Dead Silence (The Body Finder 4)

So she said nothing, pretending instead that everything was the same as it always had been. That the music-box imprint still followed her. Haunting her.

Marking her as a killer.

“I think we should talk,” Rafe told her as he scooted his chair across the aisle so their desks were lined up side by side.

Violet peered toward the front of the classroom, knowing that if Mr. LeCompte caught them like that, they’d be in trouble. Again.

Rafe was continually breaking the rules in class, but it was Violet who Mr. LeCompte always seemed to catch. So far this year, she’d been reprimanded for talking, passing notes, and for pushing the perfectly aligned desks out of order—all because of Rafe. Just once, Violet wanted to see Rafe take the blame.

“Stop it,” she hissed, scooting her desk away from his, but knowing that wasn’t the solution. She’d only be scolded for disfiguring her row too.

He reached across, surprising her when he captured her hand with his, and she felt that far-too-familiar jolt. “I mean it, Violet. You can’t just pretend I didn’t”—his eyes held hers, and everything around her went still—“do what I did last night. We need to talk about it.”

She started to draw away from him, to tell him where he could go—in terms that weren’t exactly ladylike, either. But something about his expression stopped her.

She looked at him, really looked at him, and thought about all the secrets—and the pieces of the puzzle that still didn’t fit. Maybe she did need to talk to him.

Overhead the class bell rang, and before Violet could change her mind, she nodded. “Fine. But not here,” she insisted, staring at the students who were still settling into their seats. “Grab your backpack and let’s get out of here.”

Rafe looked confused at first, like he hadn’t really expected her to take him up on his offer. Like she’d just said the very last thing on earth he’d expected her to say. But it only lasted a second, that stunned expression, and then he was lifting his backpack off the floor and his desk screeched as he stood too abruptly. Too impatiently.

Violet stood too, just as Mr. LeCompte sauntered into the classroom, wearing a self-righteous smile on his face, ready to teach thirty-three high schoolers the finer points of AP Lit.

His pointed gaze fell on the two of them as they stood in the aisle, but ultimately landed on Violet, giving her his signature reproachful shake of the head. “Tardy again, I see,” he drawled in his pretentious, false accent.

She opened her mouth to respond, even though she had no idea what she actually planned to say, but Rafe didn’t give her the chance. He dragged her, instead, down the row as every student in class watched them head to the front of the classroom. “Actually, we are late. But not for class,” he explained as they passed the smug instructor on their way out the door.

“Well, I—you can’t just . . .” Violet heard Mr. LeCompte sputtering behind them, but it was too late. They were already halfway down the hallway. She thought she heard him bellowing something about the principal’s office and detention—or maybe it was suspension—but she couldn’t be sure. Rafe didn’t slow down, and neither did she.

He led her past the front office, out the entrance, and through the parking lot. It wasn’t until they were standing in front of his motorcycle, and he was handing her a helmet—a sweet bubble-gum-pink number that could only belong to Gemma—that she realized his intention.

“Oh no.” She threw her hands up in front of her, warding off the offensive fiberglass helmet. “Not in a million years. I saw what that thing did to you. There’s no way I’m getting on it.” She still couldn’t look at his new bike without remembering the way his old one had sounded as it had skidded across the concrete—metal against asphalt. Without imagining Rafe lying in the center of the intersection, looking hopelessly broken. “I can’t believe Gemma agrees to ride it at all.”

Rafe grinned slyly. “She only gives me one day a week. The rest of the time I have to ride in that little Barbie-mobile of hers. I’m likely to get my ass kicked just for being seen in that thing.”

Violet had seen Gemma’s car, a Mini Cooper that was just a few shades lighter than the pink helmet Rafe was holding now. She’d wondered how Gemma could afford a car like that, especially knowing Gemma’s background as a foster kid, but she’d held her tongue. Asking questions insinuated curiosity, and curiosity might be misconstrued as caring.

And she definitely didn’t want Gemma to think she cared.

“If it makes you feel any better, this isn’t the same bike,” Rafe offered, still trying to persuade her to get on. “If you recall, that one was totaled.”

“Is that seriously supposed to make me feel better?” She reached out and punched him in the arm. “You can be a real ass, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told. Come on, V. It’s safe, and I’ll drive real slow. I promise.” He held Gemma’s helmet out again, and this time Violet’s resolve cracked. Not because she wanted to ride his stupid death-mobile, or because she trusted his word necessarily, but because she could see Mrs. Jeffries from the office coming out the front entrance to investigate. She wondered if Mr. LeCompte had made good on his threat to call the principal.

She wrenched the pink helmet from his grasp and forced it over her head, realizing too late that her head must be at least two sizes larger than Gemma’s as the helmet crushed her skull. She tried to make herself feel better by telling herself it was probably just because she had so much more hair than Gemma.