

### DEAD RINGERS

### ILLUSION

### Volume One of the Dead Ringers Serial

### Darlene Gardner

Dead Ringers Serial

All nine volumes now available

The complete collection: 1-9 boxed set

Volumes 1-3 boxed set

Volume. 1: Illusion

Volume. 2: Invertigo

Volume 3: The Spider

Volumes 4-6 boxed set

Volume 4: Shell Game

Volume 5: Pitfall

Volume 6: Tilt-A-Whirl

Volumes 7-9 boxed set

Volume 7: The Mentalist

Volume 8: Freak Show

Volume 9: Hall of Mirrors

Other books by Darlene Gardner

Romantic Comedies

Three's Comedy (boxed set)

The Misconception

Bait & Switch

Snoops in the City

Three For All (boxed set)

Clash of Hearts

Baby It's You

Her Very Merry Mistake

Forget Me? Not

Once Smitten & Twice Shy

Contemporary Romance

The Christmas Cupid

Winter Heat

To The Max

Romantic Mysteries

Sound of Secrets (A Saltwater Romance)

Lowcountry Lies (A Saltwater Romance)

Copyright 2013 Darlene Gardner

Cover by P.K. Gardner

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. Except for the use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means is forbidden without permission in writing from Darlene Gardner.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

To my multi-talented daughter P.K. Gardner, who listened to the germ of an idea for this serial and helped make it a reality. I couldn't have done it without you. You're not only well loved, you're amazing.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ILLUSION

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Afterward

More Dead Ringers

Other eBooks by Darlene Gardner

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

Four months ago

When the police find me, I'm stumbling out of a deserted carnival. The place is boarded up for the season, awaiting the fresh swarms of tourists who descend on Midway Beach every summer like Alfred Hitchcock's birds.

I trip on a crack in the pavement and pitch forward onto my knees. The sound of laughter resonates in my ears and the back of my head throbs. I reach up to touch my skull, half-expecting my hand to come away bloody, but the wound's nothing more than a bump.

The dizzying spin of police lights and the accompanying thud of footsteps against the frosty ground intensify my headache. I wrap my arms around myself to try to stop my shivers. It may be North Carolina, but even southern beach towns feel the chill in February.

"You're not supposed to be here." A flashlight shines in my eyes before angling back to the ground as the cop bends down to put a hand on my shoulder. The voice is much softer as he takes in my state. "Are you all right?"

It's a fight to force the words past my chattering teeth. "H-h-how did I get here?"

Another beam of light hits me in the face as a second, shorter cop jogs up behind the first. "Hey, Wainwright? Isn't that the Greene girl?"

Why would a Midway Beach cop know who I am? The answer slowly penetrates my fuzzy brain. My stepfather's a felon now, and these must be the two cops who came to the house asking questions about him. The surge of anger is preferable to the headache, but only barely.

"Yeah, it is," Wainwright says. He's so ripped he looks like he's wearing a muscle suit. He loops a strong arm under my shoulder and helps me to my feet. The ground spins, but he doesn't let me fall. "Your name's Jade, right? What are you doing here, Jade?"

"I was walking to Becky's house." I'd set out for my best friend's house at dusk, but judging by the darkness shrouding our surroundings it seems much later than that now. "And then I was here."

A terrible realization sweeps over me. I'm missing time. It's the sort of thing that happens in movies like _Invasion of the Body Snatchers._ For all I know, there's a pod Jade hiding in the carnival, waiting to invade our peaceful little town.

"What happened to me? Where have I been?" I ask the cops.

Wainwright peers over my head at his partner. "We better take her to the hospital. Looks like she has a whopper of a concussion."

At the hospital, I discover things are worse than I thought. Much worse.

I haven't just lost hours. I've been gone for _days._
CHAPTER TWO

Present Day

Until I vanished into thin, sea-scented air, I considered myself an average eighteen-year-old. Sure, the funky atmosphere in the beach town where I live is in danger of obliteration, the stepfather who raised me is in prison and my mom's massively screwed up. But everybody has issues.

Hardly anybody gets selective amnesia, though.

That's pretty much what happened to me on the wintry night I set out for my best friend Becky's house after my stepdad pled guilty to holding up a liquor store with a gun that wasn't even loaded. How's that for dumb and dumber? Mom wasn't even around to lie and say everything would be all right. She'd taken off a few months earlier.

I remember the wind whipping at my face and turning the tears that dripped down my cheeks to ice as I hurried down the dark sidewalk and then... nothing. Until forty-eight hours later when I turned up confused and disoriented at the carnival on the beach.

The carnival was closed for the season, not teeming with people and noise and music like it is now. Just about every teenager in Midway Beach, including me, works summers either at the carnival or one of the other businesses along the boardwalk. Think Coney Island on a smaller, shabbier scale. We have an arcade, tacky souvenir shops, greasy pizza joints and a wooden pier with an open-air bar that hosts some epically terrible music.

This is my third straight year working as a ride operator although I wasn't supposed to be at the carnival this summer. My plan was to line up a job at a daycare center. But that was before my life went off track, back when I thought I'd be heading to the University of North Carolina on a full academic scholarship and majoring in elementary education.

I couldn't swing the UNC tuition after my grades tanked and I lost the scholarship. But as much as that hurts, the scholarship isn't what I want back most.

What I want back are those two lost days.

"Hey, Jade," Roxy Cooper, my boss, bellows at me as she approaches the Wild Mouse roller coaster. She's a powerfully built platinum blonde somewhere between thirty-five and fifty. The line of teenagers part like the Red Sea to let her through. "How many times you gonna let those cars go 'round?"

I'm supposed to keep it to a three-lap limit. Some of the riders look green from all the tight, flat turns and switchbacks so I'm probably over that. The controls aren't automated but antiquated, like everything else at the carnival. I yank up the long lever that operates the skid brakes, and the coaster groans like it's dying.

"You okay?" Roxy asks me that question at least once a day, like she's really concerned. I know better. After the cops figured out I was missing time, they'd investigated where I'd been for the previous two days.

According to Roxy, the spineless liar, I'd been with her. She claimed to have dropped me off at my house shortly before the cops found me. Of course she insisted she had no idea how I ended up at the carnival.

"I'm just peachy."

Her jaw works as she chomps down on her gum. Wintergreen, from the smell of it. The orange _Midway Beach Carnival_ T-shirt all the employees wear is too tight for her, the material straining against her Double D's. "You know, I'm real glad to have you back this summer."

Would she say that if she knew my ulterior motive was to figure out how she was involved in what the hell happened to me last February? Maybe. Roxy and the truth aren't exactly on good terms.

She's waiting for me to respond so I dredge up my inner Valley Girl. "It's, like, so awesome to be here."

The kids on the previous ride have disembarked and new riders are taking their places, laughing and shouting and trying to claim the best cars. I always head for the last car myself. Roxy's smile goes only as far as her lips. "I need you to head over to the funhouse and relieve Becky. I want her at the bumper cars."

The funhouse. I try to hide my shudder.

Roxy likes to rotate the ride operators to keep everybody fresh, but three weeks into the season I've managed to avoid manning the funhouse. Not for the world will I tell Roxy that, ever since my _incident_ , the funhouse creeps me out big time.

"Sure thing, boss."

I salute her and start the trek across the carnival. Along the way I pass the Hurricane, the iconic wooden roller coaster that is the carnival's centerpiece. Workmen are finishing up an extensive renovation project to update the aging structure with new wooden planks and beams. Any day now, it'll be back in operation.

The childish screams and shouts from the midway drown out the sound of waves pummeling the shore, but I can see the wide expanse of ocean and smell the salt on the breeze. When I was growing up, our family spent lots of lazy hours at the beach. My stepdad used to build amazing sand castles with spires and moats and fortress walls. I can't think about what used to be, though, not when my reality is so starkly different.

Besides, those aren't the memories I'm worried about.

To delay my arrival at the funhouse, I detour through Kiddie Land, where bells ring, horns blow and little kids rush from one of the dozen or so rides to the other. Merry-go-round music blares while parents wave to boys and girls riding up and down on the carved horses.

My twelve-year-old brother, Julian, and two of his friends are buying fried dough and cotton candy at one of the food booths outside Kiddie Land. Julian has such dark hair and eyes that he'll be a looker when he grows into his big feet. He doesn't resemble me at all. How could he when Mom and Dad adopted him from Colombia? He's wearing a T-shirt I bought for him imprinted with _Bring Back the Land Shark_. The slogan's in protest of the town council's decision to replace the ceramic statue of the Great White Shark that used to greet visitors to the boardwalk with a grinning dolphin.

Maniacal laughter that sounds like it's coming from crazed clowns drifts on the sea breeze. The funhouse is in sight.

"Jade! Jade!" Becky Littleton calls from her post in front of the attraction, waving her right arm madly. No one is waiting in line. No surprise there. "You heard what happened, right? Because you're not gonna believe it. You're just gonna die."

Becky is beautiful, with hair that is naturally blonde and straight instead of reddish-brown and unruly like mine. She has it pulled back from her face, calling attention to her sky-high cheekbones. Modeling might have been her calling if she'd grown past five feet and one hundred pounds. I'm five feet five and what I like to think of as athletically built. Next to Becky, I look like an Amazon.

"I might die," I say with a grimace. "The thing laughing in the funhouse is the top suspect."

Becky's mouth gapes open. Before she gets any words out, I know she doesn't think I'm nearly as funny as I find myself. "You can't say things like that! Someone's gonna hear you. They won't know you're kidding."

I'm not kidding. Becky must know it, too, even though she doesn't understand about the funhouse. Even if I was as easy to read as she is, my intense dread of the place makes no sense to me, either.

"What won't I believe?"

"The Black Widow is out on bail!" Becky leans forward, her eyes bright. "I give it a week before someone turns up dead!"

See, things can always be worse. At least my stepdad hasn't killed anybody like Constance Hightower, aka The Black Widow.

Constance is accused of whacking her rich husband, Boris. The murder took place sixty miles south of Midway Beach in Wilmington. The details are all over TV, the newspaper and the Internet. The former Miss North Carolina and the tobacco magnate fascinated the gossip-hungry even before the ugly accusations surfaced. Constance is thirty-one. At the time of his death, Boris was seventy-nine.

The story goes that Constance discovered Boris was cheating on her and sprinkled his food with a slow-acting poison until death did them part. Since the symptoms mirrored a heart attack, she would have gotten away with it if the children from Boris's first marriage hadn't pressed for an autopsy.

"You gotta wonder why Constance did it," I say. "Boris dumped his first wife for her. She had to know he was a cheater."

"She did it for the money, silly," Becky says breathlessly. "I think she was planning to murder him all along. If the poison didn't work, she would have smothered him in his sleep."

"That got dark really fast."

"Hey, we're talking about a murderer here. And I bet I know something about her you don't."

"She's childless because she ate her young?"

"No." Becky's so far from smiling, her teeth don't show. "Right before he died, Boris bought a beachfront place at Ocean Breeze. The Black Widow has made it her lair."

The proper name of the exclusive residential community that has invaded the outskirts of Midway Beach is The Estates at Ocean Breeze. The Lair at Ocean Breeze has a better ring to it.

"Wonder if she'll show her face in town," Becky says. "I want to get a good look at her eyes. I hear they're empty. No remorse."

As much as I dread my new assignment, I'm tired of talking about the Black Widow. "Roxy says it's my turn at the funhouse. You're supposed to head over to the bumper cars."

Becky grimaces and chews on her bottom lip. "You didn't tell her the funhouse creeps you out?"

"Nope."

"Well, maybe it's a good thing you're working the funhouse," Becky says. "You know, face your fears."

The creepy, canned laughter drifting out of the makeshift building makes me want to cover my ears. Amid the laughter, I pick out another sound. "Is someone crying?"

Becky cocks an ear, her expression growing serious. "Oh, damn. It is crying. Lacey's probably lost in the mirror maze."

"Lacey Prescott? Hunter's cousin?" Just saying his name sends a thrill through me. My hormones don't seem to care that Hunter's going out with my arch-rival.

"Yeah. I let her go in there alone."

Hunter lives with his aunt and uncle. Lacey's their only child. She's a couple years behind my brother Julian in school, a sweet-faced girl who hardly says a word to anyone. "Is she even old enough?"

"She's ten. Her friends are over there on the tilt-a-wheel. She said that was too scary but she was all gung-ho about the funhouse."

Last weekend, I went to a matinee showing of the new Batman movie after my mother showed up at our house and moved back in, like she had the right after being gone for almost six months without a word. Lacey was at the movie, too. The death and destruction had barely begun when she practically ran out of the theater. The body count was at two or three. Tops.

"I guess I have to go in there after her," Becky says.

"Let me," I say, shocking myself.

"Really? You?" Becky makes a face. "Girl, please tell me you're not still stuck on Hunter?"

I can't tell her that.

"Forget him," Becky says. "If he was interested, he had his chance. He's not good enough for you."

Loyalty sometimes makes you delusional. Hunter is a rarity, a talented actor who gives off vibes that are one hundred percent heterosexual. He's been accepted into the same prestigious drama school in New York City where M. Night Shyamalan studied. I'm headed nowhere at the speed of light. I walk toward the funhouse without responding.

"Remember, everything in there is just pretend," Becky calls.

The way my legs are trembling, she just as easily could have shouted for me to watch out for the guy with the chainsaw. I climb the rickety stairs and step into a dark corridor. Lights flash on and off while aggressively cheerful music blares, punctuated by that clownish laughter. The floor dips in places, adding to the disorientation.

Becky's not entirely correct about my motives. Sure, I'd like word to get back to Hunter that I rescued his young cousin. But I'd have gone into the funhouse after Lacey even if she didn't have a hot relative. She has a little-girl-lost quality that gets to me.

The sobs tear at my heart until I feel physical pain. My pulse trips. What if my aversion to the funhouse has something to do with those days I disappeared? My brain's blurry on the details of where exactly at the carnival I reappeared, but why couldn't it have been the funhouse?

What if Lacey is in real danger, the kind that greeted me back in February? Will she be the next to vanish?

I try to shut out the music and laughter and focus on the crying. It sounds animalistic, a cross between a cry and a scream. Shivers rack my body. But, wait. The feral noises are part of the soundtrack. The human whimpering seems to be coming from the right and the hall of mirrors.

Gathering my resolve, I forge on toward the distortion mirrors. A screeching cry reverberates through me. The animal in distress on the soundtrack? It's getting harder to partition Lacey's weeping from the manufactured noises.

There's another sound, too: Ragged gasps that pass for my breathing. While I'm trying to get myself under control, I reach the first mirror. Staring back at me from two sets of eyes is a short, squatty young woman with a pencil neck and an extra mouth. It's me. So is the spindly figure in the second mirror who is taller than Shaquille O'Neal.

Turning a corner, I nearly slam into another illusion of myself. I jump back. So does my double image.

The crying is more faint now.

"Lacey." My shaking voice competes with the music, the animal cries and the never-ending laughter. "Lacey, where are you?"

No answer. I speed up, past mirrors where I look demented and mirrors that give the illusion that my body has been sliced in half. While I'm deciding which way to go, colored lights flicker on and something jumps out of an oversized box.

It's a life-sized clown, its red lips pulled back in an unnatural grin.

