Nate’s grip on my hand tightens. There are tears falling down my cheeks, and I can’t speak. I talked to Reid about her yesterday in this very room. I thought we were talking about him liking her. Then he showed up here today, mud covered and telling me he loved me. I think back to Amy’s death, drowned at the lake, and the mud on Reid seems more damning than I can process. I take a breath, my chest shaking as I gulp air. I don’t want these things to be true.
“He was here yesterday,” Nate answers the detective. He sits down on the sofa next to me. “They both were. Eva thought he liked Madison.”
I answer then, “Nate wasn’t with me when Reid and I talked about Madison. Nate was with Madison, and Reid was watching her. I suggested . . .” I look at the detective, stare straight into her eyes as the unavoidable truth settles on me.
“I suggested he talk to Madison. I thought . . . I thought he meant to date her. . . . He killed her. Reid killed her.”
“Miss Tremont is dead,” Detective Grant confirms just as my mother returns.
Hearing it said aloud is somehow worse than just thinking it. I saw Madison yesterday. She was here in my house talking to Nate. I talked to Reid about her. He held my wrist, and I thought he was the victim. I wonder if I would’ve seen him kill Madison if she came near enough that I could see her death. I start shaking as I say, “He drove Grace home. Grace and CeCe Watkins. Oh my God! I need my phone.” I try to get up, but Nate stops me.
“I’ll grab it,” he says.
“Grace needs to stay in her house.” I look from the detective to my mother. My voice gets shriller and shriller as I tell them, “You need to find Mrs. Yeung and send her home, and CeCe, we need to text CeCe. What if he thinks I was telling him to talk to them too. I sent them with him after I said I thought he should do something about his feelings for Madison.”
The detective steps out of the room and makes a quick call. My mother walks away to call Mrs. Yeung, and the detective offers me what looks like sympathy, but it makes me feel worse. Guilt twists through me. I think back to the messages in the flowers, the cicada, the card that said “yours,” the words cut into Amy’s skin, and the new words in Madison’s skin. He did all of those things in some sick attempt to send me a message. I should’ve known. I should’ve figured it out somehow.
I’m still sitting there when Nate comes back and hands me my phone. I text Grace and CeCe. “Are you home and okay?”
The detective returns.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper. “He knows me. Why did he . . . do this? How can he think? . . . I don’t understand how this happened. I should’ve seen something, a sign or whatever. I could’ve stopped him. If I’d seen it, I could’ve saved Maddy. . . .”
Detective Grant shakes her head. “Don’t. You are not responsible for what he did. He is.”
CeCe’s text reply comes in: “Yes. What happened?”
“Can I tell CeCe?” I ask the detective.
She frowns. “Just tell her to stay home. Don’t let anyone from school in, even people she knows.”
I pass on the message with a note to tell all the girls and Robert too. CeCe sends back a quick reply that she’s “on it,” and I look back at the marked lack of reply from Grace. I send her another text. I call.
“Grace isn’t answering. She always answers.” I look at Nate.
“I sent a car over,” Detective Grant starts.
My mother returns and announces that Mrs. Yeung will be at their house in fifteen minutes. Mom shivers. “I’m going to be here, and my husband will be home shortly. We won’t go anywhere.”
The detective stands. “I need to take Grace’s statement about her interaction with Reid Benson yesterday, as well as speak to Miss Watkins.” She brushes her hands over her trousers like she has every other time. “I’ll be back. If you think of anything else or hear from Reid, call me.”
After she sees the detective out, my mother comes into the room and pulls me into a fierce hug. When she lets go, I see tears in her eyes. “He was in the house. I opened the door and let a killer into our house.”
“He won’t be here ever again,” Nate says. “The door is locked, and Mr. Tilling is on the way. I was here too, and I’m staying.”
My mother nods.
“Why don’t you relax there? I can get you . . . a drink or something?” Nate looks at me, and the expression on his face makes me smile briefly. He wants to help, but he doesn’t know what to do.
