Page 104 of The Graveyard Girls (Detective Ellie Reeves #11)

ONE HUNDRED THREE

No Man’s Land

Kat’s head spun in circles. They should call the police. Let them know they found a body.

But if she did, her parents would know she’d been in the woods and they’d go ape shit that she’d been out there at night. Especially with a killer targeting teenage girls.

A killer who might be her grandfather.

Would he kill her if he knew she was here and might have exposed Ruth Higgins’ body?

Brush crackled and twigs and branches snapped, brittle in the silence, as her friends raced back to camp.

A chill whipped through her, and she shivered then ran back to talk to the others.

Shadows seemed to lurk everywhere in the woods.

A wild animal howled somewhere in the distance, odd since wildlife and vegetation rarely survived in the area.

She picked up her pace. Her sneakers pounded the dry ground and she paused every few feet to check over her shoulder. At one point, she thought she saw eyes peering at her and heard someone whispering her name.

Terrified, she ran faster. She stumbled over a rotten tree stump, fell on her knees and pine cones stabbed at her legs. Gasping for a breath, she peered all around her, then pushed up, determined to reach their camp.

But as she rounded the corner to the pit Raphael had dug in the ground, the fire was out and the others were digging a hole to hide the weed.

“We have to tell someone,” she rasped.

“No way,” Woody screeched. “We’ll get arrested.”

“My parents would freaking ground me for life,” Bebe said on a sob.

Raphael touched her arm. “They’re right, Kat. We’d get in so much trouble.”

“But it’s not right,” Kat said in a tortured whisper.

“You want the police to come down on us like they did your family fifteen years ago?” Woody hissed.

Kat’s heart pounded. In her mother’s journal, she’d sounded so traumatized by everything that happened. All the gossip about the Graveyard Girls. Them being white trash. Her father a murderer.

Mama had wanted to be free of it.

As many issues as she had with her mama, could she start that shitshow all over again? And ruin her own reputation at school?

She wanted desperately to escape Brambletown and her family’s reputation.

Tears blurred her vision, then she glanced around and realized her best friend was gone. “Oh, God, where’s Carrie Ann?”

“She seemed pretty freaked. She probably left the minute we hiked into the woods,” Woody said.

Kat nodded. He was right. Carrie Ann had her car and was probably safe at home right now.