A memory flashes through my brain. I'm sitting in a hard-backed chair with rope cutting into my bound hands and feet. A hood covers my head, effectively blinding me. I feel groggy but know I'm outside, because I can hear the crescendo of cicadas and the nearby wail of some sort of animal, maybe a fox.

Sharp pain explodes inside my head. Bile rises in my throat, and I fight nausea. The pain is relentless, like something is assaulting my brain. My head jerks back and forward, back and forward, sending fresh waves of agony through me. If it goes on much longer, that will be the end. I can't survive this. No one could.

And then, suddenly, it's over. I slump forward, my head falling below my knees, the loosened hood coming free and dropping to the ground. Fresh air reaches my nostrils. I lift my throbbing head at the same time something sharp stabs me in the right shoulder. The groggy feeling immediately intensifies.

With every ounce of willpower I possess, I fight the wooziness, managing with great difficulty to turn my head. Through lids growing heavier by the second, I get a glimpse of whatever's doing this to me.

Holding an empty syringe is a clown, its face cloaked in white makeup and its oversized nose and mouth painted blood-red.
CHAPTER THREE

My eyes drift closed, but I can still see the clown's taunting grin. Something is shaking me. From a distance, I hear a familiar voice I can't quite place. The shaking gets harder. My teeth rattle like they sometimes do during the scariest parts of a horror movie.

"Jade!" says a loud voice near my ear. "Jade! Snap out of it!"

I blink and the image of the evil clown fades to black. One more blink and the interior of the funhouse comes into intermittent focus, depending on whether the lights are flashing on or off. I'm on the floor, slumped against the cool glass of one of the mirrors.

Becky leans over me. In the artificial funhouse lights, her face appears as chalk-white as the clown's. "Are you all right?"

I can't make myself nod. I'm not all right. I haven't been since last summer, when something so terrible happened to me that I buried the memories. Until now.

Because deep in my gut I know that what I just had was a memory. Even now, I can almost feel the ropes cutting into my wrists, smell the earthy richness of the outdoors and taste the acid rising in my throat along with the dread.

Becky sticks out a hand to help me up. She's so small and my legs are so rubbery that I have to anchor my free hand against the mirror so I don't fall.

"Come on," she says when I'm upright, keeping hold of my hand and winding through the maze of mirrors like she's navigated it dozens of times. Without her guidance, I'd never find my way outside where the ocean air sweeps away some of the cobwebs in my mind. Darkness is encroaching and the lights of the midway are on, the Ferris wheel outlined in a circle of white.

White. Like the clown's face paint.

"I thought someone was dying in there!" Becky hasn't let go of my hand. Nobody is within ten yards of us besides the guy working the ticket booth while listening to his iPod. "Why were you screaming like that?"

"I was screaming?" My head hurts, as though somebody took a sledgehammer and tried to split it in two.

"You were screaming bloody murder. I thought the Widow decided to start with Lacey."

Lacey, Hunter Prescott's young cousin. Had somebody abducted the girl and tied her to that chair? I grab Becky's arm. "Please tell me Lacey's all right."

"I think so. She came out the exit a few seconds after you screamed." Becky stares down at my hand on her arm. "Let go. You're hurting me."

"Sorry." I release her, my mind crowded with questions.

How had I gotten into that field? Who had tied me to the chair? Why had it felt as though my mind was splintering? How did the clown fit in? And, most importantly, what did he want from me?

"So what the hell happened in there?" Becky persists, rubbing her arm. "I've never heard you scream like that."

I wet my lips, trying to process my thoughts. "I remembered something. From when I vanished."

Becky puts a finger to her lips. "Shhh. We agreed you wouldn't talk about that."

"But I remember, Becky. It was night and I was tied to a chair in a field." I concentrate over the pounding in my head, conjuring a mental snapshot. Lining the edges of the clearing were sprawling live oak trees and tall loblolly pines. "I could smell grass but also something damp. The marsh or a swamp, maybe."

"Jade," Becky says with a warning tone in her voice. She doesn't want me to continue, but she's been my best friend since kindergarten. There is nothing about me she doesn't know.

"At first I couldn't see because I was wearing a hood. My head felt like it would explode. While I was thrashing around, the hood came loose. Then there was a needle in my shoulder." I moisten my lips, knowing how she'll react to what I'm about to say. "That's when I saw the clown."

"For God's sake, Jade!" Becky drags a hand through her blond hair, and some strands come loose from her ponytail. "A clown? Are you listening to yourself? You actually believe you were abducted by an evil clown who tied you up and injected you with something?"

Stated that way, it sounds crazy. Yet I didn't get to that field by myself. "I think it was a sedative."

Becky's blue eyes turn round and troubled. "You're freaking me out, Jade."

I can hardly wrap my mind around the vision myself, yet the life-sized clown that had sprung from the jack in the box uncovered something in my mind I've been trying to reach for months.

"I'm freaked out, too." I rub my forehead, intensifying my headache. "But it could explain the gap in my memory. Maybe even where I was for those two days when I vanished."

"We already know where you were," Becky says, her voice gentle. "You were skiing in the Great Smoky Mountains with Roxy."

"No." I shake my head, rejecting the explanation the same way I have since I'd turned up dazed and disoriented at the carnival. It's no secret that Roxy is passionate about skiing. After three years of working at the carnival, that's the only personal thing I know about her. But we had most definitely not gone on a ski trip to the Cataloochee Ski Area together. "That's a lie."

"Jade, you sent me a text, remember? I know you were messed up about your dad's conviction, but I still have it on my phone."

"He's my _stepdad_." I never used to make that distinction. He's the only father I've ever known and I call him Dad, but I'm just so damn angry at him.

"Okay, your _stepdad_." She pulls out her cell, navigates to a screen and hands me the phone. "Here, maybe it'll help if you see the text again."

Going skiing for a few days with Roxy, the text reads. Don't worry.

Becky hadn't worried. Neither had Aunt Carol, my mom's sister. She'd uprooted everything and moved in with my sister, brother and me after my stepdad's arrest. My aunt received a text from my phone with the same message. Roxy even had an explanation for my temporary amnesia. She said I'd fallen on the slopes. The bump on the back of my head seemed to back up her lie, but I think someone knocked me out when I was walking to Becky's.

Even if the blow resulted in a concussion, though, it doesn't explain my memory gap. It's typical not to remember the accident. Not so typical to have no recollection of the following forty-eight hours.

"I didn't write that text. Someone must have gotten hold of my phone and sent it."

"Why would anyone do that?"

"So nobody would realize I was missing and come looking for me." I can tell Becky doesn't buy that explanation. "C'mon, Becky. Why would I ever go skiing with Roxy?"

"Her father went to prison when she was a kid, too." Becky repeated the story that Roxy had told everybody. "She thought it would be good for you to get away for a few days."

"Roxy's lying."

"We've been over this already, Jade. Why would she lie?"

_Maybe Roxy was disguised as the clown._ Except that doesn't sound right. What possible motive could she have? She was involved, though. Somehow.

"I don't know why Roxy's lying."

"Do me a favor, okay?" Becky rubs her hand up and down my arm. "Don't mention the evil clown to anybody. People are already talking. You can't give them more ammo."

I shrug her hand off my arm. "About me being crazy? You think I'm crazy, too, don't you, Becky?"

"No! Of course not. I just think..." She pauses and the corners of her mouth turn down. "I just think you've been under a lot of stress."

"Hey, is everything all right over here?"

My head whips around at the voice of Maia Shelton, who's closing the distance between us. Like Becky, Maia has been my friend forever. Unlike Becky, she can't keep a secret. She spends all her waking hours on the strip, either at her job at the arcade or hanging out at the carnival, collecting the news of the day and then freely sharing it.

"I heard something about a bloodcurdling scream." Maia tosses her beautiful black hair, which cascades down her back almost to her waist and is adorned with one of the chrysanthemums she's taken to wearing. Today's flower is purple.

Becky sends me a warning look, then says, "People scream all the time at a carnival."

"The funhouse is too lame for screams," Maia declares, waving a dismissive hand. "So, spill. What's going on?"

It's time I entered the conversation with the truth. Seems to me I heard somewhere it was the best defense. "It's nothing. I just got spooked by the clown in the funhouse."

Maia balances her hands on her curvy hips and tosses her hair again. "Oh, come on. You're not afraid of clowns. Last year for Halloween you dressed up as that killer clown from the Stephen King miniseries. I can't think of the name, but you know the one."

_It_. I'd read the book, too. Not his best work.

"I saw the two of you huddled over here," Maia continues. "You were talking about something important. I can tell."

Becky telegraphs me another silent message to keep my mouth shut.

"We were talking about the clown," I say.

Maia blows air out her nose. "Bullshit! You think I can't tell when you two are hiding something from me?"

"What would we be hiding?" I ask.

"How should I know? You won't tell me." Maia huffs out another breath. "Fine. See if I care."

She spins on her heel and stalks away, flipping us the bird as she goes.

Becky waits until Maia is out of earshot before she turns troubled eyes to me. "I'm serious, Jade. You can't say anything about an evil clown to anyone, not just Maia. If you do, people are gonna think you're like..."

Becky's voice trails off, but I know what she means.

I can't afford to let people think I'm like my mother.
CHAPTER FOUR

When Becky pulls her little red Honda Fit into my driveway three hours later, my head hurts from trying to figure out the mystery of what happened to me. Not as much as it hurt that night in the forest, though. That pain was extraordinary.

"You're like a million miles away," Becky says.

"I've got a lot of things on my mind."

"Things you should never, ever tell anyone," Becky says. "We're clear on that, right?"

"Crystal."

She doesn't need to worry about me spreading tales tonight. My two siblings are too young to understand what I can't grasp myself, and no way would I tell dear old mom anything.

I thank Becky for the ride, get out of the car and shut the door. The porch light is on, shining on the hanging baskets of geraniums that make the ranch house appear a little less modest. I use my key and slip inside before the flying bugs surrounding the porch light can follow me. Quickly I punch in the security code on the alarm system my mother had installed before she abandoned us.

Tonight the bowels of the house are dark. Good. Everybody's asleep.

Something brushes against my leg. I cry out and jump back. Yellow eyes peer at me in the darkened foyer. Our black cat Beelzebub and not Jack Nicholson wielding a bloody knife like he did in _The Shining_.

"Jesus, Bee. I had a rough enough night without you trying to give me a heart attack. Don't you know an evil clown could be after me?"

I strain my ears for the sound of stirring but hear only silence. Slipping off my shoes, I pad barefoot into the kitchen and open the refrigerator without bothering to turn on an overhead light. The cold air feels good on my clammy skin.

Yogurt or leftover pizza?

"Like I really have a choice if I don't want to weigh two hundred pounds," I mutter.

But if I gained a lot of weight, it might be tougher for somebody to snatch me off the street a second time. I grab the pizza, head for the family room and turn on a lamp. Light bathes the room, illuminating the empty sofa, the coffee table my stepdad found at a flea market and refinished and the woman in the recliner.

Her eyes are open and staring directly at me.

I swallow the scream before it starts. The woman in the recliner is my mother.

She'd walked into the house without even knocking about a week ago. She didn't apologize or explain why she hadn't once in twenty-five weeks given us a call to say where she was. She acted like she'd never been gone, taking my little sister Suri shopping, making Julian whatever he wanted for dinner. After a few days, Aunt Carol returned home to South Carolina.

"Why are you sitting in the dark?" I demand.

"I was waiting for you," she says.

Her speech is slow and measured, without inflection. It's impossible to tell if I woke her. She always sounds like that, which I figure is a side effect of her meds. I might feel sorry for her if she hadn't stopped taking them last year and wrecked our lives.

"No need for that. I can take care of myself."

She says nothing but continues to stare at me. She's in a long-sleeved flannel nightgown much too warm for a summer night. Her shoulder-length hair is brown with no trace of red, her green eyes are wide set and her lips plump. Supposedly we look alike, but I don't see it.

I pick up the remote, switch on the television and sink into the sofa. On screen Drew Barrymore is sobbing into the phone. I instantly recognize the movie _Scream_. I've seen it a half-dozen times, but anything is better than having a conversation with my mother.

Long minutes pass. The pizza is cold, but I can barely taste it. The girl on TV is screaming because—surprise—no one ever survives the first five minutes of a slasher flick. I try to ignore my mother, who hasn't even shifted in her seat. Why won't she go to bed and leave me alone?

"Your father left a message on the answering machine," she announces.

"Stepfather," I correct for like the millionth time. My real father took off before I was born. My mom claims she doesn't even know where he is.

"He'd like for you to visit him."

She makes it sound like they're divorced and he's inviting me to spend time with him. Like Maia's father, who has a multi-million-dollar home with a tropical waterfall pool at the Estates at Ocean Breeze.

"Have _you_ visited him?"

"Not yet."

"I'll leave the visiting to you then."

On television, Drew Barrymore grasps for her killer's mask. It's already too late.

"I talked to your Aunt Carol on the phone tonight. She said you haven't seen your father since he was arrested."

Not quite true. I'd gone to an arraignment where I've since found out hardly anybody pleads guilty. Leave it up to my stepdad to dare to be different. It is true, however, that I've never been to the maximum-security prison where the judge sent my stepdad at the sentencing hearing. I haven't read the letters he writes me, either. They end up in the trash.

"What's your point?" I ask.

"Five months is a long time for a father and daughter to go without seeing each other."

My mother was gone for longer than that. My palms hurt, and I realize I'm clenching my hands and the nails are digging into my skin. "Yeah, well, he should have thought of that before he got himself arrested and landed us here with you."

Silence. Utter and complete except for the gasps from poor, dying Drew on TV. Definitely not a bloodcurdling scream. Hard to pull that off with a few dozen stab wounds. The knife comes up again. The television screen goes dark before the killing blow. My mother has the remote in her hand.

"Hey! I was watching that. What gives?"

"You obviously have something you want to say to me."

"Nope."

"I think you do."

Why is she making an issue of this now? Since she moved back to Midway Beach, I've made no secret of the way I feel about her. If she's in one room, I'm in the other. I speak to her as little as possible.

"Trust me," I say under my breath, "you don't want to hear what I have to say."

"Try me."

I let out a noise that sounds like a laugh but isn't. Far from it. I sit up straighter, rising to the challenge. I've been holding in the anger for so long that maybe it is time I had my say.

"Since you asked for it, I'll give it to you straight. I wish you hadn't come back. I know somebody has to take care of Julian and Suri, but it shouldn't ever be you."

She looks wounded, but I harden myself against her, thinking of all the nights I cried myself to sleep after she left, thinking of how hard it was on my stepfather without her around. All because she'd refused to accept help for her problem.

"You sound angry with me," she says.

"Ya think?" I know blood doesn't really boil, but it feels like a hot rush through my veins. "Now why would I be angry at a mother who didn't care what happened to her family? You must have known money would be tight."

My stepfather worked as an MRI tech at the hospital, a decent job for a single man but not so much for a family man supporting three children.

"I didn't think your dad would try to rob a liquor store."

"That's on you." My voice is rising and I can't control it. "It never would have happened if you hadn't abandoned us!"

"You make it sound like I wanted to go." Mom sounds impassioned, nothing like the woman who's been on such an even keel since she returned. She leans forward in the chair, her eyes bright. "But I had to leave. It was the only way to protect all of you."

"From what? Your _enemies_?"

