And then Lucy grabs my free hand, and we run for our fucking lives.

  We don’t stop for the yelling, and we don’t stop for the crack of the pistol behind us. We just run for the gate and the bike, damn everything else.

  “How the hell did you get a Taser?” Audrey shouts at me as we clamber through the gap in the fence.

  Another shot rings out behind us.

  How many bullets do small guns like that have? I wish I had paid more attention when Mom talked about guns, which she did a truly ridiculous amount of times.

  “That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” I yell back at Audrey.

  “I’m also thinking that you standing up to Veronica was kind of hot,” she yells back, and I consider whether smacking her would delay us an unreasonable amount of time. “And trying the thing with the Mace, even though you missed.”

  This girl is unbelievable.

  “I hate you,” I yell back at her, and she has the audacity to grin at me.

  “Where are we going?” she yells at me as I narrowly miss running straight into a tree.

  “This way,” I tell her. “I hope.”

  “You hope?”

  “I’m directionally challenged,” I tell her as I trip over a tree root. “Your bike’s in here somewhere. Do you still have the Taser? Can we use it more than once, or is there, like, a limit? Oh, and Katy gave me the Taser. She said just in case. Figured this was one of those cases.”

  She snorts, something that could almost be a laugh. “Lucille Marie Preston, you better not have lost my bike in this damn forest.”

  We nearly stumble over it in the pitch-blackness of the forest, but Audrey doesn’t hesitate, despite the thunder of footsteps pursuing us. The footsteps are heavy, twigs cracking, and I chance a guess that it’s Curtis who is on foot.

  Curtis, who is nice until he’s not. Who cares about my mom, until he doesn’t. Who pretends to be the only moral Anselm, until he isn’t.

  Which means that Blake, and her gun, are probably approaching from the street.

  “Those fuckers,” Audrey snarls, hauling her bike back out of the forest with an ease that makes me stare at her in wonder. “Stop gaping and get on, you dumbass.” She half drags me onto the bike with her, and then we’re off, speeding through the night.

  I glance over my shoulder.

  The black Cadillac is now bearing down on us from behind.

  “Audrey,” I scream, because Veronica is driving, and there is no doubt in my mind that she will crush us both if she can.

  But Audrey isn’t the kind of girl who flinches when she sees an animal in the woods or nearly runs the motorcycle off the road just because she can’t balance. No, I can’t see Audrey’s face but I can picture that look, that small, stubborn smile.

  And then she looks back at me. “This bitch,” she says above the roar of the motorcycle, “has nothing on me.”

  She veers a hard left straight down the steep, grassy slope away from the road, and I bounce so hard I nearly fall.

  Audrey holds me up, though, as we bump through the grassy gully beside the road, ducking under low-hanging branches.

  The Cadillac swerves after us, and I hear the terrible crunch of branches snapping forcefully as it crashes through them in its relentless pursuit to reach us.

  Audrey is driving one-handed now, the other hand helping me balance as I cling to her.

  I’m not chickenshit, I swear I’m not, but all I want to do right now is close my eyes.

  Audrey pulls us back onto the road—well, over the road and back down into the ditch, and the Cadillac veers after us. I cling tightly to Audrey, resting my head on her shoulder so that my face is pressed against her chin.

  We aren’t fast enough to outrun it, but with Audrey, maybe we have a chance of outmaneuvering it.

  We come to a particularly narrow bend in the road, and I can feel Audrey’s grin.

  “Hold on,” she shouts at me, and then she pulls the motorcycle sharply to the right, until we spin in a one-eighty, facing down the Cadillac.

  Every inch of Audrey is illuminated by the high beams, and I see her silhouette, every hair standing up along her bare arms, her dark hair framing her face like a halo.

  And then she guns it, speeding toward the Cadillac. Head-on.

  I scream, and at the very last second I squeeze my eyes shut, and then—

  Sharp swerve as we pull to the side. My body tilting.

