People Like Us(33)
Then I remember why we’re standing here, and the fact that I am directly responsible for her involvement.
Apologize. Do it now. “Fine. You’re the foul-mouthed sidekick, though.”
“I behave ever like a perfect lady.” Nola helps me yank the stone out of the ground and stuff it into the backpack. She zips it up, then stands and attempts unsuccessfully to lift it. “Good sweet holy crap, this is heavy. Give me a hand.”
I brace myself against the rail separating the lake from the road and slip one of the straps over my shoulder and lift. Suddenly a white beam of light swings out over us.
“Duck.” Nola lets go of the backpack and flattens herself on the ground, leaving me holding it alone.
Like a deer staring into the signals of its own doom, I freeze, equally expecting to look into a pair of headlights and the ghost of Jessica Lane hounding me for disturbing the dead. But it’s neither of those. In fact, it’s much worse. It’s Detective Morgan herself, marching down the lake path brandishing a flashlight.
I drop the backpack and start running.
“You! Stop right there!”
I hear Nola shriek and a pair of footsteps pounding behind me. I have confidence in my ability to outrun Morgan. I am in peak physical fitness, seventeen years old and conditioning daily, at the top of my game. She’s probably around thirty-five and may have been an athlete once, but let’s face it, there aren’t many criminals to chase around here. She doesn’t call to me by name, and that gives me hope. I might have a fighting chance to get back without being caught. Nola, on the other hand, is a wild card. Although she’s short, she has to be in pretty good shape if she dances regularly. I can’t afford to stop and look back, but I have to hope that she either split off in another direction or stayed hidden. If she gets caught, I’m as good as caught, too, because I have no reason to believe she’d protect me.
I pound my sneakers on the lake path, taking the curves hard, and then cut away from the dorms toward the gym, hoping to outlast them both. Even if Morgan is fast, I’m going to bank on having more stamina. I round the gym and slow down, listening for footsteps behind me. I can’t hear anything. My heart hammering, I take my phone out of my pocket and consider texting Nola to see if she made it back. I can’t, though. If she’s with Detective Morgan right now, and by some miracle didn’t rat me out, then texting would implicate me.
I duck into the gym and head into the locker room for a quick shower before I go home. Just in case. When I’m toweling off and slipping into the spare change of clothes I keep in my locker for rainy day practices, I see that Nola’s texted.
Close one, she wrote.
My body is still shaking with the adrenaline of the chase and the terror of almost getting caught, but I also feel oddly exhilarated and defiant. It’s the Nola effect, I decide.
You owe me, I text back. I grin and head back to the dorm.
10
By the next evening the news is all over campus: The body of a cat was found near the lake.
“It was probably the same person who murdered Jessica,” Cori says at dinner. “Apparently, the killer was using cats to whet their appetite for human murder. That’s how serial killers start out. Everyone knows that.”
Brie kicks me under the table and smirks. Cori was a major player in the original missing-cat story because she was a family friend of Dr. Klein and, as such, had known Hunter from the time he was a kitten. She took his kidnapping very seriously and led student search efforts. As a person who had regularly been in Dr. Klein’s mansion, she was also the leading authority on how someone could have gotten in and out without being seen while Dr. and Mr. Klein were having dinner, where Hunter was likely to have been at the time, and other forensic matters. She even started a short-lived true-crime podcast about Hunter’s disappearance, but quickly grew bored and dropped it when it became apparent that it was not going to be the next Serial.
She unloads her new set of theories to Brie, Maddy, and me in her rapid-fire speech as I pick the mushrooms out of a chicken quesadilla. It’s a little bittersweet. Quesadilla night was Tai’s and my favorite.
“I thought Jessica committed suicide,” Maddy interrupts.
Cori glares at her. “At this point, anyone still clinging to the suicide theory is in denial because they’re scared, Notorious. Would there still be crime scene tape on her room if it was a suicide? And why would the detectives still be questioning us?”
I snap my head up. “They questioned you, too?”
Cori eyes me dubiously. “Of course. We were witnesses.”
I feel my silverware slipping between my fingers and place it down, wiping my palms on my skirt. “What did you tell her?”
She frowns and tucks a strand of her thick, chin-length brown hair behind her ear. “Him. I talked to the short guy. Lombardi. I told him what we saw. Dead body, very sad, too late to do anything. Now. Back to poor sweet Hunter.”
Nola flutters over and sets her tray down next to me and Cori stops talking. Brie smiles tautly and nods a greeting. Cori and Maddy both gaze up at Nola wordlessly. She looks back at them and then at me.
I take a nervous bite of quesadilla. “You guys know Nola Kent?”
“We keep meeting,” Brie says. She takes a sip of my soda and it strikes me what a territorial move it is. No way is she jealous. I glance at Nola, who is sipping her own drink and watching Brie, and then at Brie, who hangs on to my glass and swirls the straw around.