cell, we can figure out what number she called from and get it traced.”
“Bomb!” someone screams from inside the restaurant.
Huh? Looney Livingston isn’t the only one making no sense.
The people chased inside the restaurant by the wind start pouring out of the plastic-covered doors, bumping into each other in their haste.
Max cranes his neck toward the commotion. “Did I really just hear that?”
“Run!” It’s one half of the pair of former cheerleaders that in high school we called the Drama Queens Twins—DQ Twins, for short. Her name’s either Ashley or Heather. She’s wearing the skimpy black shorts and tight red top identifying her as a White Pelican waitress. Ashley/Heather rushes by, shrieking to the customers on the patio, “There’s a bomb on the pier. It’s gonna blow!”
A loud crack splits the air. My heart jumps. I brace myself, expecting the pier to splinter beneath my feet and debris to rain down on our heads.
Leanne Livingston screams.
The three of us at our table leap to our feet. The pier’s jammed with people, as it is every night during tourist season. Hundreds gather farther down the pier to listen to whatever C-list singer got booked for the night. All of those people stream toward us.
Leanne joins the stampede, moving fast enough to make me think I could be wrong about her being drunk.
People shout and scream. The only word I can make out is Bomb! The pier isn’t wide enough to accommodate the thick crowd. Stragglers knock over tables and chairs on the outdoor patio as they run by. God forbid anybody should fall. The question of whether it’s better to be trampled to death or blown to bits sends me into paralysis.
Max grabs my hand, his eyes steady on mine. “Let’s get out of here.”
A fresh boom drowns out his last few words. The pier seems to shake beneath my feet. My heart pounds so hard the beats echo in my ears. I hold tight to his hand as we move toward the people streaming by in a panic while hard truths slam into my brain.
Max and I will never piece together the rest of our memories. We’ll never know why we were each taken separately to the same field and tied to a chair. We’ll never share another kiss.
Because we’re going to die.
Right here.
Right now.
Except we’re both still in one piece and so is the pier. But how can that be?
“Wait!” Max stops beside a fallen table a few feet from the mass of running humanity. He pulls me close and bends down until his mouth is near my ear. “That wasn’t a bomb. Those were firecrackers. You know, the ones that make a single loud bang.”
Firecrackers are illegal in North Carolina, but that doesn’t mean much. Lots of beachgoers are ignorant of the law. Others don’t care. Growing up in Midway Beach, I’ve seen and heard just about every kind of firework there is. Max is right. Those two blasts sounded like they came from a cherry bomb or an M-80.
“Come on.” Max tugs on my hand and reverses direction, away from the crowd and back to where we were sitting with Leanne Livingston. The table we vacated is nearest to the edge of the pier, overlooking the beach.
“Look!” Max points below to three boys emerging from under the pier and running through wisps of smoke down the beach. “They must be the ones who set them off.”
The boys couldn’t have been on the pier when the stampede started. They have too much of a head start.
Their backs are to us and they’re getting farther away by the second. One of the boys is considerably taller than the other. The loping way he runs seems familiar. But when would I have seen a tall boy run? And then I’ve got it. The tall boy plays for the high school basketball team. His nickname is even Loper.
“We need to find Leanne before she disappears again,” Max says before I can figure it out. It’s not tops on my list of things to do, but I go along. By the time we get to the boardwalk, the screaming’s stopped and it’s pretty clear the pier won’t blow up. People mill about, their conversation buzzing over us like a swarm of locusts.
“Leanne was wearing a hat. That might make her easier to spot.” Max makes a three hundred sixty degree turn, his head swiveling in all directions.
I stand on my tiptoes, trying to see over and through the crowd. Some familiar faces pop out. Becky and Maia and Porter McRoy and the long-haired, tattooed boy who works at the arcade, all far enough away that I don’t feel like I have to speak to them. Hunter Prescott, too, with Adair holding on tight to his hand. Cops in uniform stride through the crowd, pulling some people aside.
“Leanne was moving pretty fast,” I say. “If she kept going, she might already be gone.”
Max swears under his breath.
“Let’s find out what happened.” He grabs my
hand and edges through the mass of people to where Officer Wainwright is talking to Ashley/Heather. She gestures expansively with her hands and covers her mouth. Her chest heaves up and down. Before we reach them, Wainwright hands her his business card and turns away. Ashley/Heather starts walking away.
“Hey, Ashley,” I call.
No response.
“Heather?”
She turns, looks around and finally figures out who addressed her. Before I vanished and lost time, the popular crowd in high school didn’t pay much attention to me. It was better than being looked at like I belong in a psych ward, but it wasn’t exactly a confidence boost.
“What do you want?” Heather’s face is flushed and her eyes are watery. There are tear tracks down her face. “I just survived a crisis, you know. I almost died!”
“You didn’t almost—” I begin.
“You were great back there,” Max interrupts. “If there had been a bomb, you would saved lives.”
“I know,” Heather says, her blue eyes wide. “Some people are just really good in a crisis.”
Gag.
