Page 36 of The Sister's Curse

“You should talk,” I retorted with a grin. “Y2K called and wanted their cargo pants back.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “I’ll go get the car. See you in the pickup area.”

“I can walk,” I insisted.

“Shut it.” Her hand made a puppetlike mouth that opened and snapped closed, and then she disappeared behind the curtain.

I sighed. I probably couldn’t catch up to her. I limped out from behind the curtain, headed past the nurses’ station, and went down to the elevator banks.

An elevator’s door was open, so I called out: “Hold the door, please.”

A hand shot out to hold the door open, and I shuffled inside…to find myself face-to-face with an older version of Ross, tall and thin, with brown hair. A bit more realistic than the portrait at the car dealership.

I stuck out my hand. “Anna Koray. Nice to meet you, Mr.Lister.”

Lister swallowed and shook my hand. “Thank you for helping my boy.”

I nodded. “It’s part of the job.”

He looked at me quizzically, and his brows drew together, as if he were trying to connect my name with my visit to the dealership.

“I work for the sheriff’s office.”

“Ah.” His hand froze around mine, and then he withdrew it. “We were lucky you were there.”

I had him here, trapped. I hadn’t punched a floor button. “I have to be honest with you, Mark. There’s something weird about Ross’s accident. He said he saw a girl who tried to drown him, but there’s no sign of the girl.”

“A girl?” He seemed to pale beneath his spray tan.

“Yeah. Ross described her as a goth girl. Does he have any friends, or maybe a girlfriend, who might match that description? I’m worried about her.”

Mark’s hand slid to his mouth. “No. I don’t remember him talking about a girl. I thought…maybe he was just involved in some horseplay.”

“Why do you think he might say something like that?”

He looked away. “Don’t know. He seems really out of it.”

“This isn’t the only near drowning I’ve seen lately.” I pressed onward. “You likely saw on the news that Jeff Sumner’s child nearly drowned.”

He stared into the cup of coffee he was holding. “Jeff told me.”

“From an outsider’s perspective, this is a really odd coincidence.”

“How so?”

“Well, as I’m investigating that case, I look at the backgrounds of the adults to see if there’s anything significant. And I saw in our records that you and Jeff and Quentin Sims were accused in the disappearance of a girl twenty-five years ago.”

Mark squeezed the coffee cup so tightly that liquid sloshed through the plastic lid. “That was nuts. I don’t want to think about that.”

“I have to wonder if someone else, someone connected to that girl, harbors a grudge. And that person—or people—is directing some anger at you.”

He closed his eyes. “It’s bad. It’s really bad.”

The elevator, summoned from a lower floor, began to move down.

“What happened, Mark?”

He seemed just about ready to confess something to me. He’d licked his lips and opened his mouth when the doors slid apart.