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“It’s in the back,” Hannah managed to get out in a fevered breath.
Danny’s hand moved around her in that way all boys did—fast enough to get where it wanted to go, slow enough to make it seem like some kind of accident.Oh, look what I found. While I’m here, do you mind if I …
Get on with it, she thought. She wanted this as much as he did.
Hannah loved the fact that Danny still got nervous and took things slow. She loved how he knew to apply just the right amountof pressure, where, and when. She loved the way he kissed her as he did all of it, not sloppy or all tongue, just right. Just enough.
She lovedhim.
“You know that, right?” Hannah said quietly, before realizing she’d said the words aloud.
“Know what?”
She tugged the clasp on his belt open, unsnapped his jeans, and pulled down his zipper. “I love you.”
They’d said the words before. That had first happened on milestone date number 43, but this might be the first time Hannah realized she actually meant it. She loved this boy with all her heart.
“And I love you,” he told her, finally getting her bra off and dropping it to the floor between them. “One of these days, I’ll marry you. We’ll get a nice little house down on Colonial with a view of the mountains and have two point four kids.”
They’d had that talk before, too. After college. Troy and Ivy, a boy and a girl. But like using theL-word, this was the first time it felt real. There was something in his voice. He wasn’t just saying it to get what he wanted. He meant it.
Hannah pressed tighter against him, their bodies entwining. The heat had steamed up the windows, and it felt like they were the only two people in the world. “This is way better than Boston,” she breathed, maneuvering her hand down into his jeans.
The two of them rolled over, Danny on top now. He sat up, pulled his shirt off, and tossed it aside, then went still as he looked down at her.
“What?”
A smile spread across his face. “You’re so damn bea—”
The window behind his head exploded, and a small black hole appeared in Danny’s temple, just above his right eye.
26
Sheriff Ellie
WITHTWENTY-SIXYEARS OFlaw enforcement under her belt, Ellie liked to believe she could handle just about anything. Hollows Bend had never had much crime, but she’d seen enough, dealt with her share of drunks and domestics, the occasional smash-and-grab, usually some out-of-towner. She’d even talked a jumper off the old bank building once, not that the two-story fall would have killed him, but she liked to think she at least spared him a nasty broken bone or two.
At least ten seconds ticked by as Ellie stared across the children’s section of the library at Edgar Newton—the Stork, Bean, this man she had known her entire life, who always seemed to smell like he had cheese in his pockets. He hovered over the paper cutter, looked down at his severed fingers, then raised his hand to his curious face and studied the remaining nubs as if he were inspecting some item on exhibit rather than his own savaged limb.
Ellie’s training kicked in and she rushed over to him, wiping the last of the water from her swollen eyes.
“I seem to have had an accident,” Newton mumbled, still eyeing his hand, his voice oddly calm.
Ellie grabbed a tablecloth from under a display of Harry Potter books, spilling the worn hardcovers across the floor. “Hold your arm up,” she told him. “You need to keep it above your heart to slow the blood loss.” He did as she asked, and Ellie twisted the tablecloth over the wound. “I need your tie,” she told him, already working at the knot. She cinched the tie around the bundle as tight as she could get it, knotting it twice.
“Mr. Newton, you still there?”
Sally’s voice sounded disembodied, thin and soft. Ellie realized it was coming from the phone receiver; Newton had left it on the table next to the paper cutter. Ellie scooped it up and it on her shoulder. “Sally? It’s me, Ellie.”
“Oh, thank God! I’ve been trying to reach you! Phones are down.”
Ellie pulled a plastic evidence bag from her pocket and gently began picking up the fingers from next to the paper cutter and dropping them inside. Her stomach groaned, and she choked her breakfast back down. “How did this call get through?”
“Mobilephones are down,” Sally corrected. “Radios aren’t working right, either, but landlines seem to be okay.”
Even as she said this, her voice faded out, the line crackled with the same static Ellie had heard on earlier calls. Then she came back. There was some clicking in the background, steady, one click every three or four seconds.
Ellie quickly told her about Ms. Gilmore and what Newton did to his own hand as she retrieved the remains of his index finger and dropped it in the bag. “I need you to have North Hollow dispatch an ambulance. The cuts are clean—if they hurry, theymight be able to reattach them.” She needed ice to keep the digits cold.
