Twisted by Hannah Jayne(24)

Bex clenched her eyes shut and counted slowly until her breathing was at a normal cadence before pushing herself up and glancing out the window. The sedan was gone; the man watching her from the driver’s seat was gone—so why wasn’t the sickening feeling in her gut?





Thirteen


The yellow sunlight was nearly blinding when Bex opened her eyes. The man in the sedan seemed like the last remnants of a bad dream, but she checked out the window anyway, breathing contentedly when she saw that the street was empty. Her relief was short-lived when she turned around and glanced at the clock: eight forty.

“Oh my gosh!” She rifled through her clothes, jumping into her jeans and pulling on a T-shirt as she stumbled down the stairs. “I’m late. I’m so late!”

Denise and Michael sat at the table, staring at Bex with none of the urgency she felt.

“I slept through my alarm!”

“Oh, no, honey,” Denise said, standing. “I turned it off. You had a rough night. We thought you should take it easy today.”

“I’m not a fan of missing school, but I think Denise is right on this one. You’ll have an extra day so you can just relax and…regroup.”

Denise and Michael shared a glance, and Bex was struck with a sour feeling in her gut.

“I’m okay.”

Michael smoothed the newspaper in front of him under his palms and Bex could see that Darla was still on the front page, the same picture of her that the media and the school had been using, the same photo that looked so much like the girl with the scarf. She had to look away.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Bex forced herself to nod her head.

“Because you can stay here.” Michael was gesturing to the house, but the thought of hanging around alone there made Bex even more certain that she wanted to be anywhere else—even if that was at school.

Denise looked from Bex back to Michael. “If you’re absolutely sure…”

Bex nodded. “I am.”

“Okay then,” Michael said. “Grab a piece of toast, and I can drop you on my way to the university.”

The ride to the school with Michael was long and silent but not uncomfortably so. He called the administration office on the way and told them that Bex would be there. “You’re all set,” he said to her, grinning as he pulled the car to a stop in front of the school.

“Jeez.” He leaned forward, craning his neck to see over Bex’s head. “More media. They’re vultures.”

Bex shuddered. “I don’t know what else they think they’re going to uncover here.” She hiked her backpack up and stepped out of the car, leaning down toward Michael. “Thanks for the ride.”

The reporters were still huddled in strange groups all over the front grounds of the school, but the frenetic bustle was gone—until Bex stepped onto campus. They immediately started toward her as if some sort of starter gun had gone off, calling her, “miss” and “young lady” as they closed in on her. Her panic started to rise and Bex shrank back, exposed, a deer caught in the laser-sharp sight of a hunter.

She saw the school’s security guard rushing through the gate toward her, barking at the reporters to get back and leave her alone, but nothing would stop them as they surrounded her, shoving microphones in her face and flicking on enormous lights that seemed to blank out the sun.

“Miss, miss, are you a student here?”

Bex felt her face flush, felt heat all the way to the hair follicles on the top of her head. Her stomach lurched and her palms were sweating. She couldn’t have answered the woman even if she wanted to. Her mouth was dry, her tongue a deadweight. She was seven years old again and everyone wanted to know what she knew, whether her father shared anything other than the macabre trinkets of his deeds with her. They wanted to know what she said to indict him, when she realized what he’d done was wrong.

“Please go away.” Bex was surprised by her own voice. “Please, we don’t have anything to say.”

It was exactly what her grandmother had said when they stepped into the big marble hallway in the courthouse after her father’s pretrial hearing.

The reporters bustled there too, but all Beth Anne could hear was the reverberating sound of her grandmother’s voice, half pleading, half demanding. There was the blinding flash of a camera snapping, and while Beth Anne tried to blink away the black blobs in front of her eyes, she saw her father in his nice, gray suit watching, the courtroom door just open enough for him to peer out without being seen.

Her heart swelled, and she knew that her daddy could stop it, would save her like he always did.

“Daddy!”

The horde of reporters followed Beth Anne’s gaze and turned on her and her grandmother then, shoving past them to get to Beth Anne’s father before his lawyer whisked him away. The last thing Beth Anne remembered seeing was the flash of silver around her father’s wrists, his hands clasped together, and the awkward way he walked, his ankles shackled. She had betrayed him again.

“What is your name, please?”

“Did you know the deceased?”

“Are you a student? Are you involved in the case?”

Bex took a step back, the lights and camera flashes blinding her, cell phones shoved in her face. She held up an arm to protect herself and clamped her mouth shut against the bile that tore through her stomach and itched at the back of her throat.