Bad Things Read online

  Nope. Not a number she recognized.

  A prank call. Just what she needed. The battery icon was only half-full, though it had been charging for hours. Something wrong there.

  She set down the phone and snapped the mask back over her eyes.

  Well, what if it’s Jerry? her good angel worried.

  Her finger hesitated over the Off button.

  It’s not! her bad angel shouted. GO TO SLEEP!

  But ... but ...

  Bzzzz . . . Bzzzz. . . .

  “Oh, hell,” she growled in frustration, clicking the button. Jerry had suffered a minor heart attack last year, and it had slowed him down in a way that worried her. If this was about Jerry, she would feel really bad if she refused the call.

  And she was awake now anyway. “Hello?”

  “Kerry?” a quavering female voice asked.

  She didn’t recognize the caller and her hand sank. She should have listened to her bad angel and refused to answer. “Yes?” she asked with an edge.

  “Hi, it’s Diana. Diana Conger, and I’m . . . I’m . . . We were together tonight with the A-Team? And I saw you, and we were ... we were with Nick. . . .” Her voice sank to a mewl.

  Diana Conger was one of Nick’s old classmates. Yes, she’d been with the A-Team tonight, a dumb name, in Kerry’s biased opinion, for the group of friends from Nick’s high school that still hung out together. Kerry knew them, more like “of them,” as they were really just acquaintances of hers because she’d attended high school in Seattle after her mother and Nick’s father broke up. She really hadn’t even wanted to go out with them tonight, though she liked Josie pretty well, but Nick had been insistent. So, okay, she’d thought. And then she’d realized, somewhere in the evening, that Nick wasn’t all that excited about hanging out with them either. Or at least it had appeared that way. Nick had seemed pretty determined to make her his wingman. She could never say no to Nick anyway, and she’d thought, fine. So, she’d gone, and truthfully had had a pretty decent time.

  “So, Diana, it’s three in the morning,” Kerry said, as Diana’s voice had petered out on a small gasp, as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

  “Kerry . . .”

  “Yes?” She was trying not to sound impatient. When Diana didn’t immediately respond, a whisper of fear traveled over her skin. “You okay?”

  “No . . .”

  “What’s wrong?” Even as she asked, Kerry wondered why she was the one getting this call. Diana could have called Josie, or Miami, or Taryn, or one of the guys, Randy, her boss, or . . . well, maybe not that Egan something or other ... Fogherty . . . Egan Fogherty, who was a little too friendly, intense, and always invading her personal space, kind of like a stalker. Or the guys who owned the bar, Sean and Forrest, and Killian, who they all called Lady-Killerian, mostly because that’s how he pretty much thought of himself ... or maybe even Nick. Anybody but Kerry, who was the outsider. They’d all made sure they had one another’s cell numbers tonight. Maybe it had been a mistake to hand hers out to Diana.

  Diana started making choking sounds.

  “Diana . . . you’re scaring me . . .”

  “Oh, God, Kerry. Oh my God . . .” she whispered tearfully.

  Kerry sat up in bed.

  “It’s Nick ... it’s Nick . . .” Diana said something else, but she was burbling, barely making sense.

  “What about Nick?” she asked carefully, frozen except for her pounding heart.

  “He’s here ... in my bed.” Her voice grew small. “Kerry, I think he’s . . . dead!”

  Kerry exhaled, alarmed and angry. “That isn’t funny! Is Nick really there? If he is, put him on the phone.”

  “He’s dead, Kerry!” she cried hysterically.

  “Stop it! Stop crying!”

  “I don’t know what to do!”

  The phone was slick in Kerry’s hand. This wasn’t real. “If he’s hurt ... or something . . . call 9-1-1.”

  “They’ll come? Even if he’s dead?” Diana asked on a hopeful hiccup.

  Jesus. Was there even a chance she was telling the truth? “Diana, don’t screw with me.”

  “I’m not, Kerry, I’m not.” Her hiccupping had turned to a constant low and tearful uh-uh-uh-uh.

  “Then call 9-1-1.”

  “Okay . . . okay. . . .”

  This had to be a sick joke. “How did Nick ... get hurt?” she tried.

  “I don’t know. I just woke up and he was ... I didn’t know he was ... I mean, I thought he was alive, but he’s not breathing . . . he’s not ... anything.”

