“I swear to you, I didn’t kill Blanche.”
Five days. That’s how long it had been since Bridge had been arrested. Since then, Dagger had resolidified his belief that they were all helping Sumner. That they were dedicated to covering for him, even murdering for him if it came to it. Of course this wasn’t close to the truth, but Dagger wasn’t just convinced, he was obsessed. He needed them to be guilty, to be the ones behind everything that was going on in Armor Falls. Because if they were guilty, if they were the sick and twisted accomplices, then they could lead him to the real mastermind, the real killer; Sumner himself.
In the days that came with his arrest, Bridge had been subjected to multiple sessions with Dagger, submitted lines of questioning that he had already answered, with the same conclusions that he had given the detective during his initial crusade upon their culpability. It was a constant state of badgering that Bridge was thriving inside of, a battle that he was destined to lose at the feet of Dagger’s persistence. He wasn’t letting up, and while Bridge knew he was innocent, that he hadn’t killed Blanche the night of Homecoming because he was with Ben, he couldn’t tell Dagger that. He was in enough trouble without dragging Ben and his selfinflicted issues into the interrogation room with someone as savage as Detective Alston Dagger.
He wasn’t the only one feeling the white hot wrath of their less than favorite law enforcement figure. The rest of his friends were being questioned just as hard in the coming days. Ever since Blanche’s funeral, Dagger had not only himself, but also the town believing that they were the ones behind Blanche’s murder, and therefore, the ones who were really hiding Sumner, waiting for the right moment to attack the entire population. And when countered with the fact that Sumner had tried to kill them, he simply waved it away as an act, one they had kept up for over six months. He was a man possessed with finding the truth. Except he was so blinded by pursuing it that he didn’t see that his view was obstructed.
And now, Bridge was having another meeting with his lawyer, Maxima Simon, annoyed with the fact that he was being told to plead guilty so he could have a reduced sentence for murder in the first degree.
“I’m not taking it, Maxima.” Bridge shook his head. “Why would I want Blanche dead? She was the only person who knew what Sumner was really about, why he was doing everything that caused the mess that I’ve called life for the past eight months.” He scoffed, seeing that Maxima really did mean well, that she was just doing her job, which was to advise her client on their best choice for survival. “I want this to be over. I’ve been treated like a murderer for only five days and I already want out. But I’m not going to say that I’m a killer in order to do so.”
“I know this is crazy, Bridge.” Maxima breathed between her slightly chapped lips, edges of frayed skin crying for attention and making home on the crevices of her face. It somehow warmed the cold exterior her features shone to the world, which helped Bridge feel the need to trust her despite his lack of choices in the matter. “I don’t want you to think that I believe Dagger, because I don’t. But the evidence against you...while it’s concrete, I don’t think it got there because you were the one to end Blanche Baxxen’s life.”
“Then why tell me to take the plea?”
“Because someone wants you to go down for this.” she nodded. “Someone wants you to pay for her death with the rest of your life.”
“It’s her. I’ve been telling you it’s her.” Bridge licked at his own lips as he continued to focus on his lawyer’s, also a sign that he was beginning to get restless. “Paige is the one who’s framing me.”
“Bridge, if I tell Dagger—”
“I know, I know.” He sighed. Bridge was at a junction of juxtaposition, one that didn’t seem to have a clear destination as to what he would get when he found the end of either path. If he kept it to himself that Paige and their stalker shared the same stationary, he’d stay in jail. He’d go to trial. He’d be labeled a murderer for the rest of his life. And if he told Dagger, the detective would know not only about the stalker, but he’d ultimately have to ask about what it is that the mysterious blackmailer was hanging over them. And no one, not even Bridge scared out of his mind for his life in prison, wanted to condemn the lives of his friends from something that he felt he alone had committed that night at Armor Falls Cemetery.
“You have choices, Bridge.” Maxima said, steering him back towards the current conversation they were still having and away from his darkening thoughts. “You can either tell Dagger what you told me, about the stalker and Paige and the stationary, everything. Sure, you’ll have to tell me, and him, why this person is doing this, what it is you’re willing to go to jail over. Or, you could let Ben be your alibi—”
“I can’t.” He stopped her, shaking his head vigorously. “Ben doesn’t want anything to do with me. He’s...no. I can’t do that. It doesn’t really prove anything anyway. I was with Ben after Blanche’s apparent time of death, so they’ll still think I could have killed her once I left my friends and went searching for him or something stupid like that, right?”
“That’s definitely a possibility as to how it could look.”
