Page 89 of Ominous: Part 1
Winslet is reportedmissing.Notdead.
It feels as if someone dumped ice cold water over my head. Dizziness passes in a wave. I take deep breaths, quiet, trying not to let him see I’m freaking out. And I keep my voice calm and controlled when I ask,“Murder?”
He doesn’t backtrack. He doesn’t even flinch. His tone is cold when he simply responds with, “You avoided the question.”
At the darkened intersection, it is eerily sinister, only Eli’s blue-tinted lights spearing through the night. I see bugs in the beam of them, something that looks like a pair of eyes in the woods, just across the street. Probably a deer, but it unnerves me all the same. “You saidmurder.”I speak quietly as I stare straight ahead. “You avoidallof my questions, so stop fucking with me, Eli. You. Said.Murder.”
Silence fills the car.
He doesn’t drive. We idle at the stop sign, and I start to wonder how many bodies could be hidden in these woods.
Goosebumps trail down my arms.
I force myself to stay, instead of run. But I need him tosay something.
Seconds pass. Minutes.
Slowly, I turn my head.
Our eyes connect in the dark.
His expression is blank, and I wonder if he’s intentionally trying to scare me.
I don’t move. It seems to be what he needs, to break his silence.
“She’s been missing a year,” he finally says, his voice low. “They’re starting to think… she’s not coming back. Not alive, anyway.”
It feels like spiders crawling down my spine, a shiver ghosting over my entire body with his words.
Immediately, I think of the yearbook. Like he’d vanished from Trafalgar for a year.
I try to think of a way those two things aren’t connected. Dominic’s sister, and no record of Eli in school. There are so many explanations, but he won’t give me any, and he says nothing else as he turns at the intersection, heading toward my house.
He gives me nothing at all to hold onto, like he wants me to consider the worst-case scenario. Then what? Does he expect me to still choose him, knowing he could’ve… done something to this girl?
He pulls up in front of the trailer, and I see something is off immediately, dragging me out of my thoughts about Eli and Dominic’s sister for the moment.
The door of my house is open, only the screen door separating the living room from outside. Lights flash along the wall, and I know the TV is on. Sebastian’s Mazda isn’t here, meaning either Reece or Mom or both of them are in the living room, and as I hold my breath, I see a shadow move toward the glass of the screen door.
Fuck.
“It looks like your mom wants to meet me.” Eli’s words are syrupy sweet, a reminder he is still a smartass and maybe, also, a murderer.But I don’t really believe that.
I glare at him as I unbuckle my seatbelt, Mom still hovering by the door, her arms crossed. I don’t think she can see us in here, as dark as Eli’s windows are tinted, but I still feel like we’re ants trapped under a glass jar, and now I won’t get any answers.
I almost consider it a mercy.
“Stay here,” I tell him, grabbing my bag from the floorboard. “You don’t need to meet the parents.” I reach for the cool handle of the door, knowing I’ll have to ask the rest of my questions tonight, under my covers, through my phone. But Eli grabs my wrist, fingers tightening around my bones as the smallest gasp leaves my lips.
I can feel him staring at the back of my head.
He’s not holding onto me hard enough to hurt, but it’s aggressive, his grip.
“I do,” he says coldly. “Because you’re going to be swimming half-naked in my pool by the end of the week and your mom is going to want to know where her precious daughter is all day and night,don’t you think?”
I grit my teeth, casting a glance at Mom’s anxious shadow. “If I tell my mom herprecious daughteris in a car with a guy who is under suspicion from police about a girl’s disappearance, I don’t think she’s going to let me go anywhere with him.”
He laughs, slicing through my pseudo-threat and releasing my wrist, only to run his fingers over the bracelets there, tugging on one like he wants to break it.