  Kerry switched on the light and threw back the covers. “I’m coming over there. What’s your address?”

  Diana mumbled it, but Kerry managed to hear her, just. She knew enough about Edwards Bay to recognize the general area. “The Bayside Apartments, number two-one-one,” she repeated aloud, to burn it into her memory. If this really was the truth, if it really was ...

  “Hurry.”

  “Call 9-1-1! ”

  Kerry was already out of bed. She was terrified. If this was some kind of game at her expense ...

  But that would be the best scenario, wouldn’t it?

  Yes.

  She ripped off the oversize T-shirt she wore at night. Nick had been perfectly fine when she saw him at that last bar, the one owned by Sean and Forrest, The Blarney Stone. They’d wrapped their evening up there, all crowded around a table in the back that was separated from the main bar by a railed wall. Kerry remembered looking through those rails and seeing Nick standing near the bar, head bent to something Killian was saying to him. Diana had been hovering to one side. Or had that been Taryn? Maybe Josie? They all had that kind of dishwater blond hair. Only Mia Miller, who called herself Miami, had darker hair, but then, she maybe dyed it.

  But Nick had been perfectly fine!

  He wouldn’t play these kinds of games. It wasn’t in him. Maybe this was Diana and the others’ cup of tea, playing horrible jokes on anyone outside their group, but it wasn’t Nick’s.

  So, was it true?

  She clamped down on her mind, keeping that unholy thought right out of her head. Grabbing up her jeans, she snagged a green T-shirt out of her drawer and got dressed. Keys in hand, she looked at herself in the mirror by her apartment’s front door, finger-combed her hair, her pulse racing, light and fast. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t.

  So, why are you going?

  She determinedly headed for her small Mazda wagon, which was parked on the street that ran in front of The Sand Drift’s fourteen units. Normally, she parked in the back lot, by the rear door to her manager’s cottage, but there had been so many construction vehicles and potholes that she’d pulled up on the street. Jerry had been so happy that she was on-site to supervise that he’d offered her free rent, but she’d insisted on paying him a ridiculously low amount, something, otherwise it felt too much like a gift.

  Drawing a breath, she took a moment to assess herself. Was she okay to drive? She’d taken Uber to the first bar and then bummed her way around with Nick’s friends before Ubering home as well. She felt stone-cold sober now, wide awake and filled with icy control. Still, it wouldn’t do to get a DUI, especially if this all turned out to be some kind of vile prank.

  You don’t believe that, though, do you? Diana’s not that good of an actress. Nick’s hurt, or something.

  Kerry shivered. If this was some kind of elaborate trick by Diana or Nick’s friends or somebody, she was going to be pissed off and angry at them like they’d never known. And if by some weird chance, Nick was in on it, she didn’t know what she’d do. Lay into him, that was for sure, and all his friends. Even Randy Starr. He might be her boss, but he was a son of a bitch on a good day. Maybe the others were just as bad. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Randy coerce her into the Edwards Bay job, and maybe she shouldn’t have accepted Jerry’s largess.

  Jerry. Swirling in the back of her head was the notion to call him, to let him know what kind of sick game his son’s friends
were playing. But as she drove through the dark streets, pavements shining beneath the streetlights in dark pools from the fitful rain that had beset them all evening, she silently shook her head. She wouldn’t worry him over something that could turn out to be a hoax.

  But if it wasn’t a hoax ... ?

  She set her jaw and drove.

  It took less than fifteen minutes to arrive at Diana’s apartment and, as Kerry rounded the last corner, she got a distinct shock upon seeing the flashing red, white, and blue lights of a police car and an ambulance.

  Diana had listened to her and called 911. She wouldn’t take a joke that far . . .

  Kerry’s mouth went dry.

  She threw the car into park and jogged toward the apartment, quivers running through her thigh muscles, spasms, the shock of belief taking a physical toll. She had to grab the wrought-iron rail along the front walkway as she headed toward the outside stairs to the second floor, where she assumed 211 would be.

  There was a small crowd outside the door of an apartment on the far end. As if in a dream, Kerry stumbled toward it, legs trembling, fear clutching at her heart, robbing her of strength.

