What Lies in the Darkness (Shadow Cove Book 1) (15 page)

My heart slams against my chest as I jog into the hallway after him. Maybe I’m being delusional, but a small part of me hopes he’s about to show me an answer to what happened to our dad.

He leads me down the hallway to the final door on the right. Opening the door, he walks into his old bedroom. A layer of dust covers the made bed, the boxes stacked on the floor, and the light fixtures.

“You packed up my stuff?” he asks, peering around the room.

The pain in his voice makes my heart squeeze inside my chest.

“Not all of it. Mom thought … Well, she thought it’d help us all heal more quickly if your stuff was out of sight, out of mind.” I feel like an asshole for saying it aloud. He’s dead. He doesn’t need me reminding him of that. “I’m really sorry.”

“For what?” he mutters, opening the closet door. “I’m the one who caused this mess.”

Before I can ask him what he means by that, he steps inside the closet and vanishes into the darkness.

I follow after him, fearing he’s going to leave me.

“Sawyer?” I whisper, feeling above my head until I find the cord to the light. With a soft tug, the lightbulb clicks on, and I sigh in relief at the sight of Sawyer standing at my side. “I was worried you left.”

He shakes his head. “Not yet. Not until I show you.” With a remorseful expression, he crouches down. “I’m really sorry about this, Mak.”

“Sorry about what?”

“About what’s back here … I just want you to know that I never meant to get into things this deep. I just wanted some extra cash and to stop being picked on all the time. I thought this would help, but once I got started, I couldn’t stop.”

I gulp. “What happened—”

He slips through the floor, his voice echoing, “Just please forgive me when you find it …”

***

My eyes pop open, and I gasp for air, bolting upright in bed. My forehead is damp with sweat, and my soaring pulse makes me question if I’m having a heart attack.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. In. Out.

After a minute or two, I manage to steady my heartbeat and breathing. I glance at the clock and shake my head. 4:30 in the morning. Man, this is too early to be up.

I lie down in bed and attempt to go back to sleep, but my dream replays in my mind, branded into my thoughts. Every step we took, every word we exchanged felt so real, like most of my dreams about Sawyer and my hallucinations. Then again, this dream felt different, too. He wasn’t there to talk to me. He was trying to show me something.

Slipping out of bed, I tiptoe out of the room, being extra quiet to avoid waking up Kennedy who is passed out on the inflatable mattress on my floor. Once I get into the hallway, I hurry straight for my brother’s closet and flip on the light. I don’t even know what I’m looking for, especially since most of his belongings have been emptied out.

“What were you trying to show me?” I crouch down and rest my palm on the closet floor, unsure what I’m even looking for or if I should be looking for anything. Maybe I’m just some crazy girl sitting in her dead brother’s closet, hoping to find an answer that doesn’t exist. “It’s just carpet, Mak. What do you think you’re going to find? It’s not like we didn’t clean out his room.”

Still, I’m not ready to give up yet. Sawyer used to hide things in odd places: cigarettes under his mattress, beers beneath his bed, and my mom even once found a joint lying on his closet floor. Why he stupidly left the joint out in the open is a mystery other than maybe he was too stoned to realize.

Or maybe he was trying to hide it somewhere and got caught.

Hmmm … I glance around and notice a torn spot of carpet in the far back corner of the closet. Not untypical for our house, but I peel back the corner, anyway. By the time the carpet catches, I have half the damn floor flipped back.

Scratching my head, I stare at what I’ve found. “A crawl space? Just how long has that been here? And why did it seem like Sawyer was trying to show it to me in my dream?”

I slip my fingers along the cracks, drag the piece of wood off the entrance, and a cold chill slithers down my spine. Does he want me to go inside? I shiver again at the thought, getting a really bad case of the heebie-jeebies. Then I think of Sawyer in that lake, drowning … of him coming into my room that day and asking for my help … of me letting him go without finding out what was wrong. I need to do this … for Sawyer … for my dad … for myself.

You can do this, Mak. For him.

Holding my breath, I stick my hand into the dark hole and test how deep it goes. Instead of finding the bottom, my fingers graze what feels like paper. Grabbing it, I pull my arm back up to see what I found.

