“Hmm. After Brandon left to go smooth things over with the sheriff and find you, I sat alone in the woods.” I was attacked by imaginary enemies and terrified. “Eventually, I walked miles to get home—with that annoying Jackson Deveaux—and spent the night in the barn.” Or rather, in the cane field. “You just left me out there, Mel. You chose bros over hoes,” I said, drawing blood.

She gasped. “I thought you were with Brandon! I’ll break up with Spencer as penance!”

The thing about Mel—she truly would. How could I stay mad at her when I’d been lying to her so much? In the end, I muttered, “You’re forgiven.”

“Thank you, Greene! I didn’t want to bwake Spencey’s wittle heart.” She lay back on my bed, adding mischievously, “Not yet.”

My laptop chimed. “An e-mail from Brandon?” Strange. We texted 99 percent of the time. He basically used his cell phone as his computer.

Everything’s cool w/ the cops. Bout to get lecture from Dad tho. Talk later.

“That’s weird. Why didn’t he just text? He doesn’t know that I got stranded without my phone.” And why hadn’t he even mentioned my voice mail?

“He couldn’t text you,” Mel said, raising her hands in the air to study her nails. “Everybody’s phones got stolen.”

“What?” I shot to my feet.

“Why do you think I didn’t call all morning?” She rose with a frown. “Somebody snatched wallets and cells right off of people. And they broke into all our cars. But don’t worry, your bag didn’t get taken.”

I bolted out of my room, scrambling down the stairs to reach Mel’s Beamer. My journal!

“What’s wrong with you, Evie?” she demanded, trotting behind me, easily keeping up.

When I got to her car, I frantically slapped the door until she clicked it open. “Jesus, Evie, chill.”

My hand trembled as I reached for my bag. Surely a thief wouldn’t leave it but then steal the journal. Please let my drawings be inside!

I reeled on my feet.

My sketchbook was . . . gone. The one filled with rats and serpents under an apocalyptic sky, bodies mangled in thorn barbed wire, and horrific sack-faced bogeymen. I’d drawn one lapping blood from a victim’s throat. Like an animal at a trough.

My tear-blotted drawing of Death on a pale horse was dated from just a couple of nights ago.

It was the journal that Jackson had repeatedly angled to see. My eyes shot wide. The figure skulking among the cars last night—it was Lionel, Jackson’s best friend.

Lionel had stolen the phones and my sketchbook: my very own one-way ticket back to the mental ward at CLC.

And Jackson had kept me occupied, almost kissing me . . . so that Lionel . . .

Oh my God.

Struggling not to throw up, I told Mel, “I know who’s got our phones. And if you help me, I’m going to get them back.”

_______________

“You’ve had better ideas,” Mel muttered, squinting to see out of her bug-splattered windshield. At dusk the insects swarmed, and their squashed bodies had meshed till they were like tar on the glass.

“Maybe so, but I have to do this.” I’d never been so angry in all my life, and I’d be damned if I let Jackson get away with this. “Can’t you go any faster?”

The sun would set soon, and we hadn’t even made the parish levee yet. It’d taken us hours to find the Cajun’s address, and then I’d wasted even more time persuading Mel to drive me into the Basin.

“You’re lucky I’m in for this one at all, Greene. I’m not losing my license because of a fifth ticket this year. . . .”

She still hadn’t stopped grumbling by the time the towering levee loomed. “Let’s just call the cops.”

And then they’d confiscate my journal. “Jackson only did this because he’s a bully and because he can. No one ever calls him out. But it’s time somebody did.”

“How do you know he’ll have the phones? You said he just served as a lookout.”

I hadn’t told Mel exactly how good Jackson had been at his job, only that he’d kept me talking to him while Lionel snatched our things. “I just know, okay?” Which wasn’t precisely true. He might not have the phones, but he’d have that sketchbook, which was my main priority.

Not that the phones weren’t a big deal. Though I code-locked mine—good luck accessing any of my info—Brandon never locked his phone. And he had all our private texts over the last seven months, not to mention a folder filled with countless pics and vids of me.

Were those Cajuns even now ogling images of me in my bathing suit, or snickering over the goofy faces I’d made for Brand’s camera? The corny jokes I’d told?

Had they listened to my voice message from earlier? “Yes, I’ll spend the night with you.” My face burned, my fury ratcheting up to new heights.

When we came upon the new bridge, stretching over acres of swamp, my lips thinned. Without this line of dull gray cement, I’d never even have known Jackson Deveaux.

Once we reached the end of the bridge, we were officially in a new parish. Cajun country. Bayou inlets and smaller drawbridges abounded. A pair of wildlife agents in their black trucks sat chatting on a shoulder.

Mel exhaled. “Why are you forcing me into the voice-of-reason role? You know that never works out for us.”

“I need to do this,” I said simply. When I’d realized Jackson had played me, that the almost-kiss had been a ruse—it’d hurt. Even though I’d never wanted his kiss to begin with.