It was barely an hour since Bex had sat across from Detective Schuster but it felt like a thousand years had passed. She tried to curl her hair and brighten the blush in her cheeks, but no matter what she did, she looked exhausted.
Her father had surfaced. According to the picture in the file, he was officially out. Bex had her hand on her cell phone, ready to call Trevor and cancel, when she heard the muffled din of his engine, the thunking bass of his radio. He was pulling into her driveway. Bex did her best to push everything to the back of her mind, to hang on to what might be her last few hours of normalcy. If—if—her father came for her, contacted her, or made his presence known, then the whole of Kill Devil Hills—and the high school—would know who she was.
Your father has already made his presence known, the tiny voice in the back of her head taunted. Remember Darla?
She stamped out the thought and smiled at Trevor when he smiled at her, nodding mutely and allowing him to open her car door. She was on a date—her first date! Sure, they were just going to a party, but he picked her up and told her she looked nice and she had waited for this moment her whole life.
And once again, her father was ruining it.
Bex’s mind swam as she sat in the passenger seat of Trevor’s car. She knew he was talking to her, but she had no idea what he was saying. She kept her eyes focused on the dark landscape zooming by outside the passenger window. A bar parking lot clogged with shiny motorcycles. Is my father in there? A graveyard of school buses parked at the district bus depot. How would he get to me? A car? A bus? She swallowed down a niggle of sadness. Would he try to get to me?
A newsreel zipped through her head. Dateline, 20/20, “special” reports, anniversary specials, anchors, and experts talking about her father, calling him dangerous, predatory, not able to be rehabilitated.
“Some people are born without a conscience. Quite simply, they are pure evil,” she remembered a psychologist in an ugly tweed suit commenting about her dad. “A monster,” said the shaking lips of one of the victim’s husbands. He “doesn’t care about anything because he can’t care about anything”—from a criminology expert.
“No conscience, no capacity to love. It might seem like he was a good neighbor, a loving father, but he would have been acting. Sociopaths like the Wife Collector have a keen skill set for making people believe exactly what they want them to. This man wants a wife. He’s clearly charming, good looking. He plucks these girls—because that’s what they are, girls, barely women—that he wants as his own. He takes them to satisfy his own sick need to have and then kill a wife. We feel revulsion and horror. He feels nothing. There are no two ways about it.”
Bex started blinking rapidly, rubbing her eyes.
“Hey,” Trevor said, leaning over. “You okay?”
She sniffed. “Yeah. I…just got some sand in my eye or something.”
Trevor squeezed her knee, his touch tender, not at all pushy or suggestive. “Just making sure,” he said, his smile evident even in profile.
Again, Bex struggled. She was lying to Trevor. He was a nice boy who thought she was a nice girl, two nice kids going on a date, going to hang out at a house party and have a good time. Two kids who should be thinking about a first kiss at the end of the night—not whether one of them was responsible for luring a murderer into town.
They parked in a sand-dusted cul-de-sac already clogged with cars from the student lot at Kill Devil High.
“Wow, I thought it was just going to be a few of us.”
Trevor shrugged. “It always starts out that way. We always end up on the beach, so…” He handed her a fluffy, blue comforter and hoisted his backpack onto his back. “That’s Chelsea’s place.” He pointed to a house that seemed to meld perfectly into the sand behind it. “Ready?”
Bex wrapped her arms across her chest. “I hope they have a fire up. It’s cold.” Now that the car was parked and the headlights were off, the street was plunged into darkness. There was one lonely streetlight, but its sad, yellow beam barely filtered through the cypress trees dotting the sidewalk toward the sand.
Anyone could be hiding in that darkness, Bex thought. No wonder it took so long to find Darla’s body.
She started when she felt Trevor drape something over her shoulders.
“Hey! Sorry!” he said, holding up his hands. “Just trying to warm you up.”
She looked at the jacket that Trevor had draped over her. It was heavy, in Kill Devil Hills High colors.
“Your letterman’s jacket?”
Even in the darkness, she could see the crimson burn on Trevor’s face. “If you don’t mind. It’s cool if you don’t want to wear it.”
Bex felt her own cheeks burn as she broke out in a wide grin. “No, yeah,” she said, pulling the jacket closer around her. “I’d love to wear it.”
Her mind soared and the barely visible path swam in front of her eyes. I’m wearing a boy’s letterman’s jacket… When Trevor’s fingertips found hers and their fingers intertwined, Bex thought she would fly away. Nothing mattered but that feeling, the way that Trevor anchored her to this spot, this moment on the beach in her new home with her new friends. She was Bex Andrews and nothing could touch her.
Chelsea threw open the door before Trevor was able to touch the doorknob.
“Hello, lovebirds!” she tweeted, shoving red party cups in their hands. “Fill up with whatever you want. There’s soda and stuff in the kitchen. Martin’s got some concoction brewing in a garbage can out back. Please note I am not responsible for whatever side effects that stuff might cause. And, uh, just have fun.”
“The ultimate hostess,” Bex said, holding up her empty cup.
Trevor took it from her hand. “What can I get you?”
Bex had never had alcohol other than a few stolen, bitter sips of her father’s beer when he had passed out and the bottle sat warm and open on the counter. She remembered the bubbles burning up her nose as the liquid burned down her throat. She also remembered the airy, light-headed feeling she got when she tossed back her head like she had seen him do and glugged those first few sips. Feeling light-headed and airy was exactly what Bex wanted now.
“I’m feeling adventurous.”
“Garbage brew it is.”
As the party started to build, Trevor snuggled closer to Bex. “You seem happy.”
She cuddled against him, tucking her head underneath his chin. “I am.” She closed her eyes, loving the sound of his heart beating steadily. They were sitting on Chelsea’s patio, feet in the sand, the fire pit crackling in front of them. The garbage brew tasted like a horrible concoction of cherry cough medicine and Sprite, but Bex had sucked down two cups, liking the way the booze softened the hard edges of the thoughts that barreled through her mind.
“It’s like there’s nothing to worry about out here on the beach.” Bex closed her eyes. “Let’s just stay out here forever, okay?”
Hovering there, it was almost as if she had moved past her father, past the horrible memories. She was just a kid at a party. Trevor’s lips found hers, and everything else in the world fell away.
“Okay, everyone? Everyone!” Chelsea stomped out on the patio and clapped her hands, the sound sharp in the night. Bex lazily lifted her head from Trevor’s shoulder and tried to straighten up.
Laney followed behind Chelsea, her arms full of white carnations that seemed to mass together in one fluffy head. Bex blinked, trying to focus, but her eyes kept going to the carnations, their powdery smell wafting over the scent of fruit juice and smoke. Something was pulling her out of the softened state of drunkenness. Something about the flowers en masse…
There must have been hundreds of them pushed together to form the limbs of the cross. Beth Anne rolled down the window and sucked in a breath of air heady with the sweet scent of the carnations. She loved everything about them, from the way they smelled to how they formed a soft, cloudlike pile, the arms of the cross reaching outward, embracing. In the center, there were more flowers—exotic and brightly colored among sprays of ferns and baby’s breath.
The arrangement was at least six feet tall; it dwarfed her and looked regal and hopeful propped up on the lawn in front of the iron gates of the cemetery as Beth Anne and her gran drove by. Something was woven right into the flowers, written in sparkly silver letters that glittered in the sun. They were driving too fast for her to read—the names of all the women her father had killed.
Bex sat upright, the brew burning a hole in her stomach, the sharp pain of memory cutting through the fog of alcohol. It didn’t matter if her father was looking for her—he was never far from her mind.