A large manila envelope.

My gut twists into tight knots. Somehow, I know whatever is inside the envelope isn’t going to be good.

Opening the top flap, I dump out the contents: a small stack of hundred dollar bills; a tiny plastic bag filled with a white, powdery substance that I’m pretty sure is cocaine; a key; a newspaper clipping for a lawn care job; and a small card with a circular symbol printed on it. It’s the same symbol from the card I found in Lispy Larry’s truck and the escorting site.

I fall back on my butt, staring at the contents in horror. “What did you get into, Sawyer?”

Tears sting my eyes as a single thought runs through my mind. One single thought that makes my body run cold with fear.

Is this why you’re dead?

LOCATION: MAK’S HOUSE

TIME: 7:11 AM

DATE: TUESDAY, MARCH 23
^RD

I wake up the next morning with a killer headache, probably because it took me over an hour to fall back asleep after I flushed Sawyer’s stash of cocaine down the toilet. The rest of the stuff I held on to, though. The contents of the envelope are currently tucked away in the secret nook in my dad’s office.

I lie awake in bed for about half an hour, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for Kennedy to wake up. I can’t stop thinking about everything I found and how I want to find more. I want to connect the dots, find out the truth.

“
You sound just like Dad,
” Sawyer said to me in my dream, and he was right. I do sound like Dad.

I don’t know if that’s a good thing, considering he went crazy then just disappeared. Regardless, I can’t stop looking, not when I finally found the start of a trail.

Is this how my dad felt all the time? This overwhelming, desperate, addicting need to figure it all out, to get to the truth?

“Good morning,” Kennedy says with a yawn as she sits up on the air mattress. She takes one look at me then frowns. “Why do you look worried?”

I climb out of bed. “Let’s start getting ready for school, and then I’ll tell you.”

As we get dressed and do our hair, I give her a quick recap of what I found last night, minus the drugs. I plan on keeping that tidbit to myself. Maybe forever.

While I don’t fully believe my brother’s drug addiction led to his overdose, I still don’t want any evidence out there that he was a drug addict. It makes me sad to think that my brother was struggling that hard before he died, that he was in such a dark place.

Maybe everyone’s right. Maybe he did just kill himself.

Then why was my dad so strung out on proving Sawyer was murdered? And why did Lispy Larry imply he knew Sawyer didn’t take his own life?

No, I’m not ready to accept my brother’s death as a suicide. I refuse to think anything else until I get to the truth.

“So, what do you think is up with all the help wanted ads?” Kennedy asks after I’ve finished telling her about what I found.

“I have a couple of theories, but they’re a little out there.” I take a seat on my bed and lean over to lace up my sneakers. “One, whoever is placing the ads in the newspaper, which I’m assuming is Lispy Larry since he’s the only person I’ve seen hanging out at the ghost house, is sending secret messages through those ads.”

She sets down the curling iron she’s holding. “Secret messages, Mak? Really? Isn’t that a little bit out there?”

“I’m not done yet.” I stand up and slip on a dark green button-down jacket over my black tank top. “Another theory I have is that the person placing those ads—aka, Lispy Larry—is luring people into the house so he can kidnap them.”

She tousles her hair with her fingers. “Why would Lispy Larry want to kidnap people? I know the guy’s a total weirdo and everything, but kidnapping seems a bit extreme.”

“Maybe because he’s a sick, twisted freak.” I sling the handle of my backpack over my shoulder. “Or maybe he’s running a sex trafficking business along with his drug trafficking.”

“That’s a bit out there, too. Plus, you said your dad never proved he was drug trafficking.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t disprove it, either.”

“You really think someone like Lispy Larry could be behind some huge ring of drug and sex trafficking?” she asks skeptically, shutting off the curling iron.

I head for my bedroom door. “I never said he was the only one behind it, just that he was in on running it.”

She collects her purse and books from off my bed. “I know this is going to sound a bit strange coming from me, Miss Adventure Adventurous, but if you really believe Lispy Larry is doing all of this, then maybe you should go to the police.”