Mom had her condition well under control until last year when she crashed her car and insisted she was speeding because _they_ had been chasing her. After the accident, she had the security system installed. She used to stand at the window for hours, peeking through the curtains into the street to make sure her enemies weren't out there.

One night, I'd heard my parents arguing about her meds through the thin walls of the house. I'd prayed she would get back on her regimen. Instead she'd packed up and left when nobody was home.

I can never forgive her for that.

"You never had any enemies, Mom," I continue. "You would have known that if you hadn't gone off your meds."

Wrinkles form between Mom's brows. "I never went off my meds."

"Yeah, right." I am sick of people lying to me. "I heard you two arguing. You wouldn't listen to him."

"That's not the way it was."

"So you didn't leave because you thought someone was after you?" My eyes are trained on her, looking for I don't know what. Foam frothing from her mouth, perhaps?

"Well, yes, but—"

"So there's nothing left to talk about."

"You're wrong. I already mentioned I spoke to your Aunt Carol tonight."

"So?"

"She told me more about what happened to you in February." Mom wrings her hands the way she used to when she was standing at the window keeping guard. "I'm afraid, Jade."

"Of what? Your enemies coming after me?"

She shakes her head, the movement almost frantic. "No, Jade. I'm afraid you're a paranoid schizophrenic. Like me."
CHAPTER FIVE

With the bright morning sunlight streaming through my bedroom window, it seems ridiculous to believe an evil clown snatched me off the street, injected me with a syringe full of sedative and tied me to a chair.

And yet as I get out of bed, that's pretty much where my head is.

Do I get any sanity points because I realize the scenario sounds nuts? Or does that make it more likely that I'm a paranoid schizophrenic?

Like my mother.

Voices drift down the hall from the kitchen. My bedside clock reads a little before nine a.m. Oh, crap. I'd meant to wake up earlier to make sure Suri and Julian weren't alone with her.

I hurry down the narrow hallway, forgetting the bulge in the carpet where it isn't pulled tight enough. I stumble, putting out a hand to steady myself on the wall. A framed photograph of our family of five before Mom left us crashes to the floor. I leave it behind.

Suri and Julian are sitting at the butcher block kitchen table, plates and silverware already laid out in front of them. Our mother is at the stove, flipping a pancake in the frying pan. Her dark hair is up in a flattering style and her short-sleeved pale pink blouse is paired with a navy skirt and high-heeled sandals. The sun shines through a kitchen window onto her unlined face. There aren't even circles under her eyes.

"Good morning, sweetheart." She smiles at me while the pancake sizzles in butter, as though our bizarre conversation last night didn't happen. "Would you like me to make you some, too?"

In the months my mother was gone, before my stepdad turned into a sort-of-armed robber, it was up to me to make sure Suri and Julian ate breakfast. Sometimes I'd pop frozen waffles into the microwave and drizzle maple syrup over them, but most of the time all three of us ate cold cereal.

"No, thanks."

"Good." Julian holds his fork upright like a pitchfork. "More for me."

"I want two." Suri gets up from the table and prances over to the stove with her plate. Like Julian, she's adopted. She, too, has black hair and eyes. Suri, though, is Asian. Since our mother signed her up for ballet lessons, Suri walks everywhere on tiptoes. My eight-year-old sister's hair is done up in a pretty French braid, the kind Mom is always offering to do for me.

"There's enough for everybody," Mom says with a chuckle.

I've been up half the night trying to figure out whether I need to protect Julian and Suri from her. Grabbing my brother and sister by the hand and making a mad dash for the family car suddenly doesn't seem like such a brilliant idea.

"Mom's taking me with her to work today!" Suri announces. "We're gonna go through houses built on special."

Mom's a real estate agent out to make a buck on the new face of Midway Beach, yet another thing to hold against her.

"On spec," Mom corrects. "That means the houses were built with no specific buyer in mind but the builder is pretty sure they'll sell."

She deposits a pancake onto Suri's plate like she's Martha frigging Stewart. Anybody on the outside looking in would be fooled into thinking life was grand with the Greenes. Suri and Julian seem fine, though.

Making a snap decision to get the hell out of there, I grab a cinnamon apple fruit bar from the pantry closet and head for the back door. "Later."

"Wait a minute, Jade." My mom's voice stops me, but I don't turn around. "Today's your day off, right? What are your plans?"

For lack of another idea, I thought I'd go down to the strip, walk around and see if I can spot any wicked clowns. If I told her that, though, she'd probably offer to come along and help.

"Why do you want to know?"

"I was hoping you'd do me a favor." She's acting like we have a normal mother-daughter relationship where it's possible I'll say yes. "Julian's having friends over to play video games. Can you keep an eye on them until I get home?"

The favor, then, isn't for her. It's for Julian. Since she's been back, Mom's been real strict about having friends over without supervision. If I say no, she'll tell Julian to uninvite them. My brother's been through a lot, too. I can't do that to him, no matter how much I want to defy her.

"I'll do it for Julian." I reverse directions, stepping over the photo on the hallway carpet and retreating to my bedroom. I eat my fruit bar in my bedroom behind a closed door that doesn't block the delicious smell of the pancakes.

Julian's friends are running late. They arrive after lunch and park themselves in front of the X-Box in the family room, giving me plenty of time to research schizophrenia on my laptop. Since Mom was diagnosed when Suri was a toddler, I know a little about it already. It's a chronic condition that requires lifelong treatment. Patients are supposed to be on medication even when they feel like they've got the condition beat.

The new bit of information is that the condition has a strong genetic link.

The symptoms, though, aren't what I expect. I can't ever remember my mother being angry, violent or argumentative. It wouldn't surprise me if she hears voices, but the only other symptom that truly fits is she's delusional. I mean, enemies? C'mon.

I'm the one who has enemies, Roxy Cooper among them.

"Oh, shit," I say aloud, remembering the genetic link. "Paranoid much?"

I clamp a hand over my mouth. Now I'm talking to myself.

By the time Mom and Suri get home, though, I still can't make myself accept that the incident in the forest with the clown didn't happen. Sick of my own company, I head for the door. My mother follows me into the driveway, hovering nearby while I yank on my bicycle helmet and check the pressure of my bicycle tires.

"Why don't you stick around for dinner?" she asks. "I'm making lasagna with some of that crusty bread you like."

She's trying to bribe me with my favorite meal, like I'm Julian or something.

"No thanks."

"Where are you going?"

"Out. Don't wait up."

She tilts her head. "But it'll be dark soon, sweetheart."

"What? Are you afraid I think that evil thrives in the darkness? That my enemies are out there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for their moment?"

"Do you?" Empathy shines out of her eyes, the way it had last night when she theorized how alike we were. "Should I make an appointment for you to talk to someone?"

"No."

Priority number one is getting the hell away from her. Hopping on my bicycle, I coast down the driveway and turn toward town.

"Be careful out there," my mother calls after me.

I pedal faster, putting distance between us before I retort something like _Nobody with pasty skin is getting near my neck!_

Halfway to town, a car horn blares. An expensive-looking red convertible zips by me, close enough to touch. I jerk my bike wheel to the right so I'm riding nearer to the shoulder of the road. The car takes the turnoff to the Estates at Ocean Breeze.

"Go back to where you came from!"

The driver can't hear me, but I feel a little better.

Midway Beach is small enough that there's nowhere else to go except the boardwalk, a half-mile stretch of mostly restaurants and souvenir shops. I'm way more likely to find answers there than I am sitting in the house. If only I can figure out how to ask my friends if they'd seen any suspicious-looking clowns lately.

I chain up my bike and start walking. The tourists are out, like an invasion of ants. Most of the faces I pass are unfamiliar. None are slathered with white makeup. People my age hang out either at the arcade or the carnival. I reach the arcade first.

It's at least as old as I am. The majority of the video games are throwbacks, like Midway Beach itself. Pacman, Frogger, Galaga. When I was a kid, my dad used to challenge me to a game of Skeeball every Sunday. I thrust aside the memory, shove through the doors and hit something solid.

"Ow!" someone yells. Not just anyone. Hunter Prescott. He hops back on one foot with his hand covering one of the most perfect noses God ever gave out.

"Your poor nose! I'm so sorry!"

"Ish okay." He speaks through a long-fingered hand as flawless as the rest of him. He's six feet two of perfection, all lean muscle, golden-brown hair and striking blue eyes that at the moment are narrowed and crinkled at the corners.

In the hand not covering his nose are a couple of wedges used to prop open the doors and let in the ocean air once the heat of the day has passed.

"It's not okay," I say above the mechanical noises, music and hum of conversation that fill the arcade. Later tonight when it gets crowded, it'll be almost impossible to hear.

"I'm fine. Look." He drops his hand. His nose is red but as long and straight as before, thank God. He looks even hotter than he did the night we took in one of the _Paranormal Activity_ movies, then walked along the beach. At night. In early February. I was so nervous wondering if he'd kiss me that I planted one on him first.

That kiss is the best thing that's happened to me all year.

"You sure you're okay?" I touch his arm. God, he smells good. Like a strong, masculine soap. "Can I get you something? An ice pack maybe?"

He lowers his right leg so both his feet are on the ground and winces. It's still possible I've broken his toe.

"I could kick myself for not paying attention to where I was going," I say.

"Don't do that. Wouldn't want to bruish those pretty legsh."

Hunter's noticed my legs? They're strong and toned, a soccer player's legs. He's smiling and looking into my eyes, the way he did on the beach after we kissed. I've been waiting since our date for him to look at me like that again.

"I wouldn't really kick myself. I mean, that would be pretty stupid."

Kind of like that comment.

"Good," he says, still smiling.

"I'm not usually such a klutz."

"You've got a lot of things on your mind."

"Come again?"

"Yesterday." He cocks an eyebrow. "The funhouse. I heard about the bloodcurdling scream."

My face burns like I've spent hours too long in the sun. "I guess Lacey told you."

"Lacey?" Hunter's perfectly shaped eyebrows shoot up. "What would she know about it?"

No point in explaining I was trying to rescue his cousin when he didn't even know she'd needed rescuing. "How'd you hear, then?"

A couple arcade employees are across the aisle, beside the row of pinball machines. One of them is Porter McRoy, a guy so clueless he doesn't seem to realize Becky is nuts about him. Or maybe he's shy. He graduated with us but I've hardly ever heard his voice. The other employee has arms covered with tattoos. He says something to Porter and nods at me. They both stare. Then I get it. The Mouth of Midway Beach has struck again.

"I'm gonna let Maia have it."

"Don't be too hard on her. She's worried about you. We all are." Hunter is no longer smiling. "How ya doin'? You know, since that thing last winter."

It's the first time he's brought up the forty-eight hours I lost. Not surprising. I can count on one hand the number of times Hunter's said anything at all to me since February.

"I'm fine." I'm not sure if I'm trying to reassure Hunter or myself, maybe a little of both.

"I hope you are." He lowers his head. "Hey, if you need someone to talk to, call my aunt. I should have told you about her before. She's in practice with two other women. Their website is psychthree.com."

The aunt he lives with is a psychiatrist. The only way this could get worse is if my mother made an appointment for me with her. I shift my weight from one _pretty_ leg to the other. Hunter's gaze doesn't dip.

Maia comes toward us, long black hair swinging behind her with a yellow chrysanthemum tucked behind her right ear. The yellow T-shirt the arcade employees wear is even uglier than the orange carnival T-shirt. Her skin looks sallow in the artificial arcade lighting. "Oh, hey, Jade."

She sounds irritated. It takes me a moment to remember her outburst. Did that really happen only yesterday?

Maia turns to Hunter, her face a cool mask. She's always annoyed at him. She and Hunter were an item back in the eleventh grade when he first moved to town. Their relationship only lasted a few months before she dumped him for reasons unknown. Since then, she barely speaks to him, except, it seems, to spread gossip about me. "Adair's almost an hour late. Is she still sick?"

My onetime friend Adair Adams is Hunter's current girlfriend. They've been dating since shortly after I gushed to her about that kiss on the beach.

"No clue," Hunter says.

"Her home phone went to voicemail."

"Yeah, she never answers that one. And her parents are vacationing in Europe."

"I couldn't get her on her cell, either."

"She might have it turned off," Hunter says. "She does that sometimes."

"I'll cover for her this time but she's on her own if it happens again. Tell her that, okay?" Maia stomps away without waiting for a response.

Hunter finishes propping open the doors, securing them with the wedges.

The breeze from the ocean seems to blow right through me. It's not cold, but I shiver. "When was the last time anyone saw Adair?"

His shoulders move up and down. "I don't know."

"When was the last time _you_ saw her?"

"About noon yesterday, I guess. We both had the day shift. She went home sick after a couple hours."

"So she's missing?"

Like I was for those forty-eight hours.

"Whoa." Hunter puts up a hand. "I wouldn't go that far."

"But if she's feeling crappy, shouldn't she be at home? How do you know if she even got there?" I pull my cell from the pocket of my shorts. "Someone needs to track her down and make sure she's safe. I think I've still got her number in here."

"She won't answer," he says. "Like I said, I think she turned off her cell. She does that when she's playing hard to get. She was never sick, okay? She left work because we had a fight."

That puts a different spin on things but only slightly. The fact remains that nobody has seen Adair in more than twenty-four hours. "Where is she then?"

"She texted me yesterday that she was going to her dad's cabin."

A chill rattles through me. I know of the cabin. When Adair and I were friends, we'd gone there together once when her father asked her to bring him the bowhunting gear he'd forgotten. It was about thirty miles northwest of Midway Beach in a coastal forest called Wilder Woods.

The memory of the wet, earthy smell that filled my nostrils when the hood slipped off comes back to me. The smell could have been drifting from a swamp, like the ones that populate Wilder Woods.

"Why would she go there?" I ask. "It's in the middle of nowhere."

"I don't know why Adair does what Adair does."

"Did you check to make sure she was there?"

"Nope. I'm not going to, either."

"But..." I stop myself before I ask what if someone besides Adair sent the text. "What if she's not at the cabin?"

"Then she's not at the cabin."

The entire scenario doesn't sit right. When I was gone for those forty-eight hours, my friends and family weren't out looking for me either because of texts I hadn't sent.

"Adair's not missing, Jade." Hunter's voice cuts into my thoughts. His eyes bore into mine. "You understand that, right?"

If I argue, he'll join the legions of other people in town who think I'm crazy. That is, if he doesn't think so already.

"Of course I do." I hope my smile hides what I'm really thinking. "It's just Adair being Adair."

"Exactly." The tension seems to drain out of him.

That's because he doesn't know I'm heading to Wilder Woods as soon as we're through talking. I owe it to myself to find out if the clown has struck again.
CHAPTER SIX

Guilt has something to do with Becky surrendering the keys to her Honda Fit without a fight. She's working the carnival tonight so I make the argument that she doesn't need it. The real clincher is that her parents presented her with the cute, pint-sized car for high school graduation while I got only enough money to buy bicycle brake pads.

I feel guilty, too. To convince Becky to let me borrow the Fit, I told her a movie theater thirty miles away is hosting a Horror Spectacular. That's actually true. I'm just not going.

The road narrows to two lanes when I get to the Midway Beach suburbs. A car that looks suspiciously like my mother's blue Chevy pops up in my rearview mirror.

"You've got to be kidding me," I say aloud.

Mom could be headed to a real estate listing, but I don't buy that for a second. I thought I'd seen her lurking around the carnival shortly before we closed. Now I'm sure of it.

