Ransom River

RANSOM
RIVER

Also by Meg Gardiner

JO BECKETT NOVELS

The Nightmare Thief

The Liar’s Lullaby

The Memory Collector

The Dirty Secrets Club

EVAN DELANEY NOVELS

China Lake

Mission Canyon

Jericho Point

Crosscut

Kill Chain

DUTTON

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For Stephen King

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Acknowledgments

About the Author

Then

T
he night was meant for shooting stars. Before the shadow rose, or the sirens moaned, the sky was cut by a meteor shower: ice on fire, streaks of light that tore the air. Maybe meteors would crash into the mountains, Rory thought. Or into West River Elementary School. Or into the Chevron gas station downtown. That, she thought, would cause a supermassive fireball. That made sneaking out at one in the morning worth the risk.

Or it should have.

In her bedroom, in the dark, she tied her Converse All Stars. Outside the window, the sky boomed at her, looming and endless and pounded white with stars.

The house was school-night quiet. She turned her ear to the closed door but heard nothing—no TV, no talk or laughter from her mom and dad’s room. Pepper was in his dog bed in the kitchen. Everybody was asleep.

Beyond the window a voice whispered. “Rory.”

Seth pressed his hands to the screen. His eyes swam with starlight.

“Getting my stuff,” she whispered back.

She shoved binoculars into her backpack and slung it across her shoulders. The Power Rangers felt like a shield, even though the bright plastic might shine under the streaking light of a meteor. As if a falling star could
read
R. Mackenzie
written in black marker across the pack and aim for her. But maybe. Like her dad said sometimes,
Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.

Seth stretched on his toes to look in her window. “Hurry up.”

She stuck the flashlight in her sweatshirt pocket. She slid the screen open, boosted herself onto the sill, and jumped out.

The air was chilly. She crouched beside Seth on the grass. In the night he seemed nothing but blond hair and a crazy smile. Beyond the lawn and avocado tree and her mom’s tomatoes, beyond the cinder-block back wall, the countryside seemed to murmur at them.

Ransom River, most of it, was the other way, out her front door. The city, population 172,000 according to the poster in her fourth-grade classroom, had fallen asleep. Streetlights kept watch, like a giant skein of Christmas lights. Farther away, over the mountains, Los Angeles was a smudgy yellow glow in the sky. Like the post-thermonuclear scene in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day,
which her parents didn’t know she had secretly watched at Seth’s.

She hunkered like a commando and pointed north, at black hills that swallowed the stars. “We can see best from the Pinnacles.”

Seth snickered. “This isn’t a jailbreak.”

“My parents will
kill
me if they catch me sneaking out.”

Mom would look worried and disappointed. Dad would get the black-cloud face and call her sternly to attention on the carpet, saying,
Aurora Mackenzie, this is preposterous.
And she would flush and stutter
sorry
and hide in her room.

Not tonight. They ran across the cool grass. At the back wall Seth jumped, grabbed the top, and pulled himself up. Rory was a step behind.

And from the dirt road on the other side of the wall, headlights caught Seth and outlined him in the night.

He froze. The headlights belonged to a heavy vehicle, maybe a hundred yards away, bouncing slowly toward them. It looked like a delivery van bumping in their direction along the dirt path.

Seth hesitated only a moment. In a hard whisper he said, “Come on. We can make it before they get here.”

Rory grabbed his leg. “Wait.”

There was no reason to run in front of a big old van at one in the morning. Except Seth Colder wanted to do it. It was a dare. The van rattled toward them. Seth glanced down at her, and the look on his face seemed like a promise. This was an adventure. Rory boosted herself up.

The van’s headlights popped to brights. They lit Seth up like a paranormal creature.

Rory jumped back down and yanked on his leg so hard he fell to the ground. They bungled to a heap on the grass. On the far side of the wall the van ground to a stop. Its door creaked open.

“Crap,” Seth said.

Rory huddled to her feet against the wall. “We can’t get in trouble for being in my own backyard. It’s my house. It’s Mackenzie property.”

“What if it isn’t the UPS guy?”

The engine gargled. Gingerly, Rory stood on tiptoe to see over. Her blood turned to cold water. The van was stopped a few yards away on the dirt road. In front of it a figure stood silhouetted, feet planted wide. Just standing there. Looking.

She crouched back down. “What does he want?”

“What does Freddy Krueger want?”

Her skin seemed to zing, like she’d touched an electric socket with wet fingers. “Tree house.”

She’d never seen Freddy Krueger, but Seth had three big brothers and snuck along whenever they did things. Freddy Krueger had knives for fingers and killed teenagers. She ran low along the wall to the avocado tree. Its leaves were dark and slick in the starlight. She dashed underneath it with Seth hard at her side. Outside the wall, the van rumbled.

“Who is he?” Seth said.

“Don’t want to know.”

She shimmied up the tree trunk. Seth squirreled up behind her. They
clambered into the tree house and crouched on the creaking planks and peered out through the leaves. The headlights of the van caught the upper reaches of the tree.

“Think he can see us?” she whispered.

Seth shook his head.