Page 26 of The Executioners Three

“Does that have anything to do with the black eye?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay.” Freddie ripped her gaze away from his. Heat was gathering in her belly, and she liked it a little too much. “Well, here’s my ICQ name, just in case.”

“ICQ?” He laughed. “Who the hell uses ICQ?”

“What do you use to message people?”

“AIM, like a normal person.”

“Pshaw.” Freddie rolled her eyes. “But fine, you don’t have ICQ, so here’s my email too—though I swear to god, Mr. Porter, if you use this information for anything nefarious, I will destroy you.”

“First of all, you couldn’t destroy me if you tried.” He bent toward her. His blond hair flopped over his eyes. “Second of all, I won’t misuse your info. I told you I’m not a Very Bad Human Indeed.”

Freddie bit her lip. She had no worthy retort for this, and like yesterday, his declaration was making her whole chest ignite with sparklers. She very much wanted to lean in and—

NO.

She jerked up taller.

BAD. BAD. BAD. She’d sworn a sacred vow, so what was she doing acting like this? Smiling and… and flirting ? Divya would literally kill her, and it would be completely appropriate if she did.

“Listen,” Freddie said, her voice strained. “About the, um…” She swallowed. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word kiss, and now she was blushing like a summer peach. “About what happened yesterday.”

“Yes.” Theo was staring at her very, very hard. “About that.”

“I didn’t mean… That is to say…” Oh god, why was this so difficult? Freddie had made a promise; now she had to draw up boundaries. “We’re enemies, yeah?”

“We are.” His eyes narrowed.

“So yesterday was just…” Spit it out, Gellar. SPIT IT OUT. “It was, um, just a one-off. Right?”

Theo tensed. An almost imperceptible movement. Then his thumb started tapping. “Obviously.” He shifted in his seat. Tap, tap, tap . “I mean, what is it you said on Saturday? You have that effect on everyone.”

Freddie’s mouth went dry. She had no idea how to respond to a statement like that. Once more, it felt like he was complimenting her—and once more, it left her heart fluttering out of control.

It didn’t help that he was looking at her again with a face that had gone very still.

“Thank you for understanding,” she forced out.

“Yep,” he replied, and finally— finally —he looked away.

Freddie handed the notebook back to him. “I hope I hear good news about your grandmother soon.”

“Yep,” he repeated, completely withdrawn now. A statue over a gravestone.

They were enemies. This was what Freddie had wanted. Capulets and Montagues. Still, though—even though she knew it shouldn’t—her heart sank when she left the waiting area, trilling a goodbye…

And only stony silence followed behind.

Freddie tried very hard not to think about Theo Porter while she cycled away from the hospital.

All the way through downtown Berm. Into the drugstore to buy new film.

Then while she huffed past Fortin Park, lined with piles of raked leaves.

And finally to the old church-turned-library that always flooded during storms.

She even sang “Tearin’ Up My Heart” in time to her pedaling. Not that it helped. NSYNC and Lance Bass could not scrub Theo Porter from her brain.

When she reached the library, Freddie tried even harder not to think about Theo—while she chained her bike. While she looked for newspapers. While she tried (and failed) to figure out the microfiche reader and then went searching for Miss Gupta in order to figure out said machine.

Even while Miss Gupta showed her how to insert the microfiche into the lenses, switch on the proper lamps, and print the resulting pages, Theo was still stuck in Freddie’s head.

The way he’d looked, all broken and beautiful, with his black eye and stitches. And the way his whole face had gone still when he’d said she had that effect on everyone…

“No,” Freddie groaned at the microfiche screen. Berm Sentinel headlines from October 1987 glared back at her. “No, no, no—”

“Is everything alright?” Miss Gupta asked from a few aisles away. Her tone, as always, was cheery and helpful.

Freddie tried to mimic it as she called back, “I’m fine! Just fine, Miss Gupta!” Because of course she was fine. Theo’s gorgeous, beat-up face might’ve taken over her common sense, but she had come here on a mission. And when Freddie Gellar was on a mission, she did not rest until it was complete.

She was, after all, her mother’s daughter. I can handle it.

Today, Freddie’s mission was to look at newspaper articles from 1975 and 1987. Anything that her father might’ve missed. She might not know why he had gathered those documents—and the poem too—but there had been a reason. Something Freddie was certain connected to the current chaos.

