His words were a fog. Her grandmother was still in another part of the hospital, and Makani wasn’t allowed to see her yet. She touched her bandaged arm for self-support. It was wrapped from elbow to wrist. “When can she come home?”
“She’ll need significant rehabilitation here in the hospital. Three weeks, at least.”
“Three weeks?”
“After that, we’ll transfer her to a rehabilitation center . . .”
He was still talking as Makani, stupefied, lowered herself back onto the bed where she’d received the stitches. Three weeks . . . and then more rehabilitation . . .
The surgeon removed a pen from the shirt pocket of his green scrubs. He clicked it, and the finality of the sound made her look up. “Do you have any other family that you can stay with while she recovers?”
Her parents flitted in, and then straight back out of, Makani’s mind as she shook her head. “It’s just the two of us.”
“That’s okay.” The nurse placed a steady hand on Makani’s uninjured arm. “Your grandmother will be awake soon, and we’ll ask her where she’d like you to stay. I’m sure she has some friends who’d be happy to take you in for a while.”
Makani’s chest constricted. Grandma Young’s church friends were nosy. They would ask so many questions. Maybe she could stay with Darby or Alex instead.
As the surgeon detailed the recovery process, he spoke with a brisk authority that Makani found difficult to follow. When he left, the nurse outlined it in simpler terms and reminded her where the call button was to ring for help. Makani glanced at her laminated ID badge—DONNA KURTZMAN, RN—and thanked her by name.
For the second time in a year, almost to the day, Makani was trapped inside a waking nightmare. Grandma Young had thrown herself at a serial killer to save her. The selflessness of this act was almost too big to comprehend. But equally astounding was that she’d made it home in time to do it. Makani should be the one in the operating room, not her grandmother. Her grandmother had done nothing to deserve this.
Two more excruciating hours passed alone with her thoughts.
At last, Donna led her to the ICU where Grandma Young was coming around from the anesthesia. Her enfeebled body was strung up with wire monitors and IVs and catheter tubes, and Makani had no idea what else. A reclining chair sat beside the bed. Makani perched on its cushioned edge and took her grandmother’s hand. Her skin felt thin, her bones fragile. “Hi, Grandma.”
Grandma Young’s eyelids fluttered open. She tried to speak, but her voice came out as a whispered croak. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost eleven. Do you know where you are?”
Her eyes closed again, groggily. She nodded.
“You had emergency surgery, but you’re okay. Do you remember what happened?” There was a twenty-second pause. “Grandma?”
“What time is it?”
“It’s eleven at night,” Makani said. Donna had explained that the anesthesia would make her grandmother disoriented for a while.
Grandma Young gave another frail nod. “Are you all right?”
Makani had held it in since the attack. But this question, coming from this person, unlocked the dam. Warm tears spilled over, no longer containable. “I’m fine.”
“Oliver?”
“Ollie’s fine, too.” Makani used her right sleeve to dry her cheeks. The left sleeve had been cut off. The rest of her sweater was encrusted with dried blood, and her jeans were stained with rust-colored pools. “We’re all okay.”
There was a knock on the door, which had been left ajar. Chris nudged it open. He was in his blue uniform and holding a small bundle of Mylar balloons. And beside him, as if summoned by their thoughts, stood Ollie.
Makani’s heart cracked down the middle. But it was a good feeling.
Ollie looked pale—his skin tone even paler than its natural state—and weary. No, she corrected herself. Bleary. As if he’d been answering the same questions, over and over, for the last six hours. He glanced at her, skittish and apprehensive.
“I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Young,” Chris said. “May we come in?”
If her grandmother had been anyone else, Makani guessed that he would have called her ma’am. This was the habitual Mrs. Young of a former student.
Grandma Young’s eyes reopened, and her posture straightened the teensiest bit. She gained a modicum of strength as she regained the role of the adult. “Christopher. Officer Larsson,” she corrected hoarsely. “Come in.”
He grinned. “Christopher is still fine.”
