Better left buried, p.20
Better Left Buried, page 20
“Was there an investigation after your dad died?” I ask.
“Cliff investigated,” she says. “And there was an independent commission who came in and looked at the roller coaster to see if it had been faulty. They said it wasn’t, but I heard the click of his seat coming undone, and then he fell. I heard it. And if I heard it click open, it must have been clicked shut to begin with, right? It means Dad did what he was supposed to, and that it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t his fault,” I whisper into Audrey’s hair. “Of course it wasn’t. And it wasn’t yours, either. I promise.”
And then she’s kissing me desperately and I’m kissing her back, and I toss the folder to the floor because the hell with the case and the hell with the Anselms and Haeter Lake and the hell with anything that isn’t Audrey and her lips and this messy, perfect moment.
Every bit of Lucille Marie Preston is perfect. I should know. I kissed every inch of her skin, found every single freckle from her nose to the few scattered across her torso. I even kissed the one on her knuckle.
And after, we lie there together in her motel bed and giggle and whisper and kiss some more.
It takes us a long time to find the motivation to get dressed, but finally Lucy untangles herself from the blankets and me, dropping one last kiss on my forehead.
“I don’t know about you,” she says. “But I would rather not be found naked by your mom or my mom or, idk, the serial killer probably lurking around here somewhere.”
I throw a pillow at her. “There is no serial killer,” I tell her.
“This is the murder motel,” she retorts. “Didn’t you know?”
“The murder motel.” I snort. “Why do you keep calling it that?”
She rolls her eyes at me as she pulls her pajama pants—the adorable green dinosaur ones—on and smirks at me. “This is a motel at the end of a dirt road,” she says. “In a tiny town. With no cell phone service. And even worse, no Wi-Fi.”
“Sounds unforgivable,” I say, and she tosses my shirt at me.
It lands on my face, covering my eyes and mouth, and by the time I claw it back off she is dressed in her pajamas.
“I would rather that you’re also not naked when someone comes,” she says.
“Someone, as in our moms or a serial killer?”
“Exactly.” She leans down and presses a kiss to the tip of my nose.
This girl is so adorable it should be illegal.
I grab her wrist and tug her down on top of me.
She kisses me hard, and then nips at my bottom lip before smacking me with my shirt again. “Up,” she orders imperiously.
I grin at her lazily. Because despite the horror surrounding us in Haeter Lake, I can still find it possible to smile. Because of her. “But you’re sitting on top of me,” I protest.
“Whose fault is that?” she says, and swings her leg off.
I reach out instinctively to catch her hand, and I’m glad that I do, because she stumbles the way she does every single time she tries to mount or dismount my bike.
When we are both dressed, she fusses with her mom’s case files for several minutes before finally replacing them in the briefcase.
“Should we be in separate beds like good girls?” I ask playfully.
My mom wouldn’t be particularly surprised to find me in bed with a girl, but I’m not sure how Lucy’s mom would react to us, even now that we’re fully and appropriately dressed.
“No.” Lucy snuggles in against my shoulder and pulls the blankets up over us. “Shh. I’m going to sleep. And you’re staying right here.” She cuddles in against my shoulder and then turns her body so that she’s on her side and we’re spooning.
Sleeping next to someone in their bed seems weirdly even more intimate than the moments we shared earlier, and my heart flutters in my chest.
“Lucy?” I ask.
But she’s already asleep.
Lucy. 4:13 a.m.
I don’t wake up at whatever time Mom comes back to the motel, but I do wake up to a crash much later in the night.
I jerk awake, searching in the dark for any light.
There is nothing.
Not the one single flickering streetlight that usually blinks outside of our window.
Not the red lights of the alarm clock that are usually glaring from the nightstand.
Shit.
I fumble for my phone in the dark and feel Audrey’s hand on my shoulder.
“Shh,” she whispers. “Someone’s here.”
There’s another crash of shattering glass, and I scream.
