Nora used the time to retreat to the shade of the small office, where she ate a snack and checked her messages.
Now, when she took out her phone, she saw a text sent from Emily. It said:
Asdfghjkl;;zxcvbnm,./qwertyuiop[
Nora stared at the screen. There was a second message. It read:
Sdfghjklasfghjklzxcvbnmm,./
Was it a joke? It didn’t look funny.
And then, finally, a third text read:
Poiuytrewq’;lkjhgfdsa/.,mnbvcxz
Nora had a dull headache. Maybe it was spam. Because if it was some kind of complicated code, or even if it was an obvious puzzle, she wasn’t getting it.
And so she sent back a simple reply:
?????
She then tossed the phone into her bag and went to get more sunscreen from the supply closet. She’d call Emily at the end of the day and see what was going on.
There were only two states of being.
In the first state, with the buzzing roaring in her head, Emily focused on studying what was exactly in front of her.
Literally.
The black molded plastic square, which covered the air vent of the dashboard, had a texture that looked like a miniature waffle. When the sunlight hit it in the right way, she could see a fine layer of dust. When the sunlight wasn’t angled in that direction, the panel looked completely clean.
Emily worked to take the observation to the next step: dust particles were really just tiny pieces of dirt. Or plant pollen. Or human skin cells. She had studied dust in high school. In physics. No, maybe in some other class.
Would she ever go to high school again?
Freak out.
Back to buzzing state.
The floor mat was made of gray fibers. Clean, upright strands. Like gray synthetic grass.
The car seemed new. A new car with clean floor mats.
Alert. Previously unseen was a small stain near the back right edge of the mat. That could come out. It could be scrubbed. Maybe vacuumed first? Her parents liked clean cars.
Parents. Would she ever see her parents again?
Freak out.
The windshield had little yellowy streaks. Flecks of yellowy stuff. What were they? Droppings of some kind. From an animal?
There is an animal sitting behind the wheel.
A terrifying animal.
Freak out.
Back to the buzzing.
Second state of being: analyze an escape.
Make a plan.
Big-picture thinking.
The car is driving north on the freeway.
Maybe someone is looking for this car?
No one is looking for this car.
The vehicle is not speeding.
The other cars, the other people, so close but yet so far, cannot help.
But the vehicle will need gas at some point if he keeps driving.
Question: does he know where he’s going? Does he have a plan?
He will have to stop the car for gas if he continues.
And what about eating?
Will he get hungry or thirsty?
And what about going to the bathroom? He will need to go to the bathroom.
When the car stops, what can be done?
If there are people around, how can they help?
Can her cell phone still send any kind of signal?
Why didn’t she charge her phone?
Sam.
Because she saw Sam with Destiny.
Did she really see Sam with Destiny? Did she make that up in her head? Was it a bad dream? Was this a bad dream?
This is as real as it gets.
Were people looking for her right now?
Maybe her family knew that she was in trouble.
The dog knew. He was at the window. He saw.
No one would get her out of this. No one could help her. It was all on her.
A plan would involve running. She could run long distances because of soccer.
A plan would involve leaving a trail.
A signal.
A sign.
A plan is needed.
Dying is not part of any plan.
37
Clarence had eaten the leftover steak and onion rings from the night before when he’d woken up in the morning.
He’d had two cups of coffee. Both with a shot of bourbon.
Now, as he drove, his tongue worked to dislodge a piece of meat gristle stuck on the left side in his back molar. He was glad he’d had a good meal.
Breakfast was so important.
At his side the girl was quiet, and that was a good thing. She had the sense to just stare straight ahead, keep her mouth shut, and not ask a lot of dumb-ass questions.
He could see that her legs were trembling. Just slightly. And it wasn’t cold, so that had to mean she was shaking from fear.
Sweet.
He’d killed a bird once, when he was small, by crushing it in his hands. It trembled when he held it. He remembered that now. And then he broke its neck, and it stopped shaking.
It was so peaceful and lifeless in the palm of his pale hand. It had been released from this world of pain.
He wanted the Bell family to remember him.
He would stop their daughter from shaking.
He could bring her to the peaceful place.
He just needed to figure out where and when.
Destiny worked on her plan.
She had to start with the license plate of the silver car. Once she had that information, she could get off the freeway and report the man and the gun and the girl. Hopefully, in no time, that would get a parade of highway-patrol cars powering after the bad guy.
But a few things were holding her back.
She made a list of potential obstacles as she drove.
She didn’t have a valid driver’s license. Would she get in trouble for that?
She had no ID, really. And she looked young. So young that people—authorities—might not even believe she was old enough to drive. What if they thought she was a runaway? That had happened before. In Tucson. But at that point she was a runaway. So maybe that didn’t count.
