Unfortunately, Lissie Adams was standing right behind him, and she saw Violet too.
Lissie was everything Violet wasn’t: blonde, trendy, and insanely popular, and it killed her that Jay had chosen Violet over her as his date for the Homecoming Dance. She got her digs in whenever he wasn’t around.
And this happened to be one of those moments. Lissie raised a stylishly manicured middle finger and flipped Violet off.
Violet closed her eyes; she was so sick of taking Lissie’s crap.
“So who’s your friend?” the woman asked, tipping her head in the direction of the school.
Violet sighed. “She’s not my friend.”
The woman smiled. “Not her. The boy you waved at.”
“You mean Mike?” Violet frowned. “He’s just a new kid at school.”
FBI Sara pursed her lips, pausing briefly. “What do you know about him?”
“Nothing. Why are you asking?” Violet asked hopefully. “Is that why you’re here? To talk about Mike?” Suddenly conversations about Mike Russo didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
To her credit, Sara Priest didn’t miss a beat. “Not at all. I’m here to talk about you, Ms. Ambrose. May we?” She pointed to Violet’s car. “So we can speak in private?”
Violet’s stomach sank. She was fleetingly aware that she’d never actually been shown a badge, and she knew her parents wouldn’t like the idea of her talking to strangers—even if they were from the FBI. Still, she had a hard time mustering the courage to do anything but agree.
Her heart skipped nervously as she climbed inside. She thought about not letting this Sara person in her car, and instead just locking her doors and taking off. But even as she weighed the option, she knew it was useless at this point. Obviously they knew her name and her phone number. They knew where she went to school and probably where she lived. Did she really think she could escape the FBI?
So instead of leaving, she reached across to the passenger side and unlocked the door as she made a hasty scan of the seat to make sure there was nothing there that could make a big, nasty stain. She was afraid that the woman’s suit was in danger of being defiled by her dilapidated rust mobile.
Violet wondered if the dark-haired boy would get in too, but he never moved; he just stood there, silently guarding Sara’s door.
Strange, Violet thought as she started her car to get the heat going. She hoped that whatever the woman had come to say would be finished before the car actually had a chance to warm up.
“So I’m guessing you want to know why I’m here.”
“Uh-huh.” Even those two—nearly inarticulate—syllables sounded shaky coming out of her mouth. She hoped she wouldn’t be expected to say much.
“Well, it seems that your name has come up during the course of an investigation.” The woman beside her brushed invisible lint from her knee before looking up to judge Violet’s reaction.
Violet’s heart pounded. Hard.
This could go one of two ways. One, she could deal with. The other was bad. Very, very bad.
Maybe they’d found another missing girl’s body in the woods somewhere.
She couldn’t believe she was hoping for something so terrible.
“Uh-huh . . .” So far so good on the speaking part, she thought.
The banging sound that came from the driver’s-side window felt like an explosion to Violet’s already raw nerves. She jumped hard and was immediately embarrassed by her reaction as she turned to see who was there.
Chelsea’s nose was pressed against the glass, making her normally pretty face look distorted and hideous. Violet could practically see the girl’s sinuses from her vantage point; it was more than she’d ever needed to witness.
Violet rolled down her window with the old-fashioned hand crank, and Chelsea jumped back before her face went down with the glass.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Chelsea declared, not sounding the least bit repentant. She glanced disrespectfully at the woman in Violet’s passenger seat when she said it and then instantly ignored her without waiting for a response. She looked earnestly at Violet. “Do you know where Mike went? I’ve been looking all over. He wasn’t at his locker after class, and I haven’t seen what’s-her-name, his little sister.”
Violet rolled her eyes impatiently. “I just saw him waiting for his bus.”
Chelsea sighed. “Crud! I was hoping to offer him a ride home.” But the way she wiggled her eyebrows implied that “ride home” meant more than a simple car ride. Knowing Chelsea, she was hoping it would.
Violet smirked as a big yellow school bus pulled out of the lot. “I think you just missed your opportunity, Chels.”
Now there were only a few straggling vehicles left in the student lot, Violet’s and Chelsea’s among them, as well as a big black SUV that Violet could only assume belonged to the woman sitting beside her, since it sure as heck didn’t belong to anyone at school.
“Fine,” Chelsea sighed. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”
“Sorry about that,” Violet mumbled to the woman once Chelsea was gone.
“I just have a couple of questions for you,” FBI Sara continued as if their conversation had never been disrupted at all.
Violet’s airway narrowed painfully. Here goes, Violet thought, hoping against hope for the familiar questions that she’d already answered a hundred times before.
“First of all, how did you know the body was there?”
Violet stared at her. She wasn’t sure how to answer the question. It wasn’t clear; FBI Sara hadn’t given her enough details to be sure which body she meant.
Violet thought about the first body she’d found last year, discarded and bloated in the shallow waters of the lake. She closed her eyes, trying for the millionth time to purge the image from her mind’s eye. But it was too vivid, forever etched into her memory.
“I saw it,” she mumbled, hoping that that was the body the woman was talking about.