  Wind and heat as the Cadillac passes us narrowly.

  I open my eyes in time to meet Gus’s eyes as he stares from the front seat, inches from my own.

  His eyes are blue. Ice blue, sad and hollow and wide, wide, wide with fear.

  I never wanted this.

  He opens his mouth as if he’s speaking. And maybe he is.

  I’m sorry.

  And then the Anselms careen past us, unable to make the turn. They crash off the road, straight into century-old oak trees, their car crumpling into silence.

  Audrey slows, slows, slows.

  Her hand reaches back, finds my thigh.

  “You with me?” she asks softly, her voice barely audible above the sound of her motorcycle.

  It’s an odd, final sort of quiet, just the trees and Audrey and the motorcycle.

  Off to our right, the Cadillac is smoking, the glass at the front shattered. It is wrapped almost all the way around one wide oak tree.

  We don’t wait to see if there are any survivors.

  “I’m with you,” I murmur.

  Audrey drives a bit farther, her hand never leaving my leg. I don’t want it to ever leave.

  She kills the engine and stays there, straddling the bike, her boots resting on the pavement.

  “Do you have service?” I ask. “We should…We should call an ambulance. For the Anselms.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t have service out here. You know,” she continues, “we won’t have any proof, after this. Not with all the files missing. It’s our word against theirs. But at least we’re alive.”

  I shift so that I can reach the pocket of my dress without really letting go of Audrey, even a little bit. Even though I knew she would catch me if I needed her to. “Oh no,” I tell her. “I saved the files in the cloud, even after Cliff told me to delete them.”

  Audrey chuckles softly. “Of course you did,” she says. “Still. All those things they told us tonight?”

  “Oh, that,” I say. “It’s on my phone. I recorded everything.”

  This time, it’s Audrey’s turn to almost fall off the bike. “Holy shit,” she says, righting herself. It’s so utterly, utterly silent out here.

  Just the whisper of wind in the trees and the murmur of crickets, the far-off hoot of an owl.

  And the sound of our heartbeats, beating in time with each other.

  “How?” she whispers in amazement, twisting so that she can look straight into my eyes. “I didn’t see your phone. I assumed you didn’t even have it.”

  “My dress has pockets,” I tell her triumphantly.

  She grins in disbelief. “Of course it does,” she says, and then she leans back to kiss me, just once, slow and sweet.

  A roar cuts the silence, a motorcycle approaching, and we both go still.

  A second later, Audrey throws her head back and grins.

  The bike rounds the curve, and I stare, slack-jawed.

  Because there on the motorcycle is Langley, dark hair tucked under a helmet.

  And riding behind her, arms wrapped around Langley, is Mom.

  I sprint toward Mom before they’ve even dismounted, and she pulls me into a fierce hug.

  “Oh, baby,” she whispers against my hair. “Oh, sweetheart, I thought I’d lost you.”

  And then I’m crying against Mom’s shoulder as if I will never stop.

  Mom nearly lifts me off my feet in a hug.

  She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just holds me in her arms and cries so hard her shoulders are shaking.

  I’m crying before I realize it, too, and I bury my head against her shoulder. She’s still in the black blazer she was arrested in, and now I’ve soaked the shoulder with tears. “Mom,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

  She draws back and cups my face in her hands. “You’re safe, baby,” she tells me fiercely. “That is the only thing that matters to me.”

  Sirens sound next, wailing up the road, and then three squad cars pull up.

  “Who the hell is this?” I ask. “Mom, what happened?”

  Lucy tugs her mom by the hand until they’re standing beside us in the circle of red and blue flashing lights.

  “Audrey.” Katy holds out her hand to me. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you. I went along with your mom’s arrest because I thought it would buy us time with the Anselms, give me time to get reinforcements here. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell either of you. I thought I could keep you both safer that way.”

  One of the cops—a tall, brown-skinned woman with close-cropped dark hair—strides toward us.

