Page 84 of The Mermaid Murder

Misty’s phone location was pinging to my phone as well as Jeremy’s. He had his car, and I had Misty’s Jeep. Christy was in the back seat, and Mason was driving while I navigated, using the map on his phone so I could keep the location app open on mine.

“Take a right up here, then the first left. That circles around behind the phone’s location. Jeremy’s going straight in.”

Mason took the turn, drove a little ways, then took the left. We drove between woodlands that fell away, revealing wide open meadows on either side of the road.

“The phone is out that way, in that field to the left,” I said, pointing. “Keep driving past it, though.”

Mason did, pulling over where the trees began once again, and then off the road a little ways, to make the car less obvious.

He got out, checked his gun, and didn’t put it back in its holster. He was done fucking around.

My phone vibrated in my hand, and I looked down at it, then at my two companions. “It’s Sandra,” I said, “She and Jim have arrived at the house. They’re with Myrtle and they want to know what’s going on.”

Christy snatched the phone from my hand and tapped a message back so fast it had to be some kind of supernatural ability. Then she handed it back to me, and I looked down to see “my” reply.

Rachel: Everything is fine. We’re picking up the girls and we’ll be back in a couple of hours. Breakfast would be great.

I looked at her. “You said you were going to call her.”

“I did."

“And?”

“And I told her to come out to the house you rented, and we’d spend the morning together.” She shrugged. “We can tell them about all this later. Wouldn’t do any good now.”

I sighed and added a message of my own.

Rachel: Myrt’s in the bedroom. Take care of her, okay?

Sandra: Of course. And the girls are really okay?

Rachel: They are, but their phones are silenced while we finish up and I have to turn mine off too, for a little while. TTYS.

I silenced my phone, wincing when I did it. “She’s gonna know I’m not telling the truth.”

“What can she do?” Christy asked.

“Track my phone like we tracked Misty’s.”

Christy took my phone again, tapped, swiped, tapped, then handed it back. “Not anymore.”

We got out of the car and cut through the woods alongside the field where the phone’s location seemed to be. There was a culvert at the end where it went right under the road. We moved slowly, stepping soft in the underbrush. The sky was starting to turn from dark blue to light gray. It would be daylight soon.

Then we heard voices and came to a stop.

“Oh good, you’re here,” Jen Scott was saying, and I realized Jeremy had made it to her. “Now toss your gun down, and I’ll take you to your girlfriend.”

* * *

MISTY

Misty pressed up onto her hands and knees and crawled out of the culvert, into the tall grasses and wildflowers of the meadow. Her chest screamed. She was pretty sure she had a couple of broken ribs. When she inhaled, it felt like knives in her chest. But there was not a bullet in her heart. She wasn’t dead. She was alive. And as long as she was alive, she wouldn’t let that horrible Jen Scott hurt Jeremy. If she’d already done anything to Christy or to Rachel or Mason— the thought choked her and she had to pause, lower her head, and force herself to breathe again. If she’d hurt any of them, she was going to pay.

She couldn’t stand up. If she did, she’d be seen. The sky was paling, so she crawled on hands and knees through the tall grasses, heading back toward where Jen had left her car, and praying it would still be there.

It was!

She slowed down, moving with more care, ignoring the pain. The chain was still around her neck, with her savior, the mermaid, hanging from it, her middle flattened by a bullet.

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