Outsider was my second.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said, holding up his hand in an awkward wave.
“This is Mr. Ryan,” Dad said. “The BCA agent I was telling you about.”
“Hello,” I said.
“Hi,” Junie said, her glance down but foxlike, not submissive.
We all stood like that for a few seconds, and then Mr. Ryan thanked Dad for his time.
“Sorry to bother you at home,” he continued. “I didn’t want to deliver the message over the phone.”
“Appreciate it,” Dad said, but his voice was gruff. “Care to join us for dinner? Heather could heat up another meal.”
“No, thank you,” Mr. Ryan said. “I’m off to Sheriff Nillson’s.”
He said his goodbyes. I returned to the table. So did Dad, but he didn’t pick up his fork. Junie and I watched him stare at something a million miles away. Finally he spoke. “They found a body in Saint Paul. Another waitress, but not Elizabeth McCain. They don’t have any hard evidence, but they think it might be that guy I told you about.”
“And you think he’s coming here?” Junie asked, her voice pitched high. “To Saint Cloud?”
That brought Dad’s mind back into the room. He squeezed her hand. “No, honey, probably not. It’s a long shot, anyhow, and we’re watching for him. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
“That’s right, Junie,” I said, trying to be supportive of Dad. “You don’t need to worry.”
He tossed me a grateful look, and I took my cue from that. My job was to take everyone’s mind off the bad things, at least until Dad finished eating. I gave up on my pile of bean mush and leaned toward him, chin resting in the hammock of my hands just like I’d seen Mom do. “Did I tell you that the Girls are playing at the county fair?”
“Me too! I get to play tambourine,” Junie said, tugging at the front of her favorite shirt, now more crop top than tee. DADDY’S FISHING BUDDY, it said, above a cartoon image of a smiling, curled walleye. Dad, who did not fish, had gotten it as a gift from a client back when he was in private practice, a client who misheard Junie as Johnny. Dad loved telling that story.
“No, you girls certainly did not tell me that,” Dad said, his face relaxing. “I want to hear everything. Do I have to camp out for tickets? How much will the concert T-shirts be?”
Then he smiled that younger-Kennedy smile that had been good enough to land my fairy-tale-beautiful mom back when she was 100 percent alive, and we finished our dinner.
BETH
Beth slumped on the dirt floor, her surroundings still so black she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. She counted her heartbeats, tapping them out on the cool earth with her fingers. Sixty heartbeats was a minute.
One one. One two. One three.
Sixty rounds was an hour.
Sixty-one. Sixty-two. Sixty-three.
Nothing changed. The darkness didn’t shift, the smell of gravedirt didn’t recede, no sounds but the rabbit thump of her heart.
One hundred one, one hundred two, one hundred three.
She first heard his footsteps as a counterbeat, a slight tremor overhead that made her lose count. She sat up, slowly, fighting waves of dizziness. She scurried backward until she reached the cold slap of a concrete wall. Her mouth was dry, lips cracked, her thirst a living thing. She’d already peed twice, reluctantly, in a far corner. She had to pee again.
Overhead, a heavy door creaked and screamed. The noise sounded like it came from the ceiling, but it wasn’t close, not yet. Then careful hangman’s footsteps on stairs, distant but nearing.
Then silence, except the salty crush of her heartbeat.
She tried to swallow it as the dark swallowed her.
Keys jingled on the other side of the dungeon door.
She chewed her tongue to keep from screaming.
The door opened.
What came next happened so fast. More darkness outlining him, not true belly-of-the-beast blackness like she was in. Regular dark. She caught a glimpse of what looked like a hallway behind him. She drank up that detail, swallowed it like icy water.
He stepped into the room and closed the door after him.
Blackness again.
She heard the clink of metal being set on dirt, smelled the kerosene, then burned her irises on the flare of a lighter. The illumination that followed was immediate and warm. A camping lantern.
He set it on the ground next to two metal pots. “I’ll leave it here if you’re good. You scream, I’ll take it away.”
The flickering flame underlit him, turning his face into a demon’s mask.