Page 53 of No Place Left to Hide

Officer Know-It-All gets into the driver’s side of her police cruiser with all my documents.

“What a bitch,” I grumble, turning to Jena. She hasn’t said a word since we got out of the car. She perches on the guardrail, somehow still looking like a supermodel in my jumpsuit, but her face is drawn and panicked.

I nudge her. “Hey, are you okay?”

She shakes her head, and stares fixedly at the pavement. “This is so messed up. All of it.”

I rest my temple on her shoulder. “It’s not ideal, but I promise it’ll be fine. My dad will never let this lady charge me with anything serious, and so many people saw Brandon screaming at the party. Someone will back up our story. Plus, the voicemails aren’t the only evidence I have of the harassment. Brandon plastered my car with newspapers about the special investigation after school today, and I’m not the only one who saw them. Felix found me cleaning them up. He’ll vouch for us.”

“So then you knew this harassment stuff was about Claire the whole time,” she says, pulling away.

“Well, I had an idea. I just never thought Brandon was smart enough to mastermind something like that. Until tonight, I thought he was about as organized as a car full of monkeys.”

Jena fists her hands in her lap and looks off into the night. “Yeah, well, he’s not going to do anything now. Not with a cop here. It’s over.”

“For now. Honestly though, what did he expect to accomplish? A few newspapers, some missed calls, a little lake water in my locker, aslashed tire or two, and I’d…what? Run to the police? Now he’s pushed it so far that he’s for sure going to jail and I’ll be rid of all this for good.”

I may not have to completely wash my hands of Oregon after all. My harasser will be housed in the Oregon State Penitentiary, and I’ll get my fresh start at Yale, Dylan,andkeep my roots too. It’s the best-case scenario. Well, now that we’re not being run off a cliff or whatever.

Maybe I should thank him.

“You didn’t tell me any of this was going on,” Jena says, pulling me back to the present. “Not one word for months, Brooke.”

I nod. “I didn’t want to let whoever was behind it know they were getting to me. If I complained and got all panicky, it felt like he’d know somehow. I wanted to pretend none of it was happening, leave for Yale, and be done with all of it. But Brandon had other plans.”

“Brooke, we don’t know for sure that it’s Brandon.”

“Who the hell else would go to such extreme lengths to avenge Claire BottomFeeder Heck? You said it yourself last year: she alienated everyone close to her. Nobody even cares that she’s gone.”

Shock is written all over Jena’s face. “Brooke, how can you—”

The revving of an engine draws my attention to the road. At first, I think the sound came from the police cruiser, but it’s still idling where it was, with Officer Lefebvre sitting inside.

Then I see it.

Headlights appear around the bend, and then…the white Bronco—minus its windshield—is bearing down on us. My heart lodges in my throat, beating so fast I can barely breathe. Jena’s hand is a vice grip on my forearm.

The Bronco doesn’t slow down. It tears around the corner, wobbling over the yellow line, then jerking back to the right side of the road. It looks like it’s picking up speed.

“Brooke!” Jena shouts, pulling my arm.

The Bronco swerves one more time, then slams into the back of the police cruiser without so much as tapping its brakes. The cruiser flies into the back of the Subaru, sending pieces of bumper and glass everywhere. I instinctively throw my arms over my face, but it all happens so fast. A cloud of smoke goes straight into my lungs and I hack it back up as everything goes dead silent.

I drop my arms. Jena’s entire body shakes beside me, but I don’t look away from the wreckage. The Bronco is mostly unscathed, apart from a substantially crunched front end. The Subaru was parked far enough from the cruiser that the trunk got a little more smashed, but it doesn’t look much worse than it did when we got pulled over.

The cruiser, on the other hand, now has a trunk where its backseat used to be. Every single window is smashed or spiderwebbed.

In the Bronco’s headlights, I see Officer Lefebvre sprawled across her steering wheel. She doesn’t move. Panic crawls through my veins in a way I’ve never felt before. It’s like adrenaline but with the thickness of Jell-O. I can’t stop shaking.

There’s movement from inside the Bronco. Without the glare of glass between us, I can see the figure in the driver’s seat as clear as day. They’re wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood drawn up over their head. And a fluorescent pink skull mask,Purgestyle.

My mind registers what I’m seeing, but it’s too slasher flick to process.

The driver’s side door of the Bronco opens. The person in the pink mask jumps down like they’ve parked at Target rather than smashed three cars into a pile by the side of the road.

They turn toward where we sit on the guardrail and the sound of that grating, robotic voice cuts through the silence.

“I warned you, Brooke.”

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