The Herd(54)
* * *
—
I woke and lay in bed for a moment with my eyes closed. Then it all came rushing in, like someone had turned on a cold tap: Katie next to me, Ratliff in the station, and, with a dizzying lurch, Eleanor, Eleanor frozen like a venison steak, Eleanor’s neck with its rimy crust of blood.
My stomach seized and I rolled over, clutching it, wishing wildly I could back up into my dreamland, where none of this was reality. A few feet away, Katie snored softly. Trying not to disturb the covers, I slid my legs out and padded down the hall.
I was just squeezing toothpaste onto my brush when, in the mirror, something moved behind me. I jumped and whirled around: Katie was thumping down the hall, holding my phone out in front of her.
“Daniel keeps calling you,” she announced, her brows knitted.
I set the toothbrush on the sink and took the phone from her. “Thanks,” I said, pushing the door closed. She didn’t move, her eyebrows now reaching for the sky, so I basically shut the door in her face.
“Hana?!” he yelped, before I could hear a single ring.
I kept my voice low, pictured Katie with her ear pressed against the door. “What’s up?”
“Get here now,” he said. “I don’t—I don’t know what to do.”
“Are you in danger? Should I call 911?”
“No police. You don’t want police.” He sounded terrified, unhinged.
“I don’t want police?”
“It’s about—Hana, it’s about what happened in 2010.”
It hit me like a force, like a fire hose, shot at all of me all at once. My ears rang and I clutched the side of the bathtub. How on earth did he know? What had he found?
“Listen to me very carefully.” I curled away from the door, my voice just above a whisper and so cold, so bloodless, it scared even me. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t contact anyone else. No one else. Do you understand?”
Another gaping silence and the air itself seemed to lean in.
“Get here,” Daniel said, and then he was gone.
CHAPTER 15
Katie
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 8:10 A.M.
Hana flung the door open and stood centered in the frame. The sconce lights on either side of her mirror glowed behind her so she was silhouetted, an outline of Athena preparing for battle.
“I have to go,” she announced.
I was lingering in the hall, all casual. As if my ear hadn’t been one with the door a second earlier.
“What’d Daniel say?”
“I’m heading over there now.”
“Why, what’d he say?”
She sighed and her shoulders slumped. “He’s freaking out. Threatening to kill himself.” I waited, and she went on: “I guess he started drinking and didn’t go to sleep all night, and now he’s, like, out of his mind and consumed by grief. I don’t actually think he’s going to try anything, but he’s freaking out.”
“So it’s a cry for help?”
“Sure sounded like it.”
“But why did he call you?”
Hana tipped her head back, closed her eyes. “My thoughts exactly. God, I don’t need this.”
She pushed past me, down the hallway, and I called after her: “Doesn’t he have any other friends?”
“Not that many, honestly.” She made it to her bedroom and threw open the closet. “He got out of a ten-year relationship right before he met Eleanor. At the wedding he had one guy, a friend from high school, as his best man, but that’s it.” She hooked on a bra, stepped into a pair of underwear.
“So why not call that dude?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s unavailable. Maybe Daniel doesn’t want to talk to someone who barely knew Eleanor.” She yanked a turtleneck over her head.
“Did he try calling Mikki too? I’m just trying to understand why—”
“Katie.” Hana stared at me for a second before unfolding her jeans with a flick. She had tears in her eyes, and a spear of guilt went through me. “I don’t know what you want me to say. He just called me, repeatedly, begging me to come over.”
She turned away and yanked her curls into a bun. She looped the elastic, then whisked her knuckles across her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Then: “Let me know if you need anything.”
Tossing things into her purse, she pretended not to hear me.
The slam of the front door seemed extra-loud and final, somehow, like the clang of a gavel or the bang of a book’s heavy back cover. I leaned against the kitchen island, statue-still, until Cosmo padded over and rubbed against the hem of my pajama pants.
I dropped to my knees to scoop him up, and as I did something rushed up through me, something sharp and bright, and then it hit my throat and came out as a moan. I hugged Cosmo to my chest and he hung limply as my head and hands filled with crackly static and my heart beat so fast I thought it’d burst, juddering as if it wanted to shoot out from my chest. I gasped with the wild, unself-conscious panic of a toddler mid-meltdown.
Finally I found my breath again, blinked hard until the static lifted. “Eleanor,” I murmured, dropping my nose to the top of Cosmo’s head. He twisted his neck, blinked at me. “Poor Eleanor.” Cosmo wriggled free and sauntered off toward the hallway. I managed to leave Mom a voicemail, my voice quavering as I asked her to call me back.