“Who is it?” Mom yells, and I hear a thump as she stumbles to her feet, shoving her body between our bed and the door.
I reach for the light switch behind me and flick it. Up. Down. Up again.
Nothing.
There’s no power, there’s no cell service even if I could find my phone, and someone is in our motel room.
And then the clouds move from behind the moon and light floods everything, just for a moment. I see someone, the silhouette of them.
I launch forward out of the bed, past Mom, and grab onto their sleeve, because I am a dumbass.
A hood is pulled down over the intruder’s face, but what I can see of the face is vaguely familiar all the same. “Shit—” I say, and then pain explodes through my head and everything goes black.
Audrey. 4:21 a.m.
For the second time in as many days, I am screaming Lucy’s name.
She lunged for the door—for the intruder—before I could stop her, and now she crumples, silhouetted against the moon.
Lucy’s mom screams, too, and dives to catch her daughter as she slumps over.
The intruder darts out the door, slamming it behind them. Katy rushed toward Lucy’s side, but I—
I run.
I’m out the door, barefoot, sprinting across the dewy grass after the dark silhouette of the asshole who attacked Lucy.
“HEY,” I scream. “Who the hell are you? Show me your fucking face, coward.”
And then someone else slams into me from the side, and familiar arms are wrapping around me, dragging me backward.
Mom. Fury in her eyes.
“What the hell?” she snaps, dragging me bodily back toward the motel. “Inside, now.”
The attacker, whoever they were, is gone, and I’m shaking and seething. So, apparently, is Mom, who hauls me through the door, slamming it behind her.
“You went after someone who broke in,” she snarls. “When there’s a goddamn murderer on the loose in this damn town. Katy, did you send her?”
Katy is cradling Lucy, and she stares up at my mom with such confusion that I can feel Mom relent. “She just ran,” Katy says weakly. “I’m sorry I didn’t stop her.”
Katy and Mom stare at each other for a long moment.
And then Lucy stirs slightly and groans just a second later, but it’s a second where none of us breathe.
“Lucy,” I say, jerking away from my mom. “Lucy, you dumbass, what were you thinking?”
“I agree,” Katy says, but she is still cradling Lucy and stroking her hair. “What on earth were you thinking?”
Mom shakes her head, her gaze falling on me. “I’m afraid my girl might have been a bad influence on yours, Katy,” she says softly, but her touch on my shoulder is gentle.
Katy looks up, her eyes softening, before settling back on Lucy again.
“Um,” Lucy answers her. “I’m sure you’re both right. But can someone tell me what I did?”
I groan. “You don’t…remember?”
She shakes her head as if to clear it and then groans in pain. “Um, no?” she says. “Sorry. No. Wait. Oh my god. The lights were out, and there was a crash, and I thought if I could just get a look, I would be able to help us solve the case, but then I remembered too late that I’m not actually a badass.” She pauses to suck in a pained breath.
“Oh, Luce,” Katy murmurs.
“Mom, I really should learn how to defend myself. When we get home, can I take that self-defense class you took a few years ago? The one that was supercool and badass, where you trained with those SEALs and black belts? I don’t want to go to the regular karate gym. I’m not the karate kid.” She giggles as if she’s made a joke.
“Audrey, will you hold on to her?” Katy sighs as she shifts Lucy’s head into my lap. “I’m going to get her an icepack and an ibuprofen. She probably has at least a mild concussion.”
“I can look at her,” Mom says, kneeling beside them on the floor.
They share a look, a long look, and then Katy lets her close to Lucy….
“We should call Cliff,” I say. “Katy, someone broke in. Do you think they would have—”
I don’t want to finish my own sentence. Were they here to hurt one of us? I have to assume it’s related to the case, and though Katy is the private investigator, I’m pretty sure everyone in town has heard about Lucy Preston hiding in Veronica Anselm’s closet by now.
