Hands grabbed my legs and dragged me away from the desk. I kicked and made contact with flesh. My attacker grunted, but they didn’t let go. They kept dragging me out from under the desk, ignoring my flailing legs.

  The door handle rattled.

  My attacker planted a knee between my shoulder blades, pinning me to the floor, and got hold of the garrote again.

  Someone tried the door again, and then a surly teenage boy called, “What are you doing in there?”

  I tried to answer, but the garrote was too tight. Black spots danced in front of my vision. I clawed at the cord, but I couldn’t get my fingers under it.

  “Why are you so weird?” Keme said. But then, after a moment, “Are you okay?”

  Something strobed inside my head. Flashes of bright and dark.

  It wasn’t even a thought. It was desperation.

  I let go of the cord, flailed for one of the chairs, and managed to tip it over. The crash echoed through the house.

  “Dash?” Keme’s voice was louder. He hammered on the door. “Hey! Open up!”

  Darkness crowded me, thicker and thicker. Flecks of light sparked in the darkness, but fewer. And fewer. The pressure in my head was incredible, but then it didn’t hurt so bad—

  I was drifting downstream.

  Something thudded. The collision was nearby, close enough that it rippled through my body, but I was a long way downstream by then, and it was easier to keep drifting.

  Shouting.

  Crashes.

  Air, and the fire of oxygen flooding starved cells.

  I gasped, drawing in more, and the pain was everywhere.

  “It’s okay,” Keme said. He stared down at me, cradling my face in his hands. Blood ran down his face like a lightning bolt. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Keep breathing. Indira!”

  Chapter 15

  Ambulance. Deputies. Sheriff.

  When Bobby got there, I was in the back of the ambulance, wearing a cannula and getting all the oxygen I wanted.

  The expression on his face made me croak, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  He hovered over me, hesitating, hands held out like he wasn’t sure if he could touch me. So, I took one of his hands in my own. His answer came in the form of a crushingly tight grip—I could feel the bones of my hand grinding against each other. His other hand touched my hair, my cheek, my chest. He started breathing faster and faster.

  “It’s okay,” I said, struggling to sit up. Even though it hurt to talk, I said, “I’m okay.”

  He shook his head, still taking those awful, shallow breaths.

  I jiggled the cannula. “Do you want me to see if they have a couple’s package for these things?”

  Bobby squeezed his eyes shut. But he gave a broken laugh and shook his head, and after that, things were better.

  The paramedics were less optimistic.

  “He should be in a hospital,” one of them said. She looked like she’d come from a metal concert, complete with purple hair, a black leather bracelet, and a pyramid stud belt.

  “I’m fine,” I managed. “I can breathe.”

  “What about damage to your larynx? Or the vocal cords? Or cerebral hypoxia?”

  It took me a little longer this time to insist, “I feel fine.”

  (By this point, that was a bald-faced lie—my throat was on fire, and every time I croaked a word, it was even worse.)

  “We’re going to the hospital,” Bobby said. “I’ll ask Indira to grab you some clothes.”

  I wanted to say something about having Indira close her eyes while she picked out my underwear, but my throat hurt too much, so I didn’t. And after a few minutes, exhaustion caught me and dragged me down.

  The ambulance rocked slightly when Bobby came back. I was too tired to open my eyes, but I liked knowing he was there. A minute passed. And then another. And I realized I was smelling saltwater.

  When I opened my eyes, Keme was looking down at me. He had a bandage on his forehead, and he’d been crying, but he wasn’t crying now. One minute trickled into another.

  And then I said, “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head. His hair was starting to stiffen from the salt.

  “I should have—” But the pain made my throat clench.

  He shook his head again.

  After a while, when I felt like I could manage it, I said, “Thanks.”

  He started to cry again, which was probably why he said—in a tone of one thousand percent frustration—“Dash, stop talking!”

  So, I did.

  And then I said, “I love you.”

  (It’s less complimentary when you sound like a tired frog.)

