My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Lake Witch Trilogy #1)(91)

would do the job on her just fine. Or even just a dry-cleaning bag pulled tight over her head, Black Christmas–style.

Speaking of: has there ever been an Independence Day slasher?

Yes: I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. And also I Know What You Did Last Summer. More important, why does the Fourth matter to Theo Mondragon? Jade knocks on her forehead with the knuckle of her thumb, tells herself to wait for tomorrow night, all will be revealed at the Reveal, dummy, it’s not your job to figure it all out.

For right now, what she needs to concern herself with is not being seen, plain and simple. Which should be easy, with night falling. Just, the temptation to use her phone’s flashlight is strong in this one.

“Alone in the Dark, 1982,” she mumbles into the empty house, just to see if anybody gets it.

Silence. Good.

Jade promised herself to wait to use her phone until it hit ten percent, since under ten is when it tends to tank all at once, but she swipes into it at eight percent, dials before even checking the signal.

Her phone informs her that cellular data is temporarily unavailable.

“What the hell?” she asks, carrying her phone high to all corners of the room. Not even a blip, not even a thready iota of a dot that could stand up into a bar.

“Because this is horror,” she reminds herself. Not that it helps.

She executes a neat flipturn at the end of the hall, just allowing herself a glimpse of the big second-floor window before removing herself from the chance of being spotted through it.

But… didn’t she see Theo Mondragon on his cell over at Camp Blood? Didn’t Letha call her from the yacht the other night? How do Founders on the Proofrock side of the lake even call across for a ride?

Jade studies her settings to see if she’s the problem, but it’s not her. She shakes her phone because that always works, then shakes her head at how stupid she is.

So she can’t call the cavalry in. It would be a betrayal anyway, she tells herself. Indians run from the cavalry, not to them. But, were the Blackfeet the ones who scouted for Custer? Jade isn’t sure, and of course can’t look that up now.

That was a hundred and fifty years ago, though. This is now.

And Jade can’t stay up here all night. Staying put in a slasher is just setup for a blade coming through the door you’re leaned up against, and splashing out your mouth.

Going slow, and knowing it’s hopeless from the get-go, Jade takes the stairs down one at a careful time, finally stepping into the long-shadowed kitchen, checking every cabinet for some leftover lunch or a stashed bag of jerky, half a bag of chips that got hidden at a last moment. She drinks from the faucet, only realizing afterward that the spigot is actually pull-down, pull-out—whatever the term is for those ones that come off, have a nifty little hose, can point wherever. Jade detaches it from its magnet base, aims it here and there around the room, understands it’s best she didn’t grow up with one of these. People with these over their sinks must be naive, overly trusting.

She magnets it back to its home, pats it like a good dog, which is exactly when a determined silhouette crosses from one side of the kitchen window to the other, not bothering to look in.

If Jade had been holding coffee to her lips, that mug would be in pieces on the expensive tile floor now. As-is, she just stands there, and a second later she knows that’s what saved her: she didn’t burst into motion in Theo Mondragon’s peripheral vision. She drops fast to her fingertips now, though, her legs gathered under her so she can explode whatever direction. When no doors creak open ten seconds later, then twenty, and when the air pressure inside the house doesn’t seem to change, signaling a door having opened, and when her bat ears can’t detect any floorboards taking on new weight, any rubber soles twisting for a better grip, she hustles into a room in the direction Theo Mondragon had been walking, just to confirm that he’s still moving away, not closer.

Through the window she sees him stepping into the one house she’s already been through.

Two minutes later he emerges, dragging Cowboy Boots— Cody, Cody Cody Cody—by his right heel, the rest of him wrapped in foggy plastic, Tina-style.

Theo Mondragon stands there casing the night for maybe thirty more seconds in which he pulls his own phone out, unlocks it, and stares into it, finally shaking it just as Jade did.

His doesn’t get a signal either. He smiles to himself about it, though, nods, slips the phone back into his pocket, and walks a straight line out from Terra Nova, a flashlight or headlamp coming on once he’s in the trees. It dims a few steps later, then fades completely.

Jade wants to follow, wants to know, but her legs don’t agree.

Instead she counts under her breath until he steps back into the clearing she can see: six hundred and forty-one. Which has got to be something like ten minutes, right? Does he know of a cave over here to stash a body in? Has nothing changed since 1872?

Jade steps back from the kitchen window, careful not to be a body-shaped shadow against the tall silver rectangle the refrigerator is.

But he’s not coming for this house. Not even close to this one.

He goes to the third or fourth house back, his headlamp— she can see that now—a disc of yellow light against the windows from room to room until he steps back out onto the porch to turn the light off, his chest heaving, breath steaming.

He’s just staring at the yacht.