Come Find Me(43)

Now.


Wait, no.


Now. For real.



Okay, my texts to Nolan are not the most eloquent. Not that his are any better.

Here, he wrote five minutes ago.

I mean, at the corner, he amended in the next text.

I’d just spent the last five minutes making sure Joe was really sleeping, and not just staring at the ceiling in the dark. Joe didn’t come home until after dinner, when I was crashing—a nap in preparation for tonight. When he knocked on my bedroom door—to apologize for being late, got caught up, etc, etc—I tried my best to look like I hadn’t just been sleeping.

    I must’ve failed, because he frowned and asked if I was feeling okay.

I’ve been watching the clock since then. Joe didn’t go to bed until just after midnight, when the house was dark and quiet. I gave him twenty extra minutes.

When I opened his bedroom door to check on him, he didn’t move.

It was time.

Without my bike, the routine feels off. I’m more on-edge than usual, sneaking out in the middle of the night. Once I’m outside, I make a dash for the corner of the street, where Nolan said he’d be waiting.

The overhead light inside his car turns on as I pull open the passenger door, and he squints. “Hey,” he says.

“Geez, find the creepiest spot on the street, why don’t you.”

He rolls his eyes, and it looks like he just woke up. Like he’s only half focused, and it turns him softer at the edges. “Better than having someone call the cops on me because some beat-up car is parked under a streetlight outside their house.”

“Okay, okay,” I say as he drives off.

“Hey,” he says, nudging me in the shoulder with one hand while he drives. “Breathe, Kennedy.”

I smile at him, at the slow grin that forms as his eyes adjust to the dark again.



* * *



—

The street is quiet at night, winding through forest and farmland, no sidewalk on either edge. “I can’t believe you bike this in the dark,” Nolan mumbles.

    The shoulder of the road is pretty narrow, dropping off to a grassy ditch, but from this angle it looks worse than it is. “Barely anyone ever drives this way at night.”

“That doesn’t make it any better,” he says, tightening his hold on the wheel.

This time, he slows down early enough to turn into my driveway on the first pass. “Turn off the headlights,” I tell him when he pulls off the road.

“What? No way. I’d really rather not end up wrapped around some tree.”

“Just go slow. I don’t want someone to call Joe and tell him someone’s here.”

“It’s almost one in the morning, and this is your property, right?” He looks my way and lets out a sigh. “When we’re closer to the house and I’m sure I can see, I will, okay?”

I hold my breath until we reach the roundabout in front of the house and he flicks the lights off. The house is a shadow in the night, with the moon hidden behind clouds. We exit the car as quietly as we can, which isn’t really quiet at all with the rocks and dirt kicking up in our wake.

I’ve got my flashlight with me, like usual, and keep it aimed low to the ground so no one will notice unless they’re already here. My bike is still hidden underneath the porch, and I mumble a thanks to whatever higher power was looking out for it while the prospective buyers were here.

Nolan is not nearly as good at stealth mode as he thinks, closing his car door too firmly, stepping too loudly, kicking at a pebble with every other step. “Shh,” I remind him.

“What?” he says.

I gesture to his feet, to the ground. The problem is sort of…all of him. He makes an impression. He leaves a mark. I give up and continue on, hoping for the best.

    At the shed around back, the door squeaks when I push it open.

“I thought we were coming for your bike,” he whispers.

“While we’re here, I might as well check the new data,” I say, stepping inside.

Nolan flips the switch on the side of the wall, on impulse, but I flip it off again. “Trust me,” I whisper, thinking of Marco and Lydia and Sutton, who’ve been spending a lot of time out there.

Instead I turn on the computer screen, which illuminates us in the dark. Nolan’s face glows an eerie yellow, and his eyes keep darting around the room. “What is this place?” he whispers.

“A computer shed. That used to be a storage shed. That used to be a stable.”

“I see,” he says, like that makes perfect sense.

I download all the data we can get, storing it on my flash drive, then gesture to the box of Elliot’s things, left behind from when Lydia was in here. “Can we bring that with us, too?” I ask. I want to take advantage of the fact that we have a car. I want to spend some time looking through everything.

“Sure.” Nolan scoops it up, then pauses at the door, and I realize he’s waiting for me. Or he’s waiting for the flashlight.

“Just a sec.” I finish up, shut everything down, and follow him back outside, illuminating his path with my flashlight. I shine the light under the porch and wheel the bike out, walking it back to his car.