- AHMED -

Prudence rushed to her car, unlocked it, and jumped inside. Her lights shone, and she pulled into reverse to reorient before driving slowly forward under the arms of willowing trees.

As we watched her, Sam and I climbed inside his car. He twisted his keys, still in the ignition, and pushed the gear shift into drive. Prudence steadily began picking up speed, and Sam kept pace.

He turned to me after a moment's hesitation. "...I'm not doing it."

I gulped. "Huh?"

"I'm done waiting around, Ahmed. And I don't care what Prudence says."

"Sam—"

"I'm not just gonna sit at some police station when I know Lane's out there—"

Just as the words left his mouth, the rubbery squeak of stretching leather scratched out from behind me. I caught a glance of the rearview mirror, where a slender figure sprang upright in the backseat and lurched forward with the speed of lightning. Her azureous eyes stared from between flowing flanks of blond and reflected the sheen of Prudence's tail lights ahead of us.

Within seconds, the cool, circular end of a metal barrel pressed against my left temple.

"Keep. Driving." The voice from behind was smooth and feminine, almost silken.

I felt my breathing accelerate, my mind racing as the mysterious blond in the backseat pressed the gun harder against the side of my head.

She laughed. "You know, you really shouldn't leave such a nice car unlocked in the dead of night."

Out of my periphery, I could see Sam glancing at me. I noted what appeared to be a second gun pressed against his head as well.

Sam gulped. "Listen...It's really hard to drive with a...a gun pointed right at my face..."

"Aw, poor baby," she cooed mockingly, fixing her eyes on the street ahead as Prudence cut to the right. "Turn left," she ordered. "And step on the gas, you prick."

Sam exhaled, then did as he was told. The car blitzed off, and Prudence's tail lights disappeared in our rear view.

I could feel tears creeping at the corners of my eyes, but I forced them back and didn't say a word. I sniffed the stiff car air and kept my gaze fixed forward.

"You must be Alice," Sam tried.

She didn't say a word.

"I—I know you're not Lane," he spoke again. "You're...different."

She laughed. "You know, honestly, I get it. It totally makes sense."

Sam paused. "What makes sense?"

"She had such a huge crush on you."

"Oh, um..." he gulped. "...I don't...I mean..."

The woman laughed again. "It's honestly amazing that someone could be so cute and still sooo clueless."

"Please," I heard the words slip uneasily between my lips. "Alice..."

"Don't," she ordered, then turned her head to look out the window. "Just another mile or so, and then we've got a stop to make."

Sam exhaled. "I know where we're going." He tilted his head right. "It's the graveyard, isn't it?"

Alice giggled. "Maybe you really do have a clue."

"Wh-why?" I stuttered.

"You'll see," Alice pressed the barrel more firmly against my temple.

Moments later, we pulled up to the grassy edges of the gate bordering the forested collection of tombstone and meadow.

Alice cocked the pistol pressed to Sam's head. "Take out the keys," she ordered, "drop them on the seat, and then get out—both of you."

I unclicked my door, and Sam did the same after extracting the keys from the ignition. We both stood still once we were outside the car, and Alice stepped out seconds following.

"Alright, boys," she crooned, "we are gonna take a little field trip."

I felt a gun press to the back of my neck, and I instinctively held up my hands in surrender. I looked left, where Sam stood similarly with his arms raised in response to Alice's menacing weapon.

"Ruby Densett," she whispered in my ear. "She wasn't even a teenager when she was raped and murdered in cold blood." From the corner of my eye, I saw Alice nod her head to the left. "And that's her grave—where Marcus Hall paid for her to be laid in the ground...well, what was left of her."

Alice sashayed forward and stood next to the tombstone, where I noticed for the first time that a collection of dome-shaped piles of dirt surrounded the burial site. "Closed-casket funeral, a million colorful roses...and none of them ever knew, not even her parents."

"...Knew what?" Sam's voice echoed feet away from me.

"Get inside." Alice raised both guns and pointed them at us. "Get in the grave, and you'll see."

I was frozen in place, frozen in time. I couldn't move, and neither could Sam.

"Do you think I'm screwing with you!? GET IN THE GRAVE!"

I felt a jolt of fear rip through my body as she screamed. I turned to Sam fearfully, and he nodded back. I swallowed hard.

Sam walked steadily forward and crawled inside the hollowed-out ground, and I followed his lead. I bent down at the grave's edge, slid over the hole Alice had dug, climbed six feet under. Pockets of soil crunched beneath my hands and dislodged under the weight of my grip, sprinkling the top of Ruby's casket as my and Sam's feet landed on the gritty, once-polished wood.

"Okay, Alice," Sam called up to her. "We're in here. We did what you want, so just—"

"Not yet," Alice cut him off. She shook the pistol in her right hand, gesturing toward the coffin. "Open it."

My jaw dropped. "Wait, what!?"

"OPEN IT!"

"Alice..." Sam held his hands out, pleading. "We don't...this thing's too heavy to...we can't open it..."

She giggled. "Well, I didn't leave that big fat shovel down there for nothing."

I scanned the dirt around us, spotted a thick industrial shovel resting against one of the dug-out edges of our soiled surroundings.

Sam tiptoed over to the shovel, lifted it from where it rested. In the shimmering moonlight, I made out the name Chadwick's printed along the shaft emerging from the grip handle.

I slid from on top of the casket and backed as far as I could against the surrounding soil, then Sam forced the shovel's cutting end into the crevice between the casket's top and what lay within.