She was driving Robb Ellis’s car, and she hadn’t asked, and now he might be mad. What if he’d reported his car as stolen? He seemed pretty attached to his possessions. What if they hauled her away instead of going after the bad guy?
In order to see the license plate, she was going to have to pass the car. It was the only way she could get close enough. Why hadn’t someone, anyone, thought to get her glasses?
Destiny squinted hard and then said out loud with fierce conviction, “I can do this.”
She grabbed the rearview mirror and stared at herself as she said again: “I can do this.”
She lingered on her own reflected image for a moment. She liked the way she looked—her hair was growing out in a good way. The dark roots now looked so intentional.
Then she reprimanded herself. Focus.
“I can…”
She put her foot down harder on the gas and pushed the mirror back in place as she said:
“… do this.”
The black SUV pulled into the passing lane and in a matter of seconds had gained ground on the silver car.
As she got close, the rear of the Honda came into view more clearly, and she could see the license plate.
California
2KDZ7358
Destiny repeated it out loud:
“Two-K-D-Z-seven-three-five-eight.”
The silver car with the man with the orange-colored hair was now right alongside her. Destiny quickly glanced over and could see he was staring straight ahead, both hands on the steering wheel.
The edge of Emily was visible in the passenger’s seat and she, too, was looking straight out the windshield.
They both looked like mannequins. Not real.
Destiny traveled ten seconds ahead, counting the time out loud, and then slid back over into the right lane.
Emily barely blinked.
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The electrical buzzing sound in her head had transported her. She was no longer in the car. She was walking along the Oregon coast, and the wind, as always, was blowing hard. The waves, in a dozen shades of gray, were crashing in sets of threes, sending a cold, salty spray high into the air.
Sam was with her. They were walking together. He wrapped his arm around her and held her close. And then, because they were alone, just the two of them, he sang to her. He could play his guitar in front of anyone. But singing was something different. It was only for her.
And then, right in the middle of the make-believe ocean walk, she saw Bobby/Robb Ellis’s black car pull over from the left lane.
Bobby’s SUV was in front of her.
The buzzing was now screaming in her ears.
What she saw had to be a mistake.
They’d been driving for a long time, and they were in the middle of nowhere, as far as she could tell.
But when she looked straight out the windshield, she could see the SUV, and she knew that car. She had ridden in that car countless times.
She knew the sticker in the back window for the country club. It had been put on just a little bit crooked. And she recognized the license-plate holder, which said Max Miller’s Ford.
Max Miller’s Ford was, of course, where the Ellis family had bought the car. Max Miller Jr. and his sister, Kyle, owned the place, since they’d inherited it from their father. And both Max and Kyle had kids. Maggie and Harper and Ryan and Fish Miller all went to school with Emily.
How many new black SUVs had little crooked stickers on the back for a country club?
How many had license-plate holders that said Max Miller’s Ford?
Emily’s heart was pounding so hard, she thought it was going to explode right out of her chest.
And then she watched, helpless to do anything, as Robb Ellis’s SUV turned off the freeway at the next exit and disappeared up an incline.
But it didn’t vanish before she had a chance to catch sight of the driver.
And that’s when she saw Destiny.
Everything was jumbling up in Destiny’s mind.
Why had she counted the ten seconds out loud? It ruined everything.
She struggled to repeat what she’d seen: 2KDZ7358. But it was morphing now. She was too agitated, and she was losing the sequence.
The 2KD had turned to 2KC, and the Z was moving into a J.
She had the 7, but she couldn’t hold the 3 or the 8.
She should have written it down, but she didn’t have a pen. She didn’t have paper.
And she was freaking out now.
Why hadn’t she added up the numbers or turned them into something with meaning? Well, she didn’t, and suddenly she had 2KCJ and just the 7.
And now she really didn’t think it was KCJ.
She felt certain really only about the first 2. And the K.
And the rest was lost.
Junk.
No wonder she’d hated math class. Numbers were just impossible for her unless they were on a price tag.
And then the highway exit also turned into a betrayal.
It dumped out onto a road, and there was not a gas station or a restaurant or a house or anything.
There was no one to help.
She stared out the windshield and saw only a road that went up and over the interstate. And so she drove right through the stop sign at the top of the incline and straight across the blacktop and down the ramp back onto the freeway.
Destiny shouted out loud to the universe: “Bollocks!”
She had worked in a bar for six weeks by Mount Shasta, and there had been a bartender there named Ollie and he was from England and when things didn’t go the right way he’d always yell, “Bollocks.”
She wasn’t sure what it meant, but she knew that her first attempt at going for help was a complete failure.
Destiny accelerated until she saw the silver car up ahead again.
And she eased up on the gas, relieved to just be the one to follow.
38
Sam and Robb sat in Sam’s car outside Diane’s Burger Heaven.
They were both worried, but they were also hungry, and so the decision was made to get cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate milk shakes.
