Hemlock 03: Willowgrove (22 page)

A pair of headlights rounded a bend in the street and came to a stop in front of them. Two men stepped out of the car. One walked slowly with a pronounced limp, and we were just close enough to overhear what he said as they confronted the group of party guests.

“We’re looking for Stephen Walsh.” The familiar accent slid down my spine like a chip of ice.

Donovan.

I glanced at Amy’s brother. Ryan Walsh had been adamant that there had been no breach, that Stephen had nothing to do with any leak. Did he really believe that or had he been lying? Was it possible he had sent Donovan after his own son?

For years, I had seen Amy’s father as an example of what a dad should be, but maybe he was more like my own father than I ever would have guessed. Hank could be utterly ruthless and wouldn’t let anything get in his way. Not even family.

“Come on,” muttered Jason, turning and putting a hand on Stephen’s shoulder. The gesture was stiff and awkward, but seeing Donovan seemed to have killed the last of his suspicions about Amy’s brother. At least temporarily. “They know you’re not at the house. We have to get moving.”

Stephen hesitated as, up on the road, one of the party guests was shoved into the back of the car. “I don’t understand. Are they Trackers? Is it because of what I did in the study?” There was an odd, false note to his voice, like maybe he already suspected who the men were and what they were after but didn’t want to admit it.

“No.” I wished there was some easy way to tell Stephen that his father might have sold him out, but the truth was a Band-Aid best ripped off quickly. “It’s probably because of the files you took from CutterBrown.”

“If I go back . . . if I explain things to my father . . .”

“For all we know, your father’s the one who sent them,” said Jason, echoing my own suspicions as he let go of Stephen’s shoulder. “The only way this will be over is if we find
out what was on that hard drive. That will at least give us something to bargain with.”

“Unless you’re planning on holding a séance,” said Stephen bitterly, “I think you can rule out my sister telling any of us where it is.”

“We don’t need a séance.” Three pairs of eyes locked on me as sirens echoed in the distance. “I know where Amy hid the hard drive.”

E
VEN ACROSS THE RIVER, THE GLOW OF FLAMES WAS
impossible to miss. Trey had said houses in the empty subdivision had been set alight, but I counted at least three fires in the downtown core.

None of them looked close to Elm Street. That was something, I guess.

“That’s one of the warehouses near Bonnie and Clyde,” said Kyle, closing the driver’s-side door of his car and coming to stand beside me at the edge of the parking lot. He pointed to the largest blaze.

“How can you tell?” The smell of smoke drifted across the river. It clung to my nostrils and the back of my throat, reminding me of the night the old sanatorium—Willowgrove—had burned.

Kyle drew an invisible line with his finger. “See that big cluster of lights?”

I nodded. They shone like the lights in a football stadium and were impossible to miss.

“That’s Riverside Square. The Trackers put extra lighting
in the park for the rally tomorrow night. The fire looks like it’s about six blocks over.”

Behind us, Jason and Stephen got out of the car. Jason came to stand next to Kyle while Stephen walked to the opposite corner of the parking lot, phone in hand as he continued trying to get news on his grandfather’s condition.

“I’m still not sure I trust him,” said Jason, voice low.

“He wouldn’t have lied—not about Amy,” I said. “I believe him. Besides, we need him. Even if we find the hard drive, we may need his help deciphering the files.”

The three of us fell into silence as we watched patches of Hemlock burn.

“What about the smaller fires?” I asked after a few moments, roughly scrubbing my eyes with the heel of my hand. “What are those?”

Kyle wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I don’t know.”

I thought of all the places I loved downtown: the coffee shop, the fair trade store where Tess bought handmade paper and funky scarves, the used-books store where you could get four books for two dollars, and the restaurant where I had worked before taking off to Colorado without giving notice. Any one of them could be burning right now.

Hemlock was the only real home I had known and it was being torn apart.

“Why would anyone do this?” I asked, chest aching.

Kyle didn’t answer; he just pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. Next to him, Jason was equally silent. I was starting to think maybe there were never any reasons for
the horrible things people did. None that mattered, anyway.

