#
Raine woke up. Something
buzzed
. Her phone on the table beside her head. She reached for it, her motion clumsy from sleep. Eddie. She glanced at the clock. Three in the morning. Terror shot adrenaline through her body. She flipped the phone open. “What?”
“I’m freakin.’ Come out to the beach by camp. I need you. I need you bad. You’re the only one I can trust. Come alone. I need you Rain-ee.” She heard the quiver in his voice. He was high.
God, don’t let him be tweaking.
She forced her voice to be calm. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
She pulled on sweats over her sleep shirt, grabbed the tennis shoes from under her bed
, and tip toed out of the room.
Raine squinted at the brightness of the camp sign as she walked by
,
heading for the beach. This was the first time Eddie had called her in the middle of the night. Something wasn’t right. He sounded desperate. Oddly, she wasn’t afraid. She hadn’t been afraid of him since she forgave him. Warmth bubbled up inside her despite everything. She would finally get to spill her forgiveness out on Eddie. How could he help but feel her love for him?
She yawned and wiped the sleep out of her eyes. Part of her mind stretched to remember the research paper she’d done on tweaking when she was in high school. Mom let her choose her topics even though she thought Raine had a morbid curiosity about drugs, methamphetamine in particular.
Night’s dampness crept toward her from the openings of her sweatshirt, and she pulled her hands inside the sleeves. Was he tweaking—what she’d dreaded for years—his loading up on more and more meth till it ceased to give him the euphoria he was after? If Eddie was tweaking, she would need to pop her hands back out to keep them in plain sight. Paranoia was a common symptom. She would need to do anything she could to keep from frightening him. Weird when she’d been the one afraid of him for so long.
The wind tossed the tops of the pines and drove thick clouds across the sky, hiding the moon and stars. She could make out the outline of the bathhouse and shed beyond the streetlights.
Jesus, fill me with Your ability to communicate love and forgiveness to Eddie. Give me wisdom in how to deal with him. Make this a turning point for him away from drugs. Please.
She dropped off the seawall onto the sand. “Eddie? I’m here. Where are you?”
#
Drew heard the ping from his phone that he got a text message. He’d been tossing and turning all night anyway.
Aly.
Raine meeting Eddie in five. Don’t know where. Afraid for her.
Alarm slammed
through his body. Meth addicts were dangerous, and Eddie had already done violence to Rainey. He wasn’t taking any chances. He grabbed his phone, dialing 911 on his way out of the cabin. He filled in the operator as he sped across the athletic field. “My first guess is they’re meeting at the beach, but it could be anywhere a five minute walk from the camp. The guy has a history of violence.”
The dispatcher told him to stay connected. He tossed his phone into the pocket of his gym shorts and took off at a dead run for the beach. He hoped he guessed right. Rainey’s life could be in danger if he got it wrong. His mind blocked out the ground shells and pebbles under his bare feet.
Keep Rainey safe. Help me find her.
#
Aly uncurled herself from the ball she’d clenched into after texting Drew. He’d sent her a one letter answer,
k
. The way Raine worried about Eddie, she didn’t trust him. Not one stinking bit. Meth addicts were capable of anything.
She slid over the edge of her bunk, stepped on Raine’s mattress and knelt on the floor.
God, I know You haven’t heard much from me. But I’m scared. Keep Raine safe. She’s totally into You. Do it for her sake.
She made the sign of the cross and climbed into Raine’s bed to wait.
#
Only the rhythmic crash of the waves answered Raine. The wind picked up, and she rubbed her arms—a feeble attempt to dispel the chill of fear crawling through her clothes.
“Eddie?”
“Over here.”
She turned toward the sound of his voice and saw
her brother
backlit by the neighborhood lights in the distance.
In case he was tweaking, she stopped about ten feet from Eddie. No need to make him feel threatened. “I’m so glad to see you. It was creeping me out being here in the middle of the night. I wanted to talk to you for the past week. This is going to sound weird, but I wanted to tell you how much I love you—to ask your forgiveness for being angry and resentful toward you over the meth. Will you forgive me?
“Sure, Raine, whatever. I appreciate the sentiment. But I’m in crisis here. I’ve been up for days.” He sounded perfectly sane.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Five. Maybe six. What does it matter?”
Tweaking.
Oh, God, help me.
He pulled something out of his pocket. “I need more cash. A lot of cash.”
It took a heartbeat for her mind to register the metal object glinting in Eddie’s hand was a gun aimed at her. “Where did you get that?” She forced calm into her voice.
“Camp office when I was looking for money.”
“How did you get in?”
“Same as last time. Jimmied the lock. Piece of cake.”
“Don’t point that at me. I’m your sister.” She slowed her speech, hoping that made her sound calm.
“I need a lot of cash.”
She suddenly saw Drew back by the camp sign sprinting flat-out toward them. Panic flushed through her.
“I need meth.”
“Here comes Drew training for his triathlon in the middle of the night again. The guy is obsessed.”
Eddie whipped his head around.
Drew came to a stop on the seawall, his head darting back and forth, his eyes not yet adjusted to the darkness on the beach. His breath came in loud gasps.
“Hey, Drew.” She moved quickly toward him willing Eddie not to shoot.
Drew jumped down from the seawall and came toward her.
“I was telling Eddie about your freakish, middle-of-the-night training for that triathlon at the end of the summer.”