“I can’t yet. I don’t have enough proof.”

“You could always show them what you found.”

“What, a few newspaper clippings and an escort site that we can’t even log on to?” I grasp the doorknob, shaking my head. “Trust me; my dad had more proof than that about Sawyer’s death, and the police still wouldn’t do anything. Plus, this is the mayor’s son we’re talking about. If we’re going to prove someone like him did actually kidnap people, we have to find some factual, hard evidence.”

“How do we do that, exactly? We’re not cops. We should really let them handle it.”

Like they handled my brother’s death, my dad’s disappearance, and all those missing persons’ cases.

“I need more proof before I do that. I’m hoping maybe Liam might know something about the site and the logo.” As I pull open the door, the scent of bacon and eggs immediately engulfs my nostrils.

“I thought you said we were having Pop-Tarts,” Kennedy says, exchanging a puzzled look with me. “Is your mom here?”

“She wasn’t supposed to be, but …” I walk down the hallway and into the kitchen where my mom is standing in front of the stove, dressed in her scrubs and apron, pans hissing from the stovetop.

Two things confuse me about the scene in front of me. For starters, my mom wasn’t supposed to get off work until ten. Second, the last time my mom cooked breakfast was over a year ago, back when Sawyer was alive.

“Hey, honey,” my mom says when she spies me lingering in the doorway. “I got off work early, so I thought I’d come home and make us some breakfast.” She flips off the burner, sets down the fork she’s holding, and opens the top cupboard. “I noticed Kennedy’s car out front. Did she sleepover last night?”

“Yeah. And thanks for letting me stay.” Kennedy appears by my side, hugging her books to her chest. “Sorry I came over so late. My dad was just in a grumpy mood, and I needed a break.”

“That’s perfectly okay. You know you’re always welcome here.” She stacks three plates on the countertop. “I made more than enough eggs and bacon, so feel free to eat as much as you want.” She begins shoveling eggs onto the plates.

Kennedy looks at me, as if waiting for my permission, but I don’t budge.

“Why’d you get off work early?” I ask, leaning against the doorjamb with my arms crossed.

“I was tired.” She grabs a plate of bacon and eggs then pulls out a chair at the table. “I’ve been working a lot of late shifts, trying to make sure we don’t get behind on bills.”

I press my lips together at the mention of bills, dying to ask her about the hefty deposit I noted in her checking account, but then I’d just be outing that I snooped.

She’s about to dive into her eggs when she glances over at us. “Aren’t you girls going to eat?”

“We don’t have time. We need to be at the school early to work on a project for English.” Not a complete lie. We do need to be at school early, but to meet up with Liam.

“Well, at least take some bacon with you.” She pushes away from the table, tears a couple of paper towels off the roll, and places a few slices of bacon on each. “Here you go. I swear it’s good. I didn’t even burn it this time.” She says it like she cooks all the time when she doesn’t.

“Thanks.” Kennedy smiles at her as she takes a paper towel full of bacon.

I take the offered bacon from my mom, eyeing her over, wondering over the real reason she’s home early and why she cooked us breakfast. Because she was out all night with Don and feels guilty about it? Is cooking breakfast her way of trying to alleviate her guilt?

“Let’s go,” I say to Kennedy, turning for the front door.

I don’t know what my mom’s up to, but I’ve got bigger problems at the moment.

“Oh, wait, Mak. I forgot to ask you something,” my mom calls out before we even make it to the front door.

The tension in her tone instantly makes me edgy.

I turn to Kennedy. “I’ll be out in just a sec.”

Kennedy nods, and then her heels click against the linoleum as she walks out the door.

I turn to my mom, adjusting the strap of my bag higher on my shoulder. “What’s up?”

She leaves the kitchen, coming to stand in the foyer with me. “I was just wondering if you went anywhere last night.” She fiddles with the tie on her apron. “Like, up by that turnoff near Kennedy’s.”

I hesitate, attempting to get a read on why she’s asking, on how much she knows. “No. Why?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” A mixture of relief and annoyance washes across her face. “A co-worker of mine thought he saw your car up there, but I figured it wasn’t.”