Addicted To You .L.S.

Thirty Eight.

Now (June)

"Are you really gonna make me wait in the car?" Kylie asks as we drive down the dirt road leading to Rachel's house. I park behind her mud-splattered Chevy and get out, trying to ignore how my legs are still shaking.
"No," I say reluctantly. "Come on."

She follows me up the porch steps, and I knock hard on the door. The impatience that I've kept at bay leaps to life again.
What had she found?
Rachel doesn't answer, but I hear the rumble of an engine in the distance, so Kylie and I walk around the house to the back field. The dogs are lying on the deck, panting in the heat. Rachel's riding an ancient mower, cutting swathes of long, summer-beached grass in the yard. She waves when she spots us, cutting the engine and hopping off, walking towards us.

"Who's this?" She asks when she gets close to the porch.
"Kylie."
Rachel raises an eyebrow. "Seriously?"
"I think she's on our side now," I say.
"That's right," Kylie says. "Hi." She hold out her hand to her and she takes it, frowning.
"You're going to have to fill me in later, Louis," she says.
"Will do," I say, trying to conceal my impatience. "Now what did you find out?"
Rachel wipes her forehead, clearing the sweat beating down her temples. "Come inside. I've got it all set up. It's better if you see it."

She leads us to her living room, where she's got a laptop sitting on the coffee table. She clicks and taps for a few seconds, then flips the switch on the projector she's got rigged next to it. On the wall opposite us, her desktop appears. "I've got to say, your boy? He was thorough." Rachel clicks on a file labeled TL, and my eyes widen as the first thing I see is: September 28: Jackie Dennings disappears while as jogging on Clear Creek Road (approx. 6PM). Mother calls polic when she doesn't return by dinner (approx. 8PM) Police recover pink sweater at the side of Clear Creek Road (approx. 9PM). I scan the rest of the page. It's a time line. My chest is tight with triumph. I'd been right Harry chasing after a story got him killed. "What is this?" Kylie asks.
"They're Harry's notes," I say as Rachel clicks arrow, revealing another date on Harry's time line: Matthew Clarke (Jackie's boyfriend) is out body toning. "This is the reason we were out at the Point. Rachel, are all the files on the drive about Jackie Dennings?"
"Yeah." Rachel minimizes the time line and brings up re files, newspaper articles, their headlines blaring Community Searches Missing Girl: No sign of Local and Two Years Later, Dennings' Disappearance still a Mystery. "Fuck," Kylie says.
"What?" I ask.
"Last year, Harry asked me to get my brother to give him Amy Dennings's phone number. Tanner and Amy are friends."
"Jackie's little sister?" I ask.
Kylie nods. "You remember when Jackie disappeared? We started freshman year. There were all those vigils."
"Gem was upset," I say. "She and Jackie were in the same class."
I look at the article Rachel's projector beams onto the wall, Jackie Dennings's face smiles at me, her straight blond hair brushing her shoulders, blue eyes full of warmth. What had Harry found that made him chase after this so recklessly?

"What else do the notes say?" I ask Rachel "Jackie Dennings has been missing for almost three years," Rachel says. "They never found any trace of her. No sightings. She's just..gone. I don't mean to sound all dire or anything, but she's almost definitely dead. And Harry thinks so too." Rachel taps on the keyboard for a few seconds and the newspaper articles disappear, replaced with map the county. There's a big circle drawn around the northwest corner, and when I look closer, I see that right at the centre of the circle is Clear Creek Road, where Jackie disappeared.

"Was he looking for places where Jackie's body could have been?" I ask, feeling sick.
"Well, yeah," Rachel says. "I mean, I don't know if he was going into the woods with a shovel, but he mapped it out. Estimated how far whoever took Jackie would be able to get before the police would be able to put up roadblocks. Harry's theory was that Jackie got abducted on Creek Road then taken to a second location, killed there, and dumped.
  "West of town, he had half the lake to choose from." I shake my head.
"And the lakes only 10 miles away," Rachel sighs. "The ideal place to dumb a body. Never to be found."
"So you're saying whoever took and probably killed Jackie Dennings three years ago killed Harry, too?" Kylie finally speaks up.
"Well, if she was meeting someone for a story, it was most certainly this story," Rachel continues. "And he was interviewing people connected to the case. There are three audio files of him interviewing Jackie's family members and the boyfriend. That's probably why he wanted Amy's number from you, Kylie. Amy's interview is on the thumb drive."
My breath catches in my throat and something twists inside me, a weird mix of dead and wonder. "There's... his voice.. it's Harry talking?" I manage to get out.
Rachel reaches over and squeezes my hand. "Do you want me to play them?"
A sickening heat floods me, half want, half protest. No.
I'm not ready.
"No," I say quickly. "No. Please. Don't."
There's an exhalation of breath behind me, a relieved sigh from Kylie.