Bridge rustled in his chair, his awful orange jumpsuit chiming its fabric together like a wounded cricket in the night. He felt like he was on Orange Is the New Black, only with less antics and more murder. “There has to be another way.”
“There is.” Maxima leaned closer to Bridge, grabbing his hand tenderly. “Tell Dagger about the stalker. At the very least, they can bring Paige in for questioning and you’ll know once and for all if she’s the one behind this.”
“My hair was found at the crime scene. I lived in her house. I’m telling you, it’s her.” Bridge nodded. “She’s the one that’s been plaguing me and my friends’ lives.”
“Then you already know what to do.”
He didn’t want to. Only because he’d truly have to face the fact that he was a murderer, just not the one that had killed Blanche. He was a killer, albeit an accidental one caused by the placement of Sumner Shadows. But he had still taken a life. And it was time, finally, after a long almost eight months, for him to face the shiny mirror that was the truth. The only thing that caused hesitation to thrust in his veins was what would happen to his friends.
“The only way I can do this is with them. My friends have to be here, with me and Dagger. This affects them to. Can you make that happen?”
It only took about an hour to get everyone assembled. Bridge was beginning to learn that not only was Maxima a true woman of her word but also the type of person who made things happen, unable to waste any time. So when Bridge sat before his friends, which Dagger was less than pleased about but had ultimately agreed to, along with his lawyer and the shorttempered detective, all he could think to do was take a chaste chasm of a breath before opening his mouth.
“I’m going down for this,” He was addressing his friends, pretending that the adults were as far from this room as they could possibly be. This was about them too, and he didn’t know exactly how they were going to take the next set of events that he was about to put into motion. “And the only way to save myself is to tell them.”
The flash of a lightbulb breaking was easily read in all the eyes of his friends, a subtle hiss from the broken skull of glass ringing in Bridge’s ears. None of his friends opened their mouths, each of them fearing the confession that simmered painfully on the cusp of their lips.
“Tell us what?” Dagger asked impatiently, eyeing every one of the friends gingerly.
“Bridge.” This was from Mercer, but the arrestee abstained from facing the pleading he knew would be reflected in the dark splotches along his best friend’s eyes.
“I’m out of options right now.” he scoffed. “I’m sorry that it has to happen like this.”
Collecting himself, Bridge turned away from his friends and stared into the shadowy pits Detective Dagger claimed were his eyes.
“Someone’s stalking us.”
&nb
sp; “Bridge!”
He ignored Abram’s protest, trampling over his cry with the stampede of his further discourse. “It’s been going on for a while, since just after you first brought us in for questioning about Sumner, right after Kirby snapped that picture of him.”
“Why?” Dagger said, leaning off the wall and standing tall over them, a rage swelling massive waves of flames that were ready to capsize and devour them all. “Why wait until now to say something?”
“That’s not important right now,” Bridge shook his head. “What is, is that the one framing me for Blanche’s murder, the one you need to be arresting, is Paige Honeycombe.”
Dagger’s stare was sharp and felt like a blade across his neck, the detective’s namesake threatening to cut his carotid. But the astonished outputs on his friends’ faces felt like burns on his unsuspecting skin.
“Paige?” Alex cried.
“What are you talking about?” Mercer and Abram said together.
“Detective Dagger, Paige has been harassing us for months. And I can prove it.”
While he looked to Maxima, Dagger took the time to call an officer to put out a search for Paige Honeycombe at her house.
“Bridge, why haven’t you told us about this?” Abram stated, eyeing his friend with an eye of proposition.
“Because Blanche was murdered. Because everything was happening.” he declared. “Maxima?”
His lawyer retrieved two pieces of paper, one that Bridge had held onto and one that he had gotten from Abram weeks before they had arrived at the police station for this little get together. The first page, the one that Abram had previously found stuck inside his locker at school, just needed to be unfolded once. The second one was viciously crumpled into a paper ball that Bridge had to take several moments to smooth out.
Finished calling in the order to arrive on Paige’s doorstep, Dagger realigned his priority on the pieces of paper gracing the table as Bridge set them side by side for optimal viewing.
“What is this, Mathison?”
His eyebrows arched as he answered Dagger’s grunt of an inquiry. Bridge pointed to the first piece of synthesized vellum.
“This is one the stalker sent us. Notice the design of the stationary in the bottom corner. This one,” his hand wavered to the next page. “is a rough draft that Paige made of her wedding invitations.” His finger flitted to the design that the page shared with the one preceding it. “Same design.”
“You’ve known this, suspected this, since Homecoming?”
