Page 24

The admission of there truly being a monster seems to have taken something from him. His posture is hunched, and the anger that always seems to burn like stubborn coals in his eyes has been overshadowed by something irreparably haunted. She knows the image everyone else in their lives clings to: Athens University’s star baseball pitcher, full of charisma on and off the field. But for her, it has always been her brother’s control that has been the most notable—his quiet strength in maintaining any situation, in seeming unfazed and ready to adapt however necessary.

Just look at me, Tommy, she wishes. Tell me you know what to do. Tell me you have a plan.

But his eyes remain trained anywhere else. Perhaps like her, he has simply realized that she is once again the reason their lives are in danger.

“You okay, Jane?” Jackson’s voice draws her back from the ledge, and she nods her head too eagerly. She turns from the warmth of his hazel eyes, laced with a gentle concern she does not deserve.

“So you’re saying one person is causing this?” Ashley asks Kimi. Her hands slide over her protruding belly with wide, watery eyes that have yet to dry since Evan’s departure. “How is that even possible?”

Kimi shakes her head with a fresh sheen of pity. “I really don’t know,” she whispers back. “It’s just the story my grandmother used to tell me.”

“Well, we know it killed Billy and Ev—” Jackson pauses, glancing over at Ashley carefully before clearing his throat. “What I mean is that it’s still itching to get inside the store. So that must mean that someone in here…” He trails off, leaving the words to suspend like a magnifying glass being pressed too close.

“Someone in here brought that thing out from hiding,” Jim finishes for him. Any softness the man had been wearing while Kimi spoke vanishes as he looks around their circle, his hands gripped around the gun in his lap, and Jane wonders if he might be realizing just where he could put those four bullets.

She stands then, stretching her neck from side to side as she briefly turns away from the others. She can still feel that damning chill from earlier when she and Thomas stopped to assess the dead deer in the road—the same one she felt when she briefly stepped out of the store to grab Winnie before they locked themselves up inside.

“Someone in here is guilty,” Jim continues.

Jane shuts her eyes. Her hands tremble as she pictures her parents’ faces through the glass window of her hospital room door two months ago, talking to a solemn-faced police officer. Her mother had cried silently while her father maintained a wide distance, a distance Jane now knows is irreparable.

How will these strangers look when she tells them this is all happening because of her? That they are all trapped inside with Death knocking at the door, seeking out her very own heart?

“Stop it,” Thomas says, squashing the words where they lie tangled and thorny in Jane’s throat. “The last thing we need is to start pointing fingers. I mean, Jesus, the only information we have to go off of is some scary story that Kimi heard when she was still learning how to tie her shoes. It’s not exactly reliable intel.”

“You’re an ass, you know that?” Kimi says.

“Gee, I’m real hurt now.”

“He’s right,” Ashley interrupts, finally looking up from her belly. “We can’t turn on each other now. The only advantage we have is that there’s a group of us and only one of that thing out there.”

Jackson clears his throat, focusing his gaze on Winnie’s alert one. “I think one is more than enough,” he replies.

Jane exhales quietly, letting her short hair fall into her face like a privacy curtain. When she pushes it away, she sees blue and red lights wash across Thomas’s face. Heart surging, she follows the lights to where they pulse through the blinds at the front of the store. “The police,” she says, before taking off toward the doors.

The others pile in close behind as she crawls on top of the table barricade and pinches the blinds apart between her fingers, gazing out into the night for any signs of movement.

“I don’t see it anywhere,” she announces, as a police cruiser rolls to a halt a few yards away from the store’s entrance.

Jackson shifts in close to the glass, peeking out with her. “Maybe it left?” he says, then reaches around Jane to tug open the blinds so that blue lights flicker across them in a dance.

“Oh, thank God,” says Ashley, shuffling forward behind Jim.

Kimi and Thomas keep a few feet of distance from the doors, both of their postures stiff and ready.

Winnie waits at the table’s edge, whimpering curiously. “It’s alright, girl,” Jackson tells the dog, though the hint of hope in his voice makes Jane nervous. “It’s gonna be alright. Help’s here now.”

Outside, the driver’s-side door to the cruiser opens, and a man in navy uniform slips out. He whistles a cheery melody as he pauses to adjust the belt around his thin waist, eyeing the storefront. “You folks alright in there?” he calls out, then takes a few steps closer to squint at them through the glass. “I got a call saying someone was hurt?”

“Worse than hurt, sir,” Jackson answers.

The officer raises an eyebrow before walking up to the doors with a name tag that reads “Whitmore.” He observes the table barricade before glancing back out to the dark parking lot. “Why don’t you just get this door open for me, then,” he says, and Jane nods, hopping off the table. Jackson helps her pull it back from the doors, though they catch each other’s eye as she grabs the door handle.

He gives a single nod, and she flips the lock, opening the door on the left side.

“What’s going on here?” Officer Whitmore asks, stepping inside the store. His eyes trail across the group of them huddled together, though when his eyes settle on Kimi, he gives a small familiar nod.

She stares back at him a moment too long before stepping to the side.