She was quaking all over as she turned her attention back to her phone. There was a photo attached to the message. Holding her breath, she clicked it open.
The photo showed a graveyard plot with a single tombstone on it. BENJAMIN GREER, the stone read. LOVING FATHER, HUSBAND, AND FRIEND.
A cry escaped Tenley. It was their family plot in the local cemetery. Tenley remembered how hard she’d cried when she found out that it included a spot for her mom as well. “You can’t leave me, too!” she’d shrieked over and over again at the time, clinging desperately to her mom’s legs.
Tenley’s eyes flitted back to the message. Set foot in that building and Mommy Reed will end up right where she belongs.
“No,” she gasped. She staggered back to her car, collapsing inside. She thought she had nothing left to lose, but she’d been wrong. She jammed her key into the ignition and slammed down on the gas. Then she tore out of the lot and away from that building, as fast as her car would take her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Thursday, 2:35 PM
Sydney saw the card tacked to her locker from halfway down the hallway. it was a robin’s-egg blue, with the silhouette of a ring printed on the front. It was the end of the school day and the hallways were packed with people, but Sydney suddenly felt as if she were standing in a tunnel all alone. The hallway seemed to disappear as the card pulled her toward it with a magnetic force.
She pulled off the Winslow Academy sticker—the kind cheerleaders gave out at pep rallies—that was holding the card in place. Behind her, some freshmen were whining about a killer test, but Sydney barely heard them. All she could focus on was the typewriter font on the inside of the card.
Roses are red, your ring is blue. I really wish I could see it on you.…
Sydney squeezed the card so hard it crumpled in her grip. The ring. It hadn’t been from Guinness at all. It had been from the darer.
That, or Guinness was the darer.
The thought crept up on her like an attack. She’d been so insistent that Guinness wasn’t involved. But that gift practically screamed his name. Not just because it was blue, or because he’d once promised her a ring, but because it was so her. She was not a big jewelry person, but she would have picked out that ring herself. Could someone else know her taste that well? Her stomach roiled. She could taste bile in the back of her throat. If the darer had been watching her for long enough, maybe the answer was yes.
Sydney took off blindly for her car. She’d already been planning to drive out to Chief Hackensack’s house, and this only made her more determined. She knew she should shoot some photos first—it was Thursday, and she still didn’t have a “unique and awe-inspiring hometown image” for her application due Monday—but she couldn’t fathom focusing on photography right now. Ever since she’d managed to get into Kyla’s file yesterday, those images had been skating through her mind, consuming every one of her thoughts. It was the anger in them that had gotten under her skin. The fire had seemed almost human in its fury, the way it assaulted the boat with a vengeance, eyes burning and weapons slinging. It reminded Sydney of the fire on the Justice: how it had felt like a punishment, a judgment.
And then, of course, there was the missing photo, number twenty-two. It kept taunting her: What could it be of? The whole thing was just so strange. She knew firsthand how meticulously the fire department maintained those files. A missing picture would be a huge deal, at the very least worthy of an annotation to the report. But there hadn’t been a single mention of it.
She’d thought about asking her dad, but then she’d have to admit she’d sneaked into his files. Besides, he hadn’t even been the chief on the case. Gerry Hackensack had. Hopefully he could clear up this whole thing—prove without a doubt that Kyla’s death was an accident. Once she knew for sure that Guinness wasn’t involved, she could move on, forget him, and concentrate on finding the real darer.
It took Sydney forty minutes and three wrong turns to drive out to Pippsy, the small, ritzy boating town where Gerry Hackensack now lived. Finally, she pulled up to a tall stone house with three white pillars out front. “Whoa,” Sydney murmured. She knew how much her dad made as fire chief, and it could never buy a house like this.
There were two cars in the driveway, a Prius and an SUV. The SUV had a handicap parking tag, which made Sydney pause. She had a vague memory of Gerry and his wife, and she didn’t remember either of them being handicapped. She looked back at the opulent house, with its elaborate wooden door and fancy iron flower boxes in the windows. Maybe she had the wrong place.
She took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. There was only one way to find out.