The knowledge that this wasn’t even the night of the rally—that things would probably get worse before everything was over—made my stomach flip. I wished I knew what the packs were planning. If the Trackers and the wolves went to war in the middle of Hemlock, the violence would consume the city, catching a lot of innocent people in its wake.

I pulled in a deep breath and forced myself to turn my back on the fires.

I still had Kyle’s cell, and as we crossed the parking lot, I tried calling Hank. No answer. I don’t know why I bothered. Eve had called this afternoon and gotten nowhere closer to finding out what the wolves had planned for tomorrow night. If he wouldn’t tell Eve, there was no way he’d tell me.

With a small sigh, I slipped the phone back into the inside pocket of my borrowed jacket.

“Any news?” Kyle asked as Stephen approached.

Stephen shook his head. “I didn’t want to tell the hospital who I was and they’re not big on releasing patient information to complete strangers. I left messages and texts with a couple of friends. Maybe one of them can find out something.” With a dejected shrug, he turned his attention to the building in front of us.

Hemlock’s north side had strict zoning rules to ensure the area stayed free of fast-food joints, big box stores, and just about anything else the town’s wealthier families thought would drive down property values. The one exception was the small strip mall near the bridge. It was a miniature oasis
for tired nannies, frazzled parents, and kids looking for a quick sugar fix.

Like a lot of the retail property in town, the strip mall was owned by Jason’s father, but unlike the drab, boxy strip malls he owned on the other side of the river, Matt Sheffield had built this one to be as attractive and inviting as possible. It was practically the anti–strip-mall strip mall. The U-shaped building was a strange mix of Italian and Oriental architecture—a mix that shouldn’t have worked, but somehow did—and the stores all faced a large, shady courtyard—a courtyard complete with a fountain that bubbled away during the summer months.

There was a convenience store, a Chinese restaurant, a dry cleaner’s, a yoga studio, and two cafés. There was also a store that sold mailing supplies and rented mailboxes. I headed straight for the latter. Amy had mentioned getting a box last year after her mom had freaked out over a seven-hundred-dollar pair of shoes she had ordered online.

While Amy hadn’t told me she had actually gone ahead and rented a box, it was the only reason I could imagine her getting Trey to pick her up here, a twenty-minute walk from her house, in the middle of January.

Our only hope was that the box was still under her name. Hank had rented a lot of mailboxes from a lot of different places when I was a kid—it was amazing the number of illegal things you could move through the mail. Most places let you pay for the boxes up front for a set number of months. Depending on how long Amy had rented the box for, we might still be able to get into it—assuming that was what
the second key we’d found in her room actually unlocked.

Fallen leaves crunched under my feet as I crossed the courtyard. Christmas was more than a month off, but small blue lights had been strung in the bare branches of the trees. I glanced at the fountain as I passed. It had been emptied in preparation for the cold, but a layer of leaves had gummed up the drain and several inches of old rainwater and melted snow filled the basin.

We reached the store.

Most of the lights were dark, but one row of flickering fluorescent bulbs lit a wall of mailboxes in an alcove between two sets of glass doors.

Kyle tried the door. It was locked.

“Attention customers,” read Jason, leaning toward a small sign taped in the window. “For twenty-four/seven access to mailbox, please speak to management.”

“You probably pay a deposit and they give you a key to the door,” I said.

“So where’s Amy’s key?” asked Jason, stepping back.

I shrugged. “We only found the one extra key in the window seat.”

“Great. So we have no way in.”

“For someone who tries so hard to make everyone think he’s a tortured bad boy, you are shockingly inept at being a badass,” muttered Kyle. He walked over to a nearby bench. The thing was made of cement and must have weighed a ton. He glanced at Stephen as he bent to lift one end. “Give me a hand.”

With an uneasy look, Stephen did as he was told.

“I don’t think . . .” Jason started to object, but I put a hand on his arm and pulled him away from the front of the store as Kyle and Stephen prepared to hurl the bench.

The sound of breaking glass was unbelievably loud. I held my breath and waited for an alarm to go off, but things stayed mercifully silent. I guess the store wasn’t too worried about people breaking into the alcove.

