The Herd(80)

I watched her cry, feeling my impression of her shifting like tectonic plates inside my skull. I’d flitted through the week with nothing but a passing, What’s Hana hiding? This—this was a Mr. Hyde side I never wanted to meet.

“And Cameron showed up at Eleanor’s apartment,” she went on, her voice small. “I let him inside. He said he’d just gotten into town and I…I’m an idiot, I believed him. He said he was there to help, but I thought he’d come to beat up Daniel or something—he was surprised when Daniel wasn’t home. But maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe he was trying to…I don’t know, remove some evidence or something.”

“Let’s back this up,” I said. The facts were poking out at odd angles, a tent frame I couldn’t snap into shape. “We know Cameron was in town on Monday. The night Eleanor was killed. And he was still there on Wednesday, when you saw him at Eleanor’s apartment.”

Hana looked up. “Maybe when Eleanor finally scheduled the big announcement about Titan, he decided to drive down to see her. Make his final plea.”

“But you really think he would hurt her?” Mikki rocked forward, snuffling. “Maybe we’re looking at this wrong. Maybe—maybe he did reach out to Jinny’s mom, maybe he said something that made her want to confront Eleanor. Maybe he learned she was gonna try to hurt Eleanor, and he came down to protect her.”

“Hello?” Ted’s voice boomed down the hall.

We froze and stared at one another, like naughty pets caught red-handed.

“Cameron?” Ted appeared in the doorway and I blushed at the sight of him.

“Ted, hi!” Hana swept us all into the hallway, casual and smooth. “We were just about to head back over to the Walshes’.”

“Is Cameron here?” Ted craned his neck to look behind us.

I spotted an opening: “No, he said he was gonna go looking for you. Have you heard from him?”

Hana had nonchalantly led us back to the doorway. Ted shook his head.

“I texted him earlier, right after—when I got back from Mr. and Mrs. Walsh’s.” His ears reddened. Right after we’d been walked in on mid-hookup, right after he’d called me selfish and I’d told him to leave. “Cam didn’t reply, but I was down in the basement with the game on so I don’t know if it went through. I just came upstairs to get a beer and saw that his car was gone, but all his lights were on. I figured he went out and I was just gonna shut ’em off.”

“And then you saw all our coats here,” Mikki finished.

He was looking at his phone, Hana had said, right before you rang the doorbell. “What’d you say to Cameron?” I asked. “When you texted?”

He shrunk a bit, frowned. “Nothing important. Hey, so where’s Cameron? And what are you guys still doing here?”

“What’d you say in your text?” I squared my chin at him. “Was it about me?”

“What? No.”

I took a step forward. “Were you in a rush to tell him what a bitch I am? For trying to write about Eleanor?” I knew it wasn’t the case, wasn’t in character for him at all, but I could see how uncomfortable I was making him. That mounting eagerness to set the record straight. “How her death is basically my fault?”

“No! Jesus! You think I think that?” He shook his head. “I asked him about that old photo of Eleanor. Okay? Like, ‘Hey, have you been posting this online?’ I thought it was kind of a shitty thing to do when she hated that photo. I don’t even know if he saw it—he didn’t reply.”

Of course. Cameron had received that text and put two and two together, spotted the walls closing in.

I can’t imagine what face we were all making, but his glance shot between us. “What, what is it?”

“We’re heading back to the Walshes’,” I said, before anyone could break in. We think your brother’s a killer was not a conversation I felt prepped for; Mikki seemed reticent to accept it as a possibility, and typically Hana was conscientious to a fault…but tonight we were all loose cannons. “Why don’t you keep trying Cameron? It’s coming down hard out there—he really shouldn’t be driving.”

Ted continued to frown, but he nodded as we gathered our things. He flicked off the lights and walked outside with us, then hooked toward the main house with an awkward wave. The snow felt heavy on my cheeks and eyelashes and the crown of my head, like small, cold loogies. Everything still felt very wrong. Where was Cameron?

Gary and Karen, at least, were in the kitchen, sliding vegetables and salmon fillets into the oven.

“Well, there you all are!” Gary said, trying to sound jolly, but his face fell when he saw our expressions. “What is it?”

I cleared my throat. “Something weird is going on,” I said. “We were over at Cameron’s and he…took off.”

Karen set down her knife. “He what?”

“He grabbed his keys and ran out. Really gunned it,” Hana said.

“In these conditions?” Karen brought a hand to her mouth. “That’s dangerous!”

“We called Detective Ratliff because we realized some weird things about him. About”—I sucked in a breath—“about what he was doing the night Eleanor died, and why he didn’t tell anyone he was in New York.”