“Are you listening?” Bridge was elevating his voice as he spoke to Abram, unaware of his friends’ reaction to his restlessness, his encompassing feeling of loss for himself. “This isn’t about you right now, about any of you. Do you think this is easy, that any of this is easy? Everyone in this town thinks I killed Blanche and I find out that Paige is the one that’s been making our lives a conscious version of hell. That’s not easy for me. Especially dealing with all of this so...so soon after Ben.”
“Who’s Ben?”
“Ben Magnus.” Mercer nodded, seeing the sparkling tear in Bridge’s eye when he looked away from the detective. “He’s a psych major at Heartmyth.”
“I was dating Paige’s fiancé, detective. That’s why it’s her. She’s putting this on me as revenge for giving Ben the best sex of his life.”
“Okay, I’m going to pretend to ignore the underage sex part for the time being,” Dagger shook his head, violently wishing that he wasn’t having to deal with these kids and their seemingly sordid teenage love lives. “Assuming this is even the slightest bit true, that Paige has been stalking you, that doesn’t answer the question of why. What is it that she’s holding against the four of you to be haunting you over the course of two months?”
There was no way to accurately reply to Dagger’s question without confessing to the accidental murder in the woods just outside of the cemetery all those months ago. They’d kept the secret for so long that it felt cheap to just blurt it out, like they were robbing the person they had taken before their time of the grandeur they were deserved. A terrible thing happened, and they didn’t even know who it was that they had buried in the ground that night. There was a lingering assumption that it might be Emmy Walker, but the truth was they didn’t know for sure. It was a terrible thing that had happened to them that they had been hiding from the rest of the world for so long, it seemed second nature to bury it from the forefront of their thoughts. How were they supposed to shatter such a heavy secret and, once more, deface the life that they had taken?
Bridge’s mouth trembled with a response, some type of answer to calm the intense shaking of Dagger’s eyes. But the door slammed open with visceral necessity as a stumbling officer made his debut in the room.
“Detective,” the officer said between his strained breathing, eyeing the tall man systematically.
“What is it, officer? We’re busy.”
“We just received a call from Officer North. It’s Paige Honeycombe, Sir.”
His stance went from eager to agitated and alert, a warning visible in the vein on his forehead. “What about her?”
“Her place, it’s been ransacked, Sir. The officers on the scene believe it’s in disarray because she’s fled town.”
Dagger blasted off from the room like a disoriented rocket with sloppy aim, a startled eagle in the wild. Bridge stared at his friends, a lopsided laugh falling out of his mouth at the idea of Paige’s disappearance being the catalyst for him being released from his charge of first degree murder.
Being called in for questioning the next day wasn’t shocking to Ben Magnus. He’d been waiting for the call once the news broke that the police were looking for Paige in regards to the murder of Blanche Baxxen.
And Dagger was brutal. He kept implying that he and Paige were working together in torturing Sumner’s friends. Ben was still in awe that Paige had been keeping such a hideous secret, a truth so devastating, he was finding it hard to answer Dagger’s constant shouts in the forms of loopended questions.
“Detective, I don’t know anything.” Ben concluded for him, interposing another question that Dagger had ushered.
“Mr. Magnus, you have to know something.”
“But I don’t.” Ben scoffed, trying not to roll his eyes and at least keep some decorum about him given the situation. “I don’t know where she’s gone to, I don’t know why she did this to Bridge instead of me, and I have no idea what caused her to try and destroy Bridge and his friends.”
“Let’s talk some more about Bridge.” Dagger said sternly. “He said he was with you minutes prior to Ms. Baxxen’s body being discovered.”
“He was.”
“So how do I know you didn’t kill her together?”
“Seriously? I didn’t even know Blanche.”
“You’re hiding something.” The smell of car maintenance that usually hung off of Dagger like a lost soul attacked Ben’s nostrils as the detective got in his face. “I can see it in your eyes. It’s all over your face.”
“I’m hiding my sexuality, maybe, but I’m not some psychopath.” After a heavy huff, Ben went on. “I love Paige, I do. But there’s always been a part of me that I kept hidden, even from myself, and when I met Bridge,” He had to pause his rise in conversation, letting out a soft, velvet laugh, a light breeze on an airy summer day. “He somehow broke through that security I had subconsciously constructed, and I feel like I’m finally on my way to being my true self. I’m gay, detective. And I just might be in love with Bridge Mathison. But I’m not a psychopath.”
Exasperated, Dagger flung his wrists towards Ben. “Get out of here. Before I decide to follow through on filing some statutory charges.”
“I’m free to go?”
“Goodbye, Magnus.”