Max takes a step toward her and gives her all his attention like she’s the most interesting thing he’s ever come across instead of the biggest airhead alive. He’s long since dropped my hand. Even though I know he’s fishing for information, I’m still annoyed.
“What made you think a bomb was about to go off?” Max asks.
“I got a phone call.”
“On your cell phone?”
“No. The restaurant phone. It was a bomb threat. She said people would die if I didn’t get them off the pier.”
“She?” Max exchanges a look with me before turning back to Heather. “Are you sure the caller was female?”
“Positive.” She looks at him from under her lashes. “Your name’s Max, right? If you want to hear more about it, give me your phone. I’ll put in my number.”
“He’s heard enough.” I move closer to him. “Right, Max?”
He sends me a cocky grin before turning back to Heather. “You heard my girlfriend. She won’t hear of me hearing any more from you.”
Groan. Even though it’s true, it makes me sound bad.
The other DQ Twin, Ashley by process of elimination, rushes up to Heather and embraces her. “I about died when I heard what was happening on the pier. I’m so glad you’re alive!”
“Yeah,” Heather says, fresh tears running down her face. “It was so scary!”
A matter of opinion. There are way scarier things than bomb threats that turn out to be false alarms. But maybe Heather and Ashley have never seen Paranormal Activity.
Heather pulls back from Ashley’s embrace and smiles at Max. “If you change your mind, Max, you can find me at the restaurant.”
“He won’t.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
The DQ Twins walk away, arm in arm. Max doesn’t watch them go. He’s too busy smiling at me. “I like it when you’re jealous.”
“It was pretend jealousy, Max. Other people are supposed to think we’re a couple.”
He tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear and traces my jaw line with a gentle finger. “I only flirted with her to get information.”
Why can’t I move away? “We already knew somebody called in a bomb threat.”
“We didn’t know it was a female. That means somebody besides the three who set off the firecrackers was involved.”
“What makes you sure the firecrackers had anything to do with the bomb threat?”
“A hunch,” he says. “But I could be wrong.”
“Loper would know.”
“Who’s that?”
“The tallest of the three perps. His name is Jeremy Gavin, but everyone calls him Loper because of the way he runs. He was on the high school basketball team.”
Max’s face splits into a grin, and he leans down and kisses me. Back there on the pier, I thought he might never kiss me again. That’s why I don’t stop it. Life experience and all that.
“What does Loper look like?” he asks when he raises his head.
“Dark hair. Long sideburns. Kind of skinny. About six-five.”
Max gestures to our right. “Is that him?”
I start to say nobody who pulled off a hoax like that would be stupid enough to double back. But there’s Loper, walking right past us.
“He better get a basketball scholarship,” I say, “because he’s not getting into college on brains.”
“Hey, Loper.” Max heads straight for the taller boy and grabs his arm. “Got a minute to talk about those firecrackers you set off?”
“Get off me, man.” Loper shrugs Max off, sticking his chin in the air. The tough-guy jock effect is ruined by the bleary look in his eyes and the sickly sweet smell of marijuana. “I’m not talking to you.”
“It’s me or the cops,” Max says in a low voice. “Because I saw you running away.”
Loper’s lower lip quivers. “You’re bluffing, man. You didn’t see nothin’. You don’t know me.”
“My girlfriend knows you.” Max jerks a thumb at me. “She recognized you from the basketball team.”
Loper blinks a few times before he can focus on me. “Her? She’s nuts.”
I underestimated my own notoriety. I graduated in May. Jeremy Gavin is a rising high school sophomore. We’ve never once spoken.
“Take that back.” Max is a good four inches shorter than Loper but gets right in his face. The veins in Max’s neck bulge. I can almost see the testosterone coming off him. It’s been so long since someone stuck up for me that I can’t even get annoyed.
“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.” Loper backs up, holding up his hands.
I step between Max and Loper. For added effect, I lower my chin, look at him from under my lashes and try to sound insane. “You better tell us how it went down.”
“Okay. okay.” Loper actually looks freaked out. “But I didn’t know what was gonna happen. I just did it for the money.”
“The money?” Max asks.
“Me and a friend were hanging out under the pier.” From the smell of him, I can figure out what they were doing under there. “Some tourist kid—maybe fifteen, sixteen—said he’d split a hundred bucks with us if we helped him set off some cherry bombs.”
“Come on,” Max says. “You expect us to believe that?”
“It’s the truth. The kid, he didn’t know how to set them off. And it wasn’t his money. He got it from some woman.”
“What woman?”
“I never saw her, man.”
“Where’s the kid?”
“He took off. I don’t even know if I could recognize him.” Loper’s flying so high, I believe that. “Can I go now?”
“Go,” Max says. “If we need you again, we’ll find you.”
It seems pretty certain the woman who paid the boy to set off the firecrackers called in the bomb threat, but why? “I don’t get it,” I say when Loper’s out of earshot. “Why would someone want to create mass panic?”
“Not someone,” he says. “Constance Hightower. She didn’t want her sister telling us she’s a Ringer.”