Chapter Twenty- Eight– The Weight of Bones

Myles's hand found mine in the darkness.

His fingers were cold, trembling. I couldn't tell if it was from the freezer's chill or from what we'd just seen. Maybe both.

"We have to go," he whispered. His voice cracked. "Alexa, we have to go now."

I couldn't move.

Natalie Vasquez lay on the metal table like a museum exhibit. Preserved. Frozen. Forgotten. Her dark hair fanned out around her head, frost clinging to the strands. Her skin was waxy, pale, the color of old parchment. She looked smaller than her photographs, diminished by death and time and the indignity of being stored like meat.

Two years.

She'd been here for two years,or maybe even more than, hidden in a freezer in the basement of a university building, while her family searched and grieved and eventually settled for a settlement and a non-disclosure agreement.

And no one had found her.

No one had looked hard enough.

"We have to go," Myles said again, tugging my arm.

I pulled the sheet back over Natalie's face. The fabric settled gently, like a final breath.

"Take pictures," I said.

"What?"

"Take pictures. We will need evidence.”

Myles hesitated. Then he pulled out his phone and started photographing everything. The body. The freezer. The labels on the wall. The metal table. The floor. The door.

I did the same, my hands shaking so badly that half the photos came out blurry.

Click.

Click.

The sound echoed in the small room, sharp and accusatory.

"How long do we have?" Myles asked.

"I don't know. However long until someone checks on this place."

"Who would check at 2 AM?"

I thought about Helena. About the way she'd looked at me in her office. About the key card still warm in my pocket.

"I don't want to find out."

We took fifteen more photos. Then thirty. Then I forced myself to stop.

"It's enough," I said. "It has to be enough."

We backed out of the freezer room, our eyes scanning every corner, every shadow. Myles pulled the hidden door closed. It clicked shut, seamless, invisible.

"Wipe your prints," I said.

He looked at me.

"Everywhere we touched. The door handles. The table. The sheet." I was already wiping down the surfaces with the sleeve of my jacket. "We were never here."

"You want to hide evidence?"

"I want to stay alive long enough to use it."

Myles didn't argue. He pulled off his jacket and used it to wipe the door handle, the keypad, the edge of the steel table where he'd braced himself.

We worked in silence, fast and methodical. The kind of silence that exists between people who have seen something terrible together. The kind of silence that bonds or breaks.

When we were done, we stood in the center of the main lab, breathing hard.

"Did we miss anything?" he asked.

I looked around. The photographs on the wall. The computers. The vials. The stainless steel.

"The key card," I said. "We can't leave it here. Helena will know it's missing."

"So we keep it?"

"We keep it. For now."

I swiped the card one last time, locking the hidden door behind us. Then we walked out of the lab, down the corridor, and into the stairwell.

The door clicked shut.

The lock blinked red.

And we were back in the real world, carrying the weight of a dead girl in our pockets.

---

The walk back to the dorm was the longest of my life.

Every shadow looked like a person. Every rustle of leaves sounded like footsteps. Every flicker of a streetlamp felt like a warning.

Myles stayed close, his shoulder brushing mine, his hand occasionally finding the small of my back to guide me around a crack in the sidewalk or a pile of wet leaves. He didn't say anything. Neither did I.

What was there to say?

We found a body.

We left it there.

We're complicit now.

The words would come later. In the dark. In the quiet. When there was nothing left to do but feel.

We reached the dorm at 3:15 AM. The front door was locked, but Ashley had left a window open on the second floor, just in case. I boosted Myles up, and he pulled himself onto the fire escape, then reached down for me.

Our hands locked. He pulled. I climbed.

We tumbled through the window into the dark room, landing in a heap on the floor.

Ashley didn't stir.

We lay there for a moment, tangled together, breathing hard. His chest was warm against my back. His arm was wrapped around my waist, steadying me, or maybe steadying himself.

"Alexa," he whispered.

"Yeah."

"We found Natalie."

"Yeah."

"She was there the whole time."

I closed my eyes. The image of her face, frozen and pale, was burned into the back of my lids.

"I know."

"We can't tell anyone. Not yet."

"I know."

"Madden has been looking for her for two years. Ashley has been having nightmares about her for two years. And she was in the basement the whole time."

The weight of it pressed down on my chest. The same weight I'd been carrying since I arrived at Westbrook. The same weight that had sent me crashing to the floor in this very room.

"We'll tell them," I said. "When we have more. When we can prove who put her there."

"And if we never find out?"

"We will."

"How do you know?"

I rolled over to face him. His face was inches from mine, his eyes dark and searching. In the dim light, he looked older. Tired. Scared.

"Because I don't have a choice," I said.

---

We moved to the mattresses after a while.

Ashley was still asleep, dead to the world. Myles sat on the edge of my bed, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

I sat beside him, close enough that our shoulders touched.

"What did Helena say to you?" he asked. "In the office. Before she kicked you out."

"She said I ask too many questions. She said I have no digital footprint. She said I appeared out of thin air."

"She's not wrong."

"I know." I pulled out the key card, turning it over in my fingers. "She's observant. Too observant. If she's this aware of me, she might be aware of other things too."

"Like what?"

"Like the basement. Like the body. Like whatever her father is hiding."

Myles was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "What if she's not the enemy?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if she's trying to protect you? What if her rejecting you for the lab was her way of keeping you out of danger?"

I thought about the way she'd looked at me. The way she'd said you ask too many questions like it was a warning, not an accusation.

"I don’t know which scares me more.”

Myles put his arm around my shoulder patting me.

---

At 4 AM, Myles stood up.

"I should go," he said. "Before it gets light."

"You don't have to."

"If I stay, people will talk."

"Let them talk."

He looked at me. Something shifted in his expression. Something soft and dangerous and impossibly sad.

"I can't, Alexa." He walked to the window. "Not yet. Not like this."

"Like what?"

He didn't answer. He just climbed onto the fire escape and disappeared into the dark.

I sat on the bed, staring at the empty window, the key card still in my hand.

The room felt colder without him.

---

I didn't sleep.

I sat at my desk and transferred the photos from my phone to a secure folder. Then I backed them up to the cloud. Then I emailed them to myself. Then I deleted them from my phone.

Paranoid? Maybe.

But paranoia had kept me alive so far.

At 6 AM, the sky started to lighten. Gray at first, then pink, then gold. The campus woke up around me. Doors slammed. Footsteps echoed. Laughter drifted through the walls.

Normal sounds. The sounds of a world that didn't know a dead girl was lying in a freezer beneath their feet.

Ashley stirred around 7. She sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes, and looked at me.

"," she said.

"I couldn't sleep."

"Did you go? To the basement?"

I nodded.

Her face went pale. "What did you find?"

I pulled out my phone, opened the photos and handed it to her.

She scrolled in silence. Her breathing changed. Quicker. Shallower.

"Oh my God," she whispered. "Is that... is that Natalie?"

"Yes."

Ashley covered her mouth with both hands. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

"She was there the whole time. Right underneath us."

"Yes."

"We walked past that building every day. We sat on the grass outside. We laughed and studied and lived our lives and she was right there."

I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

Ashley cried for a long time. I sat beside her, my hand on her back, and let her.

When she finally stopped, she looked at me with red, swollen eyes.

"What do we do now?"

"We find out who put her there. And we make them pay, and we don’t tell Madden"

“What?, why? She is already upset about what you did now you want to keep another one from her?”

“She is going to freak out.”

Ashley took a deep breath before talking. “Okay fine.”

---

At 9 AM, my phone buzzed.

A text from an unknown number.

Meet me at the greenhouse. Noon. Come alone.

—H

Helena.

I stared at the message for a long time.

The greenhouse. Where Earl had died. Where someone had left me a warning written in red.

You're too late.

Now Helena wanted to meet there.

It could be a trap.

Or it could be the breakthrough I'd been waiting for.

Either way, I had to go.

---

At 11:45 AM, I stood at the edge of the quad, looking at the greenhouse in the distance.

Myles was in class. Ashley was in the library. Madden still wasn't answering her phone.

I was alone.

The way I'd started this journey. The way I'd probably end it.

I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Myles: Meeting Helena at the greenhouse. Noon. If you don't hear from me by 1, come find me.

His response came immediately: Don't do this alone.

I didn't respond.

I shoved the phone in my pocket and walked toward the greenhouse.

---

The door was already open.

I stepped inside.

The air was thick, wet, heavy with the smell of soil and rot. The same smell from the night Earl died. The plants had grown wild in the weeks since, vines climbing the glass walls, leaves brushing against my shoulders as I walked.

"Helena?"

No answer.

I walked deeper into the greenhouse. Past the rows of seedlings. Past the shelves of fertilizer. Past the spot where Earl's body had lain.

The path curved.

And there, standing in the center of the room, was a figure.

Not Helena.

Someone taller. Broader. Dressed in black from head to toe.

A mask covered their face.

"Welcome, Alexa," they said. The voice was distorted, electronic. Unrecognizable. “I’ve been waiting for you."