Darkest Dawn (13 page)

Bri looked up from the mail. “What is it?”

I flipped the paper around to show her.
You’re in danger. Stay inside. I’ll contact you soon.

Max came to Bri’s side and read the paper with wide eyes.

I sprinted for the door and locked it. “How did this person know I was here?”

“Maybe the same way they knew where you lived,” Bri suggested. “This is a good thing.”

“How?” Max said. “Some psycho knows your every move? That’s the opposite of a good thing. I think we should call the police.”

I scoffed. “The police who think I had something to do with that dead body?”

“Fine,” Max said. “When does your mom get home?”

Bri and I looked at each other. That was one part we hadn’t mentioned in the recap to Max. I went by Bri’s lead on that since it was her mom under fire.

She took the paper from Max. “Tonight.” She went into the kitchen and I followed.

Tucker set up our food and we all sat at the table. He caught our expressions and frowned. “What’d I miss?”

Bri handed him the paper.

His hand crinkled the note. “I’ll stay with you.”

“Me too,” Max said. Bri opened her mouth to say something but Max interjected with a hand in the air. “Non-negotiable. Jake will be here later too. And I bet Abbey will agree with me about this threat.”

“It’s not a threat,” Bri said.

“You’re in danger?” Max recalled the first line of the note. “Sounds threatening to me. Life-threatening.”

The doorbell rang and Bri flew off her chair and bolted down the hallway. I stood up and Tucker grabbed my arm. “You should hide. For now. Until we give Abbey a minute to get into the house.”

Why would Abbey ring her own doorbell? Though she could have forgotten her key. Tucker did say she was absent-minded. I went into the living room, keeping my back against the wall and staying out of sight of the front door. A man’s voice became clearer as I approached.

“Is your mother home?” he asked.

“No,” Bri said.

“What is this about?” Max said.

Tucker crossed the living room and stood in the doorway, blocking me.

“Here’s my card. Please have your mom call me as soon as she gets home.”

“What is this about?” Bri asked.

The man paused. “I’m assuming you’re a minor? I can’t speak with you without your guardian present. Like I said, please have her call me.”

The door closed and I went to the front window. The man was a cop. The patrol car blocked a few cars in front of Bri’s home. Another officer inside the car peered through the windshield up at the house. I moved away from the window.

Bri came into the living room, flipping the card over between her hands. “What was that about?”

“Max,” I said. “Show Bri the sketch.”

Max slapped her palm on her leg. “I totally forgot.” She pulled out her phone. “The man who died at the motel was murdered apparently. And they released this sketch of the last person who stayed in the room. I thought it was you.” Her eyes flicked to mine. “I’m assuming you stayed there?”

I nodded. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“We know that.” Bri touched my shoulder and sucked in a deep breath.

The heat from her hand burned my skin as if someone had singed me with a hot poker. I checked my shoulder; the skin showed no indication of what I felt.

“What just happened?” Tucker asked.

Max rushed to Bri’s side. “Whoa. Do you two have, like, psychic twin powers?”

Bri let out an exasperated sigh. “We’re not twins.”

Max ignored her. “Do you need to be touching to have your powers?”

Bri snorted. “We don’t have powers.”

Max shot Bri a look. “How do you know? What about psychic powers?”

Bri laughed to herself. “Aren’t you supposed to be the level-headed one?”

Max waved her hand at her friend. “Just try it. Think of a number from one to a hundred. And Sloane will guess it.”

Thirty-five popped into my head. I wouldn’t give in to the mind control. So what if our hands were warm when they touched, almost buzzing with electricity? I wasn’t sure if I could handle her reading my mind. Especially if it did work. Would she figure out what Jake and I did?

I shook the thought away. “This is stupid.”

Max blew a raspberry. “You’re no fun.”

Bri yawned and looked at the television. The clock on the cable box read five-thirty-seven.

“What time do you think your mom is going to be home?” Max asked.

Bri shrugged. “No idea.”

Tucker plopped on the couch and looked up at us. “She better get home soon. This mystery is a dead end without her.”

A familiar ringtone sounded from the other room. I raced for my bag and fished my phone out of the front pocket. Dad’s face lit up the screen. Damn.