"He had a lot of material," Rachel mumbles. "I swear he saved ever article ever written about Jackie. And his suspect list is so detailed—he was good at this."
"Too good," I sigh. "He got too close. He was going to figure it out. And he stopped him so he wouldn't tell."
Rachel looks between us, "there is one thing." She says, "I think the killer tried to warn him. Tried to get him to back off."
"What?!" Kylie and I say at the same time.
"Seriously, look." Rachel brings forward Harry's timeline again, paging forward. "The time line's huge; it spans years. The most recent entry is December, just a few months before harry was killed. Look at what it says."

December 5: Warning note received. Senders been tipped off
(Accidentally? On purpose?)
December 20: Note #2 received. Going to lie low. Just to be safe
I'm paralyzed for a moment with anger, consumed by it. Why did he have to be so secretive all the time? He should've known better. Should've known he wasn't invulnerable. I hate him for being so reckless. For not bothering to think about all of us, left in his wake.

"That's what the killer meant," I manage to whisper. "That night. He said 'I warned you' before he shot him."
"He was getting threatening notes and he didn't even tell us?" Kylie looks bewildered. "He would've told the police," she adds, but she sounds so uncertain, because deep down she knows she's wrong. She's trying to hide, to forget, what he was really like. How he'd existed half in this world, have in his own, and how he'd break the rules. It'd be so beautiful to be a part of it that you'd play along, follow him anywhere, just to bask in his glow. "Or Gem?" she suggests, when Rachel and I say nothing. "Maybe he told Gem?"
"If he had told Gem he was being threatened, trust me, we wouldn't even be having this discussion," I say. "He'd be alive right now. Because Gem would've locked him in his room and called the cops. That's why he didn't tell her. That's why he didn't tell anyone." Kylie looks out the window at nothing as Rachel bites her lip, her gaze flitting back and forth between the two of us. "He wouldn't have gone out there that night if he thought he was meeting the person who sent those notes though," Kylie says, breaking the uncomfortable lull. This time, there's no uncertainty in her voice.
"Are you sure about that?" Rachel asks, and she's looking more at me than Kylie. I almost shrug, but Kylie beats me to it. "No," she says firmly. "Not with Louis there. If he thought it would be dangerous, he would've come up with an excuse to leave Louis at home."
"He didn't treat me-"
"You don't know how much he worried about you relapsing-he always talked to me about it. He wouldn't have put you in danger."

Heat crawls along my cheeks, and the silence goes on too long, until Rachel clears her throat. "So that means it was someone he didn't suspect," I say.
"It means more than that," Kylie says. "It means it was someone she trusted." Kylie's right, of course. It makes me sick that he just walked into it. That the killer gained his trust, manipulated him into meeting him out there, and he'd gone, because he had that hunger to know.
"There aren't any scans or photos of the warning notes," I ask. Rachel shakes her head. "No. She would've kept them, though, right?" "Definitely." I say.
"But the police searched her room," Kylie says. "Not very well—I found the thumb drive under the floorboards."
"We should go through it again, then," Kylie says.
"I can't really do that," I say, taking a breath. "Why not?" Kylie asks.
"Gem," Rachel answers, when it becomes apparent that I won't.
"0h yeah," Kylie says, and she has the grace to look guilty. "She's really pissed at you. I'll go talk to her. I'll explain everything. Tell her I lied, that it wasn't like your fault you were at the Point. Don't worry. Gem's totally whipped over you—she'll forgive you."
I firmly ignore the last thing because I hate thinking about it, and instead I look up at Kylie. "If you tell Gem the truth, she'll kick your ass."
"I can handle myself," Kylie mutters.
"It's not a good idea," I say hastily, more for Gems sake than Kylie's.
"But–"
"Drop it, Kylie." I snap. "Rachel, what else have you got?"
"Not much. I'll make copies of all the this for you both. You guys knew him, the way he worked and thought; you might be able to see something I didn't."
"We can meet again in a few days," Kylie suggests. "Compare notes?"
"Sounds good," Rachel says, looking at me for my consent.
I nod. "Yeah, sounds good."