My mother seems to collect herself at the thought of getting a drink. She stands, straightens her shoulders, and announces, “I’ll fix a pot of tea.”
Nate nods, and we watch her go.
I text Grace again, but there’s still no answer. My mother is still in the kitchen when my father comes home. He looks in at me, sees Nate holding me while I cry, and asks, “Are you okay?”
“Nate is here,” I answer.
“If you need me—”
“I know, Daddy.”
He smiles in surprise at my words. It’s been years since I called him that, but it’s been years since I felt as close to them as I have the past couple days. He walks away to find my mother, who has been doing something or other in the kitchen that involves a lot of cupboards opening and closing.
Once I hear their muffled words in the kitchen, I turn to Nate. “I’m scared.”
“You didn’t see Grace’s death happen,” Nate reminds me.
“I did though. He put her in his trunk and took her. She was at the library, and then she was in his trunk.” I smother a sob.
“Shhh. She didn’t go to the library though. Right?”
He holds me, and I try to push past my fears. I know he’s trying to help, but until I know that Grace is safe, nothing is going to going to be okay. I need a plan. There has to be something I can do. I just have no idea what it could be.
Nate and I are still sitting in silence when my parents come into the room. I know by the look on my mother’s face that it’s bad. Gently, my father tells me, “Grace is missing.” Before I can speak, he continues, “It’s not like at Madison’s house. There was no sign of a fight, nothing broken or anything at the Yeungs’ house.”
“Madison fought back,” I say, not entirely surprised.
“She did.” My father pauses.
I realize that he’s debating hiding something. “What? Tell me.”
“Madison fought him in the foyer of the house,” he says. “They think she was alive when she left the house. She was drowned, like Amy Crowne was.”
“And Grace?”
“The police didn’t find . . . Grace isn’t at the lake. Eva, there’s no reason to think Grace isn’t going to be okay.”
I realize that in some sick way, if Reid thinks this is about me, Grace is either safer than the others or she’s in worse danger. She’s my best friend. I think back to the vision of her death. I wish that I knew more so that I could try to help her. All that I remember that could be relevant is that she was leaving the library when it happened. I think back to it, letting the memory fill my mind.
Grace opens the trunk, drops a bag in, and reaches up for the trunk to close it.
That’s when it happens. He hits the back of her head, and she opens her mouth to scream, but a hand comes over it. Grace bites down, but the person holding her doesn’t let go.
She tries dropping her weight like they tell you in street defense class, but a hand on her back shoves, and she falls into her own trunk. Her legs scrape against the car, and she feels like she can’t breathe from the force of the fall.
Blinking against the pain and trying to push herself out, Grace looks up and see someone standing there. Then the trunk closes, and it’s all dark.
“He kidnapped her,” I say aloud. “Then he took her somewhere. I’m not sure how he got her out of the house. Maybe because I trusted him, and so did she. If she’s not home and not answering, he has her.”
They all stare at me. Nate looks like he has questions, but he remains silent. I guess
he figures that what I know is because of my death visions. It sort of is, but it’s also the most logical answer. “Grace wouldn’t ignore my texts. She was supposed to come see me today. Maybe Reid claimed he was sent to pick her up, like he drove her home yesterday. She doesn’t know it’s him, and she didn’t know about Madison and—”
“Eva,” my mother interrupts. “We aren’t giving up. We don’t know for certain that she’s with Reid.”
“Of course she is!” I look at them. “He’s targeting my friends, Mom. Grace is my best friend. The only other one who’s . . . Piper . . .”
It hits me. Piper was killed in her foyer, drugged, and then . . . she died. She was going to be the victim. Reid was going to kill her, and instead he killed Madison in her foyer. “He drugged her,” I whisper.
“What?” my father asks.
I scramble to explain without admitting that I saw Piper die in the way that I now think Madison died. “If she fought but he still took her, he drugged her. Madison—did he drug her?”
“There’s no way to know that,” my mother says gently. “Eva, don’t do this. Madison is with God now. What happened was awful, but she’s gone. What you need to concentrate on is keeping faith that everything will be over soon.”
