‘What kind of comment?’
Lucas screwed up his mouth in embarrassment. ‘The kind guys make about a girl’s reputation.’
‘He called me cheap? How did you find out? I thought no one knew why Logan fought with Ezra.’
‘That’s the way Logan wanted it. He didn’t want the comment repeated.’
‘So it was bad,’ I sighed. ‘I kind of picked up that Ezra didn’t like me, but—’
‘No,’ Lucas interrupted. ‘That’s the point, Darina. Ezra did like you – a lot!’
‘Oh my God!’ I was having to paint a whole new picture and at this stage the brush strokes were broad, the details blurred. ‘Ezra liked me!’
‘A year ago, before you dated Phoenix, he had a crush.’
‘Ezra?’ The geek in the goth T-shirt, the tongue-tied guy at the school prom who never got himself a date. For Ezra Powell, think in stereotypes.
‘Then Phoenix came along and blew him out of the water.’
‘Ezra was never in the water!’
Lucas was quiet for a while. ‘Did you ever think how hard it is for a guy like Ezra?’ he asked.
I breathed out sharply. ‘Yeah – sorry.’
‘So, he’s hurt that you were never into him. OK – correction, he’s hurt that you never even noticed him.’
‘To argue my corner, Lucas, I never thought I was the type of girl a guy would have a crush on. I’m not an Arizona or a Jordan.’
There was another long silence from the passenger seat. ‘I’m never going to understand women,’ he said at last, making me smile in spite of everything.
‘So, Ezra is licking his wounds,’ he went on. ‘He’s pretty fixated on you, according to what Logan told me. Then Phoenix—’
‘Dies,’ I cut in. ‘And Ezra is ready again to make his move.’
‘But this time Logan gets there first. He’s your shoulder to cry on, your rock.’
‘I knew Logan for ever,’ I sighed. My throat constricted and tears welled up.
Lucas pushed on with the point he was making. ‘So at this point, Ezra can’t take any more. One day he’s ready to die for you, the next he’s turned one hundred and eighty degrees.’
‘He hates me?’
‘That’s the kind of guy he is. He makes a habit of running after girls he knows he can’t have – you, Arizona, Summer …’
‘He had crushes on all of us?’
Lucas nodded. ‘All inside his head, never any real action.’
‘And he ends up bitter and twisted, bitching about us?’
‘And choosing the wrong guy to offload on.’
‘Logan.’ And now I got the picture – all the details. Ezra calls me cheap to Logan’s face and like a medieval knight Logan fights to defend me, not once but twice. ‘Lucas, out at the cabin – did you hear what Ezra said?’
‘Some of it.’ He was turning red again and staring down at the glittering water of the distant lake. ‘Logan and Ezra were in the kitchen. Ezra claimed he’d …’
‘What?’
‘He’d …’
‘Had me?’
Now that I’d said it, Lucas felt able breathe again. ‘He started in on the detail. Logan grabbed him and threw him out.’
‘I never … he didn’t!’ I whispered.
‘I know that, Darina. Logan knew that. But you need to watch out for Ezra, is all I’m saying. He’s out to cause problems and there’s no Logan to protect you any more.
JakB was an extreme version of Ezra Powell, and now I saw why Ezra took on board the crazy fan’s reasoning. They wear matching T-shirts, I reminded myself darkly.
After Hartmann, I’d dropped Lucas off at his house and insisted on driving home alone. I’d thanked him for telling me the truth and said I’d see him the next morning before the concert. Meanwhile, I was still on my way to Deputy Sheriff Jardine’s office.
‘The deputy sheriff is busy,’ the officer at Reception told me when I went in.
‘This is important,’ I told her. I felt myself come up against that authority barrier that people in uniform present – the look across the desk that says: You are a small, insignificant person unworthy of my full attention. ‘He would want to see me.’
‘I would?’ Jardine asked, coming through from his inner office and recognizing me right away. ‘Thanks, Sheryl. I’ve got five minutes to give to Darina before I go off duty.’
‘Go through,’ Sheryl-in-uniform sniffed.