She started with the Berm Sentinel, also grabbing newspapers from the neighboring towns. Alas, there wasn’t much to find. Her dad had been thorough, and she only came across the same articles he’d uncovered.

Which… was… well, strange . Looking at the exact same article and knowing her dad had looked at it too… It made Freddie’s joints stiffen and her stomach roil like she had heartburn. Tamp it down, she told herself. Focus, Gellar .

After three swallows, Freddie succeeded.

Or at least, she succeeded enough to work through all of the Berm Sentinel and move on to the County Weekly, where she found a few wild animal reports that corroborated what Frank had found.

An account of icebergs forming close to the shore, too, which made gooseflesh trickle down her arms and her gut sit up and take notice.

There was also a report of a missing person in 1975, but the guy had come from Elmore, twenty miles away. She decided it wasn’t important and moved on.

After thirty minutes of scouring articles, Freddie had all but given up on finding anything from 1975 or 1987 to add to her dad’s stash. Until suddenly she came across a copy of the Elmore Gazette (a paper that didn’t even exist anymore) dated the first week of November 1975.

“City-on-the-Berme Lumberjack Pageant Leaves Historical Village,” the headline read, and right away, Freddie’s gut set to squishing.

She knew the pageant had been moved to the high school for almost ten years before going back to the Village with Mom’s help.

Freddie had always assumed it was because the stage had needed replacing or something…

But nope. Big nope. Apparently the performance in 1975 had been disrupted by a teenager—drunk off his ass and screaming of monsters in the woods.

He had been partying with his friend in the county park when the friend had wandered off by himself.

The first guy had gone looking for his buddy, and found the body…

Without a head.

Like, the guy had been full-on decapitated . No skull attached to a spinal column. Guillotined without a guillotine.

And to make it even more wild, the police decided that was an accident. There had still been some logging in those days; an axe had fallen off a platform, and kersplat .

Who the victim had been, though, the article never named. Nor who the traumatized drunk guy had been.

Freddie needed more. Her gut needed more, because as far as she was concerned, this many deaths in a single location didn’t point to bad luck so much as murder.

The question remaining, however, was whether it had been a series of copycat murderers—each death echoing elements of “The Executioners Three” poem—or whether they were all committed by the same killer over the last twenty-four years.

A serial killer.

After printing out the article, Freddie dove back into the microfiche filing cabinets.

Except when she searched for papers from October 22, 1975 (the day after this event had supposedly happened), there were none.

Absolutely none . In fact, no papers from any town or county for the day of October 22 were anywhere inside the library.

“Uh, Miss Gupta?” Freddie called. Her gut wasn’t just awake now; it was hyped up like a Chihuahua barking at the neighbors.

“Yes, Freddie?” Miss Gupta popped up beside her.

“There seems to be a day missing.” Freddie pointed at the gap in articles. “Could the papers have been misplaced? Or maybe loaned out to another library?”

Miss Gupta’s forehead pinched. As she flipped through all of the yellow microfiche folders, her frown deepened.

“How strange. There’s no reason these articles from 1975 shouldn’t be here.

Look.” She tapped a series of barcodes along the tops of the folders.

“If these had been loaned out, the entire folder would be gone. But they aren’t. ”

“Maybe… they got damaged and were removed?”

“Maybe,” Miss Gupta murmured, though she didn’t sound convinced.

And Freddie definitely wasn’t convinced. Those articles were important to her fact-finding mission—and really, what were the odds that they had all vanished on their own? “Is there somewhere else I could go, to read articles from that date?”

“You could go to all the newspapers’ offices,” Miss Gupta suggested, slipping the empty folders from the cabinet.

She was frowning in a very un-Miss-Gupta way now.

“They should all have archives—well, the ones that are still in business. Or,” she added, finally looking at Freddie.

“Fortin Prep keeps an extensive collection of periodicals.”

Of course they did. Freakin’ rich kids.

“It isn’t open to the public,” Miss Gupta went on, “but they offer special research passes for people who want access. It only takes about a week to get one.”