  His eyelids fluttered, and he looked away.

  But when I held out my hand, he gripped it even harder than Bobby had. (Have I mentioned he’s freakishly strong?)

  Boys, you know?

  Chapter 16

  After all the tests and exams and whatever, they put me in Charlie’s room.

  Can you believe that?

  Fortunately, Charlie was too deep into Detectives and Dragons for more than an excited “Mr. Dash!” Bobby pulled the privacy curtain, and Charlie went back to their book, and I went off to Happy Land, courtesy of whatever the nurse had shot me up with.

  When I woke, it was to unfamiliar sounds: voices, casters on linoleum, the hum of distant machinery. My eyes were crusty, and my body was heavy with fatigue, but the pain in my throat had mostly subsided—there was minor discomfort when I did things like breathe or turn my head or swallow, but on the whole, a significant improvement from how I’d felt the night before. And, for that matter, definitely better than the alternative.

  Bobby had slept in a chair by the bed, and as soon as I moved, he jerked upright. He immediately winced and put a hand to his neck.

  “Not as young as you used to be,” I said.

  “Don’t talk,” he said. “Wait, can you talk?”

  I probed my throat. It was still tender where the cord had cut into the flesh, but aside from those minor pings and pangs, it did seem better. I shrugged. “I can talk.”

  Tension drained out of Bobby; I hadn’t realized how tense he’d been, as a matter of fact, until I saw him relax. He rubbed his neck some more.

  “Come over here,” I said. “I’ll do that for you.”

  “No, Dash. You’re hurt.”

  But I gestured, and after a moment, Bobby scooted his chair around and let me massage his neck. It must have felt good, because after a while, Bobby made a certain, um, noise that I had definitely heard before.

  “There’s no way you actually got any rest in that chair last night,” I told him. “You need to go home and get some real sleep.”

  Bobby groaned as I worked more of the stiffness out of his neck and shoulders, and his voice was muzzy when he spoke, but he said, “Can’t. Too much to do.”

  I didn’t have a good answer for that, so I focused on massaging his shoulders.

  Whatever brief interlude of peace we’d had after waking, though, that short exchange seemed to have shattered it. Bobby’s hand came up and closed over mine, stopping me. He turned around to face me. The burnt bronze of his eyes was darker today, deeper, and his hair spilled out of its usual careful part across his forehead.

  I brushed it away, but it fell back again.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “You could have died.”

  “Maybe we don’t talk about that part.”

  “Dash, someone was in our house.”

  “Yeah, we need to get a security system. This happens way too often.”

  Bobby didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know. I’m scared too.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say.” But then he said, “God, of course I do. Thank God you’re all right. Thank God Keme was there.” He shut his mouth, but his breathing accelerated. “When I got that call—”

  He stopped again.

  “Keme?” I said.

  “He’s fine, thank God. He didn’t even need stitches.”

  The hum of all those machines swelled into that silence.

  “You want me to stop investigating,” I said quietly.

  He brought my hand to his cheek; his skin was warm, and under the padding was the firmness of bone. “I don’t even know if that would help. Someone is still out there, Dash. Someone thinks you’re a threat.”

  “But I’m not a threat. I don’t know anything. Literally. I mean, I don’t even have theories. Not good ones, anyway.”

  “Well, someone thinks you do.”

  I rubbed crusties out of my eyes with my free hand, and Bobby took that as his opportunity to pour me water. I drank it, and then he poured some for himself. I was becoming distinctly aware of my need for a toothbrush.

  “What happened yesterday?” Bobby said. “After I left.”

  I frowned. “I tried to get information out of you and the sheriff, and you were not a particularly helpful inside source.”

  A hint of that goofy grin showed before Bobby got serious again. “There’s not much to tell. There aren’t any cameras down by the creek, and Steven didn’t have any defensive wounds.”

  “Which means he knew his killer.”