So I sat in Jardine’s room eagerly spilling out all the Brandon-linked information he’d asked me for. I named Oscar Thorne and Will Stone, told him about the bad blood between the drugs gangs, the suppliers, the dealers, the middle men.
‘So Stone was on his way to meet with Thorne in the mall?’ Jardine checked with me. ‘And now you want me to talk this through with Thorne?’
‘Right now!’ I said. ‘You can’t let this go through the weekend. It has to be today!’
I got the authority barrier again – the level, narrow-eyed look, the tap-tap of the pen against the desk. Then Jardine thrust out his bottom lip. ‘Darina, did you ever think of a future career in the police department?’ he asked.
‘This isn’t a joke. There’s definitely a drugs link – you see what I’m saying?’
‘That Thorne planned a shoot-out and your friend Summer was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sure, I see. And I have to tell you, Darina, that on this occasion my senior officer was way ahead of you.’
This made me sit right back in my seat. ‘And?’
Jardine checked the date on his multi-function wristwatch. ‘Today’s the twenty-ninth. That makes it the twenty-seventh when we pulled in Will Stone for interview.’
‘And?’ I said again, this time hardly audible.
‘Stone had an alibi for the day Summer died. He was at the hospital, visiting his sick mother.’
‘You believed him?’ What a corny story – how could the cops be so gullible?
‘It checked out. Even the heads of drugs cartels have sick mothers, you know. Plus, we got a warrant to search Stone’s property, including the contents of his gun closet. There was no weapon there that matched the gun responsible for Summer’s death.’
‘So he got rid of it. That doesn’t prove anything.’
Jardine clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘But the alibi, Darina …’
‘He was at the hospital at the exact time Summer died?’
‘Check. Stone texted Thorne to say he couldn’t make Starbucks, that his mother was in the ER and they had to make a new time to meet. It’s all on record.’
I closed my eyes, tried to breathe evenly, felt hope slip away. I clutched at one last straw. ‘Maybe Stone got someone to deputize,’ I suggested. ‘Say he sent another member of the gang to do the deal with Thorne.’
Jardine sighed as he looked at his watch a second time. ‘Go home, Darina,’ he said. ‘I’m into official me-time, ready to do some fishing.’
I seemed always to be in the car, always losing hope.
‘What do I do now?’ I asked out loud.
The hood was down, a wind was blowing and I was longing with all my heart for support from the Beautiful Dead.
‘I’m out of ideas,’ I confessed. ‘There’s only JakB left on my list, and the guy scares the crap out of me.’
Suddenly the weight of not sleeping and eating for two days, of picturing Summer in permanent torment, for ever in limbo, got through to me. ‘Hunter, Phoenix, I need your help,’ I begged.
When they didn’t reply with invisible wings and halos of shimmering light I knew I’d been abandoned. I drifted through the streets, hardly knowing where I was, feeling the loneliest I’d ever felt in my life.
The isolation was intense – I was looking around for help and knowing that I was in this alone, that Summer had only me to rely on and time was racing on, sprinting towards the finish, running out.
The certainty sent me spiralling into a panic that made every normal thing on the road suddenly s
eem unreal and threatening. A woman stepped off the sidewalk without seeing me and making me swerve wide. She stood in the road acting like I was to blame. Then a guy on a Harley overtook on a bend, cutting back in front of me much too close. My foot hit the brake and my engine stalled for the second time that day.
By now my nerves were shredded. I re-started the car with a trembling hand, telling myself that the place to head was home and bed, but doing exactly the opposite by pointing the car in the direction of Deer Creek.
I drove on slowly, like I was in a dream, ignoring the horn blast of a Porsche driver who wanted me to pick up speed. As he overtook, I caught sight of a guy with a shaven head giving me the finger.
An angry guy with a gold wristwatch in a black Porsche. Will Stone maybe?
My unreliable mind cranked up my stress level another notch into undiluted paranoia. The local drugs baron was on to me – he already knew I’d spoken to the cops, he’d made it his business to learn every detail of my life – where I lived, who my friends were, what car I drove.
But no – the Porsche was past me and accelerating, the roar of his engine fading as he disappeared round the bend. Tears of relief trickled down my cheeks.