A week? Freddie’s nostrils flared. She didn’t have a week. There was a suicide that wasn’t a suicide, an injured Mrs. Ferris, a recurring theme of hangings at the park, a freaking decapitation from twenty-four years ago, and now another dead body.

“Do the students at Fortin Prep have access to the collection?”

“I presume so.” Miss Gupta’s smile returned. “The school is famous for its journalism program. Didn’t you know that?”

Of course Freddie knew that. Just as she knew Roberta Allard Fortin had been a total badass and famous for her investigative reporting.

Freddie had just never considered that all the money going into the school might also mean they’d have a massive collection of periodicals for their students to use.

Once more, Freddie was left rolling her eyes at freakin’ rich kids. They had no idea how lucky they were. Then again, right now wasn’t the moment for jealousy. Not when she needed one of those wealthy chosen to trickle down some of his good fortune. Noblesse oblige and all that.

“Is there anything else I can help you with, Freddie?”

“Yeah, actually. Do you know anything about this poem?” Freddie withdrew a handwritten copy of “The Executioners Three.”

But when Miss Gupta read the title, all Freddie earned was a wrinkled brow. Then a headshake. “Who wrote it?”

“I don’t know. It was in a book called The Curse of Allard Fortin by Edgar…” Oh gosh, what was the guy’s last name? “Fabre! Edgar Fabre.”

“I can go look if we have that. Do you need the book?”

“No, no. I… they have it at the Village Historique. But maybe you could search the poem’s title? And the guy’s name?”

“You bet. I’ll see what our database turns up.

” Off the librarian went, and Freddie returned her focus to the microfiche.

But after Freddie had printed off a few more articles, Miss Gupta returned with her frown etched even deeper and a single book in hand.

“Freddie, I couldn’t find any record of that book you named.

Or the author. Are you sure you have it right? ”

“Um.” Freddie was mostly sure. But she was also suddenly doubting herself. After all, the reason she owned Xena was because she didn’t have a photographic memory like so many sleuths in so many of the books she liked to read.

“You said this was at the Village’s archives?” Miss Gupta now asked. “There are a lot of books in there that are too old to have made it into our databases. When was this published?”

“The 1940s, I think.”

“Oh, not that old.” The librarian flashed an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, then. I don’t think I can offer much more help. I did at least find a different book for you, though. It mentions a number of people named Fabre.”

Freddie glanced at the title. A History of Bellfounding in America . Bells again—always bells. “Sure,” Freddie said. “I might as well try it. Thanks, Miss Gupta.”

After checking out the book, Freddie hurried once more into the overcast cold of midday. A few minutes later, and Divya’s dulcet tones were filtering through Sabrina.

“There you are, Fred! I’ve been waiting so long .”

“It’s only been two hours since we left the school.”

“Exactly. So long .”

“Where are you?” Freddie asked while she unlocked Steve’s bike. “Are you still with the Prank Squad?”

“Yeah. We just came up with our plan for tomorrow.”

“Oh?” Freddie paused, one leg swung over the bike. “What did you decide?”

“Crickets,” came Laina, her voice in President Steward mode. “We’ll release them in the school.”

“All that noise will drive everyone bananas,” Kyle chimed.

“And,” Divya picked back up, “we’ve already sent Cat and Luis out to every pet store and bait shop in a twenty-mile radius. By tomorrow we should have a lot of crickets.”

Freddie had to admit: this was actually quite clever. No, it was not on par with dead fish in the air ducts and a hell-blasting furnace, but that was what the Prank Wizard was for. Freddie could work with this baseline— and she could shape it into her own research needs.

“We’re just stuck,” Laina said, “because we don’t know how to get into the school. A nighttime sneak attack won’t work a second time.”

“And no one wants to go back through that forest again anyway,” Kyle muttered.

No one argued with this.

“So you got any ideas?” Divya asked.

Freddie summoned her loudest, most belly-fueled laugh. “Do I have any ideas? Oh, Divya, never doubt the Answer Finder, also known as your Esteemed Prank Wizard.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Great. Then let’s all meet at the Friedmans’ dry cleaners in ten minutes. Does that work?”

“Sure thing. See you in ten.” The call went dead (oh, the wonders of technology!) and after slipping Sabrina into her pocket and checking that Xena was safely attached, Freddie set off once more into the autumn morning.