Part 19 (1/2)

Twenty-four.

The light in Adam's garage clicked off after the door shut. Avery stood up, her eyes adjusting to the darkness.

The two-car garage was empty, but the walls were lined with shelving and all manner of storage boxes and sporting goods-canoes, a sled, a hockey stick, a soccer goal. Adam had been naturally athletic. Avery swallowed back a lump and went to the door.

It was open.

She stepped into the Marshalls' living room.

The enormous room was lined with windows overlooking a huge deck that opened onto dense forest. Avery tiptoed through the room, taking in the lush beige-and-white furnis.h.i.+ngs. Everything matched. She picked her way through the living room and kitchen, then climbed the carpeted stairs, peeking in rooms until she found the one that had to be Adam's.

She recognized his backpack next to the desk, but it was like looking at a magazine photo, not a teen boy's room. Everything looked posed. Stacks of books were arranged by size on the desk, and the bed was made so tightly it looked like no one had ever slept there. It was the kind of room that every parent wanted, but no kid would want to live in.

”Okay, now to find a motive,” she whispered to herself. ”Maybe Adam was in some kind of trouble? Maybe someone was mad at him...”

She slowly pulled open his top desk drawer, surprised that everything inside was placed just as precisely as everything on top of the desk.

Avery thought of her own room, which was a psychedelic mess of creativity and frustration that resulted in piles of cast-off clothing, books, and nice shoes tossed over in favor of sneakers.

She pushed aside the notebooks and frowned at a wide, flat box. Popping it open, she startled at the contents-a series of knives, arranged smallest to largest, each equidistant from the next. Except for one. Avery fingered the velvet between a short, orange-handled hunting knife and a longer Bowie-type knife.

Avery was vaguely familiar with the rest of the knives in the collection-a simple penknife, a pocketknife with a burnished leatherlooking handle and glossy bra.s.s studs, and a small dagger with a carved dragon handle, the reptile's eye a sparkling red jewel.

Each knife was clean and looked unused, polished even.

Was Adam a collector?

Avery had no idea what Adam's hobbies were, other than sports and Kaylee, but seemingly knife collecting-and an obsessive-compulsive bent toward organization-were important to him. She snapped a picture of the box and carefully put it back in the drawer, pawing through the next two and finding nothing of note.

She went to his closet. His clothes hung in groupings by color and style-long sleeves with long sleeves, collars all facing the same way. The militaristic organization reminded her of her father's closet.

She fingered a row of soft flannels and dug through the pockets of his jackets, hoping to find the missing knife.

What if he took it hiking with him?

Her father had never mentioned finding any weapons-but then again, she thought angrily, he probably wouldn't. If Adam had taken the knife, why hadn't he used it to defend himself?

She went through his bureau, poking through the neat stacks of clothing until she got to the bottom drawer. It opened slowly, the top of the drawer hissing over the thick stack of sweats.h.i.+rts folded inside. Avery ran her fingers over them, then dipped to the bottom of the drawer, her fingertips landing on something papery.

She pulled out a stack of hundred-dollar bills.

Eleven of them, clipped with a paper clip and organized exactly as Avery would expect: each facing the same way, edges squared, a perfect rectangular stack. She carefully pulled out the sweats.h.i.+rts and stared-the bottom of the drawer was lined with stacks of bills. There was a thick stack of twenties and another of tens. Avery was too scared to count them. She snapped a picture with her phone and frowned when the screen went black. Her battery was dead.

A rumble came from downstairs. The garage door! She ran to the window, ducking low, hoping against hope that she was imagining the sound. But the dark blue Volvo was pulling up the driveway.

Fletcher slipped out his front door. He was so jittery that his hands and feet felt tingly.

They're not going to get me. They're not going to get me.

He clenched his fists and started to run. The sound of his regular footfalls rea.s.sured him.

”Adam,” he whispered out loud to himself. ”I have to find Adam.”

Maybe Adam wasn't really dead. Maybe this was all some big, horrible joke. The thought made Fletcher feel better. Maybe this was all just some elaborate prank.

He still needed to find out what happened to Adam. If he did, then the police wouldn't arrest him, and the doctors wouldn't restrain him and shoot him up with drugs. He had to act quickly.

Run, run!

What was that? Who was that?

It wasn't his fault-his mother, she had- Put your head down and keep running. Keep running, Fletch.

I had to protect him. I was protecting him.

What the h.e.l.l are you doing?

Pain arced through his skull. It throbbed behind his eyes. He kept running.

She wasn't there-it wasn't her- Don't ever stop. I can't ever stop.

I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to. Oh G.o.d. Oh G.o.d, please, no, I didn't mean to.

Footsteps pounding. A ragged, metered breath. Sweat at his temples. The edges of his lips cracked and bone dry.

”I'm going to give you something to make you feel better,” Dr. Palmer had said. ”Something to maybe make you think a little more clearly.”

He'd felt the doctor tug the sleeve of his s.h.i.+rt up. The cold bite of an alcohol-soaked cotton ball had swabbed his arm. He'd felt a p.r.i.c.k in his shoulder. Then everything had gone dark.

”Fletcher? Fletcher, can you hear me? It's Dr. Palmer. You're safe. We're friends. Can you tell me again what you remember?”