Don't Be Scared - Page 77
But hell, I’m not sure what I can do from overhereeither. Hopefully Rory will know, and I can talk to him once Phoenix has, unfortunately, been taken away and the other officers go with him.
The only bright side I can see is that they won’t find anything in the room. Rory and Phoenix are smart enough that they don’t keep their murder clothes, masks, and weapons in the room. Instead, they’re stored in a hidden compartment in Phoenix’s SUV, where the spare tire sits. Sure, the cops will probably find them eventually, but it would take a while.
I wait, backing up into a neighboring yard that’s thankfully overgrown with large, leafy trees and thick bushes that, even in fall, provide great visual cover. My only regret is that now I can’t see or hear anything at all.
But what’s there to hear? It’s obvious why they’re arresting Phoenix. Though I’m not surehowthey’ve gotten the evidence to charge him.
My concentration is broken when cop cars zoom by, all three of them in a line, and when I stand up, I see Phoenix’s SUV following with Rory behind the wheel. He slows just a little when he passes me, but doesn’t stop.
He can’t. They’d know.
But I meet his gaze through the glass, stomach flipping around in my body like a caught fish, and swear I see the worry in his eyes.
Fuck.
If Rory is worried, then I should be devastated. He’s the one who’s good at coming up with plans. He’s the one who can make things better in a bad situation. That’s the impression I’ve been going with, anyway.
I’m just Bailey.
My phone vibrates and I look down at it where I’m holding it clutched in white-knuckled fingers. I already know who it is, but Rory’s name on my phone just solidifies my suspicions.
They don’t have any real proof. She basically admitted that when she arrested him. They’re just trying to get him to fuck up.
Don’t do anything stupid.
We just need to think of a way for them to completely disregard him as a suspect.
Seriously, don’t do anything stupid.
I won’t do anything stupid,I promise in a quick text, and he reacts to it with a thumbs up, then goes silent.
But I get that, and I don’t expect anything else. He has a Phoenix to get out of jail, after all.
But so do I.
My breath hitches, but I force myself to pull in a lungful of air as I stand up and move back to the sidewalk. The police are gone, all of them, so I prowl back to the hotel and use the keycard I’d swiped before my walk to get back in.
Unfortunately, I don’t have Phoenix’s murder clothes to wear, or Rory’s, since they’re well hidden in the SUV. But I can mimic it, to some extent, with the clothes I’d picked up from my house last night, post-festival and before I’d headed back to the hotel with the boys. I yank on black jeans, my sneakers that are pretty similar to the ones they wear, and a black hoodie on as well. The only differences are the fit of the jeans, and the lack of a zipper on the hoodie. After that I wind my hair back up into a braid, coiling it around my head and pinning it there with trembling hands as I think and work without paying attention to the movements my fingers make.
I have to find a way to convince the police Phoenix is innocent, and the only way I know how to do that, the one plan that comes to mind…is bad.
Worse than bad, it’s fucking terrible. It probably won’t even work, for one, and there’s a good chanceI’llbe the one who lands in jail, right beside Phoenix, instead of actually getting him set free. But on that front, I’m trusting that what Rory had said is true.
If the police only have circumstantial evidence, if they don’t have anything to really hold Phoenix on, then if I ‘prove’ that the murderer is still at large, then they would have more of a reason to let him go.
“This is stupid,” I tell my reflection as I check it in the hotel mirror. This isreally stupid. Yet here I am, closing the door hard behind me and taking off back the way I’d come, not quite knowing what I’m looking for, or where even to start looking.
It takes me two hours to find him.
Twohoursof meandering through the parts of town where I’ve seen homeless people hanging out before. We don’t exactly have much of a homeless population in Hollow Bridge. We’re too small for that. But we’ve had people traveling through over the years who stay for a few days, or up to a week.
But it’s at the rundown Methodist church where I find him, biting his nails as he sits on the porch steps and stares at the gas station parking lot next door. Ernie McMann has never looked worse, and definitely doesn’t seem to have showered since the last time I’d seen him.
Am I really doing this?I can’t help but ask myself, following the sidewalk around the church to where it connects to the parking lot in the back. I’ll be on the other side of the building from the man, thankfully, and hopefully I’ll be able to find what I’m looking for without him ever seeing me.
But it’s so wrong.There’s no way around that, especially not when my eyes land on a pile of junk next to the back loading dock of the large church that has served as the town’s food bank since its inception long before I’d even been conceived.
My steps falter for a moment before I make my way to the pile, leaning over it to find something that would tell me this is, in fact, Ernie’s junk. I don’t want to touch anything, but I pull the end of my sleeve over my hand, looking through what lies on the smooth concrete.