Ben rose from his chair, abandoning the interrogation room, knowing better than to give Detective Dagger any amount of time to alter his decree. When he ambled out of the police station ten minutes later, after really understand
ing that he wasn’t a viable suspect anymore, he watched two officers escorting a casually dressed Bridge out of the police station after him.
“They’re releasing you?” Ben’s voice was wet with disbelief, but also unbridled joy, which brought a relaxed halfhalo smile to Bridge’s face.
“Just now.” Bridge inclined. “With Paige fleeing town, I guess Dagger figured that she probably planted the evidence against me. Plus, I’m guessing whatever you said carried me the rest of the way out of there.”
A simper graced Ben’s darker features then, the first genuine grin he had felt ever since Homecoming. Since before Paige had been revealed to be stalking Bridge and his friends, before he’d admitted to himself that he wasn’t perfectly heterosexual anymore.
“Why didn’t you tell them about us right away?”
Bridge suspired, taking in a huge gulp of air, saying, “I didn’t want to—”
“I’m gay.”
Speech stalled, the younger man stared at him intently, waves of trauma sending spastic twitches to his face. “What?”
“I’m gay.” He took a step towards Bridge, slicing through the space currently keeping them apart. “I’m gay and I love you.”
“Ben, stop.”
“I know a lot has happened, I know I was engaged to the woman trying to destroy you and your friends, I know everything is crazy. But I’m crazy about you, Bridge Mathison.”
He sighed again, stepping ever closer to the equalheighted man standing next to him. Ben saw a glaze lift from Bridge’s eyes, color livening up his face in an acrobatic tumble of clarity.
“Ben, you’re great—”
“But?” he sighed, knowing the word was popping up on Bridge’s vocabulary next.
“But you’re right, everything is crazy. I was just arrested for first degree murder. My friends just found out the woman who let me live with her is the same person that’s been trying to put us on trial for reasons of unknown origin.” Bridge shook his head, a stiff beam on his face as he examined Ben. “I can’t. I haven’t even had a chance to process everything. I need to focus on myself, without the distraction of a relationship or a casual friendswithbenefits. It’s a Bridgeathon.” He grinned again. “That’s all I can really handle right now.”
Ben would have been lying to himself if the word disappointment wasn’t floating around his mind like a lazy river of diction. He wasn’t as upset as he would have expected. Bridge had just been through hell and back and Ben himself had, for the very first time, stepped out of the shadows of the closet. As much as it sucked to admit it, Ben didn’t need to jump into another committed relationship at the moment either.
“That’s good.” Ben brightened his face with a sudden smile. “You should focus on yourself.”
“And you should too.” Bridge pulled him into a great bear hug, clapping Ben’s back thrice in succession. “You’re coming out. Enjoy it.”
“I will do my best.” Ben stated, and really meaning it.
“Hey, my birthday is next week. I think I should have a party. With everything going on, I want to celebrate while I still can. You should come.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” He laughed. “I’ll let you know the details later.”
“Alright, thanks.” Ben beamed again, before saying, “Hey, you need a ride?”
Just before Bridge was going to politely reject his offer, a certain Jeep rolled right up to them, carrying Bridge’s three best friends.
“Thanks, but I’ve got it covered.”
“Right. I should’ve figured your squad had already been assembled.”
His chest rumbled with light laughter. “We’re a ride or die sort of squad.”
He just laughed back at Bridge as the teen approached the Wrangler. “Enjoy freedom, Bridge.”
Ben went to walk away, to head back over to his car when Bridge called back, “Ben,” A look thrown over his shoulder until his eyes met Bridge’s once again. “You enjoy your freedom too.”
Their smiling exchange wasn’t excruciatingly lengthy, but Ben could feel the surge of their lasting and former chemical reaction as they slipped into their respective vehicles.
Bridge was met with vibrant smiles of his friends, stares of thankGodyou’realright and we’vemissedyou.
“Welcome back, jailbait.”
“Not funny.” Bridge hid a smile after throwing the statement up to Mercer in the driver’s seat.
“You’re really free?” Abram asked, draping an arm over Bridge’s shoulder from the seat next to him.
“Free as can be.”
“So, what do we do now?”
The question Alex proposed swam around the foursome for a few moments, Bridge nodding when the answer came to his lips without restraint. “Now we wait for Dagger to find Paige.”
Kirby didn’t want to be spying on her mother. It just so happened that Athena had answers to burning questions in which her daughter was too petrified to solicit.
It was the next evening following Bridge’s release, and her mother had just received a phone call from Detective Dagger, and Kirby was shamelessly listening from the kitchen after school, Athena droning on in the living room when someone rapped on the kitchen’s conveniently placed side door of the restored Victorian. The sensation startled Kirby, the fright shuddering her subtle core, quickly running over to the door and opening it to see it’s yet to be revealed suitor.