Don’t cry while you drive – it should be in the Highway Code, along with using a cell phone and talking to the undead. I wept and by the time I reached Deer Creek I could hardly see the track. I parked in the spot where Phoenix and I would always meet, where I’d waited for him the night he died.
‘Hey, Darina,’ he said, reaching out to open my car door.
It was midday and the sun was shining on Deer Creek. The water was crystal clear.
‘Hold my hand,’ I told Phoenix, and when he took it I shivered at the coldness of his touch. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’ I asked.
‘It was more than a guess,’ he admitted. ‘I made it happen.’
‘You planted the idea in my head?’
He nodded. ‘It seemed a good place for us to meet.’
‘It is.’ I remembered deciding to drive home but inexplicably coming here instead. ‘How long have you been around?’
‘I took over from Dean after you left Jardine’s office. There’s been someone watching over you twenty-four/seven.’
‘And I felt so alone,’ I sighed. ‘I wish sometimes you guys would give me a signal.’
‘Against Hunter’s orders,’ he reminded me, leading me down to the water’s edge then striding from rock to rock to reach a large boulder in the middle of the creek. He climbed on to it and offered me his hand to help me up. ‘He figures someone from the far side might get suspicious.’
‘Can’t he take pity on me once in a while?’ I stood unsteadily beside Phoenix on our favourite rock, dizzied by the smooth, strong flow of the water around the boulder. ‘Truly, this is the worst I’ve been.’
‘Hunter doesn’t do pity,’ he reminded me. ‘His focus is on Summer.’
‘How’s she doing?’
‘Not good. It’s weird – she’s shutting down.’
‘Still giving up?’ I asked. I held tight to his hand, scared by the current at our feet and remembering how weak Summer had been the last time I saw her.
Phoenix sat down on the rock, letting his legs dangle over the edge and inviting me to sit next to him. ‘She’s not fighting, she’s kind of slipping away. I think she’s ready to leave.’
‘She can’t do that – not until tomorrow. Tell her she has to give me another twenty-four hours.’
Phoenix tilted his head to one side, half looking away. ‘It’s hard to reach her. She sits on the steps in the barn but she’s not there, she’s a million miles away, drifting, losing contact.’
‘Oh don’t!’ I cried. ‘How did we get here, Phoenix? I had so many ideas on clearing up Summer’s death but none of them worked out – Fichtner, Oscar Thorne and Will Stone—’
‘There’s still JakB,’ he cut in.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know any more. Sure, he’s weird, but is he a killer? You know when he trapped me in the storeroom – he cried like a baby. I looked at him and I thought, No way is this guy capable of shooting the girl he worships.’
‘But we don’t know how his mind works. He’s not like you and me, Darina. He lives in a fantasy world.’
‘And we don’t?’ I asked, still clinging to Phoenix’s hand and suddenly seeing the irony of the situation. ‘You call this real?’ Me sitting in the middle of Deer Creek with my Beautiful Dead boyfriend.
He smiled self-consciously. ‘You know what I’m saying. If we’re looking for an irrational psychopath, JakB exactly fills the slot.’ Pausing for a while to look me straight in the eye, he reached out to stroke my hair. ‘Don’t do what Summer is doing, you don’t surrender, you hear?’
‘Is that what you see when you read my thoughts – surrender?’
He nodded. ‘And failure. You figure you’ve let Summer down and it eats away at your confidence.’
‘We have less than twenty-four hours,’ I sighed. ‘It’s true, I do feel hopeless – deep, deep in the pit of my stomach.’
‘That’s not the way I see it,’ he argued, leaning out over the water and watching our reflection. ‘Look at what you achieved – a million times more than Summer ever expected.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as making contact with her parents, working on the anniversary concert, dealing with Logan’s funeral, plus following all the leads as soon as they were thrown up.’
‘Not enough,’ I muttered, feeling more and more drawn to the pull of the current beneath our feet. I imagined slipping into the water, feeling its icy touch as I sank down to the stony bed. ‘Phoenix, I’m exhausted.’