Even Chris texted me, from Arkansas, to ask about the new girl who was hiding in closets and messing with the Anselms.
“Shit,” Katy says. She’s staring at the end of her bed. “They took my notes.”
Mom shifts so that her body is between mine and the door, her eyes still watchful as if she is waiting for the attacker to come back.
Lucy tries to sit up and then slumps back on me and presses her hands over her eyes. “They stole all of your notes?” I ask. “Everything?”
Katy nods, looking stricken. “That was everything I had. I had some of it backed up onto my laptop, but not all of it, not today’s.”
“Doesn’t Cliff have his own notes?” I ask her. “It can’t all be gone, right?”
“I’ll call him,” she says tersely. “You three stay here. Do not move, you understand? I’m going to call the police.” She kneels down and presses a kiss to Lucy’s forehead with a gentleness that contrasts with the sharpness of her tone.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
She tosses the icepack—the single-use kind you have to squeeze and then shake—and a bottle of extra-strength ibuprofen at me. “She needs both,” she adds. “Even if she gives you a hard time. Can you handle her?”
Mom nods at Katy.
“I can handle her.” I brush auburn hair off Lucy’s face and ask her, “Where does it hurt?”
Katy hesitates again. “You can—You’ll be okay?”
“I can defend myself,” I tell her. “If that’s what you’re wondering. I have before. We’ll be okay. Go.”
“Thank you for keeping my baby safe,” Katy says. Her voice is the softest I’ve ever heard.
I nod, once. “It’s okay. You can go. I got her.”
Katy nods, a pained expression on her face, and then looks at Mom. “Langley,” she says, “I—”
“Audrey’s right,” Mom says, her tone not as cold as it usually is when she speaks to Katy. “We’ll be okay here.”
Katy lets out a breath and then pulls the door shut behind her with one last look at Lucy.
Lucy touches the left side of her head gingerly.
When I touch it, I can feel the raised bump already, and I press the ice pack to it.
She winces but doesn’t fight me.
“I don’t wanna take ibuprofen,” she says, and it comes out as a whine. “Those pills are too big.”
Mom shakes her head. “I can see why you like her so much,” she says, passing me the ibuprofen.
I hand them to Lucy despite her protests, helping her sit up and lean against me. I hold the icepack in place for her as she sips water from her water bottle and then downs the ibuprofen I offer her.
“This sucks,” she whispers, resting the uninjured side of her head on my shoulder.
“We’re gonna catch that asshole,” I tell her firmly.
“Uh-huh,” she agrees wearily, but she sounds unconvinced. “Audrey? Help me get into bed?”
I help her from the floor and let her lean on me, most of her body weight sagging against my shoulder.
“You’re strong,” she murmurs, but her words slur together, a combination of sleepiness and head injury that makes her sound almost drunk.
“You are, too,” I say. “But next time please don’t jump to defend us all from an attacker without…I dunno, a plan? Okay? It could have been a lot worse.”
“Audrey Nadine, you are not one to lecture about this right now,” Mom says, giving me a look that says there will be hell to pay once we’re out of crisis mode.
Lucy grins up at me lazily, her eyes unfocused. “I didn’t have a plan,” she agrees. “Nope. No plan. Not me. I thought he was gonna get you.”
I pause. “He?”
She waves her hand in dismissal, and then lurches and nearly falls when the simple motion sends her off balance. “I always just assume the villain is a man,” she says. “Like in Scooby-Doo. You know Scooby-Doo, right? There’s a dog and a guy who smokes weed and there’s always an old white man causing trouble.”
And with that enlightening summary of Scooby-Doo, she slumps over onto the bed, facedown into her pillow.
I roll her over gently and cover her with the blanket, brushing loose strands of her untamable red hair back from her forehead.
“Goodnight, Lucy,” I whisper.
But—once again—she’s already asleep.
When I wake, I am alone in the rumpled sheets, and my head aches spectacularly. I groan and roll over, pulling the blankets over my head to stop the sunlight that is pouring in through the windows.
