Then there was Leo. Had Susan really thought he’d choose her over his obsession to put his father in jail? Was he supposed to drop everything and get her off the island? He’d allowed her to be used as some sort of bargaining chip. And then he hadn’t even shown up the next morning to make sure she got home. That had been Archie, as usual.

The light of the late-morning sky poured through Susan’s sheer curtains. Downstairs, Bliss flipped the record over and side B of Jefferson Starship’s Knee Deep in the Hoopla drifted through the floorboards. Susan knew that album by heart. Every word. It had been her father’s album. When she was ten, he had taught her how to play “We Built This City” on the kazoo. She’d sounded good, too. It had only occurred to her later that her father’s enthusiasm for the song was ironic.

She rolled over on her side and put a pillow over her head, and then practically choked on the trapped hair-spray fumes. This wasn’t even Jefferson Starship’s best album. She threw the pillow on the floor and sat up.

It was useless. She was too wound up to sleep.

Susan got out of bed, pulled her laptop off her desk, got back under the covers, and started to write.

Chapter 23

CHAPTER

23

A cheerful sign on Rachel’s front door spelled out HAPPY HALLOWEEN in silver glitter. A small black cat made out of tinsel and wire sat on the hall floor just to the left of the door. Archie nearly tripped on it. He took a minute, before he knocked, to recover some composure. He ran his hands through his hair and wiped the grit from his eyes. He touched the scab at his hairline to make sure it wasn’t actively bleeding. It wasn’t. This was as good as it was going to get. He knocked.

Rachel opened the door within moments. Her face lit up when she saw him and her smile widened into a huge grin. She was radiant. He had never seen her look happier. She lifted her arms as if she were going to throw them around him, but then her eyes filled with tears and she lifted her shaking hands over her mouth. Her shoulders trembled. “Sorry,” she said. She gulped back a small sob. He could see the lines of worry on her face now, the tension in her arms. She glanced at him, and there was a flicker of terror in her eyes. “I thought you were dead,” she said.