Buried (Bone Secrets, #3)(82)

The two men locked gazes for a split second. Chris saw shock in Michael’s eyes.

“Bullshit.” Michael broke the moment. “You had nothing to be jealous of. Mom and The Senator thought you were perfect.”

“Doesn’t mean I thought I was. I wanted to be more like you.”

“Jesus Christ. Once I realized you probably weren’t coming back, I tried to turn myself into you. Tried to show more interest in The Senator’s job, tried to make my schoolteachers happy. That lasted about a month.

“I had so much guilt. Did you know I lied about being sick to get out of that field trip? For years, I blamed myself for you getting taken. If I’d been there, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe I could have talked him into releasing you and taking me instead. Fuck. I figured Mom and The Senator hated me because you were gone and they were stuck with me. The lazy kid, the school skipper and skateboarder who nearly flunked out of math. How many times do you think they said, ‘If only Michael had vanished instead of Daniel’?”

“They never said that!”

“They did in my brain. I believed they were too polite to say it out loud.”

Chris stared at his brother. He’d often wondered how Michael had handled being left behind. As a kid, he’d figured his brother probably missed him on one level but cheered that he was an only child on another.

The Ghostman had wreaked havoc on everyone.

“I had no idea,” Chris said quietly. “You know those are probably normal thoughts for a kid who experienced what you went through, but Mom and The Senator always loved you. They didn’t wish you were gone.”

Michael shrugged. “You have to love your own kid.”

“No sane person wishes for their kid to be harmed.”

“I couldn’t keep the thoughts from occurring.”

“Did you ever talk to someone?”

“A therapist? Yeah, I did that a few times. They wanted me to talk about my feelings too damned much. I just wanted them to help certain thoughts go away. I shoulda seen a hypnotist instead.”

An overwhelming affection for his brother touched Chris. Michael had been in pain, too. They shouldn’t have hurt alone.

He should have told the truth twenty years ago.

“You didn’t finish your story,” Michael prodded. “What happened to Sylvia Vasquez, the driver?”

“Oh.” Chris struggled to focus. He was still thinking about Michael, young teenage Michael wishing he was dead instead of his brother.

“Sylvia coordinated the whole tour. She was a lot more than just a driver.”

“I remember. She seemed to do a little bit of everything at the school.”

“Well, we’d all gotten back on the bus and were starting to leave the parking lot when the Ghostman flagged us down. He was waving a jacket at us, like one of us had left something behind during the tour. And he was shouting her name like he was familiar with her.”

“So maybe he knew her?”

“I saw her face. I don’t think she knew him. But he got her attention, and she stopped the bus. When she opened the door for him, he said that one of us had left behind a coat, and he stepped on the bus.”

“What were the kids doing?”

“Everyone sorta looked at each other, waiting to see who admitted leaving a coat. Sylvia turned in her seat to look at us, and that’s when he crouched down and revealed the gun wrapped in the coat. He pointed it at Sylvia and told her to drive.”

“Holy crap. And she just did what he said?”

“He eventually pointed the gun at Kendall, who was in the front seat. That made Sylvia drive.”

“No one saw the bus leave,” said Michael. “They asked for tips all over the city, and no one came forward to say they’d seen the bus. How in the hell did it just vanish?”

Chris shook his head. “We drove right through plenty of traffic. A million times, I wanted to flag someone and say we needed help, but he watched us like a hawk. Kendall was crying. He had the gun on her the whole way. Most of the kids were crying at one point or another. He kept saying he just needed a ride, and if we’d take him where he needed to go, he’d let us go safely.

“The first thing he did when we got to the woods was shoot Sylvia Vasquez. Then threaten to do the same to everyone else if we didn’t obey him.”

Michael was silent as he drove.

Chris looked out the window. How many times had he relived that bus ride? If he’d flagged another motorist. If he’d tackled the Ghostman as his attention waned for a second. His life and everyone else’s could have been different.

“You were only a kid,” Michael said. “Nothing you could have done would have made a difference.”

Mind reader.

Chris wiped at his cheek. One day he might actually believe that.





It felt like she’d been in the trunk forever.

Jamie dozed in and out, the scenery never changing. Dark. Confined. The small access Mr. Tattoo had opened from the car to the trunk had probably saved her life. The cool air was heavenly. She was still thirsty, but at least she didn’t need to pee. Thank God for small miracles, because she had a hunch he didn’t want to be a bathroom escort.

Hopefully, she wasn’t getting too dehydrated. No muscle cramps yet.