“Hello?” I answered on the last ring.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Sloane

I entered the living room after the phone call with Dad. “I bought myself some more time.” A sigh burst from my lips. If it weren’t for me talking, I could have sworn I’d held my breath through the whole conversation.

Bri smiled and she was as relieved as I was. I wasn’t ready to leave yet. Not without answers and not without staying with Bri a little longer. “What did you tell him?”

“A field trip.” I sat on the chair, sinking into the worn cushion. It felt like home. “He will be back from Paris on Monday. I said I would be gone until Wednesday.”

“Good.” Bri stood up.

“What should we do in the meantime?” Tucker asked.

“I have homework to do,” Bri said quietly. “You can watch TV or something.”

Mindless television would make my mind wander. The least I could do for her was help her out for giving me a better place to stay the night. “Homework it is then.”

Max, Bri, and I spent a few hours on a week’s worth of calculus, biology, chemistry, and Spanish homework. And by the time we were done, the sun had already started descending the other half of the sky. Bri’s eyes moved to her phone every few minutes. A couple of text messages had come through that made us both jump, but none of them were from Abbey.

She was more studious than me. At least I was able to contribute to the Spanish homework as I could speak it pretty well, considering I had to retake it several times during our many moves across the country. Math and science never clicked for me.

Tucker laughed from the other room; he’d been watching reruns of a sitcom.

A knock on the door made us all jump. I headed for my position in the living room as I had when the police visited. Before I could get there the door swung open.

“Hello?” Jake’s voice called from the hallway. He entered the living room and his face lit up when he saw me. Heat rushed to my cheeks.

“Hey,” Bri said from the doorway.

Jake closed his eyes tightly for a second then diverted his smile to Bri.

I moved to the side as he pushed past me and went into the kitchen. “I brought some food.”

Tucker launched off the couch and into the kitchen.

“How are you still hungry?” Max followed him.

I hovered in the doorway, watching the group of friends sift through the food. Watching them interact made me realize how much I missed having friends.

Bri motioned for me to come into the room. “Are you hungry?”

“Sure.” I joined the group and picked a hamburger from the assortment.

Jake leaned against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. That disarming smile he’d given me the night we met was long gone. “Who’s going to fill me in?”

Bri and Tucker gave him the cliff notes version of the story. Unlike with Max, I didn’t chime in. What was it about Jake that stripped me of all words? No guy had ever made me different. For some reason, I wanted to be what he wanted. A reserved and nice girl like Bri. Other than our looks we were complete opposites in personality. She was adorable and well liked while I tended to piss people off most of the time. My shell was harder to crack than hers. Maybe that’s why I’d never had a boyfriend.

“Where is Abbey now?” Jake met everyone’s eyes except mine.

The deliberate way he ignored me started to annoy me. He was the one who hadn’t realized I wasn’t Bri. Bri really liked him and it broke my heart to think I’d stolen that from them. I needed to tell him that our kiss was a mistake. I knew their feelings for each other were real and like hell would I come here and screw that up. Once I got my answers I’d be out of there. I still wanted to make as few waves as possible in Bri’s life.

“She’s going to be home sometime tonight,” Bri said, hopeful.

Jake raked a hand through his hair. “Well I’m not going anywhere. Especially after that note. Not until Abbey comes home.”

“Me either,” Max said.

Tucker grinned. “Ditto.”

“You guys really don’t need to do that. Sloane and I are fine.”

I voiced the worst-case scenario I could think of since most of our “plans” were dead ends. “What if she doesn’t come home tonight? We need another plan.”

Max raised her eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t she come home tonight?”

“I don’t know. Everything else we’ve done today was a bust. Why not go back to the Kael and Chloe lead? We could go to Kael’s house and get your mom’s phone back.” I might as well have asked them all to jump off the roof by the way they gawked at me.

“No one goes to his place,” Max explained.

“Except my mom,” Bri said. “She helps out with his sick father,” she explained.

Jake turned to her. “What?”

Bri sighed. “You guys have to keep this a secret. Mom didn’t want me to tell anyone.”

“It’s out of the question,” Jake said firmly. “No one is going up there.”

“In any case,” I started, “I think he’s our best lead.”