They were going to eat and make a plan, but instead they sat in Sam’s car chewing in total silence.
Sam didn’t know if he should tell Robb Ellis about his encounter with Destiny.
Could Destiny have told Emily about last night?
Was it possible the two girls were together?
Would Destiny have tried to hurt Emily?
And if he was really worried about the issue of Emily’s personal safety, shouldn’t he call her parents?
Robb, eating his cheeseburger in the passenger’s seat, had his own list of questions.
How he was going to explain to his parents that he’d basically been lying about sleeping at Rory’s?
Because, if Destiny Verbeck stole his car, which was a distinct possibility, who knew what else she might have up her sleeve that belonged to him?
Robb wondered if she’d gone to San Diego. Hadn’t she said something about wanting to see panda bear babies that were just born? She’d said something about panda bears; he felt certain of that. The trouble was that she talked so much. He didn’t actually hear half of what came out of her mouth.
And she got irritable easily. Or at least it felt that way. Especially since a lot of her irritation was directed at him.
And now this.
Robb glanced over at Sam. He looked a million miles away. Then Sam suddenly said, “I should tell you something.…”
Sam put the rest of his cheeseburger into the greasy sack and obsessed over making the now-trash bag as small as possible as he continued. “Destiny showed up at my summer school class yesterday.… I ended up driving her back to the motel.”
Robb raised an eyebrow. For him, this was a big reaction. But he didn’t say anything.
“In the car she was… sort of… all over me. I told her I had a girlfriend, which of course she already knew. But she didn’t seem too happy about that.”
Robb kept eating his French fries. Dipping each one deeper into the ketchup as if he were being paid for how well he coated the end of the potato piece. It looked like he wasn’t even listening now.
But he was listening. Totally listening. And he heard a voice inside his head screaming, Why does this stuff always happen?
Why do chicks turn against me?
He tried.
He really tried.
He bought Destiny the pink gemstone hairclips she liked so much at Rite Aid.
He held the door for her when they walked into buildings, like his parents had always told him to do.
He told her how pretty she was, and he brushed his teeth before he kissed her. And he used dental floss.
It was just so unfair.
Okay, so she didn’t like him that much. So what?
She was just a short girl with bizarro clothes who smelled like candy corn, which was weird, because he never saw her even eat a single kernel of candy corn. And it was a fact that he never trusted her.
Not really, anyway.
Sam could have her.
Robb glanced over, and the expression on Sam’s face said he really didn’t want her. But he looked guilty, so maybe he did want her a little bit.
That wasn’t even the point.
Robb needed to stick to the real problem, which was that his car was missing.
He tried to keep his voice from getting all high and squeaky, because it sometimes could be that way when he was upset. “I’m not that into Destiny. I’m really just worried, you know, about my car right now.”
Sam replied, “Okay, well, I am worried about Emily. And maybe the car is connected. So what do you think we should do?”
With the disclosure about Destiny now behind them, they were finding more stable ground.
Robb Ellis knew about law enforcement and sto
len property. “The first thing you always do is report the crime.”
And then it was like a lightbulb came on. For the first time that day, Robb Ellis felt like his world wasn’t collapsing. He wasn’t trapped in an airless plastic container.
“I’ve got OnBoard. My car. It’s got that service.”
“What’s OnBoard?”
Robb erupted. “It’s a security system—you pay for it. You know, remote diagnostics. It records everything, turn by turn. It’s tied into the car’s phone system. It uses the GPS technology. It can even slow the car down. It’s remote interface.”
Sam didn’t understand, but it was obvious to him that whatever Robb was saying was a big deal.
“So you mean we call the police and we report your car missing, and they can find it?”
Robb shook his head. “We don’t need the police. My mom’s a detective. I just call the service like I’m someone from her office. She’s hooked up. There’s a code I give the OnBoard operator, and then they’ll give me a location. You and I can take care of this ourselves.”
Sam knew that he had a lot to learn about the real world, but this was a revelation.
39
The boys stayed on the porch until the police cars and the neighbors were long gone. They hadn’t done anything wrong, but they still felt partly responsible for the break-in.
Debbie Bell needed to return to her shift at the hospital. Tim Bell would stay at home and work from his basement studio. He’d keep an eye on the boys.
They sat on the edges of the porch railing, and Riddle continued to draw. He had done a “before” picture of the rooms downstairs. Now he was working on the “after.” The “after” picture had a broiler pan in the sink and the dishes on the counter.
It was a perfect replica of the crime scene.
Beto watched from over his shoulder. “How do you remember all that stuff?”
Riddle just shrugged. “I take a picture in my mind, and then I can just look at that.”
Beto glanced over at Jared. “There has to be a way that we can harness your power. I feel like we could make a lot of money in Las Vegas or get on a TV show.”