The idea would not leave Sarah.

Whether it was held in place by fear, hope, ambition, or curiosity, the idea of a genuine lead would not leave her alone. The last three weeks had been an endless stream of teases and almost-hints, signs that she wasn’t sure were even actually signs. It was something between a clear giveaway and a red herring, and she had no solution on how to sort it out.

Michael’s lessons had continued apace. Every Monday she checked in with him before school, and every Monday she met up with him after school to see what could take extra effort. A short demonstration of the typical blind spots in security systems, with a lens to making sure that she wouldn’t be fooled by somebody sneaking up on her personally. Another small jaunt to the woods to an abandoned car that had once belonged to somebody to teach how to hotwire cars, complete with the discovery that her push daggers weren’t very usable for accessing the ignition and the suspicion that she wasn’t very good with anything that involved wires. A walking tