A noise coming from the patio made me jump. Even Mac jerked back, knocking the beer bottle over in the process, so that it rolled against the countertop, too loud in the silence.
“What was that?” he asked, peering at the darkness through the living room windows. It had sounded like something had fallen on the patio.
Mac stayed put while I crossed the living room toward the back entrance. I pulled open the door, heard nothing but the sound of crickets and a creaking hinge. The back patio was empty, but the high back gate of the fence had come unlatched and kept swaying back and forth.
That gate should’ve been locked from within. There was a bolt to turn from the patio, and it was unreachable from the outside. I’d started locking it after the Truetts. I never forgot. Without the lock, the gate could be unlatched by someone from the outside, occasionally from the wind or neighbors jostling the fence line.
I walked down the back steps, crossed the patio, and peered outside the fence into the row of trees. The sound of the crickets grew louder, but there was nothing visible between the shadows of the evergreens, overlapping. I couldn’t even see the streetlight on the other side of the road beyond, where the next half-moon court sat, a little more elevated than ours.
I pulled the gate until the latch clicked, then turned the lock. Maybe Ruby had left the gate unlocked when she was out here earlier today. When we were listening to Javier and Tate. Maybe she’d gone out for a walk and had forgotten to secure the fence after. But she’d been barefoot this morning; I didn’t think she’d been outside the fence.
“I think someone’s been watching the house,” I said, retreating to the safety of inside, locking the back door behind me. I turned to face Mac and felt once more the image of the key chain hidden in my back pocket. I wondered if whoever had placed it there had been trying to sneak closer to watch my reaction.
Mac was still staring out the window, and I didn’t know whether he believed me.
“Maybe you should get back out there,” I said, irrationally angry. Like he was the one at fault.
“Harper,” he said, “it was probably just the wind. Don’t let her get to you.”
My irritation only grew. As if Ruby’s presence was shifting the fabric of my reality. As if I was seeing danger in the places it didn’t exist.
As if Mac had come for any other reason than because he was drawn to the danger of the moment himself.
* * *
AFTER MAC LEFT, I flipped all the outside lights on, made sure the blinds and curtains were closed. And then I spent the next hour reconnecting that old camera over the front porch, the one Ruby had mentioned. It was basically an old webcam, something Aidan originally placed over the door when word first went around about packages going missing before the holiday. Once I got it working, I could access the feed and watch the livestream, but I didn’t have a service set up to record.
Ruby still wasn’t home—if not for the cash left behind in the bathroom, I would’ve thought she’d taken off with my car and this was my punishment.
Upstairs, I stuffed the image and the note in the bottom of my pajama drawer. Close by yet hidden.
As midnight approached, I left my laptop open in my bedroom, screen beside my bed, so I could see who might come by. Who might’ve left this photo. Who might still be watching. Listening to the noises of the night behind the safety of closed walls and locked doors. The sounds of the lake in the distance—a steady buzzing, a rising hum—drowned out anything softer, closer. I would hear no careful footsteps, no quiet struggle.
I watched until I fell asleep, my dreams fitful and dark. I kept jerking awake, wondering what had woken me. Pressing a button on the laptop until the screen came into focus again, watching the shadows of the grainy footage. Wondering whether it had been Mac walking by. Ruby coming home.
Or someone else.
TUESDAY, JULY 2
HOLLOW’S EDGE COMMUNITY PAGE
Subject: Neighborhood Watch Schedule Posted: 8:24 a.m.
Charlotte Brock: Just posting the final schedule for the upcoming week from the meeting last night. If you can’t make your shift, please find a replacement and update it here so we know who to expect. P.S. Thanks to Mac Seaver for taking the first shift last night.
JULY 2—Tate & Javier Cora JULY 3—Harper Nash
JULY 4—Margo & Paul Wellman JULY 5—Tina Monahan
JULY 6—Charlotte Brock JULY 7—Preston Seaver
CHAPTER 9
I WOKE CURLED UP ON my side, facing the laptop, with the faint tinge of a hangover, though I’d had only the single beer. My head could get like this sometimes, regardless of the liquor—the stress or adrenaline causing a dull ache, a persistent nausea. It was barely morning, the soft glow of dawn just starting to seep through the cracks in the blinds.