She reached into her bag to check for the small pink bottle of pepper spray. Tenley had brought it with her when she showed up late to school that afternoon, muttering something about a stomachache. Sydney had smirked as she accepted the bottle, but she was suddenly very glad to have it.
She was jittery as she strode across the lawn. She had no idea what she was walking into. Her palms were sticky as she lifted her hand to knock on the door.
A woman who looked to be in her early thirties answered. She wore wire-rimmed glasses and had a polite smile. “Can I help you?”
Sydney swallowed hard. Her throat felt like sandpaper. “Is this Gerry Hackensack’s house?” She cringed a little at the crackly sound of her voice. She had to get a hold of herself if she wanted this to work.
“Yes, I’m his daughter, Margot.” A wrinkle formed between her eyebrows. “What can I do for you?”
Sydney cleared her throat. “My name’s Sarah,” she said, rushing into the cover story she’d come up with. She felt guilty using a fake name, but the less chance the darer—or anyone—had of tracking her here, the better. “I’m a student at Winslow Academy, and I’m doing a report on the Kyla Kern accident for school. Since Mr. Hackensack was the fire chief at the time, I was hoping I could maybe ask him some questions?” The words tumbled out fast, one after another.
Margot’s polite smile widened into a real one. “You know what? I bet he’d love that.” She ushered Sydney inside. “He tries to hide it,” she whispered confidingly, “but I can tell how much he misses that firehouse. Sometimes I have to wonder if his early retirement somehow played a role in his stroke.”
“Stroke?” Sydney asked. Something tightened in her chest. That would explain the handicap parking tag.
“Oh, yes.” Margot gave her a somber look. “You didn’t know? My dad had a stroke six months after retiring.” She led Sydney down a long hallway with fancy molding along the ceiling. An iron chandelier cast a soft glow over a plush oriental rug. “He can still communicate,” she continued. “But very slowly. And you know how it is. Some days are better than others. But hearing about the firehouse always cheers him up. You know he gave thirty-five years of service to that place?”
“Wow,” Sydney said quietly. She thought about telling Margot who her dad was, but the look on Margot’s face stopped her. This woman clearly idolized her father; Sydney had no interest in pretending she felt the same. An uncomfortable flush crept onto her face. Margot was being so nice to her, and all she was doing was lying in return.
“You have a visitor, Dad!” Margot called out. Sydney tried to steady her breathing as she followed her into the living room. From the sound of it, Gerry Hackensack was a nice man, one who’d loved serving his town. She could do this.
The living room walls were painted a soft gray, and a flat-screen TV hung on one of them. Sitting in a wheelchair by a large bay window was Gerry Hackensack. He looked too young to be retired, sixty or so at the oldest. At first glance, he didn’t even seem to require a wheelchair. But when he smiled at Sydney, she saw that only half of his face smiled with him. He gave his daughter a crooked nod.
“She was hoping to talk to you about the Kyla Kern accident for a school project. That was your last case as chief, right?”
“I believe it was,” Gerry said. His words were thick and clunky. It sounded like they took great effort.
“I know how much you like to talk about the firehouse,” Margot continued. “I thought you two could chat for a few minutes.”
“About Kyla Kern,” Gerry Hackensack said slowly, laboring over each word.
“I was hoping I could ask you a few questions,” Sydney jumped in. “I already got permission to look at the old file in the firehouse, but it would be great to hear a firsthand description as well.” She rushed on before he could catch her lie about the firehouse. “You know, the kind of details that aren’t in a report: what it smelled like, how the heat felt. Who you saw, and how Kyla’s friends reacted. Things like that. Maybe I could even look through your old records, too?” It was a gutsy move, but Sydney had no choice; she had to go for it. She pressed on before she could lose her nerve. “I noticed photo number twenty-two was missing in the official file, and I was hoping maybe you had a copy of it here?”
She was talking fast, hoping the speed would distract Gerry from all her lies, but at the mention of the missing photo, she stopped short. Something in Gerry’s demeanor had changed. A stiffening. It might have been indiscernible if it weren’t for the way his hands clamped down on the arms of his wheelchair. His eyes darted up toward hers. He looked as if he was about to say something when a terrible cough wracked his body. “I—” he attempted. But the coughing only grew worse, and he gave up trying to speak as he doubled over in his chair.