Possess (20 page)

Twenty-Nine

M
ATT FOLLOWED HER DOWN THE
hall to her room, and it wasn’t until the door clicked shut that he seemed to snap out of his stupor.

“Shutting me in?” he smirked.

“Shutting them out.” Did he notice the tremor in her voice? She couldn’t help it with him in her room and their parents down the hall, completely absorbed in their own drama.

They stared at each other. Matt was suddenly shy, and Bridget couldn’t decide whether she wanted him to kiss her again or just go back to the way he’d been earlier in the day when they drove up to Geyserville: silent and strong.

Geyserville. That’s right. There was a reason why she’d invited Matt over in the first place. She spun around and opened her closet door, pushing the clothes aside as far as they would go.

“The closet?” Matt laughed. “Really?”

“Shut it, perv.” Bridget smiled. She stretched her hand to the back of her closet, groping blindly in the dark, and eventually landed on a doorknob. “A little help, please?”

Matt gingerly stepped over her boot collection and squeezed in next to her. “Is that another door?”

“These old houses are weird. There’s a room off my mom’s bedroom that connects through this closet.”

Matt leaned his shoulder against the door. “Why don’t we just go through the door in your mom’s bedroom, then?”

“Because she pushed a dresser in front of it after my dad died, smartass.”

“Oh. Good reason.”

Bridget twisted the doorknob and threw her weight against the hidden door. It opened a fraction of an inch, then stopped.

“Something must be in front of it,” Matt said.

“Push!” Bridget ordered. Matt crouched down and put his legs into it. There was a deep groan from the other side of the door, then the obstacle beyond gave way. The door flew open, and Bridget and Matt tumbled forward into the room.

Bridget landed on top of him. “You’re heavier than you look,” Matt grunted.

“Bite me.”

“I just might.”

Bridget rolled her eyes and pushed herself up, but Matt grabbed her on either side of her waist. Before she could protest, he yanked her back down on top of him.

His kiss was stronger this time, less like he was afraid of breaking her.

She kissed him back. Deep and hungry. She wanted to feel his lips and his tongue against hers. Needed them.

She’d been afraid last time: afraid of what she might feel, afraid that she was doing it wrong. But something deep inside her ignited as Matt’s hand snaked up into her curly mess of hair, his fingers twirling her strands until they felt hopelessly entangled. With a sound somewhere between a growl and a groan, she pressed her body into his, feeling every angle and crevice of his frame. The soft spots and the hard spots.

Matt slid his free hand under her T-shirt just at the small of her back, pulling her even closer. His lips moved down to her chin, then to the soft skin between her jaw and her neck. Bridget closed her eyes and moaned, a deep, aching sound that started as a dull rumbling in her belly before it escaped her lips. Her breaths came shallow and fast as she threw her head back. He took her hint and ran his lips over the sensitive flesh of her neck. It was like a million tiny explosions going off in her body all once, beginning at her lips and neck and extending downward, warming every inch of her body. Downward, until they mingled with something even more explosive deep within her.

The familiar tingling ignited in the pit of her stomach. It spread faster this time, swamping her mind with its electricity, its power. It felt exactly like . . .

Bridget rolled off Matt and scrambled to her feet. She felt like she was going to be sick.

“What’s wrong?” Matt asked, his voice thick and raspy.

“We, uh, we don’t have much time,” Bridget said. She turned her back and pretended to straighten her shirt so he couldn’t see her panic.

She heard him sit up and clear his throat. “Bridge, are you sure you’re okay? I hope you’re not—”

“I’m fine.” She turned to him with a faint smile. “Really.” Yeah, perfectly fine except apparently banishing demons and making out with you give me the same sick thrill. PERFECTLY FINE, MATT, THANK YOU!

“Oh. Okay.” Matt got to his knees and looked around. “Where are we?”

“My dad’s study.”

“I thought his office was downstairs?”

“It is.” Bridget stepped over a pile of books and hit the light switch near the other door that led into her parents’ bedroom. It was a small space overshadowed by a large window looking out on the backyard. Furnishings were minimal: a leather chair like you’d see in a coffeehouse, a low table, and a wardrobe knocked askew by the closet door. And books, piles and piles of books.

“Downstairs is the office where he saw his private clients, the ones he had before he joined Darlington’s clinic. The police searched it after the murder, but no one thought about coming up here. This was his favorite room in the house, and after he died my mom couldn’t handle looking at it from her bedroom.”