  A policeman in the Edwards Bay force uniform she thought she recognized glanced at her. It wasn’t Cole, whom she’d heard had made it to the town’s police chief; the officer’s name tag read Youngston. “Hey,” he said, trying to hold her back, but she brushed past him. He tried to reach out a hand to stop her, and she yanked her elbow in and turned around to glare at him. He was about her age with a sour look on his face, and for a moment they silently dueled, eye to eye, but then he didn’t try to physically stop her again.

  And then she saw Nick. His body being lifted off the bed and onto a gurney.

  He wasn’t moving.

  “Nick,” she whispered, a soft cry.

  “Kerry!”

  Kerry turned blankly as Diana shrieked out her name and ran toward her. Her robe parted down the center, revealing she was naked underneath as she threw herself on Kerry. Kerry stumbled a bit under her weight, then held on, aware that Diana was quaking from head to toe. The two women staggered as a man about their age with brown, curly hair and a face that was all sharp planes and ridges, caught them and steadied them. Kerry couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Her burning eyes kept returning to Nick’s inert body.

  “I need to see Nick,” she said, barely able to hear her own voice above the roar inside her own head.

  “Ma’am.” The officer, Youngston, got between her and Nick, trying to herd her back toward the door, even as the other man managed to pull Diana away from her.

  “Get out of my way,” she said through her teeth.

  “You can’t go there,” Youngston said, but Kerry was already around him, shaking off his hand when he tried to hold her.

  She stared down at her stepbrother before Youngston angrily put himself between her and Nick’s body.

  “You need to leave now,” he ordered.

  “What happened?” Kerry asked. “What happened?” Nick didn’t look natural. Something was wrong. That wasn’t natural. He wasn’t natural.

  Youngston seemed to want to grab her by her arm and steer her back outside, but he just remained a wall between her and Nick. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m . . . Nick’s sister.”

  The other man introduced himself. “I’m Alan Jenkins. Next door. How did you find out?”

  “What?” Kerry asked, dazed.

  “I called her,” Diana cried, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “She told me to call 9-1-1.”

  The officer relaxed a bit. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I need all of you to step outside.”

  Jenkins repeated, “You’re his sister?”

  “Stepsister. Kerry Monaghan.” Her voice sounded funny, faraway. “What happened?” she asked again.

  “I don’t know,” Diana wailed.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Kerry asked. The surf in her ears rose.

  “Ma’am, he’s dead,” Youngston said.

  The surf turned into a typhoon, a loud, swirling ocean inside her head. She felt someone grab her and leaned into them. “That can’t be.”

  Diana was wailing. Or someone was. Kerry was blind with disbelief and shock.

  The man holding her asked, his voice rumbling beneath her ear, which lay on his chest, “What do you want me to do?”

  Alan somebody. The neighbor. He’d released Diana to grab her. Diana was keening wildly.

  Officer Youngston moved toward Diana. “Ma’am. Stop!” His harsh manner had the right effect, and she stopped wailing, but she was shaking from head to toe, looked about to collapse. Youngston grabbed Diana by the arm and led her to a chair. To Alan, he barked, “Get her outta here.”

  Kerry, who’d been lost in a fog, came back to the present. “No. I need to see him.”

  There were two ambulance attendants who’d worked together to settle Nick on the gurney.

  “Is he dead, Ben?” Diana cried, now clinging to the officer’s hand. “Is he really dead?”

  Ben? Kerry wondered as she pulled away from Alan to stagger toward the ambulance attendants. She reached a hand out to the body under the sheet.

  “Don’t touch him,” Youngston snapped, but Kerry ignored him.

  She swept back the sheet and laid her hand on Nick’s arm.

  Cold.

  Dead.

  She saw black pinpoints of light.

  “Breathe,” one of the ambulance attendants ordered.

  “She’s going down,” the other one said.

  Someone caught her. She fell on him hard and inhaled on a gasp. He steadied her, and she stumbled away from him. The back of her knees connected with the bed and she sank down on it.

  “Get off there!” Youngston ordered. “We haven’t processed the scene!”

  “Scene?” Kerry repeated. Crime scene?

  She saw Youngston shoot a sideways glance toward Diana, who was rocking back and forth in the chair, oblivious to the fact that the robe was wide open. Alan came toward her and tugged the lapels together, a kind gesture that brought tears to Kerry’s eyes, her nose burning.

