Teddy was marked in stars, element number 5. Boron. B.
And now Kylie. I knew her number. And the fifth element had already been circled on the table. Number 76. Osmium. Abbreviation, Os.
Reece had solved the puzzle. It was so simple. I’d been reading into it too deeply, making it more complicated than it needed to be. Thinking only of the ink message on my chem lab table, and the carved one in physics. Assuming there was some complex hidden meaning in those messages I had missed. I’d never told Reece about the messages on my lab tables at school. When he saw the clue under the bleachers, his mind probably jumped to the only “table” he associated with me. The one we’d been studying together. The periodic table of elements.
Each victim’s number represented the atomic weight of an element on the periodic table. And together, in order, the pattern became clear.
Ne + Ar + Li + B + Os = me.
The killer was spelling my name with the bodies of my own students. And he wasn’t finished yet.
Are you clever enough to find me in time.
“Did you find the pizza?” I jumped at the sound of his voice. Reece rubbed a towel through his wet hair, his white T-shirt pink where it stuck to his skin. His eyes followed my guilty glance to the disassembled file on the floor. The towel stopped moving. “What are you doing with these?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” My voice was shaking. “This is a confidential police file. How did you get it?”
He didn’t move. Didn’t look at it. “I borrowed it.”
“Why?” I already knew the answer. It hung in the silence between us. “You said it yourself, you know it’s a set-up. You’re concealing evidence. Why?”
His brow pulled down.
“They’re going to arrest me, aren’t they?” I threw a pointed finger to the pile of loose photos and reports on the floor. Photos of a pretty girl with long legs and wavy hair and a gorgeous boyfriend. A girl who tangled with drug dealers at illegal parties and wore provocative clothes. A girl with too many secrets. And now everything was spelled out so clearly. “This—my name—is all the reasonable doubt they’ll need, isn’t it?” My knees felt watery and the room wavered.
I lunged for the door. Reece grabbed my hand, his emotions slamming into me. But my own were too jumbled and I couldn’t untangle the mess of feelings and scents in my head. He pulled me toward him, grabbing my face in his hands.
“Don’t touch me!”
Reece jumped back, palms held high. I braced against the wall, warning him off with my eyes.
“Give me a reason.” He eased forward, speaking in a low voice. “You’re always telling me not to touch you. What are you so afraid of ?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Bullshit.” He inched closer. “You said something in the alley. That you can find the killer because you can feel him. What did you mean?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. You won’t believe me anyway.”
“I’ll believe you. I want to help you.”
I turned my face to stop him from coming any closer.
“Explain it. Help me understand. What will happen if I touch you?” He waited, inches away.
I felt naked, completely exposed. I let the truth spill out of me, hoarse and wet and uncertain. Too afraid to look at his face. “When I touch someone, I feel what they feel. I can taste it. I don’t know how or why. I just know I can’t control it. The only way to stop it is not to touch anyone at all. So I don’t. Because it’s too hard to be inside someone’s heart. And that sucks.”
I looked tentatively at Reece. “. . . And I don’t know, maybe that’s one reason why I read the personals. Because I was tired of being the girl who would never know what it’s like to fall for someone.” I took a shuddering breath, waiting for him to laugh or tell me I was crazy. He didn’t. “And then these ads started showing up, and it’s like they were written for me. I put the pieces together and I knew that something was wrong. So I went to Nicholson and everything backfired.” I swallowed, steeling myself for the craziest part. “I felt him at the rave. I touched him and I knew it was him, but I never saw his face. It was all too much. All the people and the drugs. I felt it all and everything went wrong!
“And that’s what will happen if I touch you. I’ll feel it all. I’ll know how much you hate me, how you think I’m crazy, how you think I—”
“Then do it.” I jumped at the urgency in his voice. He stepped in close, until my back pressed against the wall and there wasn’t any air between us. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “You think you know how I feel about you? Then touch me.” He took my sleeve and drew my hand to his chest. The damp shirt clung hot to his skin. It rose and fell fast with his breath.
Slowly, I slid my hand up over his collar, and spread my fingers over his bare skin. His pulse thrummed hard. My heart raced with his fear and the rush of his desire.
He leaned in slow, lips close but not touching. Waiting, as if I might pull away. I leaned into him. His mouth was soft and yielded to mine. He returned my kiss slowly. I brought my arms up around his neck and drew him into me, drinking in his tenderness and need. His fingers dug into my hips and pulled me close. No guilt. No regret.
“Why are you doing this?” I closed my eyes, afraid of his answer.
He pressed his forehead to mine, a bittersweet sadness spilling into me. His lips parted, hesitated. “Because I might not get another chance.”
We both jumped at the bang on the door. Neither of us moved.
“Police. Open the door.”
Reece looked to the lineup of crime scene photos on the floor. Another loud bang. He cursed softly and pushed me gently aside before I could register his panic. He kicked out a foot, scattering the pictures into a random patternless mess before he scooped it all up and shoved it into the open file. His other foot found the periodic table and kicked it under the couch.
My eyes flashed to the sofa, and back to Reece.
The police didn’t know about the message under the bleachers.
I’ll put it all on the table for you. The table. That clue was the Rosetta Stone to the whole case. It was the only clue that could lead the police to the periodic table and spell out my name. But it never made it into the file. Reece never told them. And without Reece’s notes, the numbers—the most incriminating pieces of evidence against me—were meaningless. My mind rewound to his phone conversation in the park by the airport, the visitor’s log he’d stolen from the hospital, the cabbie he’d paid to give a false statement . . . He’d been systematically destroying evidence. Concealing facts. Covering for me . . . The police weren’t here for me. They were here for him.
He took a deep steady breath, surveying the room as he walked to the door. With a last pained look at me, he flipped a lock and the chain stretched taut, snapping against the strip of sunlight that poured in. Blue uniforms appeared in the gap.
“Reece Whelan?” The officer held a slip of paper against the opening. “We have a warrant to search the premises.”