Charlie needed to leave. She needed to take Ava outside, hands raised in the air. She needed to make it clear to the heavily armed SWAT team that they were cooperating.
“Fuck,” Charlie repeated. How much time did she have? She stood on tiptoe and looked out the window. The two cops were searching the bus. The rest stayed inside the van. They either believed they had the element of surprise or they were looking for explosive devices.
Charlie saw movement closer by the house.
Lenore was standing by her car. Her eyes were wide as she stared at Charlie because any fool could tell that the slit of a window she was looking through was in one of the bedrooms.
Lenore jerked her head toward the front door. Her mouth mimed the words, “Get out.”
Charlie jammed the plastic bag of clothes into her purse and made to leave.
The purple walls. The Hello Kitty. The kitten posters.
Thirty, maybe forty seconds. That’s how long it would take them to clear the bus, get back in the van, and reach the front door.
She used her gloved hand to open the dresser drawers. Clothes. Underwear. Pens. No diary. No notebooks. She got on her knees and ran her hand between the mattress and boxspring, then looked underneath the bed. Nothing. She was checking between the stacked clothes on the closet floor when she heard the SWAT van doors thunk closed, the tires crunch against dirt as they drew closer to the house.
Teenagers’ rooms were never this neat. Charlie rifled the contents of the tiny closet with one hand, dumping out two shoe boxes of toys, pulling clothes off hangers and tossing them onto the bed. She patted pockets, turned hats inside out. She stood on tiptoe and reached blindly onto the shelf.
The rubber glove skipped across something flat and hard.
A picture frame?
“Officers.” Lenore’s deep voice reached her ears through the thin walls. “There are two women in the house, both unarmed.”
The cop wasn’t interested. “Go back to your car! Now!”
Charlie’s heart was going to blow up in her chest. She grabbed at the thing on the closet shelf. It was heavier than she thought. The sharp edge jabbed the top of her head.
A yearbook.
Pikeville Middle School class of 2012.
A deafening knock came at the front door. The walls rattled. “State police!” a man’s voice boomed. “I am executing a search warrant. Open the door!”
“I’m coming!” Charlie jammed the yearbook into her purse. She had made it as far as the kitchen when the front door splintered open.
Ava screamed like she was on fire.
“Get down! Get down!” Lasers swept around the room. The house shook on its foundation. Windows were broken. Doors were kicked in. Men yelled orders. Ava kept screaming. Charlie was on her knees, hands in the air, eyes wide open so that she could see which man ended up shooting her.
No one shot her.
No one moved.
Ava’s screaming stopped on a dime.
Six massive cops in full tactical gear took up every available inch of the room. Their arms were so tensed as they gripped their AR-15s that Charlie could make out the strands of muscle working to keep their fingers from moving to the triggers.
Slowly, Charlie looked down at her chest.
There was a red dot over her heart.
She looked at Ava.
Five more dots on her chest.
The woman was standing on the couch, knees bent. Her mouth was open, but fear had paralyzed her vocal cords. Inexplicably, she held a toothbrush in each of her raised hands.
The man closest to Ava lowered his rifle. “Toothbrushes.”
Another rifle was lowered. “Looked like a God damn trigger switch.”
“I know, right?”
More rifles were lowered. Someone chuckled.
The tension lightened incrementally.
From outside the house, a woman yelled, “Gentlemen?”
“Clear,” the first guy called back. He grabbed Ava by the arm and pushed her out the door. He turned around to do the same to Charlie, but she escorted herself out, hands in the air.
She didn’t lower her arms until she was out in the yard. She took a deep breath of fresh air and tried not to think about how she could’ve died if any one of those men hadn’t taken the time to differentiate between a toothbrush and a detonator for a suicide vest.
In Pikeville.
“Jesus Christ,” Charlie said, hoping it would pass for a prayer.
Lenore had stayed by the car. She looked furious to Charlie, which she had every right to be, but she only lifted her chin, asking the obvious question: You okay?
Charlie nodded back, but she didn’t feel okay. She felt angry—that Rusty had sent her here, that she had taken such a stupid risk, that she had violated the law for reasons that were completely unknown to her, that she had risked getting shot in the heart with what was likely a fast-expanding hollow-point bullet.
All for a fucking yearbook.
Ava whispered, “What’s happening?”
Charlie looked back at the house, which was still shaking from all the heavy men traipsing back and forth. “They’re searching for things they can use in court against Kelly.”
“Like what?”
Charlie listed off the things that she had been looking for. “A confession. An explanation. A diagram of the school. A list of people Kelly was mad at.”
“She’s never been mad at nobody.”
“Ava Wilson?” A tall woman in bulky tactical gear walked toward them. She had her rifle slung to her side. A rolled-up piece of paper was in her fist. That was how they’d gotten here so quickly. The warrant had been faxed to the van. “Are you Ava Wilson, mother to Kelly Rene Wilson?”
Ava stiffened at the sound of authority. “Yes, sir. Ma’am.”
“This is your house?”
“We rent it, yes, ma’am. Sir.”
“Mrs. Wilson.” The cop didn’t seem concerned with pronouns. “I’m Captain Isaac with the state police. I have a warrant to search your house.”
Charlie pointed out, “You’re already searching it.”
“We had reason to believe evidence might be tampered with.” Isaac studied Charlie’s bruised eye. “Were you accidentally injured during the breach, ma’am?”
“No. A different police officer hit me today.”
Isaac glanced at Lenore, who was still apparently livid, then looked back at Charlie. “Are you two ladies together?”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “Mrs. Wilson would like to see a copy of the warrant.”
Isaac made a point of noticing the yellow glove on Charlie’s hand.
“Dish-washing glove,” Charlie said, which was technically true. “Mrs. Wilson would like to see a copy of the warrant.”
“Are you Mrs. Wilson’s lawyer?”
“I’m a lawyer,” Charlie clarified. “I’m only here as a friend of the family.”
Isaac told Ava, “Mrs. Wilson, per your friend’s request, I am giving you a copy of the warrant.”
Charlie had to lift Ava’s arm so that the warrant could be placed in the woman’s hand.
Isaac asked, “Mrs. Wilson, are there any weapons in the house?”
Ava shook her head. “No, sir.”
“Any needles we should be worried about? Anything that’s going to cut us?”
Again, Ava shook her head, though she seemed troubled by the question.
“Explosives?”
Ava’s hand flew to her mouth. “Is there a gas leak?”
Isaac looked to Charlie for an explanation. Charlie shrugged. The mother’s life was upside down. Logic was the last thing they should expect from her.
Isaac asked Ava, “Ma’am, do I have your consent to search your person?”
“Ye—”
“No,” Charlie interrupted. “You don’t have consent to search anything or anyone beyond the scope of the warrant.”
Isaac glanced down at Charlie’s purse, which had conformed roughly to the shape o
f a rectangular yearbook. “Do I need to search your bag?”