Matt ran a finger over the coffee table and held it up, covered in a layer of dust. “So no one’s been in here in months?”

Bridget nodded. “Since about two weeks after the murder.”

“And if your dad was hiding something, something important—”

“This is where it would be.”

“Okay then.” Matt headed for the wardrobe while Bridget tackled the book piles. There were none of the professional volumes and medical journals that filled the bookcases in both of her dad’s offices; these were his favorite reads. Mysteries and thrillers, a biography of Willie Mays, some pictorial histories of San Francisco.

“Seems to be mostly old stuff,” Matt said. He had a leather box balanced on his knee. “Yearbooks, old letters, photos.”

“Keep looking.” Though for what, she wasn’t sure. Would her dad have kept the missing Undermeyer files hidden or just piled among the books?

The books were a bust, so Bridget moved on to the coffee table. Old
Sports Illustrated
s and some half-finished crossword puzzles from the Sunday paper, both frozen in time to that horrible afternoon so long ago.

No, not so long. With everything that was happening, her father’s death seemed close again, tangible like it was all happening anew. Only this time she didn’t feel as helpless as she had before. This time she could do something so her father’s death wouldn’t be in vain.

“Oh my God,” Matt exclaimed.

Bridget bolted to his side. “What? What did you find?”

“Is this you?” he said, holding up an old snapshot.

Bridget snatched the photo from his hands. It was a picture of a seven-year-old Bridget in a pink Sleeping Beauty princess gown, complete with tiara, plastic light-up princess shoes, and glitter wand, which she was dabbing on the head of her infant brother like she was granting him a wish. “Holy crap.”

Matt was trying desperately to hold back his laughter. “I’ve never seen you in so much . . . pink.”

“Shut it.”

“Please tell me,” he said with a smirk, “that you still have the dress.”

Bridget shoved the photo back into the wardrobe. “I hate you. A lot.”

“I know.” Matt winked and he closed the wardrobe door. “There’s nothing else here, though.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I checked and double-checked. Nothing.”

Bridget sat down on the floor. Come on, think! Where would he have hidden it?

“Bridget?” Her mom’s voice drifted in through the open closet door. “Bridget, Sergeant Quinn is leaving, and I think Matt should probably go too.”

“Dammit.” Bridget ducked back through her closet door, Matt close behind. “Okay, Mom,” she called out, trying to sound normal.

Matt pulled the door closed behind him and stepped out of the closet. “I guess that means I need to go.”

Bridget cast a glance at her closet door, trying not to look disappointed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll call me? If you need anything?”

Bridget nodded.

“You’ll call me even if you don’t?”

Bridget tried to keep the corners of her mouth from bending up into a goofy smile, but she couldn’t. What had happened to her? A few kisses and she was completely under Matt Quinn’s spell. Where was badass Bridget who didn’t need anyone?

Matt took a step closer. “Will you?”

Bridget melted. “Yes.”

“Good.” Matt leaned down and kissed her lightly, then opened the bedroom door and, with one last flash of his smile, slipped into the hall.

Thirty

T
HEY SAT IN THE SAME
seats—Bridget, Hector, and Brad—at the last cafeteria table on the left. Their trays held the same familiar lunches: Brad’s piled high with a precarious tower of sandwiches, Bridget’s grilled cheese and Diet 7Up, Hector’s weight-conscious bag lunch. It was the same, and yet everything was different because of the empty seat to Bridget’s left. Peter’s seat.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Brad said at last, breaking the silence. His sandwiches lay untouched.

Hector stared at the empty seat. “Yeah.”

“I mean, I was just tutoring with him on Friday. I can’t believe it.”

“Um . . .” Hector fidgeted with the zipper on his hoodie. “Brad, you know, if you still need help with algebra . . . I mean, I could totally, you know, help.”

Bridget did a double take. Hector just volunteered to tutor his secret crush? That was the ballsiest thing he’d ever done.

“Yeah, man,” Brad said with a smile. “That’d be awesome. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Bridget was about to say something when she felt Hector’s shoe nudge her under the table. She let it drop. Now wasn’t the time to tease Hector about Brad.

“I just don’t get what he was doing at school that night,” Brad said.

“Duh,” Hector said, nodding his head in Bridget’s direction.

“It’s not Liu’s fault,” Brad said.

“I’m not saying it is. But how many text messages did
you
get from Peter Saturday night?”

Bridget’s eyes dashed between Brad and Hector’s faces. “You too?”

