Tainted (26 page)

Why? If she is truly my father’s creation, the answer is easy: revenge. I told her “no” too many times.

To what end? I thought she wanted to ruin me; whatever she’s planning will ruin Emma.

“Tell Bree to sit tight. I don’t know what Hailey’s up to, but I have a couple ideas where they might have gone.”

“Keep us posted,” Jason tells me. Not a request. We’re all caught up in the mess I made when I revived Em. We’re bound in ways I never intended.

“I will.”

He disconnects the call, and I connect the phone to the car’s Bluetooth before putting the Acura in Drive. If someone calls, I need to know. My possessive, selfish ex-girlfriend doing the right thing is as believable as a snowman with a Hell’s Gate address. So. where would she go? Some place public, make another scene, maybe. It’s worth a shot.

Winds howl over the car, snow scrubbing my visibility to nothing in sudden bursts after I leave the cover of the trees lining Memorial Gardens. Hailey must be desperate to put the next stage of her game into play, only the crazy or the desperate would be on the roads right now. Wipers beat a frantic rhythm trying to keep the windshield clear. High beams light up every damn snowflake and only make matters worse. After switching the headlights back to normal, I drive toward one of Hailey’s favorite Sadony Academy haunts: Papa’s Pizza.

The blizzard holds West Michigan in a chokehold. Drifts rise in shapeless mounds, missing some roads, blocking others completely. Ragged sheets of snow tear down vacant streets. Houses are lit, gas stations too, while businesses sulk in darkness.

I switch the radio on, turn it to the news station. Accidents are broadcast, as well as any pertinent events. It may help me avoid becoming a winter driving statistic.

Downtown White River is dead. Black, sightless windows stare at the street. I feel like I’m creeping through a ghost town and the spirits are watching me. A bad feeling sprouts in my gut, sends feelers up and down my spine. I know what I’m going to find before I reach Papa’s Pizza. Nothing. Sadony Academy’s favorite hangout sits vacant, no lights, no cars.

Hope sinking through me, I turn around in the clearest drive, and aim for my next best guess: Mugz-n-Chugz. She started this all there, maybe she plans to finish it there, too.

Even though the student body of Shelley High hardly spooks at bad weather, M-n-C’s parking lot is empty, the windows dark.

A call rings through the Bluetooth connection, poor timing with the Acura bogging down in the snowy lot. I spare a glance at the phone’s screen. Caller ID says
Paul Stanton
. Just his name makes a flash of heat run under my ribs and triggers weak attempts at denial in what’s left of Daniel. I can’t deal with Paul right now, and press the button to ignore the call. Near Tiny’s Drive-Thru window the wheels spin, and even rocking the car gets me nowhere.

Paul calls again when I’m getting out. After grabbing a collapsible shovel from the trunk, I dig out the front end. Next, kitty litter from the bag Gran insists I keep with me goes under the tires.

By the time I’m back in the car, soaking wet and pissed off, Paul’s called twice more. When it rings again, I answer, snapping, “What, Paul? I’m really not ready to talk about this yet.”

“Sorry, kid. This isn’t about us…” The sound of tapping computer keys come over the phone. “Katrina has gone missing. And she apparently signed out some questionable chemicals before disappearing.”

Why is he calling me about this? Don’t I have enough to deal with right now?

“How does that affect me? Finding Emma is my priority right now.”

“She’s gone again?” He lets out a deep sigh. The DJ warning of an auto accident on the expressway is background noise to the drama playing out between us. “I’ll see what I can do from here. But, Alex, be aware that some of the components of your formula are gone, along with incendiary chemicals and the experimental drugs she and Hailey worked on.”

Crap, crap, crap. This makes no sense. Hailey’s gone mental and nabbed my girlfriend. Katrina’s gone missing and taken elements necessary to my and Emma’s survival.

“What the hell would Kat do with those?” I’m in full defensive driving mode now, and only have one place left to look.

“I don’t know,” he says to the clicking of computer keys. “I’m running a computer simulation to try and narrow it down. I’ll call again if I get any hits. Drive careful!”

“I’m trying.”

Snow blows and billows, streetlights flicker in the gales. According to the radio, the worst of the blizzard will blow through sometime tomorrow, but it’s being blamed for numerous slide-offs, a five-car pile-up, and possibly a structure fire. In the next instant, the town’s emergency siren peels three times, calling the firefighters and first responders in. Must be for that fire.