I press my foot down on the accelerator, jerk the Fit over the double yellow line and pass two cars. One of the drivers shoots me the bird. The other lays on his horn. When I've covered enough distance that I'm fairly certain I'm out of mom's sight line, I pull into a gas station and circle around back of the building that houses a convenience store.

Minutes later, the car that looked familiar whizzes by. My mother isn't driving.

"Oh, great." I shut my eyes tight and knead my forehead. "Now I'm the one imagining people are following me."

I gather myself, pull out of the gas station parking lot and put on my favorite indie rock radio station to soothe myself. A half-hour later I'm at the edge of the coastal forest. Wilder Woods consists of more than one hundred acres of spindly pine trees, saltwater estuaries and raised swamps. My memory's fuzzy on the exact location of the cabin so I drive blind, taking a few wrong turns before spotting a dirt service road that looks familiar.

A sign reads: No Trespassing. Private Hunting Land.

I take the turnoff, and the tires of the Fit start a bumpy ride over a pitted dirt road flanked by thick vegetation. Dusk has fallen, covering everything in gloom. Even if it hadn't been for the overhanging branches, it's overcast and there's no natural light from the stars or the moon. The car's headlights are the only thing preventing total darkness.

I remember Adair saying her father used the cabin almost every weekend during hunting season, which I'm pretty sure is in the fall and the spring depending on what game you're hunting. In the summer and winter, there isn't much reason to come to Wilder Woods, although some troubled people make a one-way trip. About ten years ago a country singer with a cult following shot himself in the head near Heron Lake. Since Cam Stokes died, a half-dozen people have committed suicide the same way.

The cabin sits on a crest at the end of the road. I've already decided to make a U-turn if it's abandoned, but a pickup truck like the one Adair's dad drives is parked out front. Adair probably borrowed the pickup because it's easier going on the bumpy dirt road.

No lights shine inside the cabin, but this isn't the big city. Power lines don't run through the forest. Outdoorsmen have all kinds of ways to light a room. At least, I think they do. Adair could have picked up a few tricks.

I pull the Honda Fit to a stop beside the pickup, leaving the headlights shining on the cabin flanked by tall trees. It reminds me of the cabin in _Evil Dead_. Great. An irrational fear of trees would really add to my life.

It's so dark that without the headlights I might not even see an evil thing if Adair was stupid enough to summon monsters. Flashlight. I need a flashlight.

"No shit, Sherlock," I mutter. "So why didn't I think of it before now?"

Maybe Becky keeps one in the glove box, though. With the car still running, I lean over, open Becky's glove box and rummage through it. My fingers close around something smooth and cylindrical. A pocket-size flashlight. I flick the switch to turn it on. Nothing happens.

Great. Now what?

Should I lay on the horn until Adair comes out to check who her visitor is? Tempting, but she might stay in the house out of spite if she figures out it's me. If, that is, she's in the house and not tied up in a field.

I need to make sure she's okay, flashlight or no flashlight. It's not fully dark yet, and I've got twenty-twenty vision. Surely I can see well enough to reach the front door. Turning the headlights off, I get out of the car and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. After a few moments, I can sort of see.

Fine gravel is sprinkled over the makeshift dirt driveway. My tennis shoes make crunching noises, disrupting silence so absolute it seems as though even the insects have stopped buzzing. The air has that musty smell that signals a swamp is nearby.

My knock echoes in the forest on the solid front door of the cabin. Ten seconds pass without an answer. Twenty. Thirty. I knock again. Still no one comes.

A window a few feet from the door is at about waist level high. A gap in the curtain allows me to see part of the front room. Adair isn't lying on the floor in a pool of blood, not that I expect her to be. Well, not really.

Now what? I hadn't thought about what I'd do if Adair wasn't in the cabin. Traipsing around the woods in the gathering dark to make sure she isn't tied up somewhere doesn't seem terribly bright.

What's Adair doing out here in the first place? Doesn't she know it's dangerous for a young woman to go off by herself? It's the premise of about a million horror movies. If somebody managed to grab me in the two blocks between Becky's house and mine, they'd have no problem snatching a female by herself in a dark forest.

Oh, shit.

Something cries out in the darkness. Not a person. Maybe an owl. Or a hawk before it strikes its prey. I wrap my arms around myself. Did hawks announce their deadly intentions or did they launch sneak attacks, like a person up to no good?

A crunching noise. Like twigs snapping and leaves rustling. Something is walking through the thick underbrush. Foxes and wild turkeys live in the forest but this sounds like something bigger. It could be a bear or a deer, both of which will be fair game come fall hunting season.

Or it could be a person.

My gasp catches in my throat as I struggle not to be paranoid. My mother's the one who's paranoid. The most logical explanation is that it's Adair, returning from a walk.

Cupping my hands over my mouth, I turn in the direction of the crunching sounds and yell, "Adair? Is that you?"

Silence. Whatever was moving through the forest is still now, perhaps waiting to strike. Like the Deadites lying in wait until one of the teens ventured into the night.

I need to stop watching so many horror movies.

I also need to get out of here.

Becky's Fit is parked closer to the cabin than the pickup. Whatever is in the forest is farther away. My heart pumps and adrenalin rushes through my veins. I go from a standstill to all out running in seconds, turning the corner to get to the driver's door of the Fit.

The soles of my tennis shoes slip and slide on the gravel. Desperately trying to catch my balance, I slam into the pickup's passenger door.

My face comes up flush against the window. Inside, on the front seat, is a burnt orange backpack. A rifle leans against the seat.

Adair's father hunts, I think, with a gun as well as a bow and arrow. I've heard Adair go on and on, though, about how she could never shoot a defenseless animal. She wouldn't drive around with a rifle even if she was using her father's pickup. But what's to say this is her father's pickup?

My breathing comes in short, audible gasps. There's another sound, too. The footsteps have started up again.

I right myself and stumble toward the Fit. Something's missing. The keys. I've dropped the keys.

I bend over and squint, trying to pick out the metallic glint of the keys. It's darker now than when I arrived. The loblolly pines surrounding the clearing cast long shadows that make it seem more like night than dusk.

The crunching noise is getting louder.

I crouch down so whoever's coming can't see me. The darkness seems more absolute at ground level. I feel around for the keys, the palms of my hand scraping over the fine gravel. Something jangles, and I close my fingers over the keys.

The footsteps get louder, then stop. My relief gives way to panic. Whatever was in the woods is on the other side of the pickup. I don't have a prayer of getting inside the Fit and starting the engine before it's on me.

But I won't go meekly into the night. Not this time.

After my reappearance, Becky signed both of us up for a self-defense class for women, thinking it would make me feel safer. It seems to me the instructor said something about using keys as a weapon. Yes. You hold them between your fingers so one of the keys protrudes.

The footsteps start again. I pray they're not being made by giant clown shoes, get the keys ready and leap to my feet. Instead of the clown, a man comes around the car.

"Stop right there! I have a weapon."

He freezes. Both of his hands raise in the accepted gesture of surrender. "Don't shoot!" His head cocks to the side. "Wait a minute. Are those keys?"

"So what if they are?" If I wasn't under stress, I'd have a better comeback than that.

He drops his hands. "Keys aren't a weapon."

"They will be if you get any closer." I wave the keys like I'm wielding a sword. "I'll gouge you."

"Why would you do that?"

He doesn't sound dangerous. Now that I can make out his features in the darkness, he doesn't look it, either. He's about my age, on the tall side with a lean build that reminds me of the guys in high school who ran track. His hair is so dark it blends into the night but his face is pale. Maybe I'm wrong about him not being dangerous. Maybe he's a vampire.

There is no maybe about me watching too many horror movies.

"What have you done with Adair?" I demand.

"I don't know anybody by that name."

"Her father owns this cabin. You're trespassing on his property."

"Are you trespassing?"

"What?"

"Were you invited?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Then we're even."

"No. We're not even. I'm up here to check on Adair and you're not."

"You a friend of hers?"

I can't make myself nod. "I wouldn't go that far."

"Sounds like trespassing to me."

"You're twisting things around. I'm here to make sure Adair's okay."

"Your _non-friend_ Adair?"

"That's right."

"Why wouldn't she be okay?"

I'm definitely not telling him about clowns snatching people off the street. "You ask a lot of questions. My turn. What are you doing here?"

He hesitates. "Scouting. Deer season starts in a few months. It was on my way so I figured why not?"

"On your way where?"

"Could you stop waving those keys at me like I'm a serial killer?"

His words, not mine. I hadn't even considered that possibility. I back toward the Honda Fit, keys still set to gash him. I keep my eyes glued to him and feel around with my free hand for the door handle. When the door's open, I repeat my question. "On your way where?"

Again, he hesitates. "On my way to the beach."

I don't believe him. I don't believe anything he's said. If I could make out his features in the darkness, he'd probably be smirking.

No matter how long I stand out here, though, he won't tell me the truth of why he's here.

"Yeah, right," I say so he knows I'm not stupid.

I slip inside the car, lock the doors and turn the key in the ignition. The car engine turns over and I back up, making sure my headlights shine on the back of the truck.

It has a North Carolina license plate. I repeat the series of letters and numbers out loud, committing them to memory. If something's happened to Adair, I can direct the police to a suspect.

The stranger steps into the artificial light where his dark hair and pale skin look even more dramatic.

He blows me a kiss.
CHAPTER SEVEN

The next morning, I pad down the hall barefoot to the bathroom after rousting myself from a restless sleep. I dreamed the clown was chasing me with a syringe. The guy from the coastal forest stood by, arms folded over his chest, waiting to see if I could get away. The prize for escaping was his kiss.

Voices drift from the kitchen. One of them belongs to my mother. The other is as sweet as corn syrup and as high-pitched as a little girl's. Except it doesn't belong to a child.

It belongs to Adair.

My blood pumps so hard I won't even need my morning caffeine fix. Ducking into the bathroom, I splash cold water on my face and run a brush across my teeth. Then I practically sprint toward the kitchen.

"You look great, Mrs. G," Adair's voice drifts down the hall. "That suit is like so pretty. When did you say you came back to Midway Beach?"

"A few weeks ago."

"I can't believe I didn't know you were back."

"I can't believe how grown-up you are. You're stunning."

I reach the archway to the kitchen and pause. My mother sits catty-corner from a too-familiar blonde at the kitchen table, each of them with their hands wrapped around a mug of coffee.

Yep, it's Adair all right. Guess I won't be calling the cops to report her missing.

Mom's head swivels in my direction. "There you are, Jade. I was about to wake you. Adair stopped by to see you. Isn't that nice?"

"Hey, Jade." Adair gives me a sunny smile. She's nearly six feet tall with high cheekbones, a wide mouth and short, dyed blond hair she gels into tufts. In the last year, she's probably dropped about twenty pounds, making her model thin. Her look is unusual enough that heads turn when she walks by. This morning she wears short shorts and a cute white top.

I wish I'd taken the time to change from the oversized T-shirt I sleep in. "What the hell are you doing here, Adair?"

"Ja-ade!" My mother makes it sound like my name has two syllables. "There's no need to be rude."

My mom doesn't know about Adair's betrayal, but it still ticks me off that she's leaping to her defense. "Adair and I aren't friends anymore."

"That's what I came over to talk about." Adair sounds sweet and innocent, the way she always does. Not once, in the months since she betrayed me, has she changed her tune.

"In that case, I'll leave you two girls alone." Mom stands up. Her suit is an unusual color. Turquoise, I think you'd call it. Adair's right. It does flatter her. "Landon should be here any minute to pick me up."

"Uncle Landon? You're shitting me."

Landon Guerard isn't really my uncle, but I was probably in grade school before I realized that. He and my stepdad are as close as brothers. Correction. They used to be close.

"Jade, watch your language," Mom warns, waving a finger. "I took my car in yesterday to have some work done, and Landon's giving me a ride to the shop."

"Yeah. But why him?"

Late last year my stepfather and Uncle Landon had a falling-out around the time Uncle Landon's wife lost her battle with Lou Gehrig's disease. Still, with all that history between them, I expected Uncle Landon to represent Dad when he got in trouble. He didn't do a damn thing even though he was a criminal defense attorney before he retired early to buy a surf shop.

"It's time bygones were bygones," she says.

The doorbell rings and there's the sound of the creaky front door opening before a slightly nasal voice calls, "Hello. The cavalry's arrived."

"In the kitchen, Landon," my mom replies.

Uncle Landon strides into the room, acting perfectly at home, the way he used to back when he and my stepdad were still friends. He's maybe five feet seven on a good day. I used to think his addiction to keeping in shape had something to do with his lack of height, but he's developed a paunch since I'd last seen him many months ago.

"Hey, there, Lizzie." He rubs my mother's shoulder as he passes her and stops in front of me. "Jade, honey! You look more and more like your beautiful mother every day." He smiles at Adair. "Speaking of beauty, I'm surrounded by it."

Adair giggles. "Hey, Mr. Guerard. You're a charmer."

"I try to be." Uncle Landon focuses on me. "How have you been, Jade?"

"Where have _you_ been?" I'm not about to forgive him for abandoning my stepdad as easily as my mother has.

"We should get going, Landon," my mother says before he can answer. "Jade, Julian's in his room and Suri spent last night with a friend. She'll be with her all day. You're working tonight, right?"

I'm so miffed at her for interrupting that I don't answer.

"Jade?" she persists. "I asked you a question."

"Yeah, I'll be at the carnival if you want to stop by and lurk in the shadows."

"Good to know." She picks up her purse, her expression innocent.

Uncle Landon crosses to her side, like they're a damn couple. "Catch you later, girls."

"Have a great day, sweetheart," Mom addresses me before beaming at Adair. "Nice seeing you again, Adair."

"You too, Mrs. G." Adair gives my mother a jaunty wave.

The comment my mom made a few minutes ago about bygones could apply to what Adair did to me, but the hell with that. As soon as I hear the door open and close, I say, "You can fool my mom with your Miss Innocent act but not me."

"And here I thought both of you were bat-shit crazy," Adair spits out, her perpetual sunny smile gone.

"Don't talk about my mother that way."

"Why not? Everybody knows she's nuts. The same way they know you're nuts."

"That's funny." I tap a finger against my mouth. " _Some people_ only believe I'm nuts because of what _you_ told them."

After I lost those forty-eight hours, multiple friends let me know they heard Adair warn Hunter that I was having a breakdown. Supposedly she'd convinced him there was a danger that I'd become violent. Within a week, Adair was going out with him herself.

Adair's stare is cold. "I only told the truth."

"What are you doing here, Adair?" I demand.

"I want to know what you said to Hunter yesterday."

"What I said to Hunter? Is that a joke?"

"Listen to me, bitch. I won't let you steal my boyfriend."

I take a few steps toward her. "You mean the boyfriend you stole from me?"

"Hunter was never your boyfriend. You went out with him _once_."

"You were my friend, Adair." My hands clench at my sides. "You knew how I felt about him. You slept with him, anyway."

"I won't apologize because Hunter likes me better."

"You threw yourself at him." I'd heard from a half dozen people who'd been at the party where they hooked up that Adair was on Hunter like a tick on a deer. "What guy turns down sex?"

"What guy wants to go out with a nut job?" she shoots back.

_Nut job, nut job, nut job_.