“A dozen, at least,” Hector said. “Before I turned my phone off.”

“I got, like, eight from him,” Brad said. “But I was at the dance so I didn’t notice till the next day.”

Hector raised his eyebrows. “Bridge?”

“Thirty-seven.” Bridget pushed her tray away and sank her forehead onto crossed arms.

Hector dropped his diet shake onto the metal table. “Thirty-seven?”

“Damn,” Brad said under his breath.

Bridget didn’t raise her head. “Yeah, I know.”

“What were they like?” Hector asked.

“Like he was going through the five stages of grief,” Bridget said, sitting up. “But then near the end they got really . . .” Bridget remembered the threats Peter had texted her, the ones she didn’t get until after he was dead. “Ugly.”

Hector held out his hand. “Gimme.”

With a sigh, Bridget handed over her cell phone. She guessed Hector and Brad deserved to see them, even though those thirty-seven text messages weren’t from the Peter Kim she’d known most of her life. They were from someone else, someone whose jealousy had turned into a rage so violent it had gotten him killed.

She wasn’t going to mention that part.

“Damn,” Hector said as they scrolled through the texts.

Brad whistled. “I can’t believe Peter wrote these.”

“Believe it,” Bridget said.

“I’ve just never heard him swear like this. Ever.”

“I know.”

Bridget’s phone buzzed. Incoming text. “Give it.”

A sly smile appeared on Hector’s face. “Douchebag Quinn?” he said, reading the sender’s name. “You changed his name in your phone to Douchebag Quinn?”

Ouch. She forgot she’d changed it after he got her grounded. She was going to have to fix that. “Just give it.”

“‘R U OK?’” Brad read aloud. “‘Worried. Call me ASAP.’”

“Give it!” Bridget shot her hand across the table to grab the phone, but Brad held it out of her reach.

The phone buzzed again, and Brad leaned back on the bench to read it. “‘Miss U.’”

Bridget dropped her forehead to the table with a thud. “Kill me.”

“Oh. My. GOD!” Hector said. “You’re dating him, aren’t you?”

“Um . . .” Bridget thought of the brief make-out session on the floor of her dad’s study, of Matt’s sweet good-bye when he left. “We haven’t really talked about—”

“You totally made out with him,” Brad said, tossing her phone onto the table.

Bridget raised her head. “Um . . .”

“Oh. My. GOD!” Hector repeated, and kicked her under the table. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”

“I, er, was a little busy this weekend.”

“Yeah,” Brad laughed. “Busy.”

Bridget yawned. The strain of the last few days had caught up with her, and all she wanted to do was climb into bed and go to sleep.

“Bridge, maybe you should go home early,” Hector said.

“Yeah, Liu. I don’t think anyone’s going to give you static after . . . well . . .” Brad’s eyes darted to the empty seat next to Bridget. “You know.”

She had history, show choir—which had been temporarily moved out of the church and into the gym—and Latin left for the day. She didn’t really want to spend an hour in a classroom with Father Santos or see Alexa in show choir, and the thought of sitting through Latin was about as appealing as a
Jersey Shore
marathon.

“Maybe you’re right.” She grabbed her untouched lunch tray. “I’ll go see Mrs. Freely. Talk to you guys later.”

“Went home early,” Bridget typed into her phone. “Call me l8r.” She hit send, and the text to Matt Quinn sped off into the cellular unknown.

She rolled over in bed and pulled the covers up under her chin. A nap. A nap would be perfect right about now. If only she could turn her damn brain off.

Which, of course, she couldn’t. There were too many elements swirling around up there to let her sleep. Peter Kim. Watchers. Alexa’s eyes. Matt’s lips. Gah! Matt’s lips were
not
a part of the puzzle. She needed to focus. She needed to find that missing file.

There had to be something she’d overlooked, some connecting clue that her dumb, stubborn eye hadn’t picked up on.

“Where is it, Dad?” she called out loud. “Where is the file?”

Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat
.

Phantom paws padded across her bedroom floor. Bridget sat up in bed. Almost immediately, the scratching commenced at the door in the back of her closet.

Always the same pattern: Bridget heard the animal’s paws pattering down the hall or across her room, ending with the scratching in her closet. She fell back against her pillow. If she waited long enough, maybe it would go away.

CREAK!
Bridget sat up again. That was new. That was different. She crawled to the edge of her bed and peeked into her closet. A thin sliver of light shone through the darkness. The door into her dad’s study was ajar.

