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Riley

MAYBE IT WAS THE adrenaline from earlier or, more likely, the fact that the adrenaline had faded, but the moment Riley lay down on the couch in Matt’s office with her head resting on her mom’s lap, she fell asleep. Thankfully, it was a dreamless sleep. The monster she’d spotted in the kitchen sink, whatever had been clawing its way up the pipes, those things didn’t return to finish what they started. In the car on the way over to the police station, she told herself she’d killed it, whatever it was, but some voice in the back of her head was quick to point out that she’d only killed one of them, maybe two, and where there were two …

Riley’s eyes snapped open with that thought lingering like a bad taste in her mouth.

Her mom was no longer in the office with her. She’d taken off Riley’s shoes and draped an old quilt over her. Even found a pillow. Riley knew Matt sometimes slept here; the quilt smelled like him. Not in a bad sweaty kind of way, but in a warm, comforting kind of way. Riley pulled the quilt tight up around her neck, nuzzled into the pillow, and tried to find sleep again. She told herself everything that happened back at the house didn’t happen , it’d all been in her head, because that was way easier than accepting that it had been real.

In the other room, the adults were shouting.

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 were all yelling and they were all so mad, their voices all tripped over each other. By the time she realized that , 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 every real cop was a solid dispatch officer, and it took both of them to arrest Bobby’s daddy for something called D her mom probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone, and text messages were working, so if she did notice, she could just send her a message and she could come right back. If she even noticed she was gone.

Before she could change her mind, Riley shed the quilt, sat on the edge of the windowsill, and dropped to the ground. The sun felt good on her skin, as if she’d just stepped out of a freezer.

“There might be hope for you yet,” Mason told her when she reached them.

Evelyn frowned. “What’s that?”

Riley didn’t know what she was talking about. “What’s what?”

Evelyn grabbed her arm and pointed. “That.”

Written on Riley’s arm in what looked like blue ballpoint was a name: Mason Ridler

She didn’t remember writing it there.