I open my mouth to refute her but the denial dies on my lips. "Get out of here, Adair."

"I'm not finished." Her face is pinched and hateful. "I want to know what you said to Hunter yesterday at the arcade."

I shake my head and mutter, "I can't believe I went out to your dad's cabin to check on you."

"Is that why Hunter didn't come to the cabin? Because you went instead?"

"You were there?"

"Of course I was. It's where Hunter and I..." She doesn't finish the sentence, but it's easy enough to fill in the blanks. The cabin is where she and Hunter get it on.

"Nobody was there at eight o'clock."

Nobody, that is, except the guy with the black hair and the suspicious story.

"I left before then."

Hunter worked the early shift at the arcade yesterday. Adair must have stuck around only until she figured Hunter wasn't coming.

"So what did you say to Hunter?" Her glare is as hot as the Carolina sun.

"Why don't you already know? Doesn't Hunter share things with you?"

"What did you say to him?" she demands.

"I said I can't believe he's going out with such a slut."

She jumps up from the kitchen chair, her hand inadvertently hitting the coffee cup and knocking it over. She closes the distance and looms over me, shaking her finger in my face. "This isn't over, bitch. If you cross me again, it'll be the last thing you do."

"Are you threatening me?"

She shoves a finger into my breastbone, and I bat it away.

"What do you think?" I can smell the coffee on her breath. "Even somebody as crazy as you should be able to figure that one out."

She storms out of the kitchen and through the house, slamming the front door behind her. Brakes screech as Adair pulls her car out of the driveway and speeds off down the street. Strange. Adair's older sister was speeding last year when she lost control and hit a tree. She'd been lucky to escape with her life. Back when we hung out, Adair was always lecturing whoever was driving about going too fast.

The entire scene had been out of character. Even when Adair said something mean, it was in that molasses-sweet voice. But then, I've known for a while now that Adair is hiding her true nature.

To think I was actually worried that whoever took me to that forest had gotten Adair, too. I mean, really. That's the definition of a nut job.
CHAPTER EIGHT

When I report for work the next afternoon, it's all over the carnival that Adair and Hunter are taking a break.

"It was totally his idea," Maia tells me.

She's the reason the news has spread. Maia's working at the arcade tonight, but the two venues are close enough that she can dash back and forth when she's on break. The gossip is so juicy that she seems to have forgotten she was angry with me.

"He's tired of her shit," Maia is whispering, but the carnival hasn't gotten cranked up yet so I can hear her fine.

I'm using sanitizing wipes on the Kiddie Land motorcycle ride, my first assignment of the day. I pause and give Maia my full attention. I had the pretty strong impression she only talked to Hunter on an as-needed basis. "Hunter told you this?"

"Adair did."

"Adair used those words? That Hunter was tired of her shit?"

"She should have. She texted him that she was at her dad's cabin. When he didn't come out to be with her, she let him have it. I guess usually he takes it. This time he didn't."

"I'm surprised she told you that."

Maia adjusts the yellow chrysanthemum in her hair. "Why's that?"

"She's usually pretty secretive."

Maia shrugs. "I guess she needed somebody to talk to."

So she picked the biggest gossip in Midway Beach?

"Did Adair seem... different to you?" I ask.

"Hell, yeah. I've never seen her so mad in my life."

Not counting this morning in my kitchen, I'd never heard her raise her voice.

"But then, she's never been dumped before," Maia adds.

"I thought you said Hunter and Adair were taking a break."

"Taking a break is what guys say when they don't want their girlfriend to go ballistic because they're dumping her." Maia wrinkles her nose. "Why are you so interested in Adair anyway? Are you still hung up on Hunter?"

Like I'm going to admit that to the Mouth of Midway Beach.

"Of course not." Time to switch subjects. "How long is your break, anyway? Don't you need to be getting back?"

She pulls out her cell phone and checks the time. "Shit! I'm outta here."

She takes off running in the direction of the arcade, weaving her way through the sparse crowd. At this time of the late afternoon, people are still enjoying the sun and the sand and the ocean. Business won't pick up until after dinner time.

I wipe down another miniature motorcycle, spending extra time on the rubber horn. When I straighten, I glimpse a flash of turquoise through the Fun Slide and the Dragon Wagon.

The same shade as my mother's suit.

"Son of a bitch." I jog toward the entrance to Kiddie Land and spot the woman in turquoise walking briskly away from the carnival. This time I'm not imagining things. Even from behind, I can tell it's my mother.

If she truly believes I might be schizophrenic, why is she keeping tabs on me? Could it be that I was right in the first place? That she thinks her enemies might now be mine? Of course, Mom never had any enemies. I'm the only one who does.

The blood rushes from my head when I realize how irrational that sounds. I walk over to the motorcycle ride on wobbly legs, sink into the stool beside it and lower my head beneath my heart. Mom isn't the only one who thinks something is wrong with me. After I lost the forty-eight hours, Aunt Carol made an appointment for me to see a psychiatrist but I refused to go.

_There's nothing wrong with me_ , I insisted. The same thing I said to my mother when she advanced the theory that I could be taking after her.

"Hey, Jade," Becky calls. "Are you okay?"

I make my lips curve upward and lift my head, intending to tell her I'm fine. The words never make it past my lips. Walking alongside Becky is a guy with black hair and pale skin who's wearing the orange T-shirt of a carnival worker.

Not just any guy. The guy from the coastal forest.

"You don't look so great," Becky says. "Want me to get you some water or something?"

It's too much of a coincidence that the dark-haired stranger who was skulking around the coastal forest one day turns up at the Midway Beach carnival the next. From the half-grin on his face, he knows that.

"No, I'm good." I struggle to appear normal. "Just resting up before the rush."

"Okay." Becky isn't convinced, but she won't call me out in front of a stranger. "Jade, this is Max Harper. He's gonna be on rides. I'm showing him the ropes. Max, this is Jade."

In the daylight, he looks even better than he did last night in the gloom. His body is lean but surprisingly muscular. His black hair is thick, his cheekbones sharp and his eyes a clear blue. His nose isn't quite as perfect as Hunter Prescott's but his mouth would be better if not for his smirk.

Max Harper's blue, blue eyes meet mine and dance. "Nice to meet you, Jade."

So that's how we're going to play this. "I'm surprised I haven't seen you before. Are you from around here?"

"Nope. Came here for the job."

A job that pays minimum wage. Like that makes sense. "Where are you staying?"

"I got me a place."

Not many people our age have enough money to rent something while making so little. "With a roommate or by yourself?"

"By myself."

"Where is it?'

Becky laughs uncomfortably. "What is this, Jade? Twenty questions. Give the guy a break."

Max winks at me, the same way he'd winked when I drove away from the cabin in the forest before he'd blown me that kiss. "If you'd like, you can come over sometime and see it yourself."

I meet his gaze. "I would like."

"Great." His smile, not a half-grin this time, lights up his face. "I'll get back to you on that."

"You be sure to do that."

Behind Max's back, Becky lifts her hands and raises her eyebrows in the time-old gesture to indicate she doesn't know what's going on.

Neither do I, but I intend to find out.
CHAPTER NINE

By the next night, I'm sick of hearing about how hot the new guy is. It'd be different if somebody had the scoop on him. His eyes resembling the color of the Caribbean doesn't count.

"Can we talk about something besides Max Harper, Becks?"

The carnival's closed for the night, and we're walking along the boardwalk headed for a party taking place under the pier. Once or twice a week, word spreads like a zombie infestation that the gang is gathering. Maia's usually the one announcing the news. Today, I heard it from everybody except Maia, but that could be because she remembered she was mad at me.

"How about that Black Widow?" Becky asks.

Constance Hightower didn't show up for a court appearance this morning in Wilmington. Speculation is rampant that she's run off with what money of Boris's she can get her hands on. The media is reporting the children of the late, lamented Boris Hightower are furious that Constance was let out on bail. They're afraid she'll get away with murder.

"I'm sick of hearing about her, too."

"Okay, then let's go back to Max. I'm still trying to figure out why you invited yourself over to his place when you'd barely met the guy?"

"I already told you, I want to see what he can afford on our measly salary."

"Because you're thinking of moving out of your house?"

"That's right."

"I don't buy it." She has to take three steps to my two to keep up with me. "Living with your mom sucks but you won't have the money to move out while you're going to community college."

"Who says I'm going?"

"You've gotta go," Becky wails. "If your grades are good enough, after two years you can transfer to UNC and we can still be roommates."

Becky had been accepted to UNC less than a week after I'd been offered the scholarship. We'd sent in our applications for housing at the same time, requesting each other as roommates. For a solid week, we'd planned how to decorate our dorm room, right down to the horror movie posters on the wall.

All our plans had blown up when senior year grades came out and UNC took back my scholarship and with it my future.

"Let's not talk about college," I say.

"Okay. We'll discuss college later. After we finish talking about Max."

"We weren't talking about Max. _You_ were. I think we should talk about Porter McRoy. Any progress on that front?"

"None. Talk about shy. I can barely get a word out of him. No wonder I didn't notice how cute he was until senior year."

"Maybe he'll be at the party."

She noisily blows out a stream of air. "And maybe one of the helicopters on that ride in Kiddie Land will take off and fly."

"You might have to ask him out."

"Possibly. But it would mean so much more if he asked me." Becky bumps my shoulder playfully. "Isn't that what you're hoping will happen tonight with Max?"

Since Becky introduced us yesterday, our paths haven't intersected. Somehow Becky's figured out the main reason I suggested going to the party under the pier is that I heard Max would be there. It's not exactly a lie to confirm I'd like some one-on-one time with him.

"Okay. Yeah."

"I knew it!" Becky exclaims. "Was it really so hard to admit you're hot for him?"

Becky almost never tries to pry things out of me. Because I tell her everything, there's no need. I'd like to spill about Max lurking in the forest, but something holds me back.

"This is so great." Becky claps. "So you're over Hunter?"

This, I couldn't mislead her about. "I wouldn't go that far."

"Max is just as good-looking as Hunter, and he's never gone out with Adair," she points out.

Max is talking to Adair when we arrive, though. It's low tide and the two of them are standing in the sand beside a pillar amid a dozen or so teenagers, her blonde head cocked toward his dark one. In the forest, Max claimed he didn't know Adair. Yet it doesn't look as though they're strangers.

Some of our friends are drinking beer, but I'm not even tempted. Why waste calories on something that's both illegal and bitter tasting? Becky's driving. She snags us a couple Diet Cokes.

"Let's make sure Adair doesn't get your man before you do." She grabs me by the hand and heads straight for Adair and Max. I hear pieces of conversations as we weave through the crowd, most of them about the missing Black Widow. Becky turns back to me when we're halfway there with a mischievous smile on her face. "Watch this."

Her meaning becomes clear pretty quick.

"Hey, Max, Adair." Becky doesn't let go of my hand until we're standing in front of them. "I've been looking all over for Hunter. Have either of you seen him?"

"I don't even know who Hunter is," Max says, answering Becky but keeping his eyes glued on me. A corner of his mouth elevates.

"Adair's boyfriend," Becky says. "Do you know where he is, Adair?"

Adair's smile looks frozen. "No clue."

"So it's true you two are taking a break?" Becky asks. "I'd heard that but I didn't know whether to believe it."

"It's true," Adair says, still in a voice that sounds dipped in sugar.

"What kind of a break?" Becky asks. "I mean, are you seeing other people?"

"Why do you need to know that?" Finally. The sugar's dissolving.

" _I_ don't need to know, but Max might."

He laughs, a rich sound that rumbles like the ocean waves. "Nothing's going on between Adair and me. Right, Adair?"

"Right," Adair says. What other response can she give? "Jade, can I talk to you for a minute?"

Before I can say anything, Adair grabs me by the upper arm and guides me away from Max and Becky. She gives me the evil eye from her lofty height.

"You're not fooling me, bitch," she bites out. "I know you put your little friend Becky up to that."

"Up to what?"

"Don't play dumb with me. You must have your eye on Max yourself." She laughs. "Poor pathetic Jade. Go for it. But know this. If I want Max, I can have him. Just like I have Hunter."

"Had." I can't keep quiet when she gave me an opening a giant mutant bug could walk through. "You _had_ Hunter."

"We'll see about that." She spins away from me and stalks off, sand kicking up behind her.

Nothing is left for me to do but return to Max and Becky. As soon as I join them, Becky looks pointedly around. "I see someone I need to talk to. Catch you later."

She leaves us alone in what has to count as one of the most manufactured exits of all time.

"What was that about?" Max asks.

"She thinks I've got a thing for you."

The second corner of his mouth lifts to join the first in a full-fledged smile. "I like the sound of that."

"Don't get excited. It's not true. I only wanted to get you alone."

He sidles closer to me. "You can have me anywhere you want me."

I move back. "To talk. About what a coincidence it is that you turn up in Midway Beach a day after we run into each other in the coastal forest."

"I told you I was on the way to my summer job."

"Next you'll say you just happened to run into Adair, the very girl whose father owns the property where you were trespassing."

"That is a coincidence." His expression doesn't change.

"What were you doing out there, Max? If Max is your real name."

He, too, is drinking Coke. But full-flavored, not diet. He takes a long swallow before he answers. "I don't get why you're so suspicious." He pauses. "Unless it has something to do with what happened to you last winter."

"How do you know about that?" My tone is sharp.

"I've been working the carnival for two days. People talk."

"Don't believe everything you hear."

"I don't," he says. "So why don't you tell me yourself what happened?"

I look around. More people are arriving by the moment. Many of them are within hearing range. Across the party, Becky catches my eye and gives me two thumbs up.

"Not here," he says. "Let's walk on the beach."

I should know better than to go off with a stranger I don't trust. This is the part of the movie where I'm declaring the heroine too stupid to live and throwing popcorn at the screen.

"C'mon." He cocks his head toward the ocean. "You tell me your story, I'll tell you mine."

It's too tempting to resist. "Let me tell Becky where I'm going."

"Tell her I'll drive you home."

"I'll tell her to wait for me."

He salutes me. "You're the boss."

The temperature of the ocean water is nearly as warm as the night air. The surf teases my bare feet, the water advancing and retreating as we walk alongside each other. The clouds that had delivered some early morning showers had lingered all day and into the night. The moon isn't visible and neither are the stars.

I'm carrying my flip-flops. If he tries anything, they're my only weapon.

"Any time you're ready to start," Max says, "I'm listening."

"What did you hear?"

He scratches the side of his nose. "I heard about your dad. That's a bum deal. I'm sorry."

Unexpected tears prick the backs of my eyes. I blink them back. " _Stepdad_. No reason to be sorry. He was guilty."

"I didn't mean sorry for him," Max says. "I meant sorry for you. It can't be easy having him in prison."

I blink again, not trusting myself to respond to that. "What else did you hear?"

"That after he pleaded guilty, you don't remember anything that happened for two days."

I kick at the water and it sprays in an arc. "Not bad for gossip."

"So those days you don't remember," he says. "Where do you think you were?"

"Roxy Cooper says I was with her on a ski trip."

"Yeah, I heard she said you don't remember going with her because you hit your head. Kind of hard to buy." He pauses, and the roar of the ocean fills my ears. "She's a strange lady. Why would you go anywhere with her?"

He actually gets it. "Exactly."

"What do you think really happened?"