The woman shifted uncomfortably. “You saw him?” she asked, eyeing Violet suspiciously. “What do you mean, you saw him?”
And that was it. That one clarifying word, and Violet could no longer deny it to herself.
Him, she’d said him. Violet had been wrong. Precautions or not, she hadn’t been careful enough. All of the bodies Violet had found last year had been of missing girls.
They knew. The FBI knew. But how in the world was that possible?
She looked at the woman, trying to convey to her that this was all a mistake. It was her only chance. “I—I think you’re confused. Maybe you have the wrong person.”
“Violet Ambrose? That’s you. You placed an emergency call from a pay phone almost two weeks ago.” She watched Violet guardedly; her eyes narrowed just enough to look doubtful. “In it, you told the operator that you ‘heard something.’ You didn’t say anything about seeing the boy.”
It all came crashing down on Violet at once. Her head was spinning. She felt dizzy and sick in an instant.
She closed her eyes, trying to will her head to stop whirling so she could catch hold of her out-of-control thoughts.
She knew she shouldn’t have called 911. What had she been thinking?
But she’d used a pay phone. She shouldn’t be having this conversation.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she denied, but her voice sounded tinny and hollow, an obvious lie. She thought she was going to be sick. This was some sort of nightmare, almost as bad as her dream about the boy himself.
There was silence, and Violet struggled to keep it together. She needed to find a way out of this, out of her own car, if that’s what it took. And away from this woman who had managed to track her down.
“Look, Ms. Ambrose, there’s no point denying it. We traced you back using the shipyard’s security cameras. We had your license plate. That, coupled with the call you placed, made it easy for us to find you.” FBI Sara leaned forward, and Violet thought she might be trying to convey understanding, compassion. Inste
ad she was intimidating.
“It wasn’t me,” Violet croaked.
“We both know that’s not true. I have the recording of that call, if you’d like to listen to it.” She pulled a small tape recorder from her jacket pocket.
Violet stared at it, unable to string together another denial.
“I didn’t think so.” She put the recorder back in her pocket. “We already know you had nothing to do with the boy’s disappearance. Or his death. Like I said, cameras. Besides, we have DNA evidence that rules you out.
“So here’s the deal. I want to make this easy for you. All I need to do is to ask you some questions. Not now, but soon. It will be quick and dirty, just the facts of how you came to”—her lips pursed again—“‘hear’ the boy. But for what it’s worth—and this is just a hunch on my part—I think there’s more to it. I think you didn’t hear him at all.”
Violet blinked once, trying to clear her thoughts as she apprehensively watched the woman in her car. She refused to give even the slightest hint of what was going on inside her head.
Sara continued without waiting for a response. She didn’t seem to want one. “In fact, I know you didn’t hear him, because you called on Sunday. The coroner says that the boy we found had been dead for at least two days before we recovered his body.”
Puking became a very real possibility at that point as Violet felt the acids from her stomach swelling dangerously high in the back of her throat. Sweat prickled like icy barbs across her forehead and along the nape of her neck.
Still, she refused to speak. Not so much refused, actually, since she felt like it would be physically impossible now.
Again, FBI Sara continued, undaunted. “And even though we believe you had nothing to do with the boy’s death, you were still there. You knew where to find him. So you’re going to have to answer some questions, whether you like it or not.”
Violet kept her lips tightly sealed.
Something about the look on Violet’s face must have clued her in, because FBI Sara finally stopped talking. She scrutinized the girl beside her. “Are you okay?” she asked. The question itself contained little genuine concern.
Violet nodded. “I’m fine—” she started to say, but cut herself off as she choked on her words. Suddenly Chelsea’s favorite expression, about throwing up in her own mouth, hit a little too close to home for Violet. She clamped her mouth shut again.
FBI Sara pulled a card from her pocket and handed it to Violet. “You’re going to have to talk to me sooner or later. Call the number on the card tomorrow to set up an appointment.”
She got out of the car then and walked purposefully toward the black SUV, the boy following right behind her.
Violet looked at the simple business card, absentmindedly running her thumb over the raised gold-foil seal.
She hated the feeling hanging over her, the looming apprehension that prophesized something terrible was about to happen. She hoped it was just worry over having been discovered and being forced to give a statement about something she should never have witnessed in the first place. Something that no normal person would ever have known.
But she knew that wasn’t it. There was more to it than just a formal statement. There was something in the way that FBI Sara had worded everything that had Violet concerned.
Whatever the questions Sara planned to ask her, Violet had the strangest feeling that if she were to answer truthfully, Sara might actually believe what she revealed about her ability.
But Violet could never confess what she was capable of to Sara Priest. She had no intention of becoming some kind of lab rat for the FBI.
Chapter 9
Violet rolled over, clutching her pillow tightly and wishing that whatever had dragged her awake would simply vanish again, like an unanswered whisper. But unfortunately the impractical chasm between hope and reality was impossible to navigate.
She cursed herself. When did she become the world’s lightest sleeper?
A flash of light passed through her window. It came from outside, casting a watery glow around her dark room, and then was gone as quickly as it had come.