  “That’s them,” Katy says, pointing to the crumpled Cadillac up the road. “The Anselms. Do you have an ambulance on the way?” She hasn’t loosened her hold on Lucy, not even a little bit.

  The cop nods. “We’ll brief in a moment, all right? I’m glad your daughter is safe.” She moves past us, up the road toward the smoking Cadillac.

  Katy stretches out her hand toward me again, and this time I take it.

  “Katy told me after she dropped off Lucy at the diner,” Mom tells me. “She came back and just…shoved Cliff into the open jail cell without an explanation. And then locked him up, let me out, and we worked out the details of the case together.”

  Another uniformed officer approaches us. “Are these your daughters?” he asks Katy.

  “This is Lucy,” Katy says. “And Audrey.”

  The cop nods. “I’m glad you’re both okay,” he says. “We saw your message outside the diner. That was quick thinking—Lucy, right?”

  “Audrey was kidnapped from the diner by the Anselms,” Lucy tells him. “I came to rescue her and then we escaped together. We got away on her motorcycle, and they tried to run us down, but they crashed into a tree. Just down the road. I’m not sure…I’m not sure if any of them survived.”

  The cop’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s quite the story,” he says. “And my partner and I will be happy to hear more, but is there anything we should know about the Anselms? We’re trying to extricate any survivors, but we’d like to know if there are any weapons we should know about. We’ve got an ambulance two minutes out, but we’d like the scene to be clear when they arrive.”

  “One of them has a gun,” I tell them, and Mom’s body tenses. “Blake does. A little pistol. They showed it to me when we were in the diner. It’s why I got into the car with her. And then they took me to the park, and she pointed the gun at us and told us they were going to make it look like a murder-suicide.”

  The cop steps away from us and speaks into his radio for a moment. His eyes are crinkled with concern when he turns back to us. “I’ll take your statement whenever you’re ready,” he says. “But first I’d like to make sure neither of you are hurt. Ma’am—Langley, is it?—I’m sorry, but I believe you’re the only medical professional here with us at the moment. We’ll need the whole EMS team for the folks up the road. Can you see to the girls while the private detective and I talk about some elements of this case?”

  “Katy?” Mom says. “We’ll head back to the diner, if that’s okay.”

  Katy doesn’t look as if she wants to let Lucy out of her sight ever again, but Mom places a hand on her arm.

  “I’ve got her,” she says, and miraculously, Katy nods.

  “I know you do.”

  They stand like that, shoulder to shoulder, for a long moment.

  “I’m sorry,” Katy says finally, and something passes in the look between them that I don’t understand. “We…we should talk. After this is all done.”

  Mom nods, and the look between them lingers for a moment until she finally ushers us back toward the bikes. “Honey, are you okay to drive?” she asks.

  I nod wordlessly, and Lucy climbs on behind me. Tucks her face against my shoulder, her cheek soft and reassuring.

  Mickey will have a fit that his establishment is being used after hours without telling him, and he will also probably have a conniption over the electric bill from having the lights on all night, and the thought makes me giggle, a little hysterically.

  “You okay, honey?” Mom asks, but I just giggle again, and then suddenly I’m crying and Lucy and Mom both wrap their arms around me and wait.

  In the end, Lucy gives the cops her phone and tells them to listen to the recording, and our moms tell them we’ll give a statement in the morning.

  And then we go back to the motel all together, the four of us plus a police escort, and no one says anything when Lucy and I climb into the same bed together and curl up to go to sleep.

  There will be time to ask and answer questions tomorrow, to learn about the final fate of the Anselm family, to talk about what the future will bring. To grieve the ones we lost to Haeter Lake’s amusement park and the Anselm family.

  But tonight, we just curl up, Lucy and I, fingers entwined.

  Our moms stand at the door, talking, their voices low and melodic, watching over us just in case.

  So, Sundress and I?

  We fall asleep side by side.

