29

I dropped it as if it were on fire. The charm clinked when it fell, hitting an earring.

“It’s hers,” I whispered.

“Maybe not,” Kit said.

“Kit, it’s hers! It’s from the bracelet. Remember the other charms? They had links just like this.”

He nodded slowly, running his fingers through the jumble in the box. He picked up a small plastic vial. “What’s this?”

It was a medicine bottle, unmarked, half-filled with pinkish-white tablets. I took it from him and unscrewed the cap.

“Aspirin?” I asked.

Kit shook his head. “We need to get out of here.”

His fingers closed over my hand. “Luce, we shouldn’t even be touching this stuff. If this guy is some kind of pervert, I mean, if he did something to these girls, and that’s how he got their stuff … well, this might be evidence or something. And we’ve put our fingerprints all over it.”

I pulled my fist free and dumped a pill into my palm, slipping it into the pocket of my jeans. “I know. You’re right. But we can take this to the police. Maybe it’s cocaine.”

Kit just looked at me. “You think that’s cocaine? A pill?”

“Well, something else then. Something illegal.” I stared at the box again. “This is the guy, Kit. I know it. He did something to her. We’ve got to call the police. When they see the charm, they’ll know—”

And then I stopped. The police didn’t know about the charm bracelet. They didn’t know because I’d taken it off the girl before they’d had a chance to see it.

The charm would mean nothing to the police.

I turned to Kit. “The bracelet,” I said. “They don’t know about the bracelet.”

He looked at me, a long steady look, and took the bottle and cap from my hands.

“Oh, God,” I said.

“Luce.” When I lifted my head, he was watching me with an expression in his eyes I didn’t recognize. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “But we have to go. Now.”

I stood numbly by the bed, barely able to nod.

Kit screwed the cap back on the bottle, wiped it on his T-shirt, and dropped it in the box. Then he set the lid on the box and carefully put it back on the shelf, arranging the pile of clothes to cover it. “Is that right? Is that how it looked?”

I knew he needed me to answer. I took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

“Luce, come on. We have to get out of here.”

He tugged me away from the bed, and then there were things to do. It was good to have things to do. We moved quickly through the house, making sure it looked just the way it had when we came in. I let Kit out the front door and bolted it, then went back to the bathroom to climb through the window. Once I’d squeezed through, breathless and aching from the pressure on my ribs, I squatted on top of the propane tank. I slid the window back to its original position, then replaced the screen. Kit rounded the corner of the house. “What’s taking you so long? Come on!”

“Okay, I’m done,” I said.

We ran across the yard and scrambled into the car, flooring it out of the drive. A fog of dust rose in our wake, blocking the house from view.