  “Or he fell and hit his head.” Bobby drew a deep breath. “That’s a possibility, Dash. He’d had a lot to drink.”

  I waved the comment away. “Someone killed him, Bobby. You know it. And I know it. Someone killed him because they were afraid Vivienne told him her theory about who killed Robert Kessler.” I filled Bobby in on what I’d learned from the ducklings and then by playing internet sleuth, and then I said, “The obvious person with a motive here is the real killer. Someone killed Robert Kessler ten years ago and got away with it. At some point, Vivienne realized her mistake. Apparently, she wasn’t worried about it enough to actually do anything about it. Not until now, anyway.”

  “She might have believed it didn’t matter,” Bobby said. “Simona was dead. And Vivienne was careful about her reputation until you—”

  “Dramatically unveiled her real nature?”

  Bobby tilted his head. Sometimes, I got the sense he was still trying to get a good look at me.

  “Right,” I said. “Well, anyway, Vivienne goes to prison. Her career is over. Her reputation is in shambles. And then she gets this ridiculous pardon, and all of a sudden, she has a chance at a whole new life. She’s Vivienne Carver, which means she’s going to solve murders and write books. And she already knows where to start: the one that got away. But in the non-romantic-comedy way.”

  “It might be more than that,” Bobby said. “What if she didn’t come back to solve the murder? What if she’d already figured it out?”

  A low-grade thrill ran through my aching body. “And she’d contacted the killer.”

  “Would Vivienne try to blackmail someone?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Yes. I don’t know.” I shook my head. “Blackmail doesn’t work well with the plan to unveil a killer, but what if she didn’t contact them for blackmail? What if she was trying to get the evidence she needed, and somehow, she gave herself away?”

  “And got herself killed in the process?”

  I shrugged. “What I still don’t understand is how the killer got the drop on her. She was so savvy. I mean, do you remember that time Vivienne followed the guy who was a big advertising executive for a corned beef empire—”

  “What is a corned beef empire?”

  “—and he lured her into the basement, and Vivienne used the lid from an old tin of corned beef to saw through her ropes—”

  “Good God,” Bobby said.

  “—and then she pushed him into the, uh, vat? Or whatever it’s called. And she got a lifetime supply of corned beef. I think it was a lifetime supply. It was a lot, anyway.”

  “No. I can honestly say I don’t remember that.”

  “It was on TV! I saw it at an impressionable age. You were probably outside playing Sports.” I made sure the capital S was audible.

  Bobby took a second to catch up. And then he said, “Vivienne was a person. People make mistakes. And she’d been—I don’t know how to say it. Out of practice, I guess. I can’t imagine she was solving a lot of murders in prison.”

  “Or eating much corned beef.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Never mind, back on track. Okay, so the question is: who did Vivienne believe was the killer? God, it could be anyone.”

  Bobby shook his head. “It can’t be someone random. It’s got to be someone who showed up in the original investigation, someone Vivienne considered but then dismissed.”

  “So, who was part of the investigation the first time? That’s what we need to focus on.”

  “Steven was,” a voice called from the other side of the curtain. It took me a minute to recognize AJ.

  “Steven’s dead,” Thatcher said. “He doesn’t count.”

  “He still counts,” AJ said. “He got in a huge argument with Robert Kessler during a panel. And that was the day before Kessler died.”

  “What did he do?” Thatcher asked. “Knock himself out and roll down into the creek?”

  “It could happen! That happens in literary mystery novels. They don’t ever catch the killer because the killer killed himself or the killer is already in prison or the killer died of natural causes.”

  Bobby was pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “What in the world is going on over there?” I snapped. “And how long have you been eavesdropping?”

  Charlie giggled. “You and Detective Mai are totally couple goals.”

  “Oh my God,” I said under my breath.

  Bobby got up and reached for the privacy curtain.

  “I didn’t say anything about—” I froze because what was the kid-friendly version of special adult time? “I mean, you didn’t say anything about—” I made a suggestive gesture with my hands.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Bobby said as he pushed the curtain open. “And neither do you.”

