“We’d be breaking the law, wouldn’t we? Tampering with evidence?” Desperation hummed in Eddie’s chest, his hands.
“Do you remember when I said nothing about this case is usual? This falls into that category.”
Eddie exhaled, his palms breaking out with new sweat. Then he ducked back inside the cave and replaced the spoon, the coins, the pegs, and the string exactly where he’d found them. He hated himself, and he hoped like hell all at the same time.
Wordlessly, Martin and Eddie buried the evidence of the dead, stamped the earth flat, and covered it in a blanket of fallen leaves.
AMA Chapter 64 | 2:00 PM, December 6, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
AMA PACED HER ROOM. HER path from the window to the bathroom door felt shorter with every loop. A cramp knotted her side, but she kept moving. She had to do something to feel like she was preparing for the auction in some kind of way or she would go absolutely insane.
Lindsey, with the help of Ama’s bank account and humanitarian angle, had managed to bump up the auction date to the coming Saturday and had convinced the caterers and the musicians to follow suit. She was now ensuring every media outlet in the greater metro area would be pushing the event to their audiences.
Meanwhile, Ama was stuck in this cramped, dark motel room, wearing a trail in the carpet and spinning her mental wheels.
She exhaled slowly and rubbed her thumb against her aching shoulder socket as she mentally went over what she knew of her plan so far: the fundraiser would open with a performance by Tarson High School’s choir, singing the solo Hazel was supposed to have sung at the winter festival the year before. Then the piano player would begin his set, and they would open the silent auction to bidding. Ama would stay on the platform and read descriptions of the donated items so she could watch the crowd from above for any sign of Michael. Then they would have a thirty-minute window for the open piano while dessert was served. After that, and before the winners were announced, Ama would sing “Stairway to Heaven.” She would have Lindsey take over as MC so she would be free to follow Michael, should she spot him in the crowd. Ama felt sure he wouldn’t leave before her song. He would be there to record her voice. But there would be no reason for him to stay afterward.
Then she would have a choice to make. She would be standing there onstage with a microphone. She could call him by his real name, let people know there was a monster in their midst. Maybe they’d tackle him.
There was one big flaw in her plan, one she hadn’t yet been able to bring herself to face. The only way to find Hazel was to be led there by Michael himself. If he was caught away from where Hazel was, he would never tell them where she was being held. They would have no chance of finding her alive. Ama had to be taken to Hazel purposefully by Michael, and then hatch a plan of attack and escape from the inside.
But how the hell was she supposed to plan an escape against a psychopath who had gone completely undetected for seventeen years? She didn’t have the first clue where he was keeping Hazel or how it was safeguarded. Who in their right mind would take that kind of gamble?
Her thoughts went back to where they always did: Eddie Stevens, standing there in the mist, the barrel of his gun looming so big and yet so small. He’d walked into Tarson Woods in the black of night through sheets of rain just to try to find Ama.
The weight of needing to repay him pushed down on her, and she nearly wished he’d never gotten out of his van, when a thought struck her: If Michael took her again, maybe she didn’t need to escape. Maybe she just needed to be found.
She stared at the circle of evidence from her father’s trial still sitting in piles on the floor. Someone had known where the wreck had occurred—someone who wasn’t on the scene, who didn’t have access to her father’s logs or his drivers’ routes. The jackknifed truck had been the bait, not the hook. Someone had to have known when to pull. Someone had known he was there.
Rocking back on her heels, the truth hit her full force: someone had planted a locator on the rig and on her father. Someone he trusted. It’s the only way they would’ve known when he had reached the truck. Someone else, somewhere else, knew the exact moment he needed to be found.
Ama leaped for her phone, ignoring the bite of pain that clamped down on her side, and dialed Lindsey’s number. Lindsey answered on the second ring.
“Come pick me up,” Ama said.
* * *
Three hours later, Lindsey drove Ama through a gate in a chain-link fence where little storefronts sat in a squat row, their doors and windows barred.
“There,” Ama said, and pointed to Happ’s Hot Spot, a gaming and electronics shop. Lindsey did a double take, her stare rebounding between Ama’s face and the storefront, which was covered in fantasy characters and computer game logos.
“I’m going in for you,” Lindsey said, shifting the car into park.
Ama shook her head. “I need you to wait here,” she said.
“Ama, God knows who’s in there.”
“I know exactly who’s in there. That’s why I came,” Ama said, and lifted herself out of the car.
She did her best not to limp as she walked inside the shop. The front of the little building was checkered with collapsible tables and chairs, where people played Dungeons & Dragons or chess. In the back there was a glass counter, about eight feet in length, and a familiar face behind it: Durante Happ, the boy from her childhood staircase, now the owner of the shop, and the best tech guru in Atlanta.
“Ama,” he said, grinning, and dropped his glasses in place. “It’s good to put eyes on you in person. I seen you on the news. I tried to call, but you didn’t pick up.”
“I needed to disappear for a minute,” she said.
“I get that,” he replied, and she knew he did. Ama smiled at Durante, remembering when he was the only person who showed up to her birthday party the year her father was convicted, the only kid who would play with her at recess. He’d grown up slow in an accelerating world, raised by a single dad who worked at a tech development company by day and wrote romance novels under a woman’s name by night. Durante spent his afternoons perched in tree branches reading books, wandering through the woods in search of magical creatures, or scouring the neighborhood creek for discarded trinkets and jewelry.
Their friendship became a fortress, and their skin grew leather tough against insults and accusations hurled their way so long as they withstood them together. They would go on to withstand lonely weekends together, homecoming dances, and proms. They called each other after first dates, first kisses, first breakups, Ama’s first car accident, and Durante’s first college acceptance letter.
After graduation, invisible power still enchanted Durante, but his interests turned the way of his father’s—technology—and he went on to Georgia Tech while Ama went out of state to Auburn University, hoping a state line could somehow strain her past and her father’s infamous legacy from her future. It wasn’t lost on Ama she’d attended the school rival to her father’s alma mater. Maybe even then she’d been angry with him and just hadn’t known it yet, silently, blindly furious for everything she’d lost.
Somewhere along the way, Ama had lost Durante, too. It hadn’t been intentional or acute. It had been slow and quiet, time between calls growing longer, conversations—when they did happen—shorter. She stopped going home for summers and holidays, stopped tending the past, her hometown, and anything and anyone to do with it. She had become Ama Shoemaker, top of her class, heading to Auburn’s law school.