But the board, too, had subtly morphed with time. After the deaths of Brandon and Fiona Truett were deemed suspicious, eventually, and with Chase’s guidance, we believed we had solved the case of who killed them. We pieced together Ruby’s movements, her time line, and the police came by for our evidence, our message board comments morphing into official statements.
We were more careful now. In person and on the message board. Posts were deleted as soon as people stopped responding and sometimes sooner.
Ruby picked up her purple insulated cup and raised it toward the iron gates where Chase stood, in a mock salute. Of course she’d known he was there.
He finally turned back up the road, and I breathed slowly, deeply, as he disappeared from sight.
“Okay, you made your point,” I said. “I’m baking here. Let’s go.”
“All right,” she said, stretching. “Anyway, I’m famished for some real food.”
* * *
I SCANNED THE AREA for Chase as we walked back, worried he was somewhere else: waiting in the woods; waiting in front of my house. I kept an eye out for anyone at all. But no one came outside.
They were watching, though. I could feel it in the shadows behind the windows. In the way everyone remained behind the safety of their walls.
All the things that seemed so appealing when we moved to Hollow’s Edge: Its insular nature. Its privacy. That close familiarity. The safety of neighbors who would look out for one another.
All of us were held hostage by it now.
The truth was, after the deaths of Brandon and Fiona Truett, we were trapped here. We were trapped with one another and what we had each said and done.
CHAPTER 3
I CONVINCED RUBY TO LET me order in, to relax with a pizza in the living room, Koda curled up beside her on the other end of my couch as she sat with my laptop open in front of her.
“You sure you don’t mind paying?” she asked as she quickly added an assortment of clothes to the online cart.
“No, of course not.” I’d gotten rid of her things, and now she sat beside me, still smelling faintly of chlorine, hair damp and tangled, in more of my summer clothes. She didn’t have a credit card, or employment, or a bank account.
She selected one-day rush delivery and passed the laptop my way so I could enter the payment information. “I’m good for it,” she said with a wink. I’d never seen her wink before. It was things like this—quirks I didn’t recognize—that I found most unnerving.
She scooted closer, the cushions sinking between us, so that I felt her brush against my shoulder as she watched me finish placing the order. “Hey,” she said. “Let’s see what they’re saying.”
I froze, my heart in my throat. “You want me to Google your name?” I could only imagine what things might come up—links I’d already clicked, articles I’d read, every one of them already consumed by me in private.
“No,” she said, “I mean here. The message board. What they’re saying here.”
My fingers tingled. That wasn’t any better. Ruby had never been a member of the Hollow’s Edge community page, since she wasn’t an owner herself. Charlotte was the president of the board and had established an arbitrary set of rules that dictated who could be permitted access to the message board—homeowner being the main criteria. She’d decided back then that Ruby was something between an unregistered tenant and a long-term guest.
But I couldn’t deny her now. Not when she was sitting so close, wearing my clothes because she owned nothing of her own. Not when I’d convinced her to stay in—some dark secret I might still be able to contain.
She watched as my fingers flew over the keyboard, typing the URL, my log-in already in place. The page loaded quickly, entries sorted by date. There were no new posts from today. Not a single one.
“It’s not the same anymore,” I told her. “People don’t use it as much.” Then I shut the laptop quickly, before she could scroll down, call me on my bluff.
She let out a sigh as she edged back to her side of the couch. “I’m not sure what I expected,” she said, reaching for another slice of cheese pizza. “Maybe my picture on every security camera on the street.” She smirked, then closed her eyes as she inhaled the scent of greasy pizza. I guessed this was another thing she’d missed. “Did you ever get yours fixed, Harper?”
Once upon a time, I’d had a security camera, too. Angled over the front porch—a deterrent more than anything. But it hadn’t recorded that night. Whatever service Aidan set up had long since expired.