Dead or alive when you find him?
“Reece!” I dragged the box, leveraging my weight and
heaving it out from under the shelf until I could reach the seam. Breathless, I grabbed a box cutter from a supply cabinet and dragged it across the tape, ripping the flaps open and plunging my hand inside. I dropped to my knees, dug to the bottom. Crumpled newspaper spilled onto the floor, exposing rows of heavy microscopes underneath.
With an angry shout, I pitched the cutter across the room. I slumped into the pile of news filler and pressed my head into my hands.
The killer wanted me to find Reece, or he wouldn’t have led me this far. There had always been a clue. A bread crumb. A message somewhere to point me in the right direction. Why not now? Or had I missed it?
I dragged my sleeve across my forehead, clearing the sweat from my eyes. Then I scooped up an armful of mashedup newspaper and began stuffing it back in the box. One piece of newsprint stuck flat against the floor. I scraped up the only piece that hadn’t been crushed into a ball of stuffing. This one was smooth, torn at the taped corners where I’d ripped it from the inside flap in my hurry to open the box. An obituary.
Catherine Schrödinger. Dead of a heart attack at eightyeight in Alexandria, VA, in 2007. I skimmed the memorial and viewing information. Funeral services had been held at the family mausoleum . . . in Respite Meadows.
That was it. The clue from the ad that morning. Respite in a box, a toxic paradox.
Dead or alive when you find him?
Reece was at Respite Meadows Cemetery. I stuffed the obituary into my pocket. Then piled the filling back in the box, rotated it so the writing faced the wall, and shoved it under the shelf. If the police managed to get this far from the ad, I didn’t need them arresting me before I could find Reece. I turned off the lights and shut the closet door, grabbed my backpack, and righted my stool.
The room was pink with twilight shadows.
Found a stray cat.
Think he belongs to you.
Tonight @9. The answer’s in the box.
I checked the clock and pulled out my phone.
Less than one hour to find him.
43
The sun dipped under the horizon and the headstones glowed white against an indigo sky. In the cemetery directory I thumbed through last names beginning with S. The Schrödinger family mausoleum was located in a private section of the grounds, set far back from the highway. I crunched over a gravel trail through sculpture gardens and dark roundabouts until I recognized the grove from the directory map.
I stepped off the gravel path to the first stone structure, checking the nameplate before moving on to the next. Every trace of sunlight was gone. Monuments were lit by upturned bulbs hidden in the landscape, illuminating angels and crosses that cast creeping shadows across the mausoleum gates.
A branch crackled in a grove of trees behind me. I turned, and my heart jumped into my throat.
“What are you doing here?” I breathed as the figure came closer.
Jeremy stood in a low beam of light. It cut across a shimmering blue cummerbund over a crisp tuxedo shirt. His expression was murderous as he swiped twigs from his lapels.
“I followed you,” he growled. “I saw you get off the bus outside the gates. But the damn parking lot was roped off.” He kicked grass clippings off the toes of his high-gloss shoes.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. “Why aren’t you at prom?”
“I got stood up!” Jeremy’s hands clenched at his sides. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? Anh was supposed to meet me at the dance. I waited. She never showed up. I called her brother from a pay phone. He said she got a phone call from you. That she went to meet you! Then you came running out of school and I followed your bus here. So where is she? Why isn’t she here? What did you say to her, Leigh?”
My mind raced. Someone called Anh posing as me. And now Anh was missing. I might already be too late . . .
He shook his head, his voice loud and tremulous. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. Because I didn’t want to go to the dance with Anh. I wanted to go with you!” Jeremy was shouting now, pacing and agitated. “I’ve been chasing you since eighth grade, Leigh! Chasing you and you didn’t even care! You’re too busy falling for criminals to notice!” Jeremy turned to me, dropping his voice low and pleading. His face was streaked with tears. “Do I have to kill someone to make you chase after me like you chase after Reece?”
I backed away at the mention of Reece’s name. I was running out of time.
“Jeremy, you have to leave. You can’t be here . . .”
He stepped toward me. I stumbled, my heel connecting with a low stone bench and my momentum throwing me backward and over it. My elbows dug in the ground, breaking my fall, and I struggled to get my feet under me. I looked up into Jeremy’s face as he advanced, one hand outstretched toward me. A shadow passed behind him.
“Jeremy, watch out!”
There was a muffled thud and he crumpled to the ground. Oleksa stood behind him, breathing hard, the butt of his gun turned outward. I scrambled backward, hands and shoes slipping in the mulch.
Oleksa swiped his sleeve across his forehead and rested his hands on his knees, straining to catch his breath. He nudged Jeremy’s shoulder with his foot. Jeremy didn’t move. Oleksa rotated the gun, righting it in his palm as he straightened to look at me.
“I told you to be careful. Your friends are dangerous.”
“You’re the one with the gun.” Doubt needled me. Lonny’s warning rippled through my head. You can’t trust criminals or cops. You can never be sure whose side they’re on. I hadn’t called Oleksa. He wasn’t supposed to be here. I inched away from him on my elbows and heels.
“Where’s Reece?” he said.
“Where’s Lonny?” I fisted a handful of dry dirt like Mona and Butch had taught me, but Oleksa was too far and the wind wasn’t right. “He doesn’t know who you are, does he?”
Oleksa’s face screwed up with a confused expression I’d never seen him wear before. His spine straightened, his body stilled, and his eyes grew wide and alert. I heard the soft click as he flipped off the safety.
A gunshot pierced the silence and a jolt ripped through Oleksa.
I screamed and Oleksa dropped to his knees. His head connected with the stone bench as he collapsed facedown in the grass. I scrambled toward him, but a hand wrapped over my mouth and yanked me violently off my feet.
I choked on the bitter smell of latex, pungent and powdery, sticky against my lips. The rubber grabbed at my cheeks and I struggled to breathe, unable to hear my own screams.
I kicked out and thrashed wildly. Clawed at the arms around my neck, losing my footing as they dragged me out of the dirt. It shouldn’t have been so easy. He should have been stumbling. But he pulled me like a rag doll through the shadows, away from Oleksa and Jeremy, toward a gleaming stone mausoleum. Their still bodies grew smaller until they disappeared in the dark.
We stopped moving at a set of iron gates.
In the grass lay an empty leg brace. He turned my head with a painful jerk of my chin, drawing my attention past it. A fresh surge of terror shot through me.