Page 52 of Confessions of the Dead

She didn’t finish the sentence, probably for the same reason Matt couldn’t complete the thought in his head, not for lack of trying, but he couldn’t find a word that fit—

Sick? Infected? Crazy? Angry? Paranoid?

Maybe all of the above. Maybe this couldn’t be described with one word.

He was only certain of one thing—it started this morning with the birds. It started when that girl appeared from nowhere.

Hitting the siren one more time to clear the space in front of the sheriff’s office, he parked at the curb and killed the motor. From outside, the sounds of all the chaos rolled in—alarms, shouting, a scream in the distance. He could only imagine what was going on inside. Matt turned to Gabby. “When we get in there, I want you and Riley to head straight for my office and lock the door. You don’t open for anyone but me, Sally, or Ellie, understand?”

Gabby’s eyes were still rimmed with red, but she had moved on to anger. It only grew worse when Addie Gallagher appeared at the front door of the sheriff’s office, motioning for Matt to get inside with a frantic wave of her hand.

Gabby looked like she could tear the woman’s throat out with her teeth. “No. I don’t think I’ll do that.”

Grabbing Riley by the arm, she started to get out of the car.

Matt stopped her. “Promise me you won’t start anything in there.”

She snorted out a breath. “Yeah, becauseI’mthe problem.”

Her daughter held close, Gabby was out the door and inside the building before Matt could respond. He swore under his breath and chased after them.

Addie caught him at the entrance. “Thank God you’re back!”

She tried to hug him, and he shrugged her off. “Don’t, Addie.”

“Don’t what?”

“Just don’t.”

He pushed her out of his way with a little more force than he probably should have used, and that wasn’t lost on the people watching him from inside. Those numbers had doubled since he left earlier. Standing room only now. Everyone watching him.Judging him. Making up their mind about things they couldn’t possibly know. Things that were none of their business.

Conner Evans must have lost the battle with the vending machine, because it was lying on its side, the glass shattered. Matt spotted Gabby and Riley hovering over it, Riley picking a Snickers bar from the rubble. He started toward them, but Gabby shook her head and pointed at Ellie’s office. At the strange girl sitting calmly in front of Ellie’s desk, her back to them.

He realized she was right—he’d smooth things over with Gabby later. Right now, he needed to talk to that girl.

“Matt!” Sally’s shrill voice cut through all the others. She shoved her way through the crowd and grabbed him by arm, pulled him toward her desk. “I need to show you something.”

“I need to talk to that girl, Sally. I think she knows what’s going on.”

Sally huffed. “Half the people in here have tried to talk to her. She still hasn’t said a word. Got so bad, I had to lock the door. Got worried someone might try to hurt her. She can wait. This is more important.”

Matt gave the back of the girl’s head another look before following Sally to her desk. A map of the area was loaded on her monitor. “Remember how I said I was tracking Ellie with GPS?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She tapped at a pulsing red dot in the top left corner of the screen. “Well, her cruiser hasn’t moved since I showed it to you earlier. She’s still parked up on 112 near Lower Falls.”

Matt frowned. “She didn’t take Mr. Newton to the hospital?”

“You listening to me? She hasn’t moved, period. Can’t get her on the radio. Can’t get her on her cell. Her car’s been sitting there in the exact same spot for the better part of an hour. She’s either broke down, or something worse.”

Matt bit his lip. “Have you had any luck getting us some kind of help?”

She shook her head and ticked off two of her fingers. “No cell service. No radios. And get this—best I can tell, landlines only work in town. I can dial someone local and get right through. I dial anything else, I get two rings, the call sounds like it connects, then it drops. Same thing every time.”

“What can cause that?”

“This ain’t no line down or system outage. Something’s got us cut off on purpose,” Sally told him. “Watch this—”

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