Chapter 28

CARA PUSHED HER WAY THROUGH THE DEAD GOLDENROD in the field behind her house. Overhead, clouds scudded across an inky sky. Her flashlight bounced ahead of her like a ghostly spotlight, illuminating a branch, a patch of ground, the trees nearby. The air was cold, frosty, and her breath hung in a cloud in front of her face.

Behind her, Ethan walked carefully in her path, holding his own flashlight. Cara could hear him breathing behind her. She could tell from the rustling and crackling in his wake that Stanton and Fitzgerald were following closely behind. Their own flashlights cast powerful beams that cut into the blackness. They’d left their cruiser outside of Cara’s house after she and Ethan had called the station. Cara had told them there was only one place Zoe could be.

They were nearing the barn. The evidence inside had already been removed, the cops had said, and all the necessary fingerprints taken. Cara could see the bulk of the barn up ahead through the trees. The silvery gray walls seemed almost to shimmer in the night. Cara’s flashlight shone on the trunks of the trees, then bobbed over to the barn door, still draped with crime-scene tape. Her heart clenched when she saw the door was partially ajar. She turned around.

“She’s here!” she hissed.

Stanton and Fitzgerald stopped immediately and fanned out, concealing themselves adroitly behind nearby bushes. Ethan stepped behind a tree. According to the plan they’d made back at Cara’s house, the officers would stay outside if Zoe was in the barn. Cara would go in and try to reason with Zoe, have her come out quietly.

Cara crept up to the barn door. She stopped at the inky crack and listened. For a long moment, she heard nothing. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Zoe had run away. Then she heard it: a soft rustling. The rustle came again. She was in there.

Cara turned around, and her eyes met Ethan’s. His forehead was creased with concern. He started to come to her. Cara shook her head violently and motioned him back. I’ll be okay, she mouthed. He reluctantly slipped behind the tree again.

Cara turned back to the door. She turned sideways and, with difficulty, slipped through the crack in the door. The interior was an impenetrable wall of blackness. Cara pressed her back against the reassuring scratchy roughness of the barn door. Then she lifted her flashlight. She gasped when it fell on Zoe’s figure standing only two feet away, cold and pale in the ghostly beam.

“I was expecting you, Cara,” Zoe said. She wasn’t smiling. Her voice was cold and dead. “Traitor.”

The word floated on the air between them.

“Zoe, it’s over,” Cara said. She heard the quaver in her voice and steadied it. Her heart was pounding so loud in her ears, she could barely hear anything else. She felt surprisingly dizzy for a moment, vertigo overtaking her. Against her will, she glanced up at the barn rafters, half-expecting to see Alexis’s dead face staring down at her. But it was utterly black. The body had been taken away by now. With an effort, Cara dragged her gaze back to Zoe, standing in front of her. “The police are outside, Zoe,” she said. “You have to come out.”

“I can’t believe you’d do this to your best friend.” Zoe’s voice cracked, and suddenly her shoulders sagged. She started weeping, openly, heartbreakingly, like a child. Her gasping sobs tore at Cara. As if in a dream, she stepped toward her friend. Zoe lifted her head, her hair hanging in her face. “I loved you,” she wept. “I loved you.”

Cara felt her hands come up and touch Zoe’s face. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “Things just went wrong somewhere.”

Suddenly, Zoe grasped Cara’s wrists with frightening speed. Cara gasped in horror. Zoe’s face was white, her eyes blazing jewels set deep in her skull.

“It’s not over,” she spat. Before Cara could react, Zoe shoved her brutally. She fell to the dirt floor with a teeth-rattling jolt. Then Zoe was on her, clinging to her with her elbows and knees, like a huge, bony spider. Her face loomed above Cara, floating like the moon. Cara turned her head from side to side, straining her limbs to get free, but Zoe was dead weight on top of her. Dead weight. Have you ever really felt dead weight?

Cara opened her mouth and screamed with all her strength. Her voice cracked, and her throat burned, but she screamed again. The sound was muffled in the vastness of the barn, and she felt a flash of the same desperation as the day she’d choked—that no one was going to hear her. There was no one to help.

But behind her, she heard a rumbling like thunder and understood that Ethan was there, tugging open the doors. “Cara!” she heard him shout. Zoe suddenly released her, jumping to her feet, and Cara pushed herself to her knees, just as Stanton and Fitzgerald ran to her side. Ethan clutched her arm.

“You stupid bitch,” Zoe spat. Her face was contorted in a mask of rage. “You think you’re safe. But you’re wrong—you’re so wrong.”

She turned as if to run toward the door.

“Get her!” Cara screamed. “Ethan! Get her!” She tried to run after Zoe, but she tripped, falling heavily to the floor again. She pushed herself up on her hands and knees. “She’s getting away!” She pointed. Zoe slipped through the doors. But no one moved. Stanton and Fitzgerald just stood like statues, staring at her. All the color was gone from Ethan’s face. He reached down and pulled Cara to her feet.

“Ethan,” she sobbed again. “Please, she’s getting away.”

“Cara!” Ethan shouted. “There’s no one there.” His face was furrowed with confusion. “There’s no one there,” he repeated, more quietly.

Stanton and Fitzgerald lowered their arms. Cara saw them glance at each other. All three pairs of eyes fixed on Cara. She shrank back. “What? What do you mean? She attacked me! She was right there . . . you saw her . . . didn’t you?” she whimpered.

Fitzgerald raised his eyebrows. He grasped Cara’s arm. His fingers felt like steel bands above her elbow. “You’re going to have to come with us, Cara.”

Ethan gasped. “Oh, Cara, no . . .” A sudden look of realization flashed over his face, and he exhaled and sat down on the floor as if all the strength had gone out of his legs.

Cara tried to yank her arm away from Fitzgerald, but his hand only tightened. “Ethan, help me,” she pleaded. “They don’t understand—it was Zoe.” Her breath was coming in wheezes. The tears built in her chest.

Ethan stepped toward her. Stanton put her arm out. “I’m sorry. Miss Lange, you’ll have to come with us.”

“Ethan!” Cara called over her shoulder as the police marched her away. “Help me!”