The question seems innocent, but I've lived near the ocean long enough to know that unseen currents lurk beneath the surface. He could be trying to lull me into trusting him with my secrets.

"Do you think someone abducted you and held you against your will?" he prods.

"Something like that."

"Who?"

"Beats me. For all I know, it could have been an evil clown." I'm not sure why I recklessly throw that out there. Maybe to see his reaction. There is none. Sighing, I say, "You got any ideas?"

"What would I know about it?"

"You seem awfully interested for a guy who doesn't know anything."

A wave larger than the others pounds the shore and splashes salty water into the air, soaking the bottoms of our shorts. Max doesn't flinch. "It's an interesting story."

I've held the stage long enough. "What's your story? You promised to tell me."

He stops, turns to me and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. The sensation of his fingertips grazing the skin at my temple feels sensuous. For one pulse-skittering moment I think he's going to kiss me, but then his hand drops away from my face. "It's not as interesting as yours."

I'm disappointed, both because he didn't kiss me and because I would have let him. My words come out harsh. "Let me be the judge of that."

The next batch of waves is gentler, the roaring not quite as loud so I can hear every word.

"My dad used to take me to the carnival when I was a kid. Happiest times of my life. He died when I was ten years old. So when I saw on Craigslist that the Midway Beach Carnival was hiring, I applied."

"That's it?" I harden my heart against the boy who lost his father at such a young age. It's probably not even true. "That's your whole story?"

"My mom's not real happy I'm here. She raised me by herself. She works all the time, though, so she'll hardly notice I'm gone."

"I don't believe this. I thought you were going to tell me what you were doing in the forest."

"I already told you. I was scouting hunting locations."

This is a waste of my time. I feel my feet sink into the sand. We've walked far enough that the lights are visible from one of the beachfront mansions at the Estates at Ocean Breeze. But we are utterly alone. If Max had something to do with my abduction, it's dark enough that he could easily orchestrate another disappearance.

"I want to turn back," I declare.

His attention, for once, isn't on me. His focal point is somewhere in the distance. "There's something up ahead on the beach. It looks like it might be a person."

I squint and pick out an elongated lump. If the lump's human, there has to be some reason it's horizontal. "Sometimes we get homeless people sleeping on the beach."

"I don't think so. It's too near the shoreline."

The beauty of the ocean can hypnotize the unsuspecting into taking dangerous chances. Just last summer, Hunter got caught in an undertow and barely made it back to shore alive. If he hadn't been such a strong swimmer, he would have been a goner. Like others over the years who haven't been so lucky.

"Oh, my God. You don't think it's a body, do you?"

Even before I finish the question, Max sprints toward the dark shape. I start running, too, my feet sinking into the sand as water sprays in every direction.

A cloud drifts from in front of the moon, lighting our path. Max comes to an abrupt stop. He's silhouetted against the moon, hand rising to his mouth. He turns to me, shielding me with his body from whatever's on the beach.

"Don't come closer," he says. "It's a dead woman."

He can't be certain she's dead. In the movies, heroes are always administering CPR and breathing life into people supposedly thought drowned. Adrenaline propels me forward, and I side step him to reach the woman.

The woman is lying on her back unquestionably dead, her eyes wide open and staring. It's not just any dead woman. So many photographs of her have appeared in the media that I instantly recognize the notorious Constance Hightower.

If the Black Widow was on the run, she didn't run far.

"I don't understand," I murmur, staring down at the body. "Why isn't her hair wet?"

"Because she didn't drown." Max's arm comes around me, taking away some of the chill of the discovery. "Even at high tide, the surf doesn't come up this far."

"Then how?"

"Her wrists," comes Max's soft reply. "They're slit."
CHAPTER TEN

The cop taping my formal statement is the same one who responded to the 911 call the night before. He's also the muscle-bound cop who found me wandering around the carnival in February. He's maybe five or six years older than me, his skin is the color of coffee diluted with cream, and he has a beautifully shaped scalp. If mine was that perfect, I might shave my head, too.

"That'll do it." Officer Wainwright switches off the recorder. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

We're at the police station in what appears to be an interrogation room, although there is no mirror, two-way or otherwise. The floor's linoleum, the table's formica and my chair is plastic. There's a strong scent of stale coffee although neither of us have a drink.

"I still don't understand why I had to come to the station," I say. "I told you all this last night."

"I know you did." Wainwright's voice is surprisingly high-pitched. "Just between you and me, it's a waste of time. But the media's breathing down our necks, and the chief says we've got to cross all our t's and dot all our i's. That includes audio taping you and your boyfriend."

Max Harper is in a separate room with a different police officer. We haven't spoken since the cavalry arrived on the death scene last night. The first thing the cops did was separate us so we couldn't compare notes.

"Max isn't my boyfriend."

"Whatever you say." He clearly doesn't believe me. Before I can make another denial, he taps the back of his head. "How you doin', anyway? The head okay? You were pretty confused last winter."

"I'm fine."

"Good, good." He nods in rhythm with his comment. "Can't be easy with your dad in prison."

" _Step_ dad." I didn't really expect to get out of the police station without someone mentioning my felon of a stepfather.

"I saw your mom out there waiting for you."

Even though at eighteen I'm a legal adult, Mom insisted on accompanying me to the police station. She probably expected to be present during my statement but the desk officer said it was my choice. I didn't choose my mother.

"Lucky me," I mutter under my breath.

"How is she?" He leans back in his chair, totally at ease. Unlike mine, his chair isn't plastic. "I tell you, she's one lucky lady. Not many people who ram their cars into trees live to tell about it."

I'd overheard her tell my stepfather she'd lost control because of the enemies on her tail. No way am I bringing up my mother's crazy history to Muscle Cop, although I do need to make something clear. "She didn't crash on purpose."

"Then why did she jump off the bridge after she survived the crash?"

My heart stutters and my breath lodges in my windpipe. I can barely choke out my question. "What bridge?"

"The one near where she crashed." He peers at me and runs a big paw over his mouth. "Aw, hell. You didn't know your mom tried to kill herself?"

Forget the Black Widow. I've got my own problems. As crazy as Mom is, she's never seemed suicidal. Think, Jade. I know that bridge. It spans a marsh and connects Midway Beach to the mainland. At its highest, it's only about twenty feet.

"That bridge is pretty low," I say. "She might have jumped for another reason."

Yeah, maybe she just wanted a nice swim in the marsh. Crazy people probably get urges like that all the time.

"I shouldn't have said anything." Officer Wainwright is squirming now despite his more comfortable chair. Baby fat pads his cheeks. He might be even younger than I thought. "You should talk to your mom. She looks like she's doing okay."

"Don't you think I should know the details?"

"I think you should talk to your mom," he repeats. He gets up and sweeps a hand toward the door. "You're free to go. Thanks for coming in."

"But you haven't answered—"

"I said _thanks for coming in_." He walks to the door and pulls it open. "If I need anything else, I'll be in touch."

My only choice is to nod and leave the room. I'm forming the questions I'll ask Mom on the drive home when I come across another fresh hell in the waiting area. Max Harper and my mother are sitting side by side, their bodies angled toward each other, their expressions serious. I nearly break Usain Bolt's record in the hundred meters to reach them.

Mom looks up, her brow creased as deeply as Yoda's. "How did it go, sweetheart?"

"Fine. It was a formality."

"That's exactly what Max said." Mom nods at him, like he's her new best friend. "He told me he was with you last night. I'm so grateful for that."

My mother showed up at the beach last night to drive me home after someone—I'm still not sure who—called and told her what was going on. From me, she got next to no information.

"Have you two been talking about me?" The only worse topic would be my mother's suspicion that I'm schizophrenic.

"Guilty as charged." Max is wearing that half-grin. His khakis and cream-colored short-sleeved shirt call attention to how pale he is. Either he uses sunscreen with vampire-level protection or he doesn't spend much time outdoors.

"Do I want to know what you've been saying about me?"

"Heavens, yes." Mom puts her hand to her breast, exactly like a TV sitcom mom from thirty years ago. "Max has your best interests at heart. He thinks you're terrific."

Neither of those statements would score very high on a truth meter. "He does?"

"I do," Max jumps into the conversation. "I mean, we came across a dead body and you didn't even scream. How cool is that?"

His eyes are laughing, and I wonder if he knows about the _bloodcurdling_ scream I let loose in the funhouse. With any luck, that's old news by now. Then again, with Maia on the case, I doubt it.

The text tone on Mom's cell phone goes off. She pulls the phone from her purse and makes a face while she checks the message. "My clients are waiting. They got to the house early. Jade, I'm afraid you'll have to come with me."

"That's okay, I'll—"

"I'm happy to drive Jade home, Mrs. Greene," Max interrupts.

"That would be wonderful." My mother accepts his offer before I can reject it. She lays a hand on his arm. "I'm trusting you to keep an eye on my girl. See you later, Jade."

The high heels of her sandals click on the linoleum floor, and she wastes no time in getting out the door.

"What was that all about?" I ask.

He shrugs. "You heard her. She trusts me to get you home safely."

"I was about to say I can walk home."

"In this heat? In those shoes?" He points to the flip-flops I'm wearing with my sundress. "It's gotta be two miles to your house."

"I'm young and healthy. I can walk two miles." Something occurs to me. "Hey, how do you know where I live?"

"I know a lot of things about you." He winks and starts walking for the exit.

I hurry after him. "Like what?"

"Like you're really tuned in to the Midway Beach scene."

"Duh. I have lived here all my life."

He pulls open the door and indicates I should precede him into the sunshine. "Then you must know where you can get the best pizza in town."

"Mario's," I tell him when we're outside.

He descends the steps that lead to the sidewalk before he says, "Sounds good. That's where we'll go for lunch."

I keep pace, looking at him instead of where I'm headed. "I'm not going to lunch with you!"

"Hey, careful!" someone says.

I barely avoid running straight into a short, rumpled-looking guy who's wearing glasses and a _Wilmington News_ ball cap. A guy I've seen before. He was at the beach last night, notebook in hand.

He points a finger at us. "Aren't you the two who found the Black Widow?"

Max moves close to me like we're a team. "We are."

"I'm Stuart Bigelow from the _Wilmington News_. Mind if I ask a few questions?"

Being interviewed for the newspaper isn't on my top ten list of things to do today. "I don't think—"

"Not at all," Max interrupts. "Fire away."

The reporter flips open his notebook and takes a pen from his shirt pocket. "First tell me what happened."

Max gives a semi-detailed account of how we found the Black Widow, sounding smooth and confident, like he's used to talking to the press.

"Did you know the dead woman was Constance Hightower?" Bigelow asks.

"I recognized her from photos in the media." It's the first question I've answered.

"Did either of you notice anyone else in the vicinity?"

I shake my head.

"No one," Max confirms.

After two or three more questions, including how we spell our names, Bigelow says, "That'll about do it. Unless there's anything else you can add."

I'm ready to part ways, but Max takes a step closer to the reporter and lowers his voice. "Actually, there is."

There is?

"But in return I want to know what you know," Max says. "For starters, who was the last person to see Constance Hightower alive?"

The reporter lets out a laugh. "Are you really holding information hostage?"

"I really am. I'm sure you're familiar with exchanging information." Max sounds completely in command of the situation, like he knows exactly what can make a journalist salivate.

"Okay, I'll bite. Her sister was staying with Constance at the manse. She's pretty shaken up. Said Constance went for a walk on the beach a couple days ago and never came back."

"Did Constance leave a suicide note?" Max asks.

"Yeah. Said death trumped prison. It's consistent with what the sister said about Constance showering four or five times a day to get rid of the stink of jail."

"Who benefits from her death?" Max sounds like he's the reporter instead of Bigelow. "Her sister?"

Bigelow scratches his chin. "Why do you want to know all this?"

"We found her," Max says. "We're part of the story now."

Max's answer should make sense but it rings false. I'm curious about the details, too, but not in the same intense way as Max.

"Fair enough. Except I can't answer your question. Constance wasn't charged with her husband's death until after she inherited. His children managed to freeze the assets but by then she could have stashed money anywhere. With her dead, it'll probably take the courts years to sort things out."

"Because she was never convicted," Max finishes.

"Bingo. Your turn. What you got for me?"

"A couple questions."

Bigelow's eyebrows lift like the Golden Arches.

"The police didn't let you near the body, right?"

"Right. They had the area partitioned off."

"So you didn't ask why there wasn't any blood on the scene?"

Neither had I. And, unlike Bigelow, I'd been gaping down at the body.

"Well, I'll be damned." The reporter points a finger at Max and says, "Thanks a lot."

Bigelow hustles away, taking the steps to the police station two at a time. As soon as he's gone, I circle around Max to stand in front of him. "Why didn't you point out the no-blood thing to me last night?"

"You had enough to deal with last night."

I don't need him protecting me, but there are more pressing issues on my mind. "So you think someone killed the Black Widow and moved her body?"

"Either that or she killed herself and someone moved the body." He looks more serious than at any time since I've met him.

"Did you tell the police?"

"I'm sure they figured it out." He starts walking down the sidewalk.

I catch up to him and match my shorter strides to his longer ones. "How did you know to hold back information so that reporter would spill?"

"Common sense."

It seems like there was more to it than that, like he had experience dealing with the media. "But why did you do it? Why did you want to know the details?"

"Didn't you?"

His two-word answers aren't doing the trick. Too many things about Max Harper aren't adding up. The more time I spend around him, the more chance I have of deciphering the mystery. He takes the remote from the pocket of his khakis and unlocks the white pickup I'd seen in front of Adair's cabin.

I head for the passenger door, pull it open and hop in. The rifle I spotted through the window the other night is gone.

His key is in his hand but not in the ignition. "I thought you were walking home."

I lift one of my feet and point to a flip-flop. "Wrong shoes. Besides, I've got a craving for good pizza."
CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mario's Pizzeria has a prime location directly on the boardwalk. The interior, though, isn't worth raving about. Only one table has an ocean view. The others are arranged in a single row that stretches about eight deep to the back of the store. Opposite the tables is the counter, behind which Shep Arnett, a rising senior at Midway Beach High who looks bored enough to fall asleep, flips pizza dough.

"This pizza is awesome." Max holds up a slice of half-eaten pie. He ordered it New York style, the correct way. "Asking you out to lunch, definitely the right move."

His blue eyes are sparkling, a vivid contrast to his black hair. I might have a good view after all, not that I'd admit that out loud.

"You could have just asked where to go for good pizza.'

"And miss out on your company? Where's the fun in that?" He holds my gaze, the smile on his lips matching the one in his eyes. He always gives me his complete attention, like nobody else in the vicinity matters.

"Are you trying to distract me?"

"Now why would I do that?" Before I can answer, he indicates the uneaten slice of pizza on my plate. "Aren't you gonna eat that?"

He takes another bite of pizza and chews enthusiastically. The tangy scent of tomato sauce drifts up from my plate. My stomach growls.

"You're doing it again," I accuse.

He finishes chewing and swallows. "Doing what again?"

"Distracting me."

"Because I like the way you look when you wear your hair down?" He reaches across the table with his left hand and slides a piece of my hair between his thumb and index finger. "It's very pretty."

My hair isn't even close to pretty. In some lights it looks red, and it's so hard to keep out of my face that I usually wear it back. I lean back so his hand drops away. "You know I'm only here because I want to find out why you're so interested in the Black Widow."

He frowns. "I thought it was because you were hot for me."

