The motorcycle started up again and moved farther down the trail. I stayed where I was, waiting for it to sound farther away, but instead he sounded closer.

“Libby? Marie called me. About the mall.” Shit. Marie had said she was going to call him. I’d said not to. He knew I was near. There was no point in hiding.

“Here. I’m over here.”

Wilson pushed through the understory, crashing in rather than coming around to the gap at the back. He nearly stepped on me as he entered the clearing.

“What the fuck are you doing on the ground?”

“I was looking at the sky.”

“You’re facing the wrong way.”

“Yeah. I ducked when I heard your bike.”

“You’re like a kid who covers their eyes and then thinks you can’t see them.” He dropped his helmet as if he were in someone’s living room and plopped down on the moss carpet next to me. “Wow. Good find.” He leaned back and looked up. “Like a little fort.”

“It is our fort. Or was. Mine and Sage’s.”

“I was waiting for your mom to leave, and she hasn’t. Usually on a Saturday she’s gone by now.”

Oh great, he knew her schedule even at weekends. “Swim season’s over. So you were watching our house? You actually do that?”

“I guess so. Yeah.”

“Do you realize just how creepy that is?” I knew I should feel more terror or anger, but deep down I already knew he’d been watching and that there was something wrong with him; he probably watched other people, too.

“Yeah, well. You made it clear you don’t want me doing your lawn or helping out, but Marie called last night and said you had some bother at the mall yesterday.”

“Please leave us alone.”

“Marie said the guy was up here?”

“Thomas saw him. He was looking for whoever owned a green Impala.”

“Fucking Kowalski. Idiot.” I didn’t ask what he meant but he offered anyway. “Drove right by him when he was still on the ground, shouting out the window. That’s how he saw the car.”

I didn’t want to know the information. It made me feel sick. Teenage boys hunting down a psychopath and then going back while he was injured on the ground to taunt and provoke him further.

“It’s not Craig’s car that led them to Valley Forge Mountain. Ellen said in the car that’s where she lived.”

“Oh.” I could tell Wilson didn’t know this, and that it made sense now that Barbie Man had shown up here. “I was wondering, because an Impala’s a pretty generic car to have chased down.”

“Anyway, if Marie called you, it was only to warn you that he’s looking for you. We don’t want to be caught up in this.”

“Well, you are,” Wilson said.