Fuck. Waking up after a head injury is way too similar to waking up with a hangover.
Which I don’t know anything about, of course.
Except for that time on summer vacation, when we were supposed to be having a sleepover at Jules’s house, but instead we were at Nora’s aunt’s cabin and Nora had managed to get the key to the liquor cabinet.
Anyway.
“How do you feel, Lucy?” Katy’s voice is too loud.
Okay, yeah, this really is like a hangover.
I grunt in reply.
“That sounds about right,” she says. The bed depresses and the springs creak as she sits down at the foot of my bed. “Can you drink some water? Eat something, and then take another ibuprofen?”
“I cannot,” I tell her. “None of those things. Nope.”
This time, she yanks the covers away.
If it was Dad, he would have coaxed me gently, teased me until I laughed, brought the water over to me himself. Babied me, Katy would call it. She’s probably right, but I miss him anyway. I miss him always, but especially when I’m sick.
Nurturing isn’t exactly in Katy’s job description.
Would my grandma have put a cool hand on my forehead? Would my grandpa have brought me the ibuprofen, helped me sit up so I could take it?
“You have to,” Katy says firmly. “Head injuries are nothing to joke about.”
Fearsome women.
I feel the furthest thing from fearsome right now.
“Urgh,” I growl at her. “Where’s Audrey?”
Katy’s face falls, and she doesn’t answer me for a moment that stretches on too long.
“Katy,” I repeat, urgency pushing me to sit up, even though my head pounds. “Katy, where is Audrey?”
“She went home,” Katy says finally, and then holds up a hand. “But, Lucy, before you talk to her, I need to tell you something. Early this morning, after Cliff and I talked…well, Langley is going to be arrested for both murders. Pierce and Arthur.”
“Katy, what the hell?” I stand all the way up, and then promptly stagger and fall back onto the bed because, you know, head injury.
She pushes my water bottle into my hands as my head begins to clear. “Come on, drink some water. I brought back some eggs and toast from the diner. You can eat that and then take a few ibuprofen. You probably have a concussion.”
“Guess we won’t ever know, though,” I say sarcastically. “Because you’re about to put the only nurse in jail.”
Katy sighs. “Honey, I am not putting her in jail. You know I don’t have the power to arrest people.”
“And your pal Cliff would never have done any of that without you. So spill, Katherine,” I tell her, slamming my water bottle down on the night stand. “Why are you going to arrest my—why are you going to arrest Audrey’s mom?”
I had begun to say my girlfriend, but—well, that would be a mistake.
Wouldn’t it?
I’m not usually the type to fall this hard this fast, because come on. I’m not some dumbass who believes in fate or destiny or true love. It didn’t work for Katy and Dad, and it isn’t gonna work for me. But I guess I also don’t usually interfere in murder investigations or find that I have long lost family in creepy small towns. Or ride motorcycles. Or, really, have sex.
So I guess you could say that all of this is uncharted territory for me.
“I can’t tell you much,” Katy says. “I’m sorry. But Langley heard about the earring found at the crime scene, and she came to us herself. She showed us the match to it and admitted to being there the night Pierce died. Then she said she’d go home and wait.”
Katy pauses, and I stare at her, open-mouthed.
There is something she isn’t telling me. Something more to this, to what Langley said. Something more my mom knows.
“I’m sure it’s going to be devastating for Audrey,” Katy says, her expression shuttering. “I expect the arrest to happen later this morning, and I would imagine Audrey will need a little bit of space until she has time to process.”
“A little bit of space?” I yell at Katy. “You’re taking her only surviving family away from her. You made her an orphan. Katy. How could you?”
Katy’s face hardens, but her voice remains even and calm, as if she is trying her hardest to keep her patience with me. “Lucy, I know this is difficult,” she continues. “But I came here to solve this for Pierce, and that’s what I did.”