My parents exchange a look, and then my father says, “We’re going to wait and pray. The police are following every lead, Eva. They have everyone working on this. The detective is talking to CeCe, and I suspect they’re going to talk to Robert, Jamie, and Grayson. They’ll talk to Reid’s grandmother, and they’ll probably talk to Piper and the girls too. Someone has to know where he would go.”
“But he’s already killed three people. What if—”
“Grace is a smart girl, and the police know who he is now,” my mother interjects. She straightens her shoulders. “I’m going to call the courthouse and see if there are any properties that any of the Bensons own, and your father and I are going to talk to Sheila Benson’s former coworkers. There are a lot of volunteers. We’ll search door to door if we have to.”
My father nods. “The police know what they’re doing. Your grandfather is gathering the volunteers from the church to help, and we’re asking the employees at the winery to help too. Everyone is working together to find her.”
“I want to help.”
“No,” they say in unison.
“You’re on crutches,” my father adds.
“And he’s already hurt you once,” my mother points out. “You are not going out searching for her.”
I open my mouth to argue, but my father repeats, “No.” He shakes his head at me. “I understand that you want to help, but the best thing you can do is stay here where it’s safe. The police have asked that all of Reid’s friends stay home. The last thing we need is to have to search for more than one missing girl.”
“Daniel!”
“Reid won’t come back to our house, and between the alarm and the police patrols, Eva is safe in the house.” My father holds my gaze as he speaks. “She can agree to stay put, here with Nate, or we can stay here instead of helping with the search.”
I sigh. “Fine. I won’t join the search, but—”
“No ‘buts,’ Eva.” My father sounds sterner than I’ve ever heard him sound. “You stay here with Nate, or we all stay.”
“Go help them find Grace,” I say. “Tell Grandfather Tilling thank you. Tell everyone thanks actually.”
Both of my parents kiss me on top of my head, and after a few more reminders, they leave. I listen to the beep of the house alarm being reset, and then I turn to Nate. “In the death vision, he kidnapped Grace. She was at the library, and he hit her and pushed her into the car trunk. Her car. Remember how I told you the details of my vision of your death changes, but the big thing stays the same?”
Nate nods.
“He has her, and I have an idea.”
“Eva . . .”
I hold up a hand and text a message to Grace’s phone: “Reid, I’ll never forgive you if you hurt Grace.”
Nate looks at what I’ve texted and starts, “Are you sure that’s—” His words stop as I tap send.
I wait. I stare at my phone, hoping that he’ll reply. There is only silence. “Damn it!” I toss the phone on the floor. “He took her. It’s all my fault. I sent her home with him yesterday, and now . . .” I start crying again. “I need to fix this. I need to.”
Nate wipes my tears and tells me the same thing my parents and Detective Grant have said. “It’s not your fault.”
“What good is having visions, if I can’t save her?” I let out a scream of frustration. I feel reckless in my desire to help Grace. I’d offer myself in her place if I could. I’d do anything Reid asked right now. I can’t let him kill Grace.
“You saved me,” Nate says. “You don’t know if she’s going to—”
“That’s it!” I grab Nate’s hand. “Reid is the killer, and you get attacked by him in every version of your death. I need my phone.”
“I’m not following,” Nate says.
“Will you trust me?”
“Of course, but—”
“I love you,” I blurt.
Nate stares at me for a moment. “Eva, I—”
“Don’t. I don’t need you to say it; I just wanted you to know first.” I offer him a tremulous smile. “Can I have my phone?”
He scoops it up off the floor where I flung it and hands it to me. “Are you going to fill me in?”
“I’m going to lure him out,” I tell Nate. “He thinks he loves me, so he’s not going to want me to be with you. You saw him earlier. That’s what had him so upset. I need him to focus on me, on us, not on Grace.”
For a moment, Nate is so motionless that I think he’s going to object, but then he nods once. “Tell him.”