Weird. Matt must not have closed it all the way when they rushed through, and whatever had been making the scratching noise was able to push the door open.

Bridget slipped out of bed and into her closet. Her dad’s study was tiny: one open door and no place to hide. If a real animal came that way, it was trapped.

Bridget peered into the study. It was exactly how she and Matt had left it—wardrobe angled away from the door, coffee table with its grime-encrusted magazines, single bookcase, single chair. No cat—real or supernatural—anywhere to be seen.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch
.

Not at the door this time. From inside the room.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch
.

Bridget’s eye caught a flurry of dust from the far corner, as if something was clawing at a spot on the floor, disturbing the layer of fine dust. It billowed upward, thousands of tiny specks illuminated in a shaft of sunlight streaming through a crack in the blinds. The scratching continued, and as the cloud of dust thickened, it began to condense, contorting itself into a definite shape. Bridget’s mouth went dry. A figure formed before her eyes: bushy tail and squat legs, furry head and lopsided ears. The dust cloud looked exactly like Mr. Moppet.

She crouched in the closet, terrified of disturbing the ghost cat’s frantic digging. Digging, yeah, that’s what it was. Mr. Moppet’s ghost was trying to dig its way into the floor of her dad’s study.

What had she said just before Mr. Moppet scurried across her bedroom floor? “Where is it, Dad? Where is the file?”

Bridget sucked in a breath. It couldn’t be, could it?

“Dad?”

The undulating figure of the cat stopped clawing at the floor and craned its neck around until it stared right at her. Tears welled up in Bridget’s eyes. Staring back at her from the ethereal dust cloud of the phantom cat were the soft, almond-shaped eyes of her father.

Those eyes held her gaze for what felt like an eternity as heavy drops spilled uncontrollably down Bridget’s cheeks.

The cat gave the floor one last scratch with his paw. Then the force holding the dust cloud together vanished in an instant, and the individual particles drifted upward into a shapeless blob.

“Dad!” Bridget cried. She scrambled into the study. The dust hung in the air, no longer her father. Just dust. Just nothingness.

He’d been there all along, trying to help her. He was trying to show her something.

Bridget knelt on the floor. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he was gone, that she’d been left with all this. The ache in her heart was back, sharp and cold like she’d just been stabbed with an icicle. She’d hidden the grief for so long, but she’d never really escaped from it, and now the full force of her father’s death engulfed her. Bridget hung her head in her hands and wept.

Bridget wasn’t sure how long she sat there, her chest heaving with each wretched sob, her eyes clenched tight against the raw, searing pain of loss. As her breath slowed, she felt a warm, furry body brush against her legs. It rubbed its face against her knee, then turned and pressed its whole body into her, just like Mr. Moppet used to do with Sammy.

Without opening her eyes, Bridget reached down and felt the soft fur of a cat. She stroked her hand down its back and up through the bushy tail, and she felt Mr. Moppet’s throaty purr. In her memory, no cat had ever voluntarily been that close to her.

“I miss you, Dad.” Bridget squeezed her eyes closed as she continued to run her fingers through the cat’s velvety fur. “I miss you so much.”

The cat let out a single meow, then the firm body faded to nothingness. Bridget was alone.

She sat with her eyes closed for a few moments. Her tears had stopped, her breath came calm and easy, and the tightness in her chest that had been with her for the last year evaporated. Her dad was dead, that would never change, but she’d gotten a second chance to say good-bye.

Bridget blinked her eyes open and realized she was staring directly at the spot at which the phantom cat had been clawing. The dust had settled back onto the floor, coating the wooden beams and gathering in the crevices to form little gray channels between the planks. But a few of them looked as if they had been broken. A horizontal line of dust bisected several of the wooden planks. Odd. Bridget leaned forward, drawing her nose to within a few inches of the beams. Something wasn’t right: The broken line looked like it had been cut through with some sort of power tool.

She slipped a fingernail into the crevice and wiggled the board. The entire corner of wooden floor shifted.

Bridget dashed to her closet and grabbed a wire coat hanger, then unbent the hook and shoved it down into the crevice. It easily poked down several inches into a compartment beneath. Twisting the hanger so the curved end rotated beneath the broken floorboards, she carefully pulled up and out. The flooring popped up just enough for her to get her fingers beneath it, and she pried the compartment open.

It was a small space, no bigger than a shoebox, and it held a large yellow envelope.