Jake finally acknowledged me with something close to a death-stare. “We should go to the police.”

“How are we going to explain this?” Bri moved her hand in the air between us.

“And the threat,” I added.

Jake clenched his jaw and took Bri’s hands in his. “You’re not going into that house.”

We were at a standoff in the kitchen: Bri and I against her friends. A warmth spread through me as she defended me to those she trusted. No one ever defended anything I had to say. I blamed whatever mysterious connection we had. Surely she wouldn’t feel the same way if she realized what I’d done with her boyfriend. Jake seemed to have the same idea when his narrowed gaze fell on mine as if Bri couldn’t come up with the conclusion on her own. He’d made the same mistake and I doubted either of us could find a way of telling her without her hating us.

Bri sighed. “Then we will wait for my mom.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sloane

Something crashed and I sat up like a spring from whatever semblance of sleep I’d been getting. I ripped the blanket off my body and stood from the bed. My leg slammed into something hard. I reached for my nightstand for the light. Nothing. I allowed my eyes to adjust while my breathing picked up. I wasn’t home. I was still at Bri’s house and Abbey hadn’t returned by the time we’d all gone to bed. I peered through the darkness and saw Tucker and Max on the floor. I assumed Jake had gone upstairs with Bri. My stomach clenched.

Another thump. This time I knew I didn’t dream it. Had Abbey come home? I stood up and weaved my way through the dark, unfamiliar room. In the front hallway I peeked out the small window next to the door to the silent, unmoving night. I found my way to the bottom of the stairs and crept up them, listening for the sound again.

I had only been upstairs to shower so the layout was even more unfamiliar. I tried to figure out where I’d been sleeping on the couch relative to the second floor.

“Bri,” I hissed into the dark hallway.

Her head popped through the doorway down the hall and I had to stifle a scream that almost burst from my lips. “What the hell?” My bottled fear and frustration made my words come out harsher than expected.

“Did I wake you?” She flipped on the light in the room she was in.

I sucked in a breath, still not used to staring at myself. Did I have that crease in between my eyebrows? “What are you doing?”

She bit her lip, hesitating.

I took a few steps toward her. “What is it?”

Her eyes fell to the floor. “When Mom didn’t come home, I decided to do my own digging. And I think I found something.”

She disappeared into the room and I followed her into what I assumed was Abbey’s bedroom. It was as cozy as the rest of the house and for some reason I had the urge to bury myself under the thick tan blanket of the unmade bed. My eyes rested on as much of the room as I could take in at that moment. A large desk took up one wall next to a bookshelf scattered with so many books that I wondered if it were about to topple over. A part of me wondered if this woman could be my mom.

Of course she’s not your mom
, my rational brain argued. This woman knew my mom, and Bri and I were spitting images of Cara Baker.

Bri knelt next to a box overflowing with keepsakes and more books. I assumed that’s what made the sound that woke me up.

I went to her side as she shoved aside strewn clothes. The same strong energy that crackled between us at the school heated up the space between us. If she felt it, she didn’t give any sign. She twisted around until she sat with her legs crossed next to me, holding a box in her lap. “I needed to know if it were true. If she was hiding something from me. So I took a look around.”

I glanced at the messy room. “A look?”

She rolled her eyes playfully. “Believe it or not, the room looked like this when I came in. I’m the neat freak of the family.”

I swallowed. I tended to be the same way, a trait passed down from my dad. Was he her dad too?

“I found this.” Her eyes dropped to a small wooden box. She lifted the top and pulled out a stack of photos, handing them to me.

I took the photos, careful not to smudge my fingerprints on the glossy side. It took me a second to figure out this wasn’t a normal family photo that Bri’s mom had secreted away. It looked more like a surveillance photo. It was of me at my favorite coffee shop maybe a year or two ago when Dad and I lived in Houston. I wore my favorite faded T-shirt. I flipped to the next photo; it was me leaving the coffee house. My face wasn’t hidden by my hair. A shiver rippled down my spine and my hands turned clammy. I rifled through the remainder of the photos. They were taken the same day, in different locations around our town. I could tell because I wore the same clothes in each of the photos. I flipped them over and saw this was correct, as they were dated all the same day.