“Hey,” Salem bore his usually sloppy, charming simper.
“Shh, just get in here.”
Pulling Salem into the kitchen, she quietly closed the door and mosied her way back to her eavesdropping rendezvous point.
“Kirby, what are you—”
“Be quiet!” She hushed incessantly, a hand up that supplicated his silence.
Drawing a huge breath within himself, Salem walked over and hunched next to Kirby as she hung off the door frame, harkening at her mother’s continued telephone discussion from the slightly ajar kitchen door.
“Alston, this is serious,” Her mother’s voice echoed the worry and doubt that her words spoke of, enabling intrigue to devour Kirby’s gathering thoughts. “You know how important that file is, and you’re just leaving it in your office?”
The file. No wonder Kirby hadn’t found its new safe hiding place when she had upturned the house a second time. Athena had turned it over to Detective Dagger. If he knew about the file, then that’s probably what her mother had previously meant about Blanche’s postmortem findings being handled.
“Is your mom dating that detective dude that ruined the funeral?”
Closing the kitchen door to shut off her mother from them, Kirby nodded. “She is, but that’s not why I was snooping on the call.”
“So you’re free now then? Because we should catch up.”
Kirby’s reply evaporated when the kitchen door gave way and Athena sauntered into the cutlery cavern. Her mother eyed Salem quickly, unbeknownst to the intrusion of company.
“Oh, Salem. I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“Sorry, Ms. Wheaton.” Salem inflicted in his best properyounggentleman baritone. It’d been many moons since Kirby had witnessed him using it, especially on her mother. The memories it brought to the very start of her recollect singed the edges of her sentiments. “It wasn’t planned. Just figured I’d pop by.”
“It’s good to have you back around here, Salem.” Athena boasted. “Maybe you can stay over while I’m out.”
Alarms deafened Kirby’s auditory senses. “Out?”
The Wheaton breadwinner reiterated with the stern ricocheting of her head. “Alston and I are going to dinner. Assuming you can scrounge something up for you and Salem here? I can leave some money for you to order takeout.”
“I can whip something up.” Salem snickered. “You know how Kirby is around a kitchen.”
She shot him a glare that told him to shut up, which he gladly did as she took the time to truly hear her mother's earlier claims. Kirby couldn’t escape the shee
r euphoria radiating along the lines of Athena’s upturned smirk. And if her mother was having dinner with Dagger, he’d be absent from his office…
“Go have dinner with your beau, Mom. That’s great.”
“Since when?” Athena laughed sharply. “I thought you had reservations about Alston and I.”
“If you’re happy, then I’m all for it.” She grinned enthusiastically. “The only reservation in question is yours with the great detective.”
Chuckling openly to the room, Athena agreed as she started her exit from the kitchen. “I’m just going to grab my good heels and I’ll be on my way to the restaurant.”
“Are you talking about the gold Circus City Spiked PeepToe Pumps?”
“Kirby, we’re headed to a fivestar restaurant.” Athena guffawed. “Damn right I’m wearing my enchanted Louboutins.”
Shaking his head as Athena retreated from the kitchen, Salem let a few simple chortles slip from the outstretched oval he made as the laughter found him.
“You and your mom. I almost forgot how much fashion talk you two exchange.” His shoulders shimmied with continued amusement. “So, it’s been a while. Where do you wanna reminisce?”
“We’re not staying, so our reunion is going to be delayed.”
Confusion spread like an infection on Salem’s face, a virus of unsettled feelings driving his eyebrows upwards. “Meaning?”
A sly stab of mischievousness finely tuned her features, changing her attribute from elated to ferociously determined.
“How do you feel about breaking into the office of a police station?”
Almost an hour later, Salem was following Kirby up the steps of the Armor Falls Police Station. Having not been in Armor Falls for even a full two weeks, all Salem really wanted to do was talk to Kirby, as opposed to possibly committing a crime.
In the past year since Kirby had left Manhattan, several primeval moments had lapsed in his life that were unspoken on a critical level, because his heart was too laden to recite.
There was the adoption thing. To label the restraint of knowing a child harboring the DNA that conjoined them, and knowing they inhabited the same city, and not tracking him down as difficult, was the most severe of understatements. Salem had always wanted to be a dad, and it wasn’t that the decision to give him up was a resolution of regret. The hardship stemmed from the notion that he had a son, but he still remained as a man who couldn’t carry the rubric of father.
