Page 57 of You Belong Here

When I returned to the house, I heard Trevor and my mother in the kitchen, deep in conversation. I didn’t want to break whatever fragile truce they’d made, so I quietly deposited the bag of sandwiches on the countertop.

“Hey,” Trevor said, looking up from the table, eyes shining with humor. I could only guess how their conversation had gone.

He cleared his throat, then pushed back from the table. “I’m going to stay at the hotel on Main,” he said. “The one you sent me the link for, for parents’ weekend. I moved it up. Extended my reservation for the rest of the week.”

“Okay,” I said, eyeing my mother, wondering if she’d pushed him to leave somehow.

I followed him to the front door. His bags were already packed and waiting inside the office. “Did she ask you to go?” I asked.

He smiled. “No. But it seemed like the right move, considering everything else she was coming home to.” He grabbed his bags, then stopped at the entrance, one hand under my chin. “I think you should come with me.”

My stomach flipped, and I could feel the heat rise to my cheeks, my neck.

It was what I should’ve said nineteen years earlier, if I hadn’t been so stubborn. If I had let myself believe I could deserve something so good in my life. If I had been kinder not only to him but to myself.

I held his gaze. “I want to,” I said. “I really do. But I think I need to clear up some things at home first.”

When he looked at me, I could see another life. I could see the possibility—not only back then but now. He smiled slightly and opened the door. “Tomorrow, then?”

I nodded. “Tomorrow,” I said, but it caught in my throat.

After I locked the door, I turned to find my mother waiting at the entrance of the kitchen. I felt like a teenager caught with a boy who shouldn’t have been there.

“I could use your help,” she said, gesturing to the back of the house. “Moving the boxes back to the attic. Those are your father’s things.”

“Was he still selling his collection?” I asked.

“Yes, but he was doing things a little smarter. Fixing the pieces up. Waiting for the right price. Keeping them protected in the meantime.” She ran her hand back through her hair. “I don’t think he needs to do that anymore.”

“No,” I said.

“And I’d rather he didn’t know that you found out.”

I nodded. They managed to keep some secrets from each other after all.

When the call came in from an unknown contact with a local number, I answered it tentatively. It was very late already, but I’d gotten nervous with Delilah out of my sight.

“Beckett, this is Fred Mayhew,” he said. “I know it’s late, but I was hoping to set up a meeting for tomorrow morning.”

I rubbed my forehead, closed my eyes. “What’s this about?”

“Well, we finished going through the local footage from outside the shops downtown. We tracked you coming out of the woods and walking down the street behind the deli. We’d really like to get a complete statement on the record. Make sure we’re clear on what you were doing there.”

“I already told you. I was looking for Delilah. Why don’t you ask other people why they were out there that night?

I know I wasn’t the only one.” I’d seen Bryce Wharton walking right back through those woods that same morning.

And Delilah had said she’d received a text marking Cryer’s Quarry as home base.

The area must’ve been teeming with people in the night.

“No, Beckett, that’s where you’re wrong. You and your daughter are the only two people, at night or in the morning, that we can track heading toward the quarry.”

The room was suddenly buzzing again. It wasn’t possible. It didn’t make any sense. I worried he was lying to me, trying to trap me. He’d done it before. Twenty years earlier. Finding the gaps and pushing.

You were the one yelling for people to call 911—

You were screaming for Adalyn—

Someone saw you—

“I’ll call you in the morning,” I said.

I needed a lawyer. I needed a plan.

I added Fred Mayhew’s cell number to my contacts and dropped my head on my father’s desk, where I’d been trying to work through Delilah’s defense.

I didn’t understand. If the quarry had been home base, of course kids would be out there. They must’ve been running through the shortcut to downtown, to the path for the quarry.

Unless Delilah had been the only person to receive that text.

Everything was spiraling outside my control. I was growing desperate. There must’ve been other evidence that could support her story. If not from the cameras downtown, then maybe from the other side—by the access road. A car would have had to drive up that way to move a body.

Sierra had said the new owners were turning the quarry into a park. Maybe they’d put up cameras along with their private-property signs.

I couldn’t remember the details from the signs, but I searched Cryer’s Quarry and new ownership on my phone, and a single local article popped up.

Residents Divided over New Plan for Cryer’s Quarry

I scanned the article and quickly found mention of the name I’d forgotten—JW Enterprises. “The new park, complete with lifeguards and food vendors, will provide a safe family experience for all,” says the new owner, a local resident himself—

And then I froze, a wave of nausea rolling through me.