The bench lay across the door like a beached whale.

“My father is just going to love this,” muttered Jason. Given how much he enjoyed pissing off his parents, I had a hard time believing he was actually that upset at the destruction.

Kyle climbed inside, then reached back and helped me over. Broken glass crunched under my feet and I was glad he had found an old pair of my sneakers in the trunk of his car.

“Someone driving by is going to notice this,” I said, glancing back across the courtyard. The store was one of three that faced the street: anyone who looked would be able to see the broken window.

“With everything happening on the other side of the river, they may not care,” said Kyle, letting go of my hand.

He had a point.

I pulled out Amy’s key as I headed for the bank of mailboxes. The key wasn’t numbered; there was nothing to indicate which box it belonged to.

The stirrings of a long-overdue headache danced at my temple as I went to the mailbox at the top left corner and got to work.

Sometime after box 30, Kyle and Jason went outside to
keep an eye on the street. Not Stephen. He watched me try lock after lock with an intensity that was almost unnerving.

“You don’t have to stay in here with me,” I said, pausing to rub my forehead after I had passed the halfway point. With every lock the key failed to open, the pounding in my skull grew a little bit worse. I didn’t care how chaotic it was across town: sooner or later, that broken window was going to draw attention. We couldn’t afford to stay here long.

Stephen’s eyes flashed. “If you’re right, one of these boxes holds whatever Amy was scared of. I’m not waiting outside.” We were only a few years apart in age, but Stephen’s eyes suddenly made him seem so much older. A lot of the wolves had eyes like that. Including Kyle.

“Okay,” I said—or started to say—as I slipped the key into the next lock. It turned. Box 175.

“Kyle. Jason.” I tried to shout, but my voice came out a whisper. Nevertheless, Kyle was at my side in an instant, Jason right on his heels.

A sudden sense of trepidation flooded me as I stood there and gripped the key. Amy had kept so many secrets, and I wondered if any of us were really ready for what was hidden inside. Steeling myself, I opened the door.

The small pigeonhole was crammed full.

I pulled out old phone bills and credit card statements, delivery notices, junk mail, and a reminder that the one-year rental term on the mailbox ended in December. Nothing looked out of the ordinary—except for a padded envelope near the back.

I let the junk mail and bills fall to the floor as I pulled
the envelope free. There was a note on top of it, held in place by a rubber band. The familiar loop of Amy’s writing was a hand reaching out from the past. It wrapped itself around my lungs and squeezed.

If lease on box runs out, please mail to address on front.

I turned the envelope over. The postage had been paid and a name and address had been written on the front in purple marker.

My name.

My address.

Amy?

It was too much. The tightness in my chest grew to almost unbearable levels.

Without bothering to close the box, I made my way out of the store and to a bench in the courtyard.

I sank down and stared at the envelope, raising my eyes only when the others approached.

“She addressed it to me. Why would she do that?” My gaze locked on Stephen. He was her brother; he was the one who had stolen the files in the first place. Why send the envelope to me and not him?

“Maybe she thought it would be safer,” said Jason. “Maybe she thought her father or someone from CBP would get their hands on it if she sent it to Stephen.”

Hands shaking, I ripped open the envelope and reached inside. “A DVD?” I turned it over in my hand and then reached back inside. I hauled out a second plastic jewel case and a battered iPod. That was it. No hard drive.

The discs were numbered—
1
and
2
written in the same
purple ink as my address—and the iPod was Amy’s old one. Stephen had said it was missing from her room. I turned it over and touched the small rabbit sticker on the back. It was an older model, one she had tossed in a drawer as soon as something better came out.

I pressed the power button. Nothing happened.

“It’s been in that envelope for months,” said Jason. “The battery must have drained.” He glanced at Kyle. “You have a charger in your car, right?”

Kyle took the iPod from me. “Yeah.”

I slipped the DVDs back into the envelope as I stood and then cradled the small bundle against my chest as I trailed Kyle and Jason to Kyle’s Honda, Stephen at my side.