  When we arrive back in Haeter Lake almost two weeks later to meet with Pierce Anselm’s lawyers about his will, the sun is shining brightly. Spring has crept up on this town since I last saw it, small green leaves dancing gently every time the wind rustles the trees. Mom reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.

  “You okay?” she asks softly.

  I nod.

  I am, mostly.

  Audrey and I have been messaging nonstop since I went back to Atlanta, when we both had to go back to school after spring break.

  I tried to explain what happened to my friends back home, Jules and Amy and Nora, but how could I even begin?

  I met and lost my grandparents here.

  I met a girl who changed my life.

  I rode around on a motorcycle way too many times.

  And I solved a murder. A few of them actually.

  The details of the case had trickled in slowly. Mom stepped aside from the investigation without being asked, something she has never done before and will probably never do again, so the information came to us in bits and pieces.

  The cops found two people in the crumpled Cadillac.

  One was Gus.

  He hadn’t been buckled, and he had been thrown into the windshield. They had pronounced him dead at the scene.

  The other was Veronica, who was securely buckled and protected by the airbag. She had been in critical condition when we left but has been recovering nicely as she awaits trial.

  Because of course she is.

  The cops found Curtis farther up the road, still on foot, and he is in the county jail, not here in Haeter Lake.

  Investigations had been reopened into my grandparents’ deaths, and Audrey’s dad, too.

  The deputy has been promoted, and Cliff is still in jail, too, keeping Curtis company.

  They found Blake’s gun, too, abandoned in the Cadillac just outside of Haeter Lake.

  They never did find Blake, though.

  Just a trail of blood leading off into the forest, and then the trail disappeared entirely.

  Mom squeezes my shoulder. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Yeah,” I tell her. “I’m sure.”

  When we reach the attorney’s office, Audrey is waiting on the front steps.

  She’s more dressed up than her usual ripped black jeans. Today, she’s wearing pressed dress pants and a collared white shirt, complete with a tie that looks a little too big for her.

  I almost stop breathing.

  Katy chuckles. “Oh, honey,” she says, glancing over at me as she pulls up in front of the courthouse. “You got it bad.”

  I really, really do.

  I jump down out of the Jeep and launch myself into Audrey’s arms, nearly knocking her off her feet.

  But she’s solid, my Audrey, and she rebalances both of us.

  “I’m amazed you survived this long without more previous head injuries,” she teases me, and then pecks a kiss on the tip of my nose. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” I say, and then because her tiny little kiss was nowhere near enough, I press in and kiss her on the lips, even if it isn’t quite appropriate for an event as serious as a will reading.

  She wraps an arm over my shoulders, which she can do easily because the world is unfair and she is taller than me even when I’m wearing heels. “You ready, Sundress?” she asks me.

  I nod. “You? Are you okay?”

  She squeezes me closer to her and we pause there, leaning against each other.

  “Mom’s been making me see a therapist,” she says. “And it’s a little awkward, because there’s actually only one therapist in town, and it’s Chris’s dad. Chris has been good about all this, too, though I don’t think he can ever really understand.”

  Katy called it a trauma bond, this thing Audrey and I share, and maybe it is. I’ve been going to therapy, too, and I’m going to make sense of it. I am, someday. But for now, all I know is that Audrey and I shared something special before we ever faced the Anselms.

  “I’m glad things have been good with Chris,” I say. “Jules and Amy and Nora are trying, too. But I think maybe it’s something only you and I will ever really get.”

  She nods, and then she removes her arm from my shoulders and threads her fingers through mine. “How have things been with your parents?”

  Dad came back to Atlanta after he heard what happened. At first he stayed at a hotel nearby, but lately he’s been sleeping in the guest bedroom so he could be closer. “They’ve both been overprotective,” I tell Audrey. “He couldn’t come today, but he wants to meet you. And Mom wants to spend the weekend in Haeter Lake. She said…She said she’d take us to see where my grandparents are buried. That’d be nice, I think.”

 

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