Nine

Every foul word I knew hissed from my mouth as I struggled to regain my balance on the snow-covered walkway. Luke was right. It was freezing, and everything was as slippery as hell. And it was going to be a long, cold walk out of this town.

The front door slammed behind me and I kept walking, refusing to turn back. I had no intention of ever laying eyes on that house again.

“Dee, wait,” Luke called after me. The skating sound of sneakers on ice-caked snow approached, and I slowed to a crawl. No matter how much I wanted to lash out, I wouldn’t blame any of this on him.

“What?” I asked as I whirled around to face him.

Luke skidded in my direction, had to reach out and grip the mailbox in order to stop.

“At least slow down a little,” he said. “The car is over a mile out, and one of us is gonna break something if we’re not careful.”

“I’ll take a broken leg over staying in this house any day,” I fired back.

Mike reached out to stop me before I took off farther down the road. I yanked my arm away and sent myself sliding in every direction until I landed on my butt.

“We weren’t supposed to be here,” I yelled at everybody and nobody. “We should’ve been sitting in the hotel’s hot tub debating what to order from room service.”

“That’s not the point, Dee,” Luke said. “We’re—”

“It’s totally the point. If I—”

“Both of you shut up for a minute,” Mike said, waving us to a stop. “Luke, did you hit all the houses on this street last night?”

“No, only five or six. Why?”

We followed Mike’s gaze across the street. When we’d gotten here last night, it was getting dark and the town was more than empty—it was brutally silent. Now I could see what looked like footprints in the slushy snow, and despite the fact that the sun was slowly rising, every porch light on the street was turned on.

“Tell me you turned those on last night,” I said to Luke. “Please tell me you forgot to turn them off after you searched the houses.”

Luke shook his head, not bothering to even try and ease my fear.

“That means somebody’s here. That somebody probably knows we’re here. That somebody turned those lights on even though it’s already morning, just to make sure we know they’re here,” I said.

“Oh, not merely somebody. Trust me on that.”

We turned in unison at the sound of the voice, our gaze landing on a shadowy figure rounding the corner of the house we’d spent the night in. He kept walking toward us, coming close enough that I could make out the top button on his grungy, khaki-colored pants. I looked up into his eyes, trying to read his intentions. But they were dark and empty, and, if I had to guess, not a day older than mine.

Luke stepped in front of me, shielding me from the boy’s view. “You take one step closer and I’ll kill you,” he warned.

The kid threw up his hands, assuring us he meant no harm, but I wasn’t buying it. “He’s not alone,” I whispered. I didn’t see anybody with him, but I didn’t have to see them to know we were being watched. I could feel eyes tracking our every move.

Mike caught what I said and took two steps back. He turned in a complete circle, then shook his head. He’d seen the same thing as me—absolutely nothing.

Luke put a hand on his brother’s shoulder when Mike went to approach the boy. Mike shook him off, his eyes never leaving the kid’s as he spoke. “Seriously, Luke? There are three of us and one of him.”

I doubted that was the case, and after reading those few short passages in that book, I didn’t believe that anybody in this town was completely harmless. Maybe last night I was fine with asking complete strangers for help, but not now. Surrounded by vacant, phoneless houses and creepy manuals … if we were smart, we’d cut our losses and run.

I gripped Luke’s hand and jerked hard. There was something about the boy I didn’t like, something that made me feel threatened. “I have a strange feeling about him, Luke. Please, can we go?”

“Are you kidding?” Mike argued. “He’s the first person we’ve seen, and I have some questions I want answered.”

“I’m with Dee,” Luke said, lowering his voice to a nearly inaudible level. “You have no clue what she’s been through, Mike. None. Let me handle this.”

I knew that’s all Luke would say. It was an agreement we’d made last year when he’d begged me to tell him why I still flinched sometimes when he touched me. It had taken some prodding on his part, but I finally told him about my dad, the group homes, and the three foster families I’d lived with before finding the Hoopers. That night, Luke promised me that he would keep my past a secret and keep me safe.

Luke might have broken through my carefully fortified walls, but even now he still had to put up with a lot of my crap. He’d learned the hard way not to trap me against the lockers for a kiss and realized that tackling me on the bed to tickle me often landed him a knee to the balls instead of sex. But I was better now, or so everyone thought.

I watched Mike’s expression darken as he processed Luke’s words. It must’ve been hard to always be around me yet have no clue why I was so guarded, why Luke was so protective.

Luke took a step forward, a growl of warning rumbling from his chest.

The boy stood his ground, and my eyes traveled the full length of his body. The broad expanse of his shoulders, his height, and the size of his hands all gave me pause. He was huge. Not huge as in one-too-many-pancakes-at-the-Waffle-House huge, but huge as in holy-crap-he’s-built-like-a-brick-wall huge.

Plus, there were a lot of pockets in his coat. And I’d learned a long time ago that pockets could hide a lot of weapons.

Luke scanned the horizon, no doubt looking for the boy’s friends. His family. The rest of this town.

The kid nodded in understanding. “I’m alone.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

He gave me a passing glance before ignoring my question. “Did Mary send you?”

“Who is Mary?”

He shook his head, his shoulders shrinking at my words. “Nobody.”

“You have a name?” Luke asked.

“Joseph.”

I knew that name. From the house. From the book. From the death certificate. “You’re not dead.”

He flinched as if my words somehow stung. He tried hard to cover it up, but I saw the panic flash across his expression. “Nope, not dead. Not yet anyway.”