The brothers entered, and Chris presented Makani’s grandmother with three balloons—a Get Well Soon, a blushing emoji, and an emoji wearing sunglasses. “There weren’t many options at the hospital’s gift shop,” he said apologetically. “We bought flowers, but then they told us we couldn’t bring them into the ICU.” He turned to Makani. “They’re in my car. One of the bouquets is for you, of course.”
Grandma Young thanked Chris as he tied the balloons in a place where she could see them. Apart from the occasional lei and an orchid corsage at her ex-boyfriend’s junior prom, Makani had never been given flowers. She smiled at Ollie, perhaps even glowed, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. Her expression faltered.
He knows. The police had opened her record, and now Chris and Ollie knew. Her heart withered. The muscle blackened into soot.
“I owe you the thank-you.” Chris walked to her grandmother’s bedside. “If you hadn’t come home when you did . . .” He couldn’t finish the thought out loud.
Grandma Young shook her head, barely. “They saved themselves. I only got in the way.”
He smiled with a gentle laugh. “That’s not what my brother said.”
Ollie was staring at the floor, so Makani spared him the embarrassment of responding. “Have you caught him yet?” She didn’t have to specify the him.
Chris’s blond eyebrows pinched together, which darkened his appearance. “Not yet. There are a lot of places to hide around here, but he couldn’t have gotten far. He’s probably tucked up in someone’s barn or grain bin.” Chris sounded frustrated, and he paused to regain a measured control. “Everyone’s looking for him, and everyone knows what he looks like. We’ll get him soon. I promise.”
He asked her grandmother how she was feeling.
Ollie knows. Chris knows. Everybody will know.
“How many stitches?” Chris asked.
It took a moment for Makani to realize that this question was for her. “Twenty-six.” She was unaware that she was cradling her wounded arm. “It’s nothing.”
“Your nothing and my nothing are two very different things.”
His tone was light, but her lungs tightened.
A nurse rolled something bulky past their door. The noise reopened Grandma Young’s eyes. Her gaze locked on to Ollie, and she ushered him to her side.
Reluctantly, he complied. Each step seemed gingerly taken, evoking Makani’s memories of his cut-up feet. He bit his lip ring, and the gesture revealed the truth: Her grandmother was making him nervous. Not her. He looked troubled because her grandmother had discovered him naked inside her house.
Makani felt a rush of temporary relief as Grandma Young reached for his hands. Ollie accepted them. “Thank you.” She said it as emphatically as she could, meant with every cell in her body. “I’m so glad you were there.”
Chris’s eyes grew misty, betraying his professional stoicism.
Ollie nodded, but he lifted his chin. It quivered.
Grandma Young, still gripping his hands, shook them up and down. She inhaled deeply. “All right, then. That’s that.” And then she turned to Makani and asked, befuddled, “What time is it?”
In the hospital’s unremarkable and unadorned waiting room, Ollie produced Makani’s phone. It had been hidden in the pocket of his hoodie. “I grabbed it before the police could confiscate it. They’ll pull your records and call logs, anyway.”
Chris had to ask her grandmother a few questions, so they?
??d been banished. Makani’s eyes widened as the precious object returned to her grasp. “Thank you.”
“I think you have a few messages,” he said wryly.
Entering her password revealed dozens of texts from Darby and Alex: Are you okay? Where are you?! We are SO SORRY for suspecting Ollie!!! Scrolling through their frantic apologies was comforting, until she remembered Rodrigo’s phone. Had David texted him that morning to maintain the pretense of innocence? What kind of person could murder their best friend? Perhaps they’d never been friends at all.
Makani texted Darby and Alex to let them know that she was safe and that she’d call them later. She couldn’t handle talking about it now. Not tonight. Not again. Even though she was staring at the call button beside her mother’s name.
Ollie acknowledged her hesitating finger. “You should.”