That was it. That must have been what woke her.
She groaned, kicking her legs in frustration and throwing her covers off at the same time. This was ridiculous. She needed to sleep!
The light came again, and this time, with her eyes wide open, she had to squint against the glare.
She sat up, balancing on the edge of her bed, trying to decide what to do. She knew one thing for certain. Someone wanted to get her attention, and she was really too tired, and too irritated, to care why.
She pulled on the sweatshirt that she’d tossed on the end of her bed, zipping it all the way up to her chin. She didn’t bother looking out her window; she was in too much of a hurry. She needed to put a stop to this before it woke her parents too.
She rushed down the stairs and unlocked the front door, staring out into the unpleasantly cool night. She strained her eyes, searching for the source of the light, but came up empty.
Nothing but night. And the spiteful cold.
She took one step outside, onto the frigid porch boards in front of her door, meaning to call out to whoever was signaling for her. But something held her back, and she waited instead, holding her breath. The fabric of her flannel pajama bottoms, which had seemed too warm inside, now felt impossibly thin. A gust of frosty air ran up her legs. She shivered, tucking her bare hands into her sleeves, and wished she had more than a pair of cotton socks on her feet.
The nocturnal hush around her was deafening.
And then it came. Again. The flash of intense light that was so out of place within the midnight shadows that it burned her eyes before vanishing once more.
Violet blinked and leaned backward, her hands searching for the doorknob behind her. Just to make sure it was still there. She clutched it, trying to figure out where the light had come from.
Again she wanted to call out, but her voice had gone too, like the fleeting burst of white light.
Violet was too curious, though, to let it go. Besides, if she couldn’t find the source of the flashing and stop it from flaring, again and again, it was bound to keep her awake all night. Or at least for as long as it continued.
She shivered as the arctic night extinguished her reserve of body heat. She decided to concentrate, to wait for the light again, and this time, to pinpoint its location.
She didn’t have to wait long. The blaze was like a visual explosion, assaulting her eyes as she forced herself not to blink against it.
That was all she needed. And now she was positive that she’d seen where it was coming from.
She edged forward, hesitantly releasing her grip on the steely cold doorknob as she eased her way toward the blinking light. She cautiously stepped down from the porch and looked around, reassuring herself that she was the only one there.
The flare came again. From the other side of her car.
She moved faster now as she reached the vehicle, rounding the rear of it, and when she saw the flash once more, she froze in place.
It was coming from a box. A plain brown cardboard box sitting beside her driver’s-side door. The top flaps hung limply open.
She was confused as she stared at it. Why was the box blinking? And who would put it there, next to her car?
She glanced toward the trees that surrounded her house, wondering—only fleetingly—if she was alone.
And then she faced the box again, taking a step closer, her feet freezing on the frosty surface of the gravel driveway, too numb to feel the sharp rocks beneath them. She leaned over the top of it, afraid that whatever was in there might flash again while she peeked inside.
It didn’t. But she wished that it had. She wished she’d been blinded by the searing light, so that she hadn’t seen what it was.
Violet felt sad and sick at the same time. And angry.
This box had been placed there deliberately for her to find.
She wonde
red why she hadn’t recognized it before. The draw of the dead, an echo. The sporadic blinking of white light. The cold must have numbed more than her feet. Even her senses had been anesthetized by the glacial chill.
But it explained why only she had been awakened. And why she’d felt compelled to locate it.
She peered at the tiny black cat lying at the bottom of the box. Its head fell sickeningly—unnaturally—to the side. Its lifeless green eyes stared back at her.
It’s not Carl. Violet released a grateful breath that it wasn’t her own cat. And then shame flooded her for entertaining such an insensitive thought.
The burst of light came again, scorching her retinas, and she had to blink several times to clear the red spots that clouded her vision.
She was no longer afraid that someone else might be around. Her rage went far beyond caring for her own safety now. She wished he was here, whoever was responsible for . . . for this. She wanted him to show himself. She dared him.
Fury filled her icy veins, thawing her uncertainty. She knew what she had to do. And the sooner the better.
She closed the flaps, careful not to disturb the lifeless body any more than was necessary. The poor thing had been disturbed enough already.
Violet whispered beneath her breath, too quietly for anyone else to hear, even if she hadn’t been alone. Only the cool air around her mouth seemed to notice, and she could see the misty gusts expelled from her lips.
“Now I lay me down to sleep. . . .” It was the same prayer she’d said for every animal she’d ever buried.
She carried the box, walking purposefully beneath the pale moon, not needing it to find her way around her house, toward the woods.
“. . . I pray the Lord my soul to keep. . . .” It was the only prayer she knew.
A burst of light exploded from beneath the flaps of the corrugated box she cradled, tiny glowing slivers filtered from between the gaps.
“. . . If I should die before I wake . . .”
She reached the darkened entrance to her graveyard, the one her father had helped her construct when she was just a little girl: Shady Acres. And now, in the dead of night, the name seemed more appropriate than ever before. An omen of sorts.