“Yeah,” Drew said between breaths. His arm went around her shoulders, and she could tell the exact moment he saw Eddie’s gun by the clench of his fingers into her arm.
He shoved her behind him.
She scrambled around in her mind for something that would keep Eddie from shooting Drew. “Come on, Eddie, this is silly.
I’m your
sister
. Drew is
your future brother-in-law. Put the gun down and let’s talk.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“Yeah, well, he’ll grow on you like he did on me.” She could feel Drew’s breathing slowing to normal. His being close was helping her hold it together.
“We’re going back to camp.” Eddie’s voice quivered.
“I’ve got five hundred dollars I was planning on giving you last week—Tuesday when you didn’t show.”
“Times ten. We’ll take a cabin, the youngest kids, and hold them hostage till the camp coughs up money.”
She felt Drew tense. She
gripped his arm
trying to communicate she didn’t want him to do anything yet.
“I read about what you’re going through.” She worked at keeping her tone conversational. “Up for days. No matter how much meth you took, you haven’t gotten the high you’re after.”
“You don’t know what I’m going through,” Eddie said.
“More meth isn’t going to do it for you.” She
peered at him around Drew
. “I don’t mean getting clean forever. You’ve got to come down all the way and start over to get the high you’re craving.”
“I know what I need,” Eddie said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll stay with you while you come down. Some people stay up for fifteen days. Do you want to feel frustrated that long?”
“You think you know so much from books. You’ve never tried it.”
Drew started to say something and she jabbed him hard in the ribs. This wasn’t the time to say anything about how Eddie tried to inject her.
She had to keep Eddie talking. She knew tweaker
s
were
most dangerous when
they stopped talking
. “Since Drew’s going to be joining the family, why don’t you fill him in on stuff he needs to know about the Ziglers—family myths—like what ever happened to my Strawberry Shortcake blankie?”
Eddie shifted his gaze from her to Drew.
Drew held his hands out in front of him. “I gotta know this info—the sooner the better. Who wants to sign up for a family without full disclosure? So what happened to Rainey’s blankie?”
“She swears I stole it and buried it in the back yard. Not so. I think Logan swiped it and put in the branches over the tree house. I remember seeing it flying like a flag around Christmas, but it was gone by spring.”
“I was four. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you saw it.”
Remember you love me. Remember life before meth.
“Tell Drew about the lost city.”
Eddie motioned with his head. “Let’s go.”
There was no way she was letting Eddie
get anywhere
near camp. “The banks don’t open for hours.” She couldn’t believe how reasonable she sounded. “What’s one more story going to hurt?”
“The lost city?” Drew prompted.
“Raine
y
never played with dolls. Don’t think she’s great mom material. We were always under the house with five hundred match box cars building roads in the lost city, our version of Atlantis.” Eddie’s hand holding the gun trembled. “Enough of this.”
Was that the silhouette of a policeman in a cap up in the dunes? It was gone now. Maybe she imagined it.
“If you take this step, you’re becoming a criminal. Is that what you want—to have to hide the rest of your life or be in jail? Don’t you want to go to college, maybe become a real city planner—not just the lost city?”
Drew inched closer to Eddie. She stuck to him trying to make it look like they hadn’t moved. What was Drew going to try?
“I want you to come to my wedding. I want you to be an uncle to my kids.”
Now she saw them—two policemen—crab-walking from the dunes across the sand. They were coming at Eddie from two directions.
“Hand me the gun, Eddie. We’ll get through this together like we’ve gotten through everything else. I’ll put the gun back. I love you.” She stepped toward him, holding out her hand for the gun.
Eddie’s arm shook. “I’ll shoot. I swear I’ll shoot.”
She took another step and stopped. “Underneath it all, you love me. I don’t believe you’ll shoot me. Give me the gun.”
All of a sudden she saw the flash of Drew’s dark T-shirt in front of her as he dove across the sand toward Eddie.
The gun fired.
Oh, God.
Light from the distant streetlight glinted off the gun where it had been knocked several feet from Eddie.
Eddie scrambled toward the gun.
Two dark forms converged on Eddie in a flash of flesh hitting flesh, grunts.
Was Drew shot?
Drew crawled to his knees, spitting sand. Relief washed through her.
Eddie
lay
belly-down on the sand. An officer kneed Eddie in the back and twisted his arm to a painful angle.
The other policeman cuffed Eddie’s wrists together. “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot. You have your sister and her boyfriend to thank. Think about that when you’re in the lockup.” He hauled Eddie to his feet.
Eddie thrashed away from the officer, fighting frantically to get away.
The other officer clamped a meaty hand on Eddie’s scrawny arm. “Don’t go anywhere, you two, we’re going to need statements,” he said over his shoulder.
The officers moved away toward the road, Eddie between them.
Drew
crushed
her to him. “Thank God you’re okay. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
She pushed away a little so she could see his face. “Why did you dive for the gun? You could have gotten killed. He doesn’t trust you.”
“I didn’t want Eddie to shoot you. I didn’t want the police to shoot Eddie—for you to have to deal with that.”
“Sorry about the whole brother-in-law thing. I had to give Eddie a reason not to shoot you.”
Drew gave her a crooked smile. “We’ll have to find a way to make an honest woman out of you.”
“I’m ready to take your statements,” the officer who had cuffed Eddie said from the seawall.
They pulled apart and the wind whistled between them.
“It won’t take long. We’ll get your verbatim off the 911 call.”