"In your dreams."

"Oh, you have a starring role." He does this quivering thing with his eyebrows.

I'm rolling my eyes when the door swings open and Hunter Prescott walks into the restaurant. "Oh, damn."

The teasing light goes out of Max's eyes. "Something wrong?"

"No, nothing."

The concern's still there. "It must be something."

"Hunter Prescott just walked in."

Max is sitting with his back to the door. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred would turn around and take a look for themselves. Max keeps his attention riveted on me. "So?"

So now that Hunter's without a girlfriend, I don't want him to think I have a boyfriend.

"Oh, I get it," Max says, although I don't know how he could possibly get anything at all from my silence. "This Hunter guy's my competition."

He finally turns to take a look at Hunter, and I hear his breath catch. For once, it's not me claiming his rapt attention. "What did you say Hunter's last name is?"

"Prescott. Why? Do you know him?"

He turns back to me, his expression blank. "Never seen him before."

Over Max's shoulder, Hunter spots me and lifts a hand. He looks perfect, as usual. Lean and muscular with dark sunglasses tucked into the neckline of a sleeveless T-shirt that calls attention to the muscular definition in his arms. I wave back and think that'll be the end of it.

"Hey, Jade," he calls, arrowing straight for us. My heartbeat gets faster with every step nearer he takes. "I heard you found the Black Widow dead on the beach."

That explains what he's doing at the table.

"We both found her." Max's hand is wrapped around his Coke. He doesn't offer to shake Hunter's hand. "I'm Max Harper."

"Oh, yeah. I heard about you. The new guy at the carnival." Hunter points to his chest. "Hunter Prescott. I work at the arcade."

"Join us," Max offers.

My mouth actually drops open.

"Sure." Hunter indicates the counter where you can buy pizza by the slice. "Let me order something from Shep first. Then I want to hear all about the Widow."

Max leans back in his seat, hyperfocused on me once again. "You're surprised I invited the competition to eat with us. I can see it all over your face."

I can't speak until I clear the disbelief from my throat. "You're not competing with Hunter. If you were, you'd so lose."

"Ouch." He covers his heart. "And here I thought I was winning points for believing you weren't on that ski trip with Roxy."

It's as though he knows Hunter lost interest in me when I had my crisis. Either somebody's feeding Max information about me or he's a mind reader. With all the other weird shit going on, I can't discount anything.

"You'd win more points if you level with me," I say.

Hunter's return interrupts whatever Max might have said. Two giant pizza slices with pepperoni almost slide off Hunter's plate as he sits down next to me. His arm brushes mine, and I barely resist leaning into the contact.

"What's the deal?" Hunter asks. "How'd you happen to find the Widow?"

"Jade and I wanted to be alone so we left the party to take a walk on the beach," Max says, which is totally misleading.

Hunter looks back and forth between Max and me as though he expects our mouths to meet over the table for an open-mouthed kiss.

"Then we found the corpse," Max continues. "Not a lot to the story."

If, that is, you leave out Max's contention that Constance Hightower's body was moved after she died.

"I heard she killed herself," Hunter says.

"That would explain why she wasn't moving," Max says.

"What did she look like?" The way Hunter chomps down on his pizza reminds me of the kids who stuff their faces with popcorn at the movie theater while they wait to be entertained.

"She looked..." Max pauses and leans forward, giving his next word more weight. "...dead."

Hunter doesn't smile. "You're a smart-ass, aren't you?"

"You been checking out my ass?" Max asks. "With Jade sitting right here?"

The testosterone is so thick in the air it might soon have a sharper scent than the tomato-rich pizza. Considering these two just met, I'm not sure what's going on. What we need is a neutral subject.

"Max came to Midway Beach to work at the carnival." That sounds non-inflammatory enough. "He's from upstate."

"How long have you lived here, Hunter?" Max asks.

Hunter takes his time chewing before he answers. "A couple years."

"Did you move here with your folks?"

"I'm staying with my aunt and uncle until August." That must be when he'll leave for New York City and drama school, possibly for good. My heart contracts. The silence stretches for a moment before Hunter adds, "Martha and George Prescott."

"Is George your dad's brother?"

"No. Martha's my mom's sister."

"Really?" Max sounds like that's the most interesting thing he's heard all day. "You go by your uncle's last name?"

Hunter picks up his bottled water and drains half of it. "It's a coincidence. Both sisters married guys named Prescott."

Max leans back, crossing his arms over his chest. "Interesting."

It takes Hunter about two more minutes to scarf down his pizza while I ramble on about nothing in particular. Neither Max nor Hunter does more than grunt a time or two in bare acknowledgement of my blather.

As soon as Hunter's finished eating, he leaps to his feet. "See you around, Jade."

Hunter doesn't say a word to Max.

"What was that all about?" I ask the instant Hunter's gone. "What was the deal with those questions about his last name?"

"They were just questions."

No matter how many different ways I ask, Max won't elaborate. By the time he drives me home, I've stopped trying. We cover the distance in silence with the wind blowing through the open windows of his truck. He pulls into the driveway. I yank open the door, get out and slam it behind me.

"Hey, Jade." His voice stops me before I reach the sidewalk, but I don't turn. "Hunter Prescott is trouble."

I whirl to find him leaning partially out the window. "How would you know? Do you have some sort of secret history with him?"

The problem with that theory is Hunter showed no sign of a previous acquaintance with Max. Then again, Hunter is a skilled actor.

"I know lots of guys like him," Max says through the open window. "Do yourself a favor and stay away from him, okay?"

I let out a surprised laugh. "I'm supposed to listen to you?"

"Yeah, you are."

"Why's that?"

He puts the car in reverse before he calls out an answer. "Because I might be the only one in town who doesn't think you're crazy."
CHAPTER TWELVE

When I was a kid, the Midway Beach carnival seemed like it stretched for miles. Everything was magnified. The loud music. The crowds. The wooden posts with the height limit for the rides set at what seemed like impossibly tall levels.

In reality, a full-sized person can walk from one end of the carnival to the other in about five minutes, less when it's not as crowded as it is tonight.

So how come I still can't find Max Harper? Since he drove away from my house this afternoon after his cryptic comment, one question's been flashing in my brain like a neon light.

Why does he believe I'm not crazy?

It couldn't have been anything my mom told him. She's leaning toward sending me to a psychiatrist. Pretty wild considering she's the one with a suicide attempt in her past, although I haven't had a chance to ask her about that yet.

I'm spending my second break of the night the same way I did my first, going from ride to ride searching for Max. Still no luck. It's not like I can ask one of my gossipy co-workers where he is, either. The Black Widow talk is dying down but will get a new injection tomorrow when Stuart Bigelow publishes his newspaper story about the body being moved. In the meantime, I don't want to get anybody wondering whether Max and I have the hots for each other.

"Jade!" Roxy Cooper's voice booms above the carnival noise. She's beside the balloon dart game, gesturing for me to join her. She could tell me where Max is, but I can't risk her figuring out I'm suspicious of him. Not when I'm still trying to work out what role she had in my disappearance.

The closer I get to her, the more she towers over me. Roxy is one large woman. If she'd snuck up behind me and hit me over the head the night I disappeared, she could have picked me up and carted me off like a really big bag of potatoes.

Comforting thought.

"I'm on break," I tell her. "I'm not slacking off."

"I know that!" She beams the smile that's never seemed genuine. "You're one of my best employees."

Yeah, right. Roxy's emphasis this year is putting on a happy face for the customers. She's ripped into just about everybody for not smiling enough except melancholy me. The grin on the girl running the balloon toss game looks pained. Not surprising. The darts are dull, the balloons are underinflated and the customers get angry when they don't win a cheap stuffed animal.

"That must have been tough last night, coming across that body like you did." She waits as though she expects me to confide in her, seeing as we're such good friends and all.

"Yeah, it was. Can I go now?"

"That's not why I called you over here." Her smile doesn't waver. "Did you lose a copy of _I Am Legend_?"

It's my favorite book in the world with an ending way cooler than in the Will Smith movie. For Christmas last year, Aunt Carol gave me a paperback copy autographed by Richard Matheson. The cover's torn and the pages are dogeared, cutting down on the book's value, but I treasured it.

Until I lost it.

"Is it a paperback? Kind of beat-up?" I almost trip over my words in my eagerness to get my questions answered.

"That's the book."

Joy bubbles in my chest. I'd spent untold hours looking for the book, trying to remember where I left it. "Where did you find it?"

"Under the passenger seat of my car. You must have had it with you when we took the ski trip."

Impossible. Not only have I never been skiing with Roxy, I've never been inside her car. But if the book had been in my backpack the night I'd vanished, that would explain how Roxy had come up with it. Wouldn't it?

"Still don't remember the ski trip?" Roxy's eyebrows pull downward. "I hoped things were getting clearer."

"Oh, they are." It's time to make her squirm. "Every day I get closer to putting the pieces together."

Roxy doesn't even blink. "Good to hear. Your book's on my desk in the trailer. Stop by for it any time."

"Why won't these balloons pop?" A sunburned tourist in Bermuda shorts bellows at the still-smiling girl operating the balloon dart game. "Is the game fixed?"

"I better handle this." Roxy turns away from me and takes one giant stride in the direction of the tourist. He backs up two steps. "Of course the game's not fixed," she tells him.

All the games are fixed. Carnival games are designed to separate the gullible from their money.

One of these days, the lies will catch up with Roxy and I plan to be there when they do.

The scent of hot dogs and French fries carries on the ocean breeze, and my stomach noisily lets me know it's past dinner. So much for looking for Max. My break's almost over. If I don't get something to eat now, I'll go hungry for the rest of the night.

The nearest concession stand is in the shadow of the Hurricane, the roller coaster undergoing renovations. Painted a bright yellow, the concession stand is a junk food addict's dream. Besides dogs and fries, unhealthy eaters can buy pizza, ice cream, popcorn, snow cones, cotton candy and a bunch of other empty calories. The food booth is also the only one large enough to be staffed by two employees. One is Adair. The other is Max.

Max, who was hired to be on rides. What's up with that?

Three people are in front of me in line. Adair and Max alternate waiting on customers, rushing about filling cups with soda, stuffing hot dogs into buns and taking pizza slices out of the oven. When I'm second in line, Max's gaze zeroes in on me. His grin is instantaneous.

"Hey, gorgeous," he calls over the head of the chubby kid in front of me.

"Hey, bullshitter."

He throws back his head and laughs, showing off perfect white teeth that call attention to the black of his hair.

"Why aren't you on rides?" I ask.

"J-Rod quit." He's referring to Jorge Rodriguez, who has been telling anyone within earshot how much he hates working at the food booth. "Concessions was short-handed so I volunteered to change jobs."

Nobody does that. Rides are the way better gig.

"Can I order?" The chubby kid proceeds to do exactly that: Two hot dogs, one piece of pizza, a large soda, fries and a plate of churros.

The kid pays Max, then steps aside while Max goes to fill his order. Adair appears at the window. Lucky me.

"A hot dog and fries, please."

Adair leans forward until her head's halfway out of the booth and bares her teeth—not in a smile. She looks maniacal, like the clown who was holding the syringe in the forest. "Sure thing, skank."

"Really? You can't think up a better insult than skank?"

"You better be careful," she hisses. "Didn't you think I'd find out you were out to lunch with Hunter today?"

She doesn't seem to know Max was also present at lunch. I'm not about to tell her.

"I'm not afraid of you." My voice is as low as hers, although not as menacing. That would be hard to pull off.

She clenches her jaw, and a vein throbs in her temple. "If you don't stay away from my boyfriend," she whispers, "I'll give you reason to be afraid."

"If he's _your_ boyfriend, why was he having lunch with _me_?"

"Excuse me, Adair." Max appears at the window with a cardboard tray filled to overflowing with the chubby kid's order. Before Adair leaves to get my food, she gives me the death glare.

"Are you gonna eat all that, bud?" Max asks the kid.

"I like food," the kid mumbles before he takes the tray and shuffles away.

Nobody is behind me. The time's not right to quiz Max about what he said in my driveway, though, not with Adair in hearing range. "Can we get together tonight after closing?"

I'm expecting Max to make a quip like _depends on what you have in mind_. Instead Adair appears at the window with my order and stands close enough to Max that their shoulders touch. "He can't. Max already asked _me_ to hang out."

Adair slaps the plate with the hot dog and fries on the counter, a smirk on her face. It's obvious she's trying to make me jealous, silently threatening to steal my boyfriend because she thinks I have designs on Hunter. Never mind for a minute that Max isn't my boyfriend.

There has to be more to the reason they're spending time together than that. It's too much of a stretch that Max just happened to make Adair's acquaintance mere days after trespassing on her dad's private property.

"Okay, then. I guess I'll see what Hunter's up to tonight." I'm not sure who I'm trying to rattle more, Adair or Max. Neither of them look happy when I take my leave.

I'm not really planning to seek out Hunter, but then suddenly there he is about ten yards away heading for the concession stand. The yellow arcade T-shirt highlights the blond in his brown hair and shows off the muscle tone in his chest and arms. He looks about as far from bad news as you can get.

He's almost past me before I unstick the heart that's in my throat and find my voice. "Hey, Hunter."

He stops walking, his head swiveling as though he doesn't know where the voice is coming from. Finally, he focuses on me. "Jade. I didn't see you."

Story of my life.

"What's up?" he asks.

My tongue's in danger of knotting. But now that I got him to stop, I realize I do have something to ask him. "I got the impression at lunch that you and Max knew each other."

His eyes narrow and glisten. "Nope. That guy's an asshole."

"I wouldn't go that far." My defense of Max is automatic. When did _that_ happen? "Besides, you gotta admit the thing with your last name is strange."

Too strange, maybe. I've been so preoccupied with what Max might be up to that I haven't given much thought to Hunter's claim that both his father and uncle are Prescotts. It's either that or Hunter Prescott isn't his real name.

"Not as strange as the rumor that you and me are seeing each other," Hunter says. "Did you know about that?"

He could be changing the subject because he doesn't want to answer any more questions about his name. Or he could be trying to figure out how I feel about the rumor. This could be my chance to hint at how I feel about him.

"It's one of the nicer rumors I've heard all summer." Groan. Did I really say that?

"So you've heard it, too?"

"Just now from Adair." And now I've gone and brought up my arch rival. Double groan.

"Is that right?" Hunter doesn't seem at all upset that Adair has gotten the wrong idea. "Maybe one of these days we'll have to make good on that gossip."

The hope inside me rises like a helium balloon.

"Catch you later, Jade." Hunter points a finger at me and heads for the concession stand.

I'm not sure what sort of overture I expected Hunter to make, but it wasn't to leave me and seek out Adair. Although maybe Hunter's just hungry. In case there's more to it than that, I consider calling him back to tell him my theory that Adair is undergoing a personality change.

"Yeah, right," I mutter to myself. "Like that would win points with the nephew of a psychiatrist."

I take a bite of hot dog and discover it's cold. Not a little cold. Freezing cold. So are the fries, courtesy of my not-so-friendly neighborhood concession worker. I pitch everything into a nearby waste basket and tell myself Adair considers me to be the competition. That makes me feel a little better.

The rest of the never-ending night, I try to figure out how to convince Hunter I'd make a way better girlfriend than the bitchy Adair. By closing time, I've got nothing. The only way to end the evening on a high note is to retrieve my autographed copy of _I Am Legend_.