I turn off the main road toward my last destination: Hailey’s little bungalow house close to a little inland lake. It’s a fussy neighborhood full of new money. A few blocks down the street, a yellow, pulsing glow bleeds into the snowfall ahead, colored lights dance behind.

Black shadows, bright lights and drifting white fill my windshield when I round the bend into Hailey’s fancy subdivision. People in housecoats and winter boots stand on sidewalks, flinging wavering shadows behind them. What did Paul say?
Incendiary chemicals
. The light and flicking shadows, the glow in the sky…

Would Katrina set Hailey’s house on fire?

Whoever set it, the truth licks skyward in tongues of red and yellow flames from Hailey’s house. This is a structure fire, but the uncomfortable dark feeling worming in my guts says the weather didn’t cause it. Neighbors gather yards away, probably not wanting to get too close. The heat washes into my car in a nearly tangible wave, too hot to be normal.

I park in a neighbor’s plowed driveway, get out and lock the car. Roaring fills the air, buffets my ears. I throw a hand up to shield my eyes from the blaring light. Off to the side of Hailey’s property stand two figures in a narrow copse of trees. It’s impossible to tell who they are in the craze of flame and darkness. The backyard neighbor’s house lights up, and a woman with bushy hair steps out. She holds something up to her face, probably a hand to protect her eyes like me.

The taller figure turns from the other, gestures at the lady on her back porch and then runs off. The other person stumbles toward the house fire. Before thinking it through, I give chase. A yard away I see the person is short, wearing an ill-fitting coat and hat. I leap the snow-covered ornamental bushes and plow into them, tackling them to the ground.

She grunts with the impact and drops what she’s holding. A red gas can tumbles end over end a few feet from us. “What the hell are you doing?” I shout.

“I did it,” she says. Even though the voice is hollow, I recognize it instantly.

“Emma?”

“I did it,” she repeats, the same empty timbre, like someone ripped out what makes Emma who she is. She squirms underneath me, one hand grabbing for the gas can. “I did it and I have to stay here.”

“Are you crazy?” I ask, rocking to my knees, and then standing. “You can’t stay here.”

This has to be Hailey’s end game. Framing Emma for setting her house on fire. Free, Emma flips over, crawls toward the red container. “I have to hold it, have to tell them I did it.”

What if she did? Hailey certainly made her angry at the coffee shop. Emma hasn’t been acting right since I woke her, moods swinging wildly, blacking out. What if the formula shattered her into different personalities?

Have I created a monster?

She wraps her fingers around the handle, and I smack it away.

“No, Em!”

She jumps to her feet, trying to push past me. “I have to!” she shouts back. “I’m responsible and I have to tell them.”

Liquid sloshes in the plastic container when I kick it out of reach. When Em dives for it, I catch her around the middle and drag the wildcat she’s become to my chest.

“Stop it. I know you,” I tell her. Even if she doesn’t know herself, I know my Emma wouldn’t do something like this. “You didn’t do this.”

“Yes, I did,” she argues. The fight leaves her quickly, the way heat from a microwave never lasts.

The neighbor lady wades through the snow towards us. She’s waving something and shouting. There’s no sense running. The woman saw the two forms and me wrestling with Emma. I grapple Em into an upright bear hug and try to calm her. She stills in my arms, muttering into the shoulder of my jacket.

“Excuse me!” The woman says. She has a small box in her hand, phone maybe, or a camera. Her huge hair has the effect of making her look like a life-size cartoon of a nervous old housewife. Then I recognize her, Angela Summers, the woman who raises chickens that Hailey always hated. “Excuse me!’ she says again. “What’s going on here?”

“I wish I knew, Mrs Summers.”

“I saw the flames,” she says, eyes big and crazy, “and went to check on my chickens. That mean girl was always threatening to kill my birds. The fire was not my coop. I saw two girls in the woods. In case there was trouble, I took this photo.” She holds up the camera for me to see a shot of Emma looking drunk and Hailey with a new coat and haircut, and holding the gas can out to Em.

“Did you take anymore?”

“No. The damn thing locked up afterward. It’s working now, though.”

“Is that camera able to email files?” I can see the icons on the screen but don’t want to push. Mrs Summers was always a cranky woman.

