Page 9 of Smoke and Roses

“I slept some.” I continue to check the charred earth for hotspots.

When I stand up he’s looking at me. His expression makes me twitchy.

“You came to Eden because I asked you to, Sarge,” he says, keeping his voice down. “I’m glad you did. But nobody here needs you to be fine. You get to be human.”

I keep digging and he drops it. But I don’t. It’s the first time anyone has ever told me that I can be anything other than the leader who has his shit wired. Not that I don’t have to have my shit together here, because men are depending on me. But I don’t have to have a stone face. Or pretend that I’m not affected.

After a while I say, “She doesn’t sleep either. Her kitchen light’s on at midnight. Two in the morning, it’s still on.” I stab the ground, and move along to another spot. “She told me she hasn’t slept right since she was seventeen.”

Rob is quiet for a minute, staring at me again.

“Cassia says she had a best friend who ran off,” he says finally. “Back in high school. Lindsey never talks about it.”

“Well, she thinks about it,” I speculate.

Late in the afternoon, Rob and I take the ravine where the creek cuts down between two small ridges. At the bottom there’s a heap of burned brush, piled higher than it should be.

“You see that?” I ask.

He nods, narrowing his eyes. “Somebody must have cleared brush and dumped it here.”

I take another step, sure now of what I’m seeing. “Rob. That’s a car.”

Swearing under his breath, Rob comes and stands next to me. “Oh, hell.”

We climb down into the ravine. I pull back a burned branch with my tool, repeating this until a fender shows.

“I don’t like the look of this,” I mutter.

We keep pulling. It’s a little sedan, nose down in the creek bed, buried under brush somebody stacked over it a long time ago. It’s a Honda.

Rob shines his flashlight in the driver’s window opening. Something gold catches his light. It hangs from the rearview mirror on a little chain, black with soot. I reach in and turn it.

It’s half of a heart. Cheap mall gold. The charm is broken down the middle in a jagged line, with letters stamped across it.

BE FRI.

I let go of the chain.

“Get Caleb,” I say as the hair on my arms stands up.

Caleb comes down the bank five minutes later. He crouches at the front of the car and wipes ash off the license plate with his glove. Then he sits back on his heels. His expression is not the stoic one he wears.

He looks wrecked. “I know this car,” Caleb says, voice low enough to make me strain to hear. “It’s a ninety-eight. Everybody in this valley looked for this car for a month when I was twenty-two. I walked every ditch from here to Huntsville.”

“Whose car?” I ask, dreading the answer.

“Danielle Hayes. She was seventeen. Went missing the spring of her senior year. Everybody said she ran off. She’d been talking about going to Portland for months.”

My stomach is full of ice-cold rocks as he looks at the half heart. “Lindsey North was her best friend. They went everywhere together. Wore those necklaces.”

I drop my eyes to the ground. I realized what I was looking at as soon as he said her name.

“Fuck,” I growl.

Caleb doesn’t touch his radio. He pulls off a glove, takes his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and climbs a few steps up the bank.

“Gabe. It’s Caleb. I need you at the Hollister ranch, north ravine. Come yourself.” There’s a pause as he listens. “No. Not on the radio. Half the valley’s got a scanner app.”