Then there was the father thing. His father. Actually, it was quite preferred that things had been vastly chaotic. It kept Kirby’s studies about why Zeus Simon hadn’t accompanied the rest of his family to New Hampshire in a dark corner that remained, as he wanted; unexplored.
Lastly, perfecting the trilogy of turmoil of Salem Simon, was the thing concerning his sister, Sahalia. His sister, Holly, as he had nicknamed her since they both were very little lighthearted adolescents, was the very reason behind their united resolve to move to Armor Falls. It was because of Sahalia that their mother had signed on to work for Hendrick Shadows at Arclan Asylum.
These sort of things were topics he would love to go over with Kirby, if some more than others. And he’d much rather enjoy thinking about enacting those sordid altercations more than he favored sneaking into the office of a police detective.
“Kirby,” Salem ushered as they began to ascend the steps of Armor Falls Police Department, eyebrows shivering with bubbling caution. “Have you developed a need for danger since you left New York?”
“It’s not a big deal. And this is important.” Kirby countered, mimicking her mother’s earlier dissertation, her verbal reflexes premeditated and wickedly jagged.
“How important?”
“Life or death, Salem. Trust me. I just need you to create some sort of distraction so I can slither into Dagger’s office undetected.”
“Fine. I got you covered.”
When they parted the sea of mahogany that consisted of the doors to the police station, Salem threw a hand to his chest, gripping the material of his dark gray button up that hid the vital organ from the naked eye. In a split second prior to attention falling of both of them, Kirby sidestepped away from him, walking casually as Salem flopped on the floor, clawing the carpet and wailing for assistance. The officers went for him just as Kirby discreetly slipped into the office belonging to Alston Dagger without being seen by the three available cops on duty.
She allowed herself a moment to be scared. Kirby was inside Dagger’s office. Alone. And someone, any one of the officers, could determine that Salem was fine, that he was stalling, and find her rummaging in the renowned detective’s professional dwelling seeking answers.
Her fearfilled pause was over. Kirby leapt into action, a kinetic fury of movement as she went headfirst into Dagger’s desk. It began with tossing aside papers and disregarding takeout menus and ended with Kirby finding a manila folder in one of the top drawers underneath a mound of Almond Joy wrappers. Apparently her mother wasn’t the only delicacy Alston Dagger indulged in from time to time.
Plucking the folder from its candy crumb grave, Kirby flipped the file open. Of course, one thing she had expected was still true. This was the patient history file on Frankie Ellery.
The file read like a modern horror movie. It told of how the sixteen year old butchered her parents and two siblings in the middle of the night with a meticulously dull knife. Then she went back to sleep for a few hours, resting up before fleeing, and then being found by Armor Falls Police hours later.
But that wasn’t the most unbelievable part about Frankie Ellery’s Arclan file. Not when Kirby saw the date in which the young murderess had committed the act in question, and the estimated time in which it had taken place.
She shoved the file back into its place underneath its candy wrapper drapery, stealthily emerging from Dagger’s dungeon as Salem was attempting to persuade the officers that he dubbed his heart pain as an over exaggerated false alarm.
“Salem?” Kirby said in mock surprise, catching his eye and hoping he played along. “What are you doing here?”
“Ms. Wheaton?” An officer Kirby recognized regarded her with an inquisitive tilt of his taut head, an unspoken question lingering in the squeezed space between his eyebrows. “We didn’t see you come in.”
“Yeah, I stopped by to see if my mom was here.”
“Alston left with her almost an hour ago.” he nodded.
“Just missed them then.” Seeing the fading smile from her friend’s devilish features settled her worry, knowing that he knew where she was headed with their fake ailment. “Salem, are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine.” He threw a wrist in the air to solidify his adequate health. “I think I just forgot to breathe for a minute.”
“You should get home.” Kirby ambled closer to him, going so far as to wrap her arm around him before easing a look back toward the openeyed officers. “I'll take good care of him, I promise. If he’s still in pain, we’ll head to the hospital first thing in the morning.”
They got out with minimal additional questions, gratitude between them as they strutted over to Salem’s Eclipse. It wasn’t until they were both in the car that Salem glanced over at her, seeing the palpable dread beating against her cool skin.
“Kirby, I know we haven’t been able to talk, but now would be a great time to explain what’s happening here. If dating this guy, if dating Mercer, is dragging you into this Sumner Shadows case…”
“You know?”
“Of course I know, Kirby. Google can do wonders when you know what to look for. Look, Mercer and his friends—”
“Mercer and his friends, my friends, aren’t the ones that got me involved, okay?”