Smiling, I type “I love Nate” and hit send. I wait. There’s still no reply, so I type, “As soon as he gets back. I’m going to tell him. Then I’ll do whatever you want if you set Grace free.”
“I won’t let you do that,” Nate says, his voice grown taut with anger and something else. “I know you want to save her, but I won’t let you—”
“I’m lying,” I interrupt, which is a little bit true. “Reid doesn’t know about my visions.”
“Okaaay.”
“He thinks you’re out somewhere and that you’ll come back to me, and we know that he’s the one that attacks you on Old Salem.” I grab Nate’s hand. “We know where he’ll be. We don’t know when, but if I can lure him out, we can make the when be now.”
Nate’s eyes widen for a moment before he clarifies, “So you’re going to send me to capture him?” Then he gets the same sort of look in his eyes that I’ve seen before he ends up in a fistfight. It’s a mix of excitement and determination. “I can do it. Then he won’t be able to ever hurt you again.”
“I’m coming too.”
“Eva, he’s obsessed with you. Taking you to him is—”
“The best plan we have. We know how he attacks you because I saw it. He’ll force you off the road, and he’ll think you don’t expect an attack. You do though. So you’ll be ready, and I’ll be ready.”
Nate watches me, but he doesn’t raise any more objections. I can tell he’s thinking about it.
“We know he’s coming, and we know he’s going to attack. We just need to be ready,” I tell Nate.
“Let me go alone.”
“No.” I shake my head and give him my best I-don’t-think-so glare. “In my visions, you were alone, and he killed you. You won’t be alone this time. I’ll be there, and that will make it end differently. Don’t you see? We know things he doesn’t, and we can use it to save Grace. Please?”
“You’ll stay far away from the fight though? You’ll let me handle that?”
“I’m not going to try to jump into a fight. I don’t fight, and”—I motion to my crutches—“I’m not even standing on both feet right now.”
Nate nods once.
“Thank you!” I reach out
for his hand and say, “Help me upstairs, and then we’ll go. I just need fifteen minutes.”
Reluctantly, he agrees. I think he realizes I’m hiding something, but he isn’t asking and I’m not volunteering any answers. I’ve seen other visions. Nate knows that. Maybe he isn’t putting all the pieces together yet, but I am. The spot where Reid dies in my vision of him looks a lot like where he attacks Nate too. I know how Reid dies now—and it’s not the killer who shoots him. It’s me.
As soon as Nate goes back downstairs, I go into my mother’s room and hobble to the back of her walk-in closet. In the corner is a firebox. Awkwardly, I crouch down while balancing on my crutches, unlock it, and open it. The pistol is there where it’s always been. Next to it is a faded blue-and-yellow cardboard box of bullets. I pick both items up and slip them into my purse. I’ve been going to the shooting range with my grandfather for years, so I feel as comfortable with a pistol as I do with a cell phone. It’s a tool, one I’m hoping not to use. I want to change the vision I had of Reid’s death too. Despite everything he’s done, I don’t want anyone else to die, but if it’s between Reid and Grace, she’ll be the one who lives.
“Nate?” I call from the top of the stairs.
He comes around the corner, stops, and looks up at me. As he walks toward me, he says, “You know, I love you too.”
I can’t stop the smile that comes over me. “Yeah?”
In a blink, he’s the rest of the way up the stairs and kissing me. When he pulls back, he says, “Yeah. I do.” My crutches fall as he lifts me in his arms. “I wouldn’t put my life in your hands if I didn’t.”
He carries me down to the ground floor and then runs up for my crutches. I watch him with a smile still on my lips. When he’s back in front of me, I say, “The accident was never that bad in the death visions, but you’ll need to be careful of the crowbar. He won’t expect you to be prepared. You can use that. The Maglite helps too. A baseball bat would be better, but I don’t suppose you have one of those.”
“No bats in the truck. Sorry,” Nate says. “I’ll be ready though. I can get the crowbar away from him and kick his ass. Then he’ll tell us where Grace is, and then he’ll get locked up so everyone is safe.”