He started forcing open the burial crate, and the splotched cloth wrapped around his left arm stretched with the strain of his muscles; drops of blood seeped out, and I gasped.

"Please!" I called up, tilting my neck skyward to face Alice. "He's hurt! Alice, please stop; you're hurting him!"

"QUIET!" she screamed back.

Sam finished prying with the shovel, and the casket's top slid sideways. "Okay," his breath came out rapid. "It's done. I did it." More drops of blood leaked from beneath the makeshift bandage secured precariously on his arm.

"Look inside," Alice ordered.

I gulped hard.

Sam walked over and stood next to me, put his good arm on my shoulder. "We're gonna get out of this," he whispered to me. "Just do what she says, okay?"

I nodded shakily, then crouched to my knees to follow Alice's orders. Sam knelt next to me, and we stared inside the casket.

It was dark, and shadows fell over almost every inch of it. Still, by the light that hung overhead, we got the tiniest glimpse of...nothing.

"Th-there's nothing here," Sam whispered. "Alice, there's nothing here!" he yelled the second time.

She giggled. "Of course there's nothing." Her hand left her hip. "Nothing but ashes. Marcus had that little girl's body burned—well, most of it, anyway. Lane seems to think he's still got two of her fingers stashed away somewhere as a keepsake." She shook her head, her twisted smile morphing grimly to a scowl. "Sick freak."

Sam gasped. "Wha—Lane?...You mean she's...alive?"

Alice hunched a shoulder and grinned knowingly at Sam. "Oh, darling, she's more than alive." She flicked her neck, swaying her hair to the side. "You didn't think she left that basketball cutout in your house for nothing, did you?"

Sam's eyes grew wide. "I knew it was her," he breathed. "Where is she? Please, Alice, I want to see her—"

Alice pointed her gun at him. "Keep it in your pants, lover boy. You and your BFF are staying right here."

"Why?" I spoke up, my question coming out much more like an order. "What did we do, Alice? What the heck did either of us ever do to you!?"

Alice rolled her eyes. "You really don't get it." She lowered the gun. "I'm saving you. You may be dumb enough to fall in line with Steven's bare-balls mission to save his royal dick of a father, but you were never a part of Lane's plan. And neither was Prudence. This is between Lane and Marcus...and Steven."

"So what, then?" Sam asked. "You're just...keeping us here until Lane slaughters Pastor Hall and his entire family?"

"Well, I wouldn't have to keep you here if you hadn't followed Steven out to the lake house."

"Then why dig up Ruby's grave!?" I spat back. "What kind of a sicko would—"

"The hole's not for you," Alice interrupted impatiently. "It's for Myra. She's been stepping on graves ever since Lane went missing, and it's high time somebody dug hers."

I shook my head. "Alice, this is crazy..."

"SHUT UP!" she yelled. "That woman did nothing while her daughter was committed to Molding the Way, and she hid it from Irina! GiGi screamed for weeks, and Myra locked her away...and now it's her turn to scream." Alice began to laugh again. "Maybe the bugs will find her corpse, dig her up to the surface. Or maybe she'll rot away from this earth, just like she let this town's memory of GiGi rot into nothing!"

Alice glared down at us triumphantly, one gun in her hand and the other now secured in a leather strap attached to her waist.

I looked over at Sam, who'd stretched his right arm out against the soil wall and was steadying himself against it, then I turned back to Alice. "Please," I begged. "Sam's still losing blood. We have to get him to a doctor..." I trailed off as the tiniest of lights began to shine in the distance.

Alice just shook her head. "He's not going to die. And you two aren't going anywh...what the heck!?" She spun her head to the left as a flood of light blasted her directly in the face.

I twisted and stared over the edge of the grass to see the familiar glow of shining headlights.

Alice flinched and covered her eyes under the glare, then pointed her gun in the direction of the flash.

"Drop it!" came a voice from behind her.

Alice jumped, just as Prudence leapt from between the low-hanging arms of mossy trees and slid a pistol of her own against Alice's neck. "Drop the gun. I'm not going to tell you again."

Shuddering, Alice threw her first gun to the ground, and Prudence ripped the other one from the leather strap along her waist.

Sam and I climbed out of the grave, and I turned to face the lights; moments later, they clicked off.

"Remote-controlled headlights," Prudence announced. "Oldest trick in the book." She moved her head closer to Alice's ear. "Get on the ground."

Alice reluctantly knelt, her knees landing softly on the grass.

Prudence retrieved a set of handcuffs and prepared to snap them around Alice's wrists. "You're under arrest for the kidnapping of—"

Another gun clicked in the darkness, followed by the decisive depth of man's demanding voice: "Let. Her. Go."

Sam and I looked up in unison; Prudence's eyes followed.

Alice smiled, then giggled with delight. "Babe," she drawled, "you've gotta stop cutting it so close."

From the darkness, a towering figure wearing heavy boots and firefighter gear stepped into view.

My jaw dropped wide. "B-but that's...that's..." I stuttered, trailing off.

This can't be happening.

The same fireman who'd helped douse the flames at Marissa's home, who'd checked to make sure we were okay before leading his men back into that burning apartment—he stood before us now, his eyes ice cold and his hand gripping the trigger of a dark pistol.

"Sorry it took so long, babe," he muttered to Alice, his voice like stony gravel.

"That's okay." She smiled, then started giggling again. "You're right on time."