Her Dangerous Revenge

CHAPTER 19

Cooper stared at the ceiling, lying awake in bed with his hands stuffed in the front pocket of his hoodie. His room was dark. The clock on his nightstand read 1:07 in

the morning.

But Cooper couldn't sleep.

He'd read Calla's text a hundred times over the last hour. Her

words taunted him, daring him to believe her. Or else daring him to pick up the

phone and call the sheriff's office and tell them everything in a guilt-ridden rush.

I didn't do it.

Cooper closed his eyes. The back of his throat burned, the taste of bile still stuck on

his tongue. He'd taken up his mom's offer to polish off the last piece of pecan pie

after dinner—a decision he regretted now, his stomach twisted in knots.

Desperate for a distraction, he turned on his side and scrolled through social media.

Already his classmates had flooded his feed with status updates. Cooper grimaced

as he read through the heartfelt well-wishes. And then he froze when he saw

something worse. Something much, much worse.

There, buried in the comments of a f*******: post, was a picture of Jacob Stein's

dead body. The image looked eerily similar to the scene Cooper had stumbled upon

that night at the Halloween party. Jacob had been left for dead, propped up against

a brick wall that Cooper couldn't immediately identify. His eyes were open. His

throat, crushed—and then slashed.

How that picture had gotten online, Cooper couldn't be sure. But the image had

already circulated, passing through social media and group texts like wildfire. Everyone wanted to see it.

A horrible, morbid fascination had gripped Greenwitch.

This is my fault. Cooper put his phone down on the bed, trying to reign in a wave of

nausea. I should have told the sheriff about Calla. I should have at least tried.

He stared into the semi-darkness of his room, the light of his phone faintly

illuminating the space. He could make out the dark shapes of posters on his wall,

see the glow of a streetlamp peeking through the blinds. The apartment sat still, like

a great beast holding its breath, waiting for Cooper to make his decision.

His mom. He should tell his mom. She could talk to Sheriff Marks, who'd looked

after them like his own flesh and blood after Cooper's dad died. He would listen.

But that wasn't true. No one had to listen to some high school kid with a known

streak of paranoia and a case of obsessive compulsive disorder. And why should

they hear him out? Calla had been an honor student since middle school, rarely

missing class and running with the in-crowd. She was best friends with Tracy's

cousin, for crying out loud.

What motivation could she possibly have?

Cooper lurched out of bed. He suddenly couldn't stand to lie still. Alone, in this

room, staring into the darkness—his thoughts would drown him.

Ignoring the urge to pull out the shoebox from under his bed, Cooper instead went to

his dresser. He fumbled for a matching pair of socks and then shoved on his tennis

shoes, his heart racing.

You're making a mistake. This is how you die.

At least he wouldn't have to live with his guilt any longer.

Cooper grabbed his phone and then crept out of his room, taking care to close the

door softly behind him. His mom slept like the dead, but he couldn't risk waking

her. She'd be mortified to find her son sneaking out of the house. Especially with his

classmates dropping like flies.

"This is so stupid," he mouthed to himself as he slipped out of the front door

and into the freezing air. He shuddered as he jammed his hands into the pockets of

his sweatpants. At the top of the second floor landing, he hesitated, his eyes

roaming to the bottom of the stairs and out to the field beyond.

Turn back.

He didn't. Instead, he hurried down the stairs and ran before common sense could

bite him in the ass. Tall grass brushed his knees as he waded across the field that

separated his apartment from the white farmhouse just down the road, his eyes

locked on her window.

There were no lights on. No doubt she slept soundly, filled with an inner peace that

eluded him.

Wakey, wakey, you murderous b***h.

Cooper stopped just outside her window, which required him to lean over a hedge

that jabbed into the soft flesh of his thigh. He ignored the discomfort and, before he

could change his mind, he rapped on Calla's window. Once. Twice.

Three times.

Cooper nearly jumped out of his skin as the curtains ripped back, revealing a slim

figure dressed in an oversized t-shirt. Her face indistinguishable in the dark, he

watched, terrified, as she unlocked and opened the window, leaving only a thin

screen separating the two of them.

Calla peered down at him, annoyed.

"What?" she hissed.

Cooper couldn't feel the twigs digging into his thigh, or the cold biting at his ears.

He couldn't feel much at all when he said, "I didn't do it?"