  She couldn’t have gotten up off the bed if she’d had to. Youngston regarded her angrily for a moment, then let her be.

  She was still sitting there when the coroner’s van arrived and they took Nick’s body away. The ambulance attendants got in their van and left. Officer Youngston tried to talk to Kerry, but she couldn’t answer him. Nick was gone. Gone.

  More people came. Other apartment dwellers, roused by the commotion. It was a sleepwalker’s nightmare. At some point Alan helped Diana get up and find some clothes. She headed into the bathroom and reappeared in a pair of holey jeans and a sweater that dipped over one shoulder. Her makeup was smeared and her nose ran and she just stared straight ahead, as if she’d been emptied of all thoughts and feelings. Youngston was joined by a female officer who tried to help clear the area and talk to Kerry, but she had nothing to say. She wanted away from them. From their worried or concerned looks, from their impatience, from the whole scene. With Nick gone, she wanted to go home.

  The female officer asked for her name, address, and cell number, and she gave it to her in a monotone. She heard the woman mention Cole’s name and surfaced enough to realize there was a chance Cole might actually come. He was the police chief, she’d heard. And he was a friend of Nick’s, so yeah, he was probably on his way. Cole, her almost fiancé. Another reason she hadn’t wanted to come back to Edwards Bay. She’d yearned for Cole for years after he’d broken off their engagement. His rejection had sent her spinning into the arms of another man and a short-lived marriage she never wanted to think about again.

  All that passed through her mind in a flash, barely penetrating her horror, grief, and disbelief. But she didn’t want to see Cole, so she turned for the door. Diana, seeing Kerry was getting ready to leave, came out of her stupor to latch onto her again. Kerry had to practically peel the woman’s fingers away.


  She drove herself home. It wasn’t far, but the trip back was a complete blank the next day. She walked into the kitchen of her cottage and looked around the space, feeling out of time and space. Nick was dead. Her stepbrother was dead. She reached for her cell phone and saw that it, too, was dead. Dead like Nick. She plugged it in. The screen lit up. Five thirty a.m. Jerry was an early riser. Maybe not this early, but she needed to call him. Or maybe Youngston had called him. Probably he had. That was protocol, wasn’t it?

  She saw there was a missed call from him.

  He knew.

  All the stuffing went out of her. She leaned her back against the wall and slowly slid to the floor, dropping the last inches hard onto her butt. She sat there for a moment, staring into space; then she put her hands over her face and silently wept.

  Chapter Two

  Josie looked at herself in the mirror, pulling back the edges of her eyes, making the teeny, tiny crow’s feet disappear. Better. More like high school. Everyone told her she looked the same as in high school, but she knew they were lying. It was all so fake, the frozen smiles and cold hugs, the oh-I’m-so-jealous. You’re-so-cute! lines. Lies, lies, lies. They were either shining her on or green with envy. Either way, it was bullshit.

  “Bullshit,” she said to her reflection, examining the flecks of green in her blue eyes. Actually, there was a tiny dot of brown in her right eye. A mistake. An imperfection Taryn had told her was a beauty mark, but Taryn was full of shit, too. Half the time she simpered in the range of a good-looking guy, the other half she professed herself to be a champion of women’s rights, like she’d started the #MeToo movement all by herself or something. More bullshit. And then some of the time she acted like a dyke, which was just that, an act.

  But then, Taryn wasn’t half as bad as Diana, who would screw anything and anyone for drugs or alcohol or just because she could, and didn’t make any claims about sexual orientation because she just didn’t care. Okay, Diana tended to circle around the hottest guys, but unlike Taryn, who only really seemed to like the cute ones, Diana seemed to gravitate to power. Like Killian Keenan, who was really an asshole of the first order and had really disgusted Josie more than a few times. The way he captured you in his glare? In high school it had made her stomach clench, and it had been all she could do to smile through gathering tears, but as the years had passed, she’d kind of gotten over it. He was still a prick of the first order, no question, even though Miami stuck with him through thick and thin for reasons Josie couldn’t fathom. He couldn’t be that good in bed. No man was. Case in point, her own husband, Kent Roker, who was determined to make her life hell and was.