She moved near the elevators for privacy. There were three other people in the waiting room—a conservatively dressed elderly couple and a scruffy-faced man in an orange construction vest—and she didn’t want them to overhear her, either. They were caught up in their own emergencies, and none of them had realized that they were sitting with the latest victims of the Osborne Slayer. Soon enough, the town would think of her and Ollie as nothing else. Makani wanted to hold on to this normalcy for as long as possible.
Her mother’s voicemail picked up. “Hey, Mom. It’s me. I don’t know why you and Dad aren’t answering your phones. The hospital and the police have been trying to call you for hours. Grandma and I are all right, but . . . just call me back, okay?”
The same thing happened when she tried her father. She left a similar message.
“No luck?” Ollie asked on her approach. He sounded numb.
She shook her head, slumping back into the chair beside his. They zoned out and watched the television mounted on the opposite wall. Blissfully, it wasn’t the news. It was a rerun of Friends, and Chandler was in a box. Some kind of punishment for hurting Joey.
“They’re using our names,” Ollie said in a low voice.
Makani tilted her head as she turned to him. “Huh?”
“Snaps, tweets. The whole town knows that you and I were attacked.”
He wasn’t looking at his phone, so he must have seen it earlier. Outwardly, she remained blank and unsurprised. Darby and Alex had known, either from hearing it online or seeing her house on the news. But internally, the confirmation nauseated her. People Googled. People talked.
“At least they won’t know that I was naked,” Ollie said.
Sweat collected along her hairline. Behind her knees.
I should tell him.
“There are certain details that we, at the station, believe are best kept private,” he said, in an accurate imitation of his brother. “Believe me, no one will know . . . the nature of your visit.” Ollie switched back to his own voice. “Believe me, no one will know . . . until someone writes a book.”
The image hurled her into the future and slackened her jaw. He was right. Someday, their story would be a chapter in one of those sleazy, mass-market, true-crime paperbacks that were shelved in the cobwebbed corners of used bookstores—the types of paperbacks that boasted about the number of crime-scene photographs inside.
Ollie winced at her expression. “So, we’re not joking about it yet.”
“Just tell me something good.” She put her head in her hands. “I need to hear something positive.”
He considered the assigned task, taking it seriously. “They’ve called in a team of dogs to help with the search. They think he went into the fields near the school. There’s a huge manhunt happening right now—at least half of Osborne is out there searching for him.” When she didn’t respond, he added quietly, “It’s almost over.”
Her brain swayed inside her skull. “I won’t feel better until it’s actually over.”
Ollie sank deeper into his chair. His long legs splayed out, and his hands folded over his stomach. “Yeah.” He sighed.
“It’s weird,” he said, several minutes later. “I’ve known him my whole life. Our families went to the same church. We were on the wrestling team together in middle school. He didn’t seem like a killer. He didn’t seem like . . .”
“. . . anything,” Makani finished. Briefly thinking about Ollie as a wrestler.
“Yeah.”
“Do you think that’s why?” Ollie asked. “Because he feels invisible?”
She buried her head back into her hands and shrugged.
“I just don’t understand why he would target you.”
Her breath hitched.
I should tell him. I have to tell him. I can’t hide anymore.
“Hey.” A hand on her back.
She startled up with a gasp. Chris was stooped beside her chair. His and Ollie’s faces were creased with worry. Behind them, the construction worker and the elderly couple were staring at her tattered clothing. The woman whispered to her husband.
Chris threatened them with a police officer’s glare as he helped Makani to her feet. “Your grandma said it was okay to come home with us,” he said. “Why don’t you say goodbye, and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The brothers switched on the Victorian-style lamps throughout their house to maintain the illusion of safety. It had been less than a week since her previous visit, but the creaky loneliness of the old structure had already diminished in Makani’s memories. Now, it felt intensified under the black coat of night. The crumbling plaster walls contained a crawling sort of dread. They were alive with hidden ghouls—ghostly and human.