After texting Becky I'll meet her in fifteen minutes, I head to the steel-framed trailer that houses the administrative office. It's on the far side of the carnival nearest the arcade, and it's locked because everybody stores their stuff there. All the employees have the combination for the lock on the door. Once the trailer is open, I step inside onto the commercial tile floor. The lights are on, but the small office is empty aside from the calico cat rushing toward me and panting. She jumps, her paws on my leg, like she wants to be petted.

"Hey, girl." I reach down to stroke the unfamiliar animal, which has to weigh at least twenty pounds. "You know you're not a dog, right?"

The monstrous cat wags its tail. Weird, but our cat Beelzebub went through an identity crisis, too. And he got over it.

The cat follows me to the desk where I find the book exactly where Roxy said it would be. The rip on the upper right side of the cover verifies it's my copy. I clutch the book to my chest. Any employee could have come in here and walked off with it. Well, maybe they wouldn't have recognized the book's value. But it doesn't seem smart for Roxy to give absolutely everybody access to the trailer.

Why, if she had anything to hide, somebody might find it.

The desktop computer is off, but the desk has drawers. With the gigantic cat panting at my heels, I yank open the top drawer. It's filled with paper. I'm about to start rummaging through them when I notice a burnt orange backpack against the far wall with the rest of the employee belongings. It looks exactly like the backpack I'd seen in Max's pickup at Wilder Woods.

I'd bet my copy of _I Am Legend_ that Max also has something to hide.

The office is deathly quiet but from somewhere I hear the wail of an ambulance siren. Quickly I cross the trailer to the backpacks and kneel down. The cat makes a noise that sounds more like a bark than a meow and licks me on the arm with its scratchy tongue.

"Down, girl," I command. The cat obeys and sits at my side.

I unzip the backpack and pull out some papers. The first one is a copy of the form Roxy insists all the employees fill out. Max's home address is listed as Midway Beach instead of upstate North Carolina. Disappointing. In the section about who to notify in case of emergency, a telephone number is listed but no accompanying name. A bookmark juts out from my prized possession. I snag a pen from the bottom of the backpack and jot down the number.

I flip to the second piece of paper and suck in a breath. Staring back at me is a black and white image of Max Harper with one word emblazoned above his face: _MISSING_. Spots swim before my eyes, and I blink to clear my vision.

The cat makes its strange woofing noise and bounds over to the door as I hear the heavy fall of footsteps on the steel-framed steps. I fold the flyer and stuff it in the back pocket of my shorts before I jam the other papers in the backpack and rezip it. I stand up and whirl to face forward as the door opens and the cat greets Roxy.

Roxy laughs and bends down to pet the animal before lifting her gaze to me. "I see you found your book."

From the corner of my eye, I notice the desk drawer standing open. Damn. Roxy follows the flick of my gaze. Double damn.

In three strides she's across the office and looming over me. "Were you looking through my desk drawer?"

An ambulance siren drifts through the open door, sounding like it's getting closer by the second. I hold up my copy of _I Am Legend_ and pray my voice won't shake. "Of course not. I was getting my book."

"I think you—"

The siren blares, drowning out the rest of her sentence. It sounds as though the ambulance is directly outside the trailer. A revolving red light flashes through the window.

"Something's happening." Grateful for any excuse to escape, I rush by Roxy into the night, intending to find a quiet spot to sort out what my discovery means.

Outside there's commotion. The ambulance, its lights still whirling, is parked on the narrow side street between the edge of the carnival and the arcade. The cop who took my statement is at the entrance, keeping the gathering crowd from entering. A guy who works at the arcade emerges, his mouth hanging open and his eyes glazed. It's the same guy with the tattoos who was gossiping about me to Porter McRoy a few days ago.

I reach out and grab his arm before he can pass me. "What's going on?"

"Bad stuff, man." He shakes his head as though he's in a daze. "Convulsions, vomiting, groaning. It's like he's dying."

"Like who's dying?"

"Hunter Prescott. I think the dude's toast."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The paramedics rush out of the arcade rolling a stretcher carrying Hunter as Officer Wainwright helps clear a path to the ambulance. Hunter is hooked up to an IV. He's pale, gaunt and as still as death.

A murmur travels through the crowd like a shiver. The revolving light on top of the ambulance sweeps over the boardwalk. Most everybody is a teenager. The Drama Queen Twins, our nickname for two former cheerleaders who make everything about them, cling to each other and sob. Maia is at the entrance to the arcade with some other employees, talking among themselves. Becky stands off by herself, shaking like a leaf caught in a sandstorm.

I weave through the mass of humanity to my friend's side. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. No. I don't know." Her hand covers her mouth. "I saw it all, Jade. The arcade wasn't closed yet so I went in to check if Porter was working while I waited for you. It was bad. I've never seen anyone suffer that much."

The ambulance siren pierces the night, sending a fresh stab of fear for Hunter through me. Disbelief, too. I'd seen him only a few hours ago, and he was perfectly fine.

"Let's get out of here." I take an unresisting Becky gently by the arm and guide her through the crowd to the parking lot behind the carnival. The siren grows fainter and fainter and fades to nothing before we reach the car. Becky is still trembling.

"You better let me drive." I put out my hand for the keys and unlock the passenger door. By the time I settle behind the wheel and turn the key in the ignition, Becky's hugging herself and rocking.

"It'll be okay, Becks. The doctors will figure out what's wrong." I'm trying to convince myself of that as much as her.

"It was awful. Like he'd been poisoned or something."

In my mind's eye, I see Hunter hurrying toward the concession stand. He'd said he needed to talk to Adair, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that he'd ordered something to eat while he was there.

Becky shakes her head. "But of course I know that's ridiculous."

Is it? If Adair was that angry at me for hanging around her boyfriend, she could have been livid at Hunter. During lunch, Max's dislike for Hunter had rumbled like the waves that roll into Midway Beach. Either one of them could have sprinkled his food with something.

"What is it, Jade? You look like you thought of something."

The beginning strains of a _Murder by Death_ song ring out. Becky's ring tone. The song usually reminds me of how Becky and I share a love of indie rock. Tonight the band's name conjures up other images. Becky clicks on the phone.

"Hey, Mom." Becky makes an effort not to sound freaked out. She listens for a while, then says, "Don't worry. I'm getting ready to leave now. I'll be home as soon as I drop off Jade."

I put the car in reverse and back out of the parking spot. As Becky finishes the call, I'm navigating the dark streets of Midway Beach.

"Don't ask me how, buy my mom knows what happened at the arcade," Becky says. "She wants me home. She kind of skipped worry and went straight to panic."

I've got a different worry. It involves whether Max and Adair are at his place right now plotting to wreak more havoc on Midway Beach. Since I'd committed the address I found on his employment papers to memory, there's one way to find out

Making my voice as casual as possible, I say, "How about I let you off at your house and get the car back to you tomorrow morning?"

"No, no. That's okay. I'm fine to drive now. And I have a dentist appointment at nine a.m. tomorrow." Becky, in fact, sounds stronger by the moment.

"I'll get the car back to you in plenty of time."

"It would be easier for me just to drop you."

Max's place is three or four miles from where I live, too far to travel by bike so late at night. There must be something I can say to convince her to let me have the car. "I insist."

"You never insist on anything. What's with you, Jade? You aren't telling me something."

I'm not telling her a whole hell of a lot. I'm tempted to blurt out everything, but Becky reacts poorly whenever I mention anything to do with my lost forty-eight hours.

"I'll make you a deal," I say slowly. "If you let me take the car, I'll explain everything in the morning."

"Everything? Even what's going on between you and Max Harper?"

Something makes me take my left hand off the wheel and covertly cross my fingers before I answer. "Even that."

"Don't make me regret this, Jade."

She does, though. After I drop her off, Becky walks up the sidewalk to her house, repeatedly casting worried glances over her shoulder.

The address listed on Max's employment form is in a section of town where tourists rent houses and condos by the week. The closer they are to the ocean, the more the vacation rentals cost. The place Max is renting is in a duplex about a mile from the beach. One of the units is dark while the other has a porch light shining.

I circle the block slowly, searching for Max's white pickup truck or the blue Mazda Miata that Adair drives. I can't spot either vehicle. To be on the safe side, I park three blocks from the duplex and skulk through the night, sticking to the shadows.

Clouds obscure the moon, blacking out the stars the same way they did on the night I disappeared. The street is eerily quiet with no traffic or signs of life from the neighborhood houses. If a black cat slinked into sight, the scene would be set for horror.

Thick bushes line the sidewalk, the perfect place for someone—or something—to hide. I brace myself for the unknown to jump out at me, like the clown did at the funhouse.

"Stop it!" I chastise myself. "There's nothing to fear but fear itself."

I grimace. Did I really quote FDR? Mr. Tannehill, who taught me A.P. history senior year, really should have graded me higher than a D.

A faint rustling disrupts the quiet.

Nothing is behind me except a plastic bag blowing end over end down the street with the wind. Was that the cause of the noise? Or was it a nocturnal animal moving through the night? No, wait. A street light casts a glow over a tree-lined yard. At the edge of the light is the shadow of a person, perhaps lurking behind a tree.

Telling myself it's someone out for a walk or possibly even my mother making sure I'm okay, I pick up my pace. After a few moments, I look back over my shoulder to make sure I'm not being followed. The shadowy form moves quickly through the yards, staying just out of the light, closing the distance between us. No way could Mom move that fast.

_Run!_ my mind screams. I pump my arms and churn my legs. My heartbeat reverberates in my ears. How could I have put myself in a position for history to repeat itself? I'm worse than the brain-dead girls in the horror movies.

I really am Too Stupid To Live. But I want to live. Desperately.

I was never the fastest girl on my high school soccer team, but I have decent speed. I risk another glance over my shoulder to see if I'm gaining ground. While I'm directly under a street light, whoever chases me is doing a great job of staying out of sight. I can barely make out the dark shape of—

Bam! I collide with something solid. Not something. Someone. The air whooshes out of my lungs. I gasp for breath as I look up into the shadowy face of a human barricade.

It's the guy calling himself Max Harper.

A terrible theory grips me. It was impossible to tell if the person chasing me is male or female, but it must be Adair. She and Max are in this together, plotting to recapture me and take me back to that clown.

My heart squeezes with panic.

"It's okay, Jade." His hands are still wrapped around my upper arms. "It's me. Max."

I wrench away from him, stumbling and almost falling to the sidewalk. I need something—anything—to defend myself. I reach into my shorts pocket and pull out my only weapon.

"Really?" Max balances his hands on his lean hips. "The keys again?"

I need to buy a pocket knife, at the very least.

"C'mon, Jade. I thought we were past this. Put the keys down."

"Not on your life," I choke out past my clogged windpipe. I'm not sure of my next move. Becky's car is behind me, but so is Adair. If I don't do something fast, though, Max and Adair will have me cornered. "I won't let you and Adair get away with this."

"Adair? What are you talking about?"

"She's chasing me." I check the dark expanse of sidewalk and street behind us. There's no sign of Adair, no sign of a shadowy figure, no sign of life.

"She can't be. I dropped her off at her house five minutes ago, and that's miles from here." He sounds like the epitome of reason. Like Becky. And Roxy. And everybody else who doesn't believe I vanished back in February.

"If you're trying to make me think I'm crazy, it won't work." My breaths are ragged. "Somebody was chasing me!"

"Calm down." Max waves the air with his palm. "I believe you."

He's trying to win my trust by agreeing with me. But I can't trust him. I can't trust anybody. My heart feels like it's going to pound through my rib cage. "Don't pretend you're my friend."

"Friendship has never been what I want from you." He quirks an eyebrow and takes a step forward.

Really? He's flirting with me _now_? I back up as heat that I want to attribute to anger flashes through me. "Stay away from me."

"Relax. I'm on your side."

"You're a liar." It's probably not the smartest thing to say, considering the street remains dark and empty of life, but I won't continue playing this game with him. If he tries anything, I'll put my keys through his eyes. Reaching into the back pocket of my shorts with my left hand, I take out the missing person flyer, unfold it and extend it to him. "Here. Explain this."

He takes the paper and gazes down at it, lines creasing his forehead. I can't tell for sure under the artificial light, but it seems like his face turns even paler than usual.

"So you're the one who was snooping through my backpack," he says.

"It doesn't matter where I got the flyer. What matters is you've been lying to me."

The moon peeks out from behind a cloud. Max looks almost inhuman with his midnight black hair and alabaster skin, like one of those impossibly good-looking mannequins in a clothing store. He indicates the duplex with a nod. "I'm renting a place right over there. There are some things I should tell you, and I'd rather not do it in the middle of the street."

"You're crazy if you think I'm going anywhere with you."

"Suit yourself." Max walks toward his duplex, taking the flyer with him. The message is clear that I need to follow if I want answers. I hesitate for the space of a few second before I head after him, clutching the keys tightly in my hand. The right side of the dwelling has a porch light on. Max heads for the left unit, which is mostly in darkness. He lowers himself onto a bench spacious enough for two.

The duplex isn't spooky at all, unlike the funhouse or the cabin in the woods. But there are no homey touches. No doormat imprinted with the word _Welcome_. No flowers in a hanging basket. No sun catchers on the windows. No nefarious clown lurking in the darkness.

I join him on the bench, careful that our bodies don't touch. "What do you need to tell me?"

"I didn't decide to try to get a job in Midway Beach until I'd played tourist for a few days." His gaze zeroes in on me with that narrow focus. "Until I heard about what happened to you."

"Why would anybody in town tell you about me?"

He stretches his long legs in front of him, as though we're discussing nothing more serious than the weather. "I talked to people, asked questions. You of all people should know how gossip spreads in Midway Beach. When I found out about you, I started to think I was on the right track."

My head was starting to hurt. "You're not making sense."

My heart beats three times before he answers.

"You're not the only one who went missing and lost hours." He pauses for long moments before he continues. "I think what happened to you happened to me, too."

###

Afterward

Thank you for reading the first three volumes of the Dead Ringers serial, which has been a wild ride for me. The idea of a young woman missing memories of her abduction gripped me and wouldn't let go. All nine 25,000-word volumes are now available individually and in boxed sets.

If you enjoyed this boxed set, please consider writing a review or just rating the book. Just go back to the book's page and leave your opinion. Thanks for letting my world be part of yours.

Complete List of Dead Ringers Books

_For more information on the books and where to find them, click_ here _._

### Boxed Sets

Volumes 1-3

Volumes 4-6

Volumes 7-9

Complete Collection

Other eBooks by Darlene Gardner

_For more information about the books and where to find them, click_ here _._

### Romantic Comedies

The Misconception

Bait & Switch

Snoops in the City

Three's Comedy

Baby It's You

Clash of Hearts

Her Very Merry Mistake

Three For All

Forget Me? Not

Once Smitten & Twice Shy

### Contemporary Romance

The Christmas Cupid

Winter Heat

To The Max

### Romantic Mysteries

Sound of Secrets

Lowcountry Lies

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Darlene Gardner left her life as a newspaper sportswriter behind for love, romance and mystery. She has written more than 35 books, from this serial for the indie market to single-title romantic comedies and emotionally charged family dramas for traditional publishing. Her books have sold 1.9 million copies. Visit Darlene on the web at www.darlenegardner.com