She didn’t want to tell Salem anything, she shouldn't. But Kirby had convinced him to drive her out to the police station. On some subconscious, deeply buried level, Kirby felt like she needed Salem to know...something. Faith and Willa, they knew about the stalker. They didn’t, however, know about Emmy Walk
er or anything revolving around Frankie Ellery. No one but her knew about Frankie Ellery.
“You can talk to me,” Salem’s voice sounded muffled, like he was far away as opposed to sitting in the driver’s seat next to her. “You can trust me.”
“I saw Sumner the night before school started, before I knew anything about him or his friends. That’s what started all of this. I was out taking pictures and I caught one with him in it. And since he had been missing for six months…” Kirby sighed, cracking her fingers as nerves boiled among her veins. “It’s why I had to come here tonight. It all goes back to Sumner.” She scoffed. “It always does.”
“Okay.” Reaching over, Salem grabbed one of her hands and slid his fingers across her knuckles. “Maybe I don’t understand, and I don’t know all the details. But you can tell me in due time. I’m still here for you. Always.”
“God, I’ve missed you.” She chuckled sarcastically, a tear slipping past her defenses. “But you’ve gotten sappy since Manhattan.”
Laughing, he just agreed with her, the bobbing of his head filling the silence in the car along with his hitched hilarity. “Yeah, I guess I have. Just tell me one thing, and I’ll follow you into the dark, Death Cab For Cutie style.”
A grin bruised her lips as she shook her head. “Okay.”
Salem had no idea what he was agreeing to, what he could possibly be signing up for by reassociating with her. She supposed she should have disclosed the full terms and conditions of what it meant to be back in her life, about every little detail about Kirby Wheaton that Sumner Shadows had altered with his antics of dire destruction, but she needed this. She needed Salem by her side again. Like old times. Kirby needed some normalcy amidst the detached feeling that had taken over her life since she’d moved to Armor Falls.
“What did you find in that detective’s office?”
Salem witnessed an entire glow ebb its way through Kirby’s demeanor, a sneer quick on her lips, a sharp sideeye glance in his direction.
She said, “A lead.”
The planning of his upcoming eighteenth birthday was keeping them all busy, much to Bridge’s appreciation. A lot had been muddled since Bridge’s arrest and subsequent release. School was thrashing them through the academic mud, basketball tryouts were soon, and the police still hadn’t found anything about where Paige was or any further incriminating evidence associated with her motive. So focusing on his Halloween birthday bash was a good way to wind down from all the crazy.
“Quit saying no, it’s a great theme.” Bridge was telling his friends as they sat in the sunroom of the moderate Meadows residence. “And it’s my birthday party, isn’t it?”
“You can’t have a Día de los Muertos themed party, Bridge.” Alex declared, swiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “It’s in terrible taste, with what our lives entail.”
“I happen to have great taste, thank you.”
“So, since we’re talking about taste, should I mention Ben right now or…?”
“Fuck off, Meadows.”
All of them did the ritual of barking in a few choice chortles, Bridge even taking them up on their cue and joining in on the fanatic guffaws his friends were emitting around him.
“Just kidding, B.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Bridge nodded at Mercer, sipping on the strawberry lemonade that Clay had made upon their arrival. “Seriously though. My birthday is on Halloween. Día de los Muertos is a great theme for the party.”
“Aren’t we surrounded by a heavy amount of death without a Day of the Dead themed birthday party?”
“It’s just face paint and costumes, Alex. I love everything the traditions of Día de los Muertos hold, and I think it’s a nice nod to my heritage. Anyway, it’s cool, right Abe?”
“Yeah, it’s awesome.” Immediately after such a response, Alex elbowed his boyfriend in the ribs, which elicited Abram to amend his earlier statement, saying, “I mean, it is a little morbid.”
“Oh, what do you know. You’re blinded by sex.”
“That’s rude.” Alex scoffed, clearly not taking the comment to heart by his small laugh.
“I’m definitely not blinded by sex and I think reconsidering the theme might be a good idea.”
“No, you don’t count either. Blinded by virginity.”
“Fuck off, Mathison.”
Another round of merriment struck them as Clay walked into the sunroom, smiling at them as he garnered their communal heed. And he had someone with him.
“Kirby?” Mercer stood up, just unsettled by her abrupt arrival after his father, heading over to her as his dad handed her a glass of the perfected strawberry lemonade. “Everything alright?”
She ignored Mercer, giving his dad a teethy beam of appreciation. “Thanks for the lemonade, Mr. Meadows.”
“Just yell if any of you need anything else.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Mercer smiled.
As he departed from the room, Kirby shut the glass door to the sunroom, granting them total seclusion.
