Kiss Me, Kill Me

“Yeah, your mom told me about it. I, uh—I thought she was going to be here.”

“She’s gonna be late. We got a boarder at the last minute, and she had to get her settled in.”

“A boarder?”

“We rent the little apartment over the garage when there’s overflow at the local inns and stuff.” Sam winced, partly due to the elbow in his rib cage. “Sorry,” he said to the girl who’d thrown it. “This is my girlfriend, Sadie.”

Gabe extended a hand to the pretty cheerleader, remembering her from the soccer game—match. “Gabriel Cain,” he said. “Good to meet you.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off by Sam, who gaped and said, “Not the Gabriel Cain? The songwriter?”

Gabe lowered his eyes. “Yeah, but I’m kinda keeping that to myself for the moment.”

“Why? I’d be wearing a T-shirt with my platinum records all over it!” Sam looked at Sadie, who was wearing a puzzled frown. “It’s Gabriel Cain. You know. ‘Birds in the Wind,’ ‘Silent Song,’ ‘Sunbeam’…”

Her brows went up as Sam said, his voice growing louder with every word, “He wrote them. And tons more. He’s freakin’ famous.”

“Again,” Gabe said, “keeping a low profile here.”

“Sure, sure, I got that. But damn, Gabriel Cain, right here in Shadow Falls. Hey, I play a little, you know. We should jam or something. How long are you going to be in town?”

Gabe smiled, loving the kid’s enthusiasm. “I don’t know yet. I tend to go where the wind takes me.”

“Dude, that must be amazing.”

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Cain,” Sadie said. “A real honor. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize your name, but ‘Silent Song’ is one of my favorites. It’s on my iPod.”

“Thanks.” He shifted his focus to the boy again. “I’d love to jam with you, Sam. I’ve got my guitar in the bus, so we can get together whenever you have time.”

“The bus? You brought a bus? How are you gonna keep a low profile with a—”

Gabe cut him off with a nod toward his vehicle. “Not a tour bus. A VW Bus,” he said.

Sam looked at it and grinned. “You call that low-profile? What is it, a sixty-four?”

“Sixty-five. I call her Livvy.”

“Livvy? Old girlfriend?”

He nodded. “Yeah. She was as much of a wreck when I found her as the bus was. I managed to do for the bus what I couldn’t do for the girl.”

“What’s that?” Sadie asked.

Gabe shrugged. “Save her, I guess.”

Sadie looked sad and lowered her head, but the sentimental moment was completely lost on Sam, who was moving closer to the bus with the other two left to follow in his wake. He ran a hand over the paint, the giant flowers and psychedelic swirls of yellow and green, and shook his head. “You restored her yourself?”

“I had help from friends here and there, but mostly, yeah, she was my project.”

“What’s under the hood?”

Gabe smiled. “Nothing like what’s under yours, kid. I heard you earned that Ford the hard way.”

It was Sam’s turn to look embarrassed. “It wasn’t as big a deal as the professor made it out to be.”

“I kinda doubt that.”

The kid looked up into Gabe’s eyes, and Gabe had a moment of stark revelation. There was something about the boy’s eyes—something painfully familiar. Or maybe he was just getting way too into wishful thinking.

“Looks like something’s happening,” Gabe said, nodding at the uniformed men now moving through the crowd, urging people to break into groups of ten or so.

“Yeah, time to go. I’d love to see the inside of the bus sometime, though.”

“I’ll let you drive her later, if you want.”

“Really?” Sam beamed, but then his smile faded as he heard a cop on a megaphone begin the routine speech about how the search would unfold this evening, what areas would be covered, and what someone should do if they found anything.

Anything, Gabe knew, meant Kyle Becker, Sam’s missing friend. And, more than likely, it meant his body. Because finding him in the woods alive didn’t seem a very likely scenario. He could only hope the kid wasn’t in the woods at all but had run away, as the curly-maned doctor theorized. He clapped a hand to the boy’s shoulder. “Hang in there. I know this is a rough time for you.”

Sam met Gabe’s eyes and shook his head. “I don’t think we’re gonna find him, Gabe. Not…not alive, anyway.”

Sadie gasped. “Don’t say that, Sammy!”

“Sorry, I just—I know Kyle. He wouldn’t run away without saying something, you know? He’d have told me if he was thinking about something like that. And it’s not like he’s got any reason, you know? Not like you do, Sadie. If anyone was going to run away, it would be you. But not Kyle. He had it good. Great family, no issues. He had no reason in the world to take off.”

Gabe looked at Sadie, wondering just what her home life must be like if her boyfriend felt she had reason to run away. But she misread the look and seemed to think he was looking for her to confirm Sam’s words.

“He’s right, Gabe. Kyle wouldn’t just leave. Hell, even I wouldn’t do that. Not without telling someone.”

“Not without telling me,” Sam said, sliding an arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer to his side.

“You know it, Sammy.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Come on, Gabe. We’ll all get in the same group.”

“Thanks. I was kinda hoping you’d ask. I don’t know anybody else in town.”

“Other than Carrie, right?” Sadie said. And she had a little twinkle of speculation in her eyes as she said it.

“Other than Carrie. Right.”

They walked together, the teens arm in arm, melding into a group that looked a few searchers short. Another man came hurrying along with them, apparently looking for fellow stragglers to join up with.

Gabe recognized him. He had brown hair, closely cut, styled with the help of too much gel. His skin was startlingly tanned in contrast to his light brown hair and brows, and his dress shoes were totally unsuited to hiking through the mountains. Gabe had seen him at the soccer game—er, match, he thought with a little smile. He’d only noticed the guy because they’d been reading the same issue of the same tabloid. And because he’d been the only guy at the game wearing a suit and tie. This afternoon he’d chosen dress pants that were probably thin enough to let stray briars stick through, and a sporty black and yellow jacket he’d probably picked up in town. It looked brand-new.

“Mind if I join up with your group?” the man asked, addressing the kids, not Gabe, which Gabe found a little off-putting.

“It’s not our group,” Sam said. “But sure, come on.”

“I didn’t think I was going to make it on time,” the stranger added with an exaggeratedly heavy breath. “Just heard about this.”