So he wrapped me in his arms and softly kissed the top of my head. ‘We used to swim here,’ he reminded me. ‘The water’s deep, remember?’
‘It made our skin tingle, even in summer.’
‘There’s a ledge on the far bank. We sunbathed.’
I nodded and let the memories wash over me of Phoenix when he was alive – his skin tanned, his flesh warm to the touch and a strong heart beating in his chest.
‘I wanted to lie in the sun with you for ever. That’s what love means to me, Darina – you, the sun, clear water.’
‘I never asked you this before,’ I said softly. ‘Maybe I didn’t want to know.’
‘Asked me what?’
‘Before me, before us – did you ever … were you ever in love?’
He paused for a while, then shrugged. ‘I thought I was a couple of times at my last school – the usual crushes.’
‘Yeah, I really don’t want to hear it,’ I said, backtracking like crazy. ‘You’re going to tell me they were blonde and beautiful size zeros.’
Phoenix’s laugh was rare but when it came, like it did now, it was low down in his throat and covered me in a warm glow. ‘The first girl was named Skye and she was dark-haired. Her dad designed websites for major car manufacturers. When I asked her out on a date she quizzed me over my dad’s occupation. No dad, I said. So with Skye I was never out of the starting-blocks.’
‘That’s sad,’ I said with a grin on my face. ‘Number two?’
‘Caroline Garrety. I spent six months worshipping her, having imaginary conversations, figuring out which movie we would see when I finally asked her out on a date.’
‘And?’
‘I asked her one Halloween to share a horror movie DVD at my place. She looked straight through me and told me no offence but she wasn’t ready to start dating yet, thanks.’
‘How old was she?’
‘Eleven. I was twelve.’
‘You’re crazy!’ I laughed.
‘I love you,’ he told me and kissed me until my breath was gone.
And in the background, just rising above the sound of water running over pebbles, I could hear Summer’s voice singing her ‘Red Sky’ song about not having time to say goodbye.
There was no sleeping that night either – Summer’s last one on the far side. B
ut sleeping was what Hunter ordered for me, and he took Phoenix away so that I could rest.
‘I won’t sleep!’ I protested when Phoenix got ready to leave. We were sitting in my car at the end of my street.
‘You need to rest. And Hunter needs me back at Foxton Ridge. Donna is stuck in the barn taking care of Summer, so he wants me on patrol at the Government Bridge camp ground. He’s expecting weekend visitors, and if they stumble across the old ranch house, they have a habit of getting curious.’
‘I know,’ I sighed. ‘And the last thing you all need on Summer’s final night is working to set up barriers against far-siders. I understand.’
Phoenix made it plain he didn’t want to leave. ‘We’ve already cruised the streets looking for JakB,’ he reminded me. ‘You asked if anyone had seen him in the music stores, the cafés, all the places he might hang out. No one even knows he exists.’
‘But he can’t vanish off the face of the earth. He’s around here somewhere.’
‘Wait until tomorrow. If he’s so crazy about getting into the concert, that’s when he’ll show up again.’
‘You’re right.’ The low sun had left the streets in deep shadow, the light was grey and cool. ‘I’ll go home and check my laptop. Maybe something will show up.’
‘Cool.’ Thinking that he’d convinced me to stay indoors, Phoenix was ready to leave. He frowned and used his mysterious energy to create a faint glow around his whole body – the sign that he was about to dematerialize. ‘I love you,’ he said softly.
‘I love you,’ I mouthed back, still willing him to stay, but knowing he wouldn’t.
The light grew brighter, more dazzling until Phoenix disappeared.
Exhaustion came over me the moment he left. I just had enough strength to drive home, park my car and head inside.
‘Hannah called,’ Jim reported as I passed through the kitchen. ‘She said she’d texted and didn’t get a reply.’
Pulling out my phone I switched it on and read her message: WHAT’S THE STORY WITH YOU AND LUCAS?
NO STORY, I texted back.
SAW U 2 DRIVE OFF. LOOKED LIKE A STORY 2 ME! she came back.
I switched off my phone again and went wearily upstairs, flipped open my laptop, logged on. I Googled angelvoice.