JW Enterprises was the name of the business owned by Joseph Wharton.

My vision was going blurry. I kept drifting off on the futon, planning on a quick nap. But when I woke this time, I saw a cup of tea on the desk blotter. Something my mother must’ve brought in before finding me asleep. When I picked it up, it was cool to the touch.

There was a message on my phone that must’ve come in sometime earlier in the evening. A reply from FordGroup. My hands shook, hovering over the message.

In response to my curt question— Who is this?— there was finally an equally curt reply:

The witness.

There had been so many witnesses the night of the fire. Students in the woods and kids from town, just out of sight. I couldn’t even begin to guess who was contacting me now.

Like Fred Mayhew had threatened long ago. Someone saw you… I’d thought he was bluffing. There was no one else in the tunnels. What else could they have seen?

I knew what they were trying to prove. The same thing Delilah had said over dinner the night before: That I’d helped Adalyn. That I’d been in on her plan. It’s what had marked me as a person of interest. But in Adalyn’s absence, and without any evidence, such as the key—no one could prove it.

The witness.

Not part of a group but a singular person.

I stared at the sender’s address, trying to make sense of it. I knew no one with that last name. The only Internet hits took me to finance groups and automotive clubs…

Then I realized. My heart pounded, shoulders tensed.

FordGroup. They’d been telling me exactly who they were from the start.

That night, Charlie and Micah had arrived in Charlie’s truck. The same one that Adalyn had taken her key to, carving deep into the paint. His brand-new F-150.

Someone had dropped them off and backed away into the night.

I’d been caught in the beam of their headlights, but I’d been wearing a mask.

Unfortunately, the driver was the one person who would know it had been me that night.

Cliff, who came to warn me. Who tried to stop them. Who told me he was supposed to be with them that night.

This whole time, he’d been playing me, and for what? Drawing me closer in order to take me down? He had eyes on the entire campus. Knew how to contact me. Had read Delilah’s file. He knew I was a ghostwriter—he’d told me so himself when I drove him home.

Of course it was him.

I was fuming. So angry I called him immediately, but he didn’t pick up.

The message hadn’t been sent that long ago. Surely he was still awake, waiting for my reply. Waiting to see how he’d rattled me.

I grabbed my purse, stuffed my phone inside, and headed for the door.

I didn’t care that it was almost midnight. I didn’t care if I woke him by pounding on his front door. I didn’t even care if his neighbors heard or came out to see what the commotion was all about.

Secrets were getting people killed here.

The street was quiet and dark except for the porch lights dotting the homes, marking the way. The construction vehicles sat idle in the empty plot, casting ominous shadows against the night sky.

Cliff’s house appeared totally dark, but I was intent on waking him up. I walked up the steps and pounded on the door with the side of my fist—but the door cracked open under the impact.

I stepped back, frowning. It hadn’t been latched.

I pushed it open farther, the noise creaking in the empty foyer.

“Cliff?” I called.

Something felt wrong. Either someone had been in here, or Cliff knew I was coming, drawing me in—like I’d once done to his friends. Like he was still playing the game.

“Cliff?” I called again, stepping deeper inside. “I swear to God, if you’re messing with me…”

I flicked the foyer light, saw a shadow down the dark hall, slumped on the floor at the base of the steps. I ran to him: It looked like he’d fallen, hit his head. I was scared to move him. Scared to do anything at all.

“Oh shit, oh shit.” I fumbled for my phone, called 911 while I held my other hand to the side of his neck, feeling for a pulse.

“I’m at Cliff Simmons’s house on College Lane,” I shouted into the speakerphone.

“I don’t know the house number. The one right beside the empty plot.

He’s hurt. He’s unconscious. It looks like he fell. I can feel his pulse.”

A clatter came from the dark end of the hall. I froze, held my breath. Someone else was in here.

I heard the woman on the other end of the line. “Ma’am? Can you tell us what you see?”

“Someone’s here,” I said, then grabbed the phone, standing up.

A door at the back of the house creaked open, a shadow slipping into the night.

I raced toward the back exit. My hand shook as I called the one person I trusted the most in that moment.

“Beckett?” Trevor answered, sounding like I’d woken him.

“I need you to get to Delilah,” I said frantically. His hotel was on the other side of campus, closer to the dorms. “Please, go fast.”

Someone was running in the night, heading for the college.

Someone was running toward my daughter.