“It’s dead,” he declares. “Storm must have damaged the phone lines.”
Kayla’s eyes fly around the room. “So there’s no way to call the police?”
“No.”
She shakes her head. “Then I’m getting out of here. Chelsea, where are the keys to your car?”
Shane presses his lips together. “Kayla, will you calm down for a minute?”
Lightning flashes, illuminating Kayla’s small face, making her look almost demonic. “No, I will not calm down. Someone was just murdered in this house, and now the power and the phone are out. I’m getting the hell out of here right now. If you don’t want to come, I’ll send a police car when I get back to town.”
Shane grimaces. “Kayla…”
Kayla gives him a look. “We need to leave, Shane. Why don’t you want us to leave?”
Kayla makes a good point. We don’t want to leave a crime scene, but we have to contact the police. And if the phone lines are down, we have to drive to the station. My parents are going to absolutely demolish me when they find out what I’ve been doing tonight, but I can’t think about that. Someone is dead.
And there’s a very real chance that somebody in this room is responsible.
Chelsea rises to her feet, her eyes still moist. “Kayla is right. We have to get out of here. I don’t know who did this…” She raises her eyes to look at Shane, and then at Tim, who is lingering in the doorway. “But we are obviously in some kind of danger. We need to get out of here.”
I concur.
Chelsea and Kayla put on their completely inadequate shoes and coats, and march out of the house, ignoring the rain still falling heavily. I slide into my own sneakers, but they are no match for what feels like an icy river forming outside the front door. My sneakers fill with mud and freezing cold water. I can’t wait to get home and away from this horror show.
But just before we can pile into Chelsea’s Beetle and get back home, she stops short. I hear the sharp inhale of her breath a second before I realize what she’s looking at.
All four of her tires have been slashed.
“What the hell?” she gasps.
We go around the side of her car to Shane’s Chevy, and the situation is the same. Tires slashed to smithereens.
“What the hell?” Shane is furious now as he examines the damage to his tires. “Who would do this?”
Kayla is stepping backward, hugging her chest as she shakes her head. “Somebody doesn’t want us to be able to get out of here.”
“Kayla…” Tim reaches for her arm. “Look, we’ll figure this out—”
“No!” Kayla jerks away from him, her eyes suddenly wild. “One of you killed him. One of you did this, and now you don’t want the rest of us to get away.”
“Kayla, that’s crazy,” Chelsea says.
“Is it?” Kayla blinks back tears.
“Yes!” Chelsea swipes a strand of her soaking wet black hair with bleached tips from her face. “Tim and Shane are not murderers. They’re not.”
“Maybe it was you,” Kayla shoots back.
“Me?”
“Sure, why not? After all, everybody knows Brandon was cheating on you. Maybe the two of you had it out, and it didn’t end well for him.”
Chelsea’s lips form a startled O. “You bitch…”
A tear escapes Kayla’s right eye. She wipes it away with the back of her hand, smearing mascara across her cheek. Her eyes dart between the four of us, her breaths coming faster with each second. “I’m getting out of here—car or not.”