Latent Danger (On the Line #2)(39)

Shauna nodded. “I thought so, too. Still, we should see where she was at the relevant times. Rule her out, at least.”

Zach looked over to Liz Gordon. The girl was watching them intently, but looked away when she caught his gaze.

“Maybe we should see if the captain can approve a detail for her until we catch...” he almost said this guy, but realized it was more likely they were dealing with at least a pair of people, and he wasn’t convinced both of those people would be male, at this point.

Shauna nodded. “I still want to get her home now and stay with her until her parents get back. Besides,” she turned away from Liz and stepped into Zach’s space, speaking low so no one could overhear, “I have a feeling Liz might know more than maybe she even realizes she does. She lives next to Sawyer. Maybe there’s more that she’s seen than she even recognizes. I’d like to try to get her to relax more with me. Maybe she’ll open up.”

Zach gave a nod. Shauna handed him a piece of paper with two names and a phone number. Brent Gordon and Anna Elizabeth Kenworth-Gordon. Liz Gordon’s parents. Leave it to the mother to have four names.

“What’s wrong?”

Until Shauna spoke, Zach hadn’t even realized he’d been frowning at the paper. “I don’t know,” he said, rubbing a hand over his chest. “Just thinking. I can’t shake this feeling that there’s a connection we can’t see somehow.”

“I wish I could say I thought you were wrong,” Shauna said, “but I don’t. We’re missing a connection. And it must be a connection that’s not easily seen from anyone on the outside. Not family, not the school. But it’s there.” She looked back to Liz. “We just need to find it.”





Chapter Twenty-seven





Kate’s hands shook as she waited in the hallway outside the locker room. She could hear the practice wrapping up. She just had to stay strong about this for the next few minutes. They would cave fast.

The clatter of the team coming couldn’t be mistaken. She slipped further back in the doorway she waited in.

“Taylor, you need to get your shit together before the season starts,” one of them said. She recognized it as Kyle’s voice. “We’ll get our asses handed to us and lose our standing if you keep playing like that.”

“Hell no, he doesn’t.” That was Mike Davies. “Sawyer will be cleared and back in school before the season starts. The cops will have to admit he couldn’t have killed the girls. He has witnesses.”

There was grumbling and all of them talking over each other as half the team argued Sawyer would be back in no time and the other half said they thought his family would move away after the scandal.

It struck Kate that not a single one of them seemed to realize Sawyer had committed rape and would be standing trial for that, whether he was a murderer or not. Or, if any of them realized it, they didn’t speak up. No one in that building was speaking up for Carrie and Adrienne.

Kate closed her eyes. She was standing up for them.

She heard the boys file into the locker room and the door slam shut.

“What’s that smell?”

Kate jogged to the door and slid the metal chain she’d brought through the handles, wrapping the length around several times before bolting it in place.

“What the fuck? What is that?”

There were more voices, more questions, but Kate ignored them. She called in through the door.

“It’s lighter fluid and there’s a lot of it!” Her voice shook but she cleared her throat and shoved past the nerves. She was speaking for her friends now. Speaking for Sawyer’s victims. “I’m going to light it if you don’t all start telling the truth about what Sawyer did and where he was when my friends were killed.”

There was cursing and a lot of noise as she saw dark forms through the frosted glass panes of the door. They were rattling the door, trying to push through, but she knew they couldn’t break the chains. The glass was covered in metal mesh so that wouldn’t be an escape route for them either.

They didn’t know it, but she didn’t plan to hurt any of them. There was a small amount of lighter fluid sprinkled in the room, but it was well away from the door. She’d also sprinkled a lot of plain water around. She’d made sure that the trail of fluid they saw coming around the edges of the room and out the door—the ones she would supposedly light—were water only and that the lighter fluid was well away from sources of flame.

She just needed them to smell it, to think she would do it. To think they might be trapped in there with a fire if she did.

“Kate? What’s going on?”

Kate whirled to see Geoff Edwards, Adrienne’s uncle, coming toward her.

The guys in the locker room began to shout and the racing her heart had been doing a minute ago kicked into high gear. If she thought her heart might break right through her chest before, now she was sure of it.

She pressed her back against the doors and held the lighter in her hand up, flicking it to start the flame. “Stop! I’ll light the room if you come closer.”

Mr. Edwards put a hand out, but she backed away. “Kate, everyone’s looking for you. Your parents are worried about you.”

Kate lifted her chin. “Well, as you can see, I’m fine.”