“Kirby.”
She took his hand and joined the group, taking a seat in the meticulously chosen wicker furniture with the rest of them.
“I should have texted.” Kirby stated, eyeing Bridge. “What’s the theme for your party?”
Bridge puffed out his chest in pride, boasting loudly, “Día de los Muertos.”
“I love that. I’ll YouTube an amazing tutorial for my makeup.”
“Kirby, we love you, but we can tell you didn’t come over here to talk about Bridge’s birthday.” Alex saw her face alter into the truth he had presented. “What is it?”
“Last night,” Kirby started, gripping Mercer’s hand to ground herself and keep her tone even as she went on. “I followed some information and ended up breaking into Dagger’s office at the station.”
“I’m sorry, you did what?” She was surprised to hear this from Abram and not Mercer, or even Alex, who had obligation to the force through his mother.
“He had a file, one that Blanche recommended we find to piece everything together.”
“When did you start speaking to the dead?” Bridge scoffed.
“Just following your Día de los Muertos motif.”
Alex huffed. “How do you know this exactly?”
“I can’t say,” When she answered his question with such a closed analysis, all of them scrutinized her. “I have my ride or die, too, alright? The file was of a young girl, barely sixteen, that was admitted to Arclan Asylum.”
“So what is so special about this girl’s file?” Mercer asked.
“Because Frankie Ellery, the girl that stayed in Arclan with Blanche, was admitted the morning of August 2nd.”
“As in—”
“The morning after Sumner showed up at Heartmyth to plead help out of Straton.” Kirby confirmed. “I’ve been thinking it over, where the connection lies, and what if the reason Sumner was covered in blood the night Hugo and Straton saw him is because he did what Frankie was convicted of and murdered her family?”
“For what reason?” Abram brushed it off, unmoved by this proclamation that had as many loose ends as everything else that followed anything about what they thought they had known about what Sumner did. “What sensible link could she have to Sumner?”
“First Emmy Walker, now we have this Frankie Ellery.” Bridge’s temper flared in the abstract form of rolling his ankle, cracking its double joint irately. “All we keep getting is dead ends and harder questions to answer.”
“It doesn’t get much better.” Kirby was beginning to ruin Bridge’s previously natural high. “I looked into it and Frankie is closed off from any type of access. She’s in isolation, ever since Blanche’s escape. They think she might have been involved, along with two other unidentified patients.”
“So we have to wait.” Alex growled, restless over their diminishing options, lifting from his chair. “Waiting to find out more about Emmy, waiting for the police to find Paige, all we do is wait!”
> “Alex,” Abram persuaded him to sit back down, after placing a strategic kiss in between a set of his knuckles. “So we take some time off from investigating. We could use more of that.”
“We should tell Dagger.” Alex huffed. “About Emmy, Reyna, Rephaim, this Frankie girl, all of it.”
“No.” Kirby was adamant, having no intention of betraying her mother’s prerogative in such a cheap way. “We can’t.”
“Why, Kirby? We probably should!”
“We just can’t, Bridge!” She was yelling, but she couldn’t help it. There was no stopping the rush of vocabulary spewing from her mouth. “You guys said you couldn’t say more about the stalker. You claim that you can’t divulge in details. This is that.”
Kirby was filled with relief as the crescendo of cognizance lit their faces up like a banquet of fluorescents. Alex and Abram held on tight to each other, Bridge and Mercer swapping their silent bro bond through their eyes.
“Alright.” Mercer’s hand drifted toward her, understanding forming a sheen of familiarity on her wrist where his fingers teased the skin he was caressing. “So we won’t tell Dagger.”
Bridge stood then, his chair flying backward from the inertia of his ascension. “My birthday is in a week. We’re not getting anywhere with Emmy Walker and we can’t question this girl. They’re still looking for Paige, so can we relax and just celebrate the momentous miracle that is my birth?”
“Momentous miracle?” Mercer smirked pointedly, when he saw a response twitching Bridge’s mouth open. “I know, I know, ‘fuck off, Meadows’, right?”
A similar leer on his face, Bridge agreed wholeheartedly. “Took the words right out of my mouth.”
“How about this,” Alex decided, an auditory inclination of his escrow of reluctance hanging off of every syllable he uttered. “If after the party they still haven’t found Paige or anything, we at least anonymously let Dagger know everything we do, so at least we aren’t stumbling through this without some hired guidance.”
The terms were enough for an agreement among the attendees, accepting for some semblance of normalcy. If only fate could hold off on meddling for a week, they’d, maybe, be okay and able to cope.
20
FOUND