“And?” Bile rose in the back of Mason’s throat, and he knew there was more.

“She was found hanging from a small bridge out in the country. The crime was never solved.”

25

Troy looked at Colleen. She seemed horrified and shocked, but he’d expected that. She was a good girl, not the type who liked watching others get hurt, even though she’d been urging him on over the last few months. He understood that wanting to see it and actually seeing it were two different things.

He would be strong for her.

He knew what was best; she needed to watch Rick suffer. Then she could be at peace. Colleen huddled in the far corner of his work shed, her dark-blue eyes watching his every move with Rick. Every now and then she looked away, but when he commanded her to watch, she obeyed.

For a long time the work shed had sat empty—one of several unused buildings on the land his parents had left him. Once Colleen began speaking to him in his dreams, he’d started to alter the building for his needs. He’d always dreamed about Colleen. Nearly every night since he was seventeen. But her actual conversations with him had begun a year ago.

His old dreams had been terrors, reliving her death over and over. Sometimes the boys turned on him and he suffered the same fate. Other times he stopped the attack and one of the boys was sacrificed in Colleen’s place.

Layer after layer of insulation covered the inside of his shed. He’d reinforced the door and walls. No one could escape. He’d shut himself in and tried to beat down the door and break through the walls. It’d been impossible. Carson and Aaron had been in the shed at the same time. He’d made Aaron watch as he prepared Carson for his fate. It’d been an extra dig at Aaron. After Rick, Aaron had been the one most guilty of hurting Colleen. Carson had shown some reluctance, but Aaron had eagerly followed Rick’s suggestions.

Troy had worried the police would track him if he outright duplicated Colleen’s murder scene with Carson Scott’s. The idea to increase the torture had come from Colleen. “Start small,” she’d suggested in his dreams one night. “Then add more layers. That will confuse the police and protect you until you take care of the last killer. By then it won’t matter if they catch you.”

“Because I have to pay, too,” he’d replied.

“Yes,” she’d said sadly. “You do. You did nothing to help me that day.”

Rick’s noises grated on his nerves. The ball gag stopped him from forming words, but he could still scream behind it. Troy had laid the beautiful daisy form on the floor, rolling Rick’s naked bulk on top of it. He’d made the form a decade ago in a welding class, and it’d hung on the wall in his bedroom. It’d reminded him of Colleen and the single daisy she’d always tucked into her dark ponytail at camp.

A sign of innocence and purity.

The boys had taken that away from her.

After he’d killed Carson Scott, he’d stood staring at the white body, wanting some way to permanently mark it for Colleen, to show the world that this sacrifice had been for her. A scene from a cop show had appeared in his mind, along with the explanation of the odd blanching on dead bodies that indicated what they’d lain on for hours after death. The daisy. It’d been simple and perfect.

He closed his eyes and ignored Rick’s pleas behind the gag, remembering every second of the day his world had changed. In his mind he saw the daisy left on the ground after Aaron and Rick had taken Colleen’s body to the bridge. Joe had accidentally stepped on the daisy that’d fallen out of her hair and crushed it. Troy had kept his gaze on the flower rather than on Colleen’s battered body.

“Wuss,” Carson snapped at him.

Troy jerked up his head and looked at his circle of friends. Friends? Are they really my friends? “Did we just do this?” Troy gasped. “Did we kill her?”

“They did it,” Joe whispered. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You were here!” Rick snapped at him. “You didn’t say anything. That makes you an accomplice!”

Troy stared at the four boys. The woods surrounding their camp were dense and they were a mile away from the camp buildings. No one knew where they were. If someone had wanted to commit the perfect crime, this had been the place to do it.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

They’d gone to the river to see if Colleen was in her usual spot relaxing with a book. For a week the boys had ogled and joked about the good-looking cook at the camp. All the attendees had a crush on her, but she simply smiled and ignored them. Rumor had it that she was engaged to a rich guy in medical school, but she didn’t wear a ring.

Rick and Aaron were the most enamored. Troy and Joe could see she was plainly out of their league, and why would an older woman be interested in high school boys? But the others seemed to view her as a challenge. Rick bragged about his experience with girls. Claimed to have slept with five and swore they’d all loved it. Troy kept his mouth shut but nodded along like he knew what Rick meant. He was a virgin. Sure, he’d had his share of crushes on girls, but had never had the guts to ask one out.

The camp was for rocket fanatics. There was nothing he loved better than the science behind the toys. Watching something he’d built shoot into the sky was intoxicating. Rick swore sex was better, but rockets were a close second. They all dreamed of building rockets that went higher and faster. Troy knew the other kids at his school thought he was a geek and a nerd, but here he was among peers who understood him.