Page 60 of Confessions of the Dead

Loud.

First, she tried to tune them out, ignore all the angry voices, and when that didn’t work, she tried to listen, figure out what they were all yelling about. That didn’t work, either, because it seemed like they wereallyelling and they were all so mad, their voices all tripped over each other. By the time she realizedthat, she wasn’t tired anymore.

Still draped in the quilt, Riley got to her knees and peered between the blinds out into the main room of the police station.

There were a lot of people in the small station. Even more than when they’d first arrived. She knew her mom was out there somewhere, but she didn’t see her, not at first, then she spotted her on the far end of the room with Sally Davie. Riley liked Sally; she’d come to career day at Riley’s school last year to tell them what it was like to be a cop. Bobby Klitz had said she wasn’t a real cop, she just handled the radio, and Sally was quick to tell him, “Behind everyreal copwas a solid dispatch officer, and it took both of them to arrest Bobby’s daddy for something called D&D the summer before last.” Riley’s teacher had rushed her out after that.

Hey.

The single word came from her left like a whisper at her ear, but when Riley turned, there was nobody there. Matt’s office was a cluttered mess, but otherwise empty.

Riley shivered, and when she exhaled, her breath lingered in the air, a tiny cloud of white.

That made no sense. It wasn’t winter, and she was inside. The room was cold, but notthatcold.

What’s your name?

Riley jumped with that one. Honest-to-God jumped, because she heard the voice clear as anything, yet there was nobody there.

A girl’s voice.

She gripped the thick material of the quilt and pulled it up around her neck, as if it were some protective cape, and slowly eased off the couch. The only place anyone could hide in Matt’s office was under his desk, but there was nothing under there but a pair of Matt’s old hiking boots covered in dried mud and a couple of paper clips caught up in the carpet.

You’re like me. You don’t want to be like me. You should leave.

Riley shivered, and not from the cold.

The voice had come from her right that time, and when she turned in that direction, she found herself facing the wall that separated Matt’s office from Sheriff Ellie’s. There was a map of the town hanging there along with a collection of bulletins and reports, and Matt’s college and high school diplomas. There were also a few old newspaper clippings from back when he played football.

None of those things explained why the wall looked wet.

Riley reached out and tentatively touched it, then quickly pulled her hand away and buried it in the folds of the quilt.

Not wet, but cold. Covered in a thin layer of frost.

When Riley’s phone vibrated in her back pocket, she jumped and nearly screamed.

She fumbled it out and read the text message:

Where r u?

Evelyn again.

She replied with

I’m at the police station with my mom.

A second later—

Look outside.

Riley went over to the window behind Matt’s desk and wiped away the condensation so she could see out. Evelyn, Robby, and Mason were all out there, staring up at her from the small parking lot where the sheriff kept the county truck with the plow on the front and a couple of extra patrol cars that probably hadn’t moved since Riley was born. One of them was up on blocks.

Evelyn attempted anopen the windowmotion with her hands, pretending to lift the sash from ten feet away, and it took a second for Riley to understand what she meant. She flipped the latches and forced it up.

Evelyn said, “You need to come with us.”

Riley glanced over her shoulders in the direction her mom had been, but with the blinds closed, she couldn’t see her. “I can’t. I need to stay with my mom.”

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