“Yes, it is,” she says with a hint of pride.

“Could I use it to email that picture to my phone?”

“What do you want with it?”

“The mean girl,” I say, using her name for Hailey, “has been playing a mean game and using this girl, Emma, as a pawn. That picture may just help Emma and make sure Hailey gets punished.”

“In that case…” she says and hands it to me as the first responders swamp the neighborhood streets. I type my phone number into the proper field and push “Send”.

“Thank you,” I say, handing it back while Em clings to me.

I brace to face the onslaught of questions that I know are coming when the police notice us standing here. Then, a woofing kind of boom shakes the area when the gas can Em held explodes beside the flaming porch where I kicked it. Taking full advantage of the distraction, I tug Emma’s hand and follow the path Hailey took to escape. Her little prints weave between the trees toward the small created lake’s edge.

Passing a pine tree, I rip a branch off and drag it behind, obscuring our steps. It might help Hailey, but I don’t care about her right now. I need to make sure Emma and I get out of here safely with the photograph in my inbox.

Hailey’s prints run along the lake’s edge, away from the madness of lights and noise, toward a rise that leads to another loop of the subdivision. I push Emma in front of me, cupping her with my body and climbing for us both. She’s less than a puppet now, just stumbling along and keeping her face from hitting the ground. Two red beams stab into the night above us, followed by the sound of an engine being forced into gear.

We crest the slope too late to ID the silver vehicle, but I would bet half of Ascension that it’s Hailey’s Audi A4.

“Bitch,” Emma mutters, like she fully agrees with me, then turns her head to the side and vomits. I check the steaming puddle to verify it’s not the same dark substance as the Reindeer Games victims. The clotted mess looks and smells like the pizza we had for dinner. “I did it,” Emma says, her eyes wheeling when I turn her to face me. “I did…
didn’t
do it.”

Her blue eyes roll to the whites and she goes limp in my arms.

Her pulse is steady when I check it, breathing is fine, too. I hoist her into my arms, and find a garage to hide behind where I can see across the ornamental lake and watch the flurry of activity rise, crest and then slowly fade and die in Hailey’s neighborhood. Em shivers while she sleeps, but never wakes. Even when I finally leave the safety of the garage’s hillside wall and walk the streets through the subdivision toward Hailey’s cul-de-sac.

My Acura hybrid sits where I left it. No foot prints around it, no handprints in the snow covering it.

“We’re at the car, Em,” I tell her, though she’s sleeping and can’t hear.

I guess my voice must touch the part of her that wants to respond to me. She blinks, lifts her head, and fishes in my jacket until she finds the keys and presses the remote start button.

“Clever girl,” I say.

She doesn’t answer, just tucks her face closer to my neck. Before I get her into the passenger’s seat, she’s asleep again. The smell of smoke is everywhere as I drive back to the Ransoms’, filling the vehicle through the heater, accompanied by an odd, off kind of scent. I’ve been through two house fires now and never smelled that chemical odor.

My first instinct is to ask Paul.

That thought rips raw every wound I’d salved over while finding and saving Emma from herself.

Pale dawn light warms the sky to the east. The first full day of me knowing my messed-up, mingled parentage, knowing my mother was killed for revenge and knowing I may have ruined Emma when I revived her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

After Bree let us in through their backdoor, I carried Emma and crept through the house and tucked her into bed.

Each time she’s disappeared, Em woke the next day with no memory of the night’s events. The first time, she went to my father’s estate. The second time she was photographed before Katrina let the animals loose. The third time was the Reindeer Games with Trent Landry. This last time, it was Hailey. Some similarities, but no true common denominators. And completely random points on the map.

We’re missing something. There has to be a connection, I just can’t see it. I scrub a hand down my face when I park behind my grandparents’ farmhouse.

I’ve never been this exhausted, this soul-weary. Yawning, I haul my ass out of the car and into the bitter frost of early dawn.

Silent shadows fill the house, muffle the family pictures. I’m not sure I can bear to look at them, knowing what happened to my mom. Instead of passing by, I scoop up the last one taken of Mom and me. A few years, dozens of scars and a lot of heartache between then and now. One constant, though. Even in my birthday dinner picture with my grandparents, Paul stands in the background. The memories are nearly whole, just the edges clipped off. Paul had come in my father’s place, because dad had a board meeting he couldn’t miss.