His frown deepens as he assesses the photo, then his part. “I think?—”
A loud crash comes from inside the house, like glass shattering, and then Bailey starts barking.
Ellis leaps to his feet, withdrawing his gun. “Stay here.” He hurries off toward the hallway.
I rise to my feet, preparing to rush after him when the front door opens up.
Shit, did I forget to lock it?
I start to stumble back when a woman walks into the house.
Blonde hair, familiar eyes, and she’s holding a daisy.
I blink. And blink again. But she remains in front of me.
“Clover,” I breathe out.
There’s no mistaking it’s her this time. She looks just like how I remember her, only older.
She’s alive.
And she’s standing right here.
Unless I’ve truly gone off the deep end.
She smiles, but her eyes are dead, as if all of her life is burnt out—or she’s been drugged. “Hello, my daisy friend.”
I start to back away when I feel the familiar pinprick of a needle against my arm.
“I’m sorry,” Clover whispers to me before everything goes black.
I try to latch onto reality as best I can, knowing that if I succumb to the darkness, I might forget all of this.
Forget her.
But eventually it wins, dragging me further into the shadows and the darkness of the deadly woods.
35
ELLIS
“Someone threw a brick through the window,” Clara tells me when I enter her room with my gun in my hand.
She’s sitting on the floor with her arms over her head, and behind her, the window is busted.
“Why would someone…” I trail off as reality washes over me. “Stay here,” I tell Clara, then run back into the living room.
The front door is open, it’s raining outside, and there are mud tracks all over the hardwood floor.
Ava is nowhere to be seen.
Still holding my gun, I race out into the night and then grab a flashlight from my SUV. I spotlight it around the yard until I find drag marks in the dirt that lead to the woods.
I’ve never been so terrified in my life as I track them deeper into the trees.
I’ve always had a thing for Ava, even before I met her. I used to watch her in the classes we had together, not like in a creepy way. I just like drawing her. She was so beautifully sad. And then one day, Clover brought her into our group, and I discovered that while she was beautifully sad, she was also wonderfully kind.
But she carried heavy secrets with her.
