MY HANDS ARE SHAKING as I shove the keys into the ignition, but Quill is laughing.
“Holy shit!” he says. “That was awesome!”
“Awesome?” I ask, incredulous, as I drive us away from the town house. “It was awful! I can’t believe you did that!”
“Did what?” he asks, surprised.
“You totally threw the ball to me when I wasn’t ready for it,” I say. “You were doing such a good job asking her questions. I don’t know why you dragged me into it. I almost ruined everything!”
He scoffs. “You weren’t that bad. You just need some more practice. Besides, until I came along, weren’t you planning to do all this on your own?”
“Fine,” I agree, reluctantly. “But next time we do something like that, at least make sure I’m ready for it.”
“We should go somewhere,” he says. “Somewhere we can talk everything over.”
I think about it. “There’s a coffee shop near the beach,” I tell him. “We could go there.”
“Perfect.”
When we’re finally sitting in quiet corner booth, Quill with a latte and me with an iced tea, we look at each other. I let out a deep breath, and then, surprising myself, I start laughing.
Quill looks at me, surprised, and then he starts laughing too. After a minute, when we’ve calmed down, he looks at me. “So you caught that, right?”
I nod. “Maria had a secret too. She wanted to leave her husband.”
“I don’t blame her,” says Quill. “Her husband seems like an asshole. But how does that tie in with Joey and Connor and George Smith? Do you think maybe he was the murderer?”
I shake my head. “The cops totally ruled him out.”
Quill looks at me with wide eyes, as if he’s just thought of something. “Mac, what’s the one thing that all four victims had in common?” he asks.
I think about this. “They were all hiding something from the people in their lives.”
He nods. “So what if the killer used that to his advantage? Like, wouldn’t it be easier to plan such elaborate murders if you knew your victim was preoccupied with some secret, behind-the-scenes stuff?”
I think about this. It makes sense. “Especially if the killer got to know the victims’ routines. If George Smith was running around on his wife, he was probably spending his energy worrying about how to not get caught. The fact that someone was following him wouldn’t have been on his radar. And Connor’s secret was that he had figured out the identity of the killer.”
“Or,” says Quill, “maybe it wasn’t.”
I give him a quizzical look and he explains.
“Maybe Connor had a completely different secret. Maybe the Catalog Killer was able to capitalize on that and somehow convince him to visit the caves that night.”
I think about this, trying to fit the pieces together. “If that’s true, then why did he want me to come to the caves with him?”
Quill shrugs. “Who knows? But the note didn’t say anything about hunting a murderer; it was totally vague. It could have been anything, and whatever it was, could it really be any weirder than wanting you to help him identify and catch a serial killer?”
I have to admit that he’s right. I haven’t been able to figure out why Connor chose me to help him. It makes total sense that he could have had a different, actual secret.
The only problem is that I have literally no idea what it would be.
“So the killer watched each of the victims, discovered something they were hiding, and took advantage of this information to set up his murders.”
I nod, slowly. “Maybe Connor went to the caves that night, thinking he was going for a completely different reason—something related to whatever he was hiding—and was ambushed.”
“That makes sense,” says Quill. “It also explains how the killer was ready with a catalog image, poison, everything. He showed up prepared.”
We go silent, staring into our drinks, and I know we’re both imagining the same macabre scene.
Quill shakes his head. “Changing the subject. Before all this happened, did you have a plan for what you were going to do next? With your life, I mean?”
I shrug. “I guess so. I didn’t have it all mapped out or anything, but I knew I’d go to college. I mean, I had no idea what I’d take or anything like that, but I loved the idea of leaving town, getting a dorm room and a roommate, making new friends. Joining clubs.”
He laughs. “Joining clubs? Like the chess club? The badminton club?”
I smile. “You know what I mean. College stuff. Doing something interesting, taking classes with brilliant professors, sitting on the quad and talking about serious books. Going to open mic nights, meeting people…”
“Kissing boys?” he asks.
I blush and drop my gaze to my drink. “Maybe.”
He reaches out and puts his hand on mine, rubs his thumb gently over my knuckles.
“What about now?” he asks.
I meet his gaze again. “I don’t think about any of it anymore, except when I have to. When my parents nag me, or when I need to pay a room deposit, or something stupid like that. I don’t think about what courses I want to take, or what friends I’ll make, or…or any of it. It’s just a thing I have to do now, because my life is going to keep on going, whether it makes sense or not, and I guess the best I can hope for is that it works out okay somehow.”
“I know what you mean,” Quill says. “My future has seemed so empty and irrelevant since Joey died, because I know she doesn’t get those chances now. All the things I wanted from my life…I just stopped wanting them. And nothing else has stepped up to fill in the space. But lately…”
His eyes drop, out of shyness or embarrassment or both, and his thumb stops moving over the top of my hand for a moment. Then he picks up my hand from the table and turns it over, cupping it between his. I watch this, mesmerized for a moment, and then I lift my eyes back to his and find that he’s staring right at me, a small smile on his face.
“Things have felt different, since I met you,” he says.
My heart leaps, and I smile back at him. Unfortunately, our waitress chooses this moment to interrupt, and Quill lets go of my hand, but even later, as I drive him back to the trailer park, I can still feel the imprint of his touch against my skin. I keep running his words over and over in my mind, wishing I could hear them again for the first time, again and again and again.
As I pull over onto the shoulder near the Brookfield Estates road sign to let Quill out, he turns to me and frowns. “So this totally sucks, but I spoke to my parents this morning, and they want me to come back home for a while. I don’t really have much choice in the matter, so I’m leaving this evening.”
“Oh,” I say. “Shit.”
He shrugs. “To be honest, I’m pretty happy to get the hell out of the park, but I hate not being here to help my aunt.”
“When can you come back?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe next weekend for a couple of days? I’ll see if I can borrow my mom’s car.”
I think about this. “We could go to the Abernathy house, where the killer was hiding out. That’s not a trip I want to make on my own.”
He smiles. “I’ll protect you, don’t worry. What will you do in the meantime?”
“I still have to visit Connor’s parents,” I say. “And I should do it alone.”
“You sure you want to tackle that on your own?” he asks. “I feel like I should be with you. If you wait, we could go together.”
“Trust me,” I say. “It’s the last thing I want to do, but I need to do it, and it’ll be less complicated this way.”
“Suit yourself,” he says. “But text me the minute you’re done.”
“I will,” I promise.
He nods, satisfied, and reaches for the door handle, but then, instead of getting out of the van, he slides himself across the seat to me and runs a hand around my waist, pulling me into him. I react without thinking, reaching up with my right hand to grab the back of his head and pull him toward me, and then we’re kissing.
He pulls back, and we both stare at each other. Since I met Quill, I’ve been telling myself that something like this couldn’t happen, but now that it has, it feels like everything since that moment has been leading up to this.
“Let’s pick up this conversation next time,” he says, turning and jumping out of the van. He runs down the pitted gravel driveway into the trailer park, without looking back.
As I drive away from the park, my face is still flushed and warm, so I open the windows to let in some air. But the hot summer breeze doesn’t do much to cool the memory of Quill’s hand around my waist, his lips on mine. Something perfect has happened. All I want to do is turn around, chase Quill down, and make sure he means what I think he meant by his parting words. For the first time since Connor died, a new obsession takes up my mind, and during the entire drive back to town, I don’t think about the Catalog Killer once.