  Thatcher, AJ, and Charlie were staring at us: Thatcher arched his eyebrows at Bobby in a serious, manly fashion; AJ grimaced at all of us like we were idiots; and Charlie beamed at me over a copy of Detectives and Dragons. (Book 8: Dwarven Deception.)

  “Margaux Mendez was there too,” AJ said. “Remember? From the article?”

  “Of course she was there,” I said. “She was Vivienne’s agent.”

  “Yeah, but Margaux got cleared,” Thatcher said. “I still think it has to be this other author, Whitney Smith.”

  “I need to get back to the house and look at that copy of Dropped Stitches,” I said.

  “It’s gone,” Thatcher said.

  “It’s—what?”

  “It’s gone. I stopped by this morning to ask if I could borrow it—I figured you had a copy—and that old lady who lives there checked and said she couldn’t find it.”

  I spared a moment to pray to the patron saint of idiot writers that Indira would never learn how Thatcher had referred to her.

  “Did somebody attack you last night?” Charlie asked. “Because Thatcher said someone attacked you, and you’re here in the hospital, but AJ said you might be making it up—”

  “Obviously someone attacked him,” AJ said a little too quickly. Her piercings glittered in the morning light as she studied me. “Why else would he look like that? See his hair?”

  “Okay, well, in the first place, my hair—” I began.

  “What was it like?” Thatcher asked. He leaned forward as he asked the question. “When you thought you were going to die, and you knew, like, this was it, and there was that final moment that you could either give up or keep fighting—”

  Thatcher stopped talking so suddenly that it was technically (and audibly) a gulp.

  And then Bobby’s expression registered. Thundercloud didn’t come close. Inferno of rage came closer. Quiet, killing fury came closest.

  “Out,” Bobby said.

  Thatcher power-walked out of the room so quickly that he might have given himself a wedgie. AJ rolled her eyes, but she left too. Charlie buried their nose in Dwarven Deception a little too intently.

  “I’ve got to check in,” Bobby said. “The sheriff is going to need me today.”

  It sounded like a statement, but it was a question.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I won’t do anything dumb. I’m going to be totally, perfectly, completely smart and safe and careful.”

  For some reason, Bobby looked extra tired right then. But he said, “Clothes are in the bag by the bed. Dinner tonight?”

  Bobby’s dinner. To celebrate. And have fun. With a lot of unreadable energy behind it. “Right,” I said. “Yes. Dinner tonight.” I tried to smile. “To have fun.”

  He kissed me and went to call the sheriff.

  I took out my phone. As much as it pained me, I agreed with Thatcher: Whitney Smith was still a viable suspect, and currently, she was the one I knew least about. And I had an idea about how I could get her to meet me. I was going to borrow a page out of Julian’s playbook and give her what every writer wanted: an offer.

  Chapter 17

  Whitney couldn’t meet until late that afternoon.

  As a result, I spent a lot of time fretting. I worried. I generated some significant dread. I tried doing useful things like resting and researching and even, God help me, writing. But there was a lot of staring off into space.

  Maybe the only productive thing I managed was to review Phil’s feedback on Julian’s offer. The short version of it was: grab it with both hands.

  Eventually, though, I made my way to Testing Grounds. The coffee shop was on the far side of Arcadia’s campus—about as far as you could get from the conference center, as a matter of fact. It had exposed brick walls, sagging leather sofas, and driftwood accents. It smelled like coffee—like good coffee—and the click of balls on the pool table broke up the background jazz.

  I got there early, and I was watching the door when Whitney came in. She didn’t look anything like that ultra-filtered author photo. Or, for that matter, much like the younger woman I’d seen in the photo of her and Simona. White, thirtyish, she had her dark hair half up, and her upturned nose made her look younger than she was. She wore a fuzzy sweater and jeans and cute little boots. And I’d seen her before.

 

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