Makani lay awake in Ollie’s bed, underneath his cold window. The cloud-covered moon concealed the cornfields below. The floral bouquets had been brought in from the car and were bunched together inside the same glass vase on Ollie’s desk. The yellow sunflowers, golden chrysanthemums, red gerbera daisies, and brown corkscrewed twigs were cheerfully autumnal, but the shadows they cast were inky and menacing.
Her attacker—it was intolerable for her to think his name right now—had reduced her to a child afraid of the dark. She wanted her stuffed animals. Perhaps they could have kept her tethered to these more simple fears as opposed to her current reality.
She wasn’t at home, because she couldn’t go home.
A serial killer wanted her dead.
The drugs for her arm were also supposed to help her sleep. Instead, she was paranoid and woozy. In the darkness, Makani became aware of her cut. It hurt. The tightly wrapped bandage was stiff, and it made her feel clumsy. Ollie had lent her a T-shirt and plaid pajama pants. The clothing and bedsheets smelled like his skin, musky and clean and arousing. But they were a constant reminder of where she was and why.
Chris had given his brother the choice of sleeping downstairs on the couch or upstairs on the floor of Chris’s bedroom. Ollie had picked a third option, a sleeping bag in the upstairs hallway. The master bedroom remained empty. It belonged to the spirits.
Ollie’s sleeping bag rustled outside her door as Makani’s ears strained for sounds of the uninvited: Drawers opening. Puzzle pieces snapping. She tried to listen for the tick, tick, tick of the grandfather clock, but then she inhaled Ollie’s scent and remembered, all over again, that she wasn’t at home. Remembered that the clock had been broken.
A hooded figure lurched out at her.
She curled into a fetal position to protect herself from the blade. Everything was spinning. She screamed into the pillow.
“Makani,” a voice said.
She scuttled into the corner in fright.
“It’s okay,” the voice said. In the moonlight, Ollie was crouched beside the bed. “You were having a nightmare.” He climbed onto the mattress and coaxed her out from against the wall. Held her as she trembled in his arms.
Her heart was pounding in her throat, but as she stared at Ollie’s thickly socked feet, her confusion reshaped into consciousness. “Do they hurt?” she asked.
“No,” he said softly, an
d she knew it was a lie. “How’s your arm?”
“Fine,” she said.
They were silent for a long time. When he made a motion to leave, her night terrors surged back like an electrical storm. “Don’t.”
He didn’t.
She lay down on the narrow bed and pressed her body against the wall. He slipped into the open space. He took out his phone, and his face illuminated in aqua blue. Makani was about to protest that she didn’t want to see the news, when she realized he was setting an alarm. “So you can get back into the hallway before morning?” she asked.
Ollie smiled faintly as the light vanished.
With a muted thud, his phone was placed onto the hardwood floor. They pulled up the blankets. There was a gap between their bodies, slender enough for a shadow or a whisper. Makani heard it first. And then she felt it. His breath was warm and vital.
She closed the gap, and they nestled together against the darkness.
It took hours to fall asleep. Whenever her eyes closed, a hooded figure lurched out—an endless loop of the same harrowing second. Ollie shifted and rolled and twisted the sheets, but she was grateful for his presence. She was grateful not to be alone.
When her mind finally succumbed, the sleep was restless and sweaty. And then the alarm went off.
Makani gasped, jackknifing into a sitting position.
Ollie switched off the alarm and flattened the phone across his racing heart. Through the panes of the arched, church-like window, a rosy-orange dawn was breaking over the fields. The first birds of the morning sang to one another.
Makani dissolved into the blankets as Ollie’s legs swung over the side of the bed. Her hand shot out. It clutched his upper arm—that sensitive place, where bare skin met shirtsleeve. He craned his neck to look at her. Her hand crawled up, grasped the cotton sleeve, and pulled him back down. They kissed.
Quiet. Hungry. Desperate.
Ollie broke away first, a few minutes later. She stared at him. Begging him to stay. He shook his head. I can’t, he mouthed.
Please, she said.
“I’ll be on the other side of the door,” he whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”