The Last House Guest(76)

Had Sadie sneaked out the front while we were distracted?

I tried to picture it. Someone needing to get her out of the house. Looking frantically for the best option. The back door, no longer a choice. The car at the B&B, too far. What would they do? A faceless person looking through the bathroom cabinets, the dresser drawers—for anything. Looking through her purse, seeing the keys there. Finding mine instead.

The tire tracks in the grass I’d seen the next day when Faith’s father dropped me off—because my car had been blocked in.

I sucked in a breath. She had been there. What if she’d been in this very car.

I pulled over abruptly, at the curve of the road heading back into town, staring at the passenger seat. Looking for signs of injury. I ran my hands over the beige upholstery—worn and weary. I jerked up the emergency brake and looked under the seat. There was nothing but dirt, sand, debris—a year of memories.

But I remembered the next morning, when I’d returned for the car. How I’d sat in the seat, feeling a vague unfamiliarity to it. I’d thought, at the time, that it was my entire world, my perspective shifting at the loss of Sadie. But now . . .

My head spun, and I turned the car off. I walked around back, hands trembling, and slipped the key into the trunk lock. A dim light flicked on, and I peered into the empty space.

It smelled faintly of fabric, of gasoline, of the sea.

My hands shook as I ran my fingers across the material. The dark felt was slightly matted, covered with fragments of fibers. It had pulled away from the edges, peeling at the corners, from both time and use.

I took a deep breath to steady myself. Maybe this was just my imagination going three steps too far—forward and back.

I pulled up the flashlight of my phone and shone it into the back corners of the trunk—but it was completely empty. There was a darker spot in the corner, closer to the front, on the right. Just a slight discoloration—I ran my fingers across it but couldn’t be sure of what it was. Vodka, beer—half-empty bottles that could’ve spilled the night of the party. Or a leaking grocery bag in the months that followed. The car was old. It could’ve been anything.

I set the phone down so I could get a closer look, and the light shone up at the surface, catching on a groove on the underside of the metal roof. At the opposite end, on the left. I ducked my head underneath, ran my fingers over it. A dent, some scratches. Another dent beside it. My knuckle fit in the groove. I ran my hands against the cool underside of the trunk. A web of scratches near the seam.

It could be anything. It could be nothing. My mind, like Sadie’s, picturing all the ways death could be so close. My fingers smoothed back the felt peeling away from the corner, and a glint of metal caught in the beam of the flashlight at the corner. I leaned closer, body half tilting into the trunk as I picked it up.

It was a small piece of metal. Probably lost from a bag. Gold, and spiraled, and—

I dropped the metal. Stepped back. Looked again.

Her gold shoes that had been in the box of evidence—missing a piece of the buckle. I’d thought because they’d been worn down, the holes of the strap pulling, the stitching showing, the bottoms scuffed. But the missing piece of her buckle—here, in the trunk of my car.

I looked at the indentations and scratches again.

Like she’d kicked her shoes against the roof of the trunk. Over and over again.

Oh God. Oh God oh God. I dropped the light, dropped my hands to the bumper to steady myself.

Sadie had been in this trunk, alive. Sadie had been here, trying to fight. Trying to live.

I slid to the ground. The cool pavement beneath my knees, my hands braced on the bumper, the bile rising in my throat. The only light on the dark road was from the trunk, a sickly yellow, and I couldn’t get a full breath. Sadie. Sadie had been there. Inches away at the party. And she had been here. In my car, waiting for me to find her. To save her.

The scratches on the trunk—she had wanted to live. All those years courting death, joking about it, and she had fought it. Given it everything she had. Sadie, who I once believed could overcome anything.

I couldn’t breathe. Just a wheeze as I struggled for air.

The headlights from another car shone down the road, and I pulled myself up on the bumper to steady myself. The wheels came to a stop behind me, and the car door opened, but the engine continued running, the lights illuminating the empty road.

“You okay there?” A man’s voice.

I turned to face him, but I had to raise a hand to shield my face from the blinding light, and my eyes watered, picturing Sadie. Sadie alive and then dead. Somewhere between here and there.

I blinked to focus the image before me, and the tears escaped.

“Whoa, whoa.” The shadow in front of the lights grew larger. Broad shoulders, hands held out in front of him. Detective Ben Collins stood in front of me. He placed a hand on my elbow, another on my shoulder, and guided me away from the car to the curb.

The trunk gaped open in front of me, and my stomach heaved again, so I had to rest my head on my arms, folded across my knees. He crouched down so his gaze was level with mine, and I shook my head, trying to focus.

“Have you been drinking?” he asked gently. Close enough to smell the mint on his own breath.

“What? No, no.” I took a deep breath, slowly raised my head.

He looked back at the car, then at me. I finally understood how Sadie had gotten from the party to the bluffs that night. The absolute horror of the thing.