She gave him a droll stare. "Well. I didn't."

"Care to elaborate?" he asked, his hands balling into fists. He kept them firmly in his

pockets, afraid of what he might do if he didn't.

"Did you want me to give you a full confessional over text?" Calla's eyes narrowed. "I

know all about your half-baked theories. And I really didn't want to risk you running

your mouth to someone you shouldn't."

"I want to hear you say it."

"Christ." She startled him for a second time when she leaned forward, her nose

almost touching the screen between them. "I didn't kill Jacob Stein. Happy?"

"You lie," he whispered. "You lie every day. To everyone. About everything. I see

you. What you do and what you say. It's not..." He paused, fumbling for the right

words. "It's not right. It's not natural."

Calla watched him closely. Eventually he had to look down, analyzing

the leaves of the bush he was currently shoved against.

"I was at a party," she said, her voice startlingly loud in the quiet.

He glanced back up at her, stunned. "You..."

"Trevor Miles. He always throws this huge thing after the rivalry game. I went."

He didn't want to believe her. He couldn't believe her. But there would be witnesses

at a party like that. Why would she lie, when a lie could so easily be her undoing?

"Cory picked me up right after ten," she went on, a smug smile transforming her

face into something almost angelic. "I was with my mother all day after school. You

can ask her. Or you can ask the clinic. She got her shift covered to spend time with

me. We watched the Notebook."

The look on her face told him that she hadn't enjoyed the experience.

"You're innocent," he repeated, numb. He barely registered the cold bite of wind as it

blew past him, ruffling his hair.

"I'm innocent." She let that statement hang in the space between them.

A gust of cold air blew into his back. He shuddered.

"Go home, Cooper." Calla went to close the window, face expressionless.

" Wait. " He put his hand against the screen, as if that could keep her from shutting

him out. "Can you say the same for Tracy's murder?"

She said nothing. Those empty eyes watched him, hard as black diamonds.

"I saw someone that night. On the staircase." He paused. "Was that you?"

Her hand tightened on the edge of the windowsill. Silence pressed in on the space between them, suffocating. Deafening.

He'd gotten his answer.

"I don't know."

Her words shattered the silence—and his sense of grim victory. He opened his

mouth and then closed it again, at a loss.

Calla didn't bother to elaborate. They stood like that for a few seconds more,

staring at one another in resolute silence. Too proud to break it. Or perhaps too afraid.

My secrets are far more dangerous than yours.

He turned to leave—to run for cover—when a thought stopped him in his tracks.

"If you didn't kill Jacob..." he trailed off, afraid of the answer.

"Then someone else killed our classmate," Calla finished for him.

Someone else. That thought disturbed Cooper more than it should have. Had he

been so wrapped up in Calla that he hadn't spotted the sociopath lurking in her

wake?

Her choice of words still left him stumped. "Wait. Classmate, singular? Are you

saying—"

"Cooper." Calla pinned him with a scathing look. "Let's look at the bigger picture

here. Can we do that? Jacob is dead. Someone killed him. And it wasn't me . " She

braced herself against the screen. It creaked, precariously close to its breaking point. "You were so sure it had to be me. I'm the bad guy, right? I get it. The cat thing was traumatizing."

"The cat thing," he deadpanned. "Traumatizing."

"But," she continued, ignoring his interruption. "Did you ever stop to consider what it

meant if I wasn't the one holding the knife?"

"I don't care," he snapped back, too loudly. He glared at her and she leaned back,

surprised. "You started this. You're involved. I know you're involved. And now

someone else is dead."

He pushed away from the window and turned on his heel, running away from her

house—from the very mouth of hell itself. She didn't call out to him. And for that, he

felt relief.

But even as he took the stairs back to his apartment two at a time, as he kicked off

his shoes and crawled back into bed, he couldn't shake the thought of her. Her

words followed him into his nightmares, leaving him bone cold.

Did you ever stop to consider what it meant if I wasn't the one holding the knife?

He closed his eyes and thought of red hair and eyes so dark they were like two black

holes, sucking him and everyone else down, down below, into her realm of darkness.

Watch yourself, Cooper.

He could see her cold smile. Feel her fake laughter flash across his skin.

Calla, he thought, the ringing in his ears reaching a crescendo as sleep finally took him.

Calla Parker.