Deep down, though, she knew what had really driven Thea here. She knew why her best friend could never let these cases go, knew why she took it upon herself to try to solve them. They rarely covered unsolved mysteries on the podcast anymore. Thea always needed an answer — because she’d never gotten one for herself.
Her father had been killed on the way home from a business trip after getting caught up in a random shooting. It had happened at some backwater gas station just outside of a sleepy town he’d had no real reason to drive through. Bryce had had some ideas why he’d been there, miles off the usual route from Seattle to Stone Grange — an affair, most likely — but she’d never spoken about it with Thea, and Thea liked to bury her head in the sand and pretend there was more mystery to it, like he’d been one of the victims they talked about on their podcast and not just a man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A hoarse peal of caws rent Bryce’s thoughts, and she startled against the sound. Thea jumped beside her, eyeing the murder of crows fluttering through the leafy canopy above their heads. As though instinctively, their hands found one another’s; Thea’s clammy and soft against Bryce’s. It brought her comfort. Made her feel safe again, even if theyweresearching for what might turn out to be a body.
Ahead of them, Mikey inspected a fallen tree trunk as though it might hold the answers he needed.
“This was an awful idea,” Bryce whispered. “We’re not going to find anything.”
“We have to try.” Thea’s blue eyes glistened with unwavering determination. There would be no changing her mind now, Bryce knew.
“We should’ve gone to the cops. This isn’t our job.”
“And tell them what?” Thea’s boots squelched in the mud as she came to a stop, tearing her hand from Bryce’s. The absence left her cold. “The killer is using our podcast for ideas? How ridiculous does that sound?”
“Itisridiculous.Allof this is ridiculous.” Bryce huffed. “You shouldn’t have agreed to this. What were you thinking, telling Mikey that we’ll find her? She’s probably already dead.”
The severe lines of Thea’s brows knitted together as she glared straight ahead of her. “I was thinking that if it was you, I’d want someone to help me look for you. I’d want to believe I’d find you in time, no matter what.”
The words knocked the breath from Bryce and sent her stomach twisting, heart pounding. It wasn’t the same. Bryce and Thea had been best friends for years. Mikey had barely even spoken to Hannah. Anything he liked about her was based on superficial things he’d witnessed from afar.
But it still made Bryce wonder. It still made her ache. It was easy to forget just how much they cared for one another when Bryce saw Thea every day. And Thea was right. If it was one of them, if it had been Thea… Bryce wouldn’t be able to just sit back and wait.
She parted her lips to say just that, but the words were lost on her tongue when Thea motioned to something beyond her. “What’sthat?Is that a shed?”
Bryce turned to eye the tangle of bushes, and found that, yes, there was something hidden in the midst of them.Shedwas a polite way of describing it, though. It was more a ramshackle of rotting wood and broken windows, cordoned off by bramble and half-concealed by crawling ivy.
She frowned. “I don’t remember ever seeing it before.”
“Serial killer vibes,” Thea whispered. “Comeon.”
Bryce couldn’t help but roll her eyes. She was supposed to be heading to work in an hour or two, and she was about to wade through thorns and mud to investigate God only knew what. “Mikey.”
Mikey whipped back to them from by the lake, his sneakers caked in ruddy silt. Bryce gestured to the shed, and he followed behind quietly.
By the time they reached the shed, Bryce was riddled with nettle stings and grazes from the thorns. The deep purple stains of crushed blackberries marred her jeans, burrs had hooked themselves into any crevice of her they could reach, and leaves clung to her hair.
“All right,” Thea breathed, yanking a less than impressed Bryce out of the bushes by the hand. Mikey stumbled out after her, his foot snared by a raised tree root. “Let’s hope Mr. Serial Killer isn’t home.”
“Again,” Bryce reminded, “could be a Mrs.”
Mikey brushed past them both to try the door. He hissed out a curse when it didn’t budge, and Bryce tore at the ivy to find a rusted padlock bolting it closed.
“What now, Sherlock?” she asked Thea.
Thea scowled at Bryce’s sour tone and plucked a bobby pin from her strawberry blonde hair. The braid that had been haloing her head unravelled down her shoulders in shimmering waves. Freed.
Bryce didn’t know why the sight left her breathless. She’d always known Thea was beautiful, with her dainty, freckled features and golden hair. Sunlight made flesh. Not like Bryce, who was all darkness, all plain.
She shouldn’t even have been thinking of that, she reminded herself as Thea wedged the pin into the lock. It was painful to watch her try to pick it with clumsy fingers, especially knowing that she had never so much as stolen a candy bar before now.
“Give it here.” Impatiently, Bryce snatched the pin from Thea’s hands. Though her days of teenage rebellion and petty theft were long over, it was second nature for her to maneuver the pin around now. A click, two, sounded soon after, and the padlock popped loose. “My mom taught mesomething,at least.”
“She taught you to pick locks?” asked Mikey.“Why?”
“In case I ever got arrested and handcuffed.” Bryce slapped the rust from her hands before nudging the door open. The hinges groaned, the stench of something damp, something Bryce didn’t want to get any closer to, escaping with the shadows.
“So she raised you to be an outlaw.”