M iranda toyed with the French fries Tad had left on the table and swallowed the tears that she felt building in her throat. She was not going to cry in a public place, especially not with those bitches looking over at her every fewminutes.She didn’t understand what had gone wrong. Tad ditched Billy at the pizza place, just like Miranda hoped, and when they got in the Camaro he’d kissed her and even did a quick grope of her breasts before grinning and starting the engine.When they arrived at the mall they’d discovered that the next showing of Rambo wasn’t for an hour, so they decided to walk around for a while. Tad had put his hand in the back pocket of Miranda’s jeans while they did so and she did not object, letting him squeeze her ass whenever the impulse oc

 A lex Lopez sat at his desk and forced himself to think of the girls. Specifically, the girls’ heads talking to him.Because it was a very strange thing. He found that if he didn’t think of that exact moment, didn’t hear their voices and see their mouths moving, his brain would slide away from the memory of the crime scene.Like it was trying to forget that it ever happened.Like something was trying to make Alex forget it ever happened.And when he mentioned the fruitless search that he’d done yesterday for the girls’ car to Van Christie, it had taken the chief a minute to remember what Alex was even talking about.“Oh, right,” Christie said. “The mayor wants us to keep this as quiet as we can. He’s worried about the summer fair.&rdqu

 T here was a hill just off the center of town, a lonely and inexplicable hill: a hill that should not be, for it blighted an otherwise perfectly flat and reasonable landscape.The hill—and the house that sat upon it—watched over the people and buildings below, though it was the kind of gaze that left the back of one’s neck prickly and uncomfortable.Without this hill it was just an ordinary Midwestern burg, a town that appeared almost magically when coal was discovered nearby and the rich barons from Chicago needed men to dig it up.But the vein ran dry faster than in other parts of Illinois, and many of the men who came to dig went elsewhere to do their work, and the town became nothing but a dirt strip in between empty storefronts. The few people that remained spoke hopefully of one

  M iranda walked around the ghost tree for about the billionth time, checked her watch, and found that it was only thirty seconds after the last time she checked. Where was Lauren? She was never this late.Maybe her mom was still out.But if so, then why hadn’t Lauren called before one? They’d set a time. They’d agreed.And Miranda was going to burst open if she didn’t tell somebody about Him. Of course, she couldn’t tell Lauren His real name, because He was technically an adult and if anybody found out about Him and Miranda then He could get in a lot of trouble because she was jailbait.Not that anything had happened last night. But Miranda knew something was going to happen, could just tell from the way He

 T he mayor wasn’t completely certain how the man had weaseled his way into the office. Wasn’t Harry supposed to check who was coming into the building and who they were going to see? What was the point of security if they weren’t goingto try at all? He made a mental note to speak to Louie Reynolds, the head of security for the building, about it later. The mayor of Smiths Hollow was supposed to be accessible to the residents of the town, but not that accessible.Rebecca had just stepped out to get a sandwich for both of them, and in the intervening fifteen minutes this stranger had knocked on his door, interrupting an unproductive conversation with Van Christie regarding the still-unidentified girls.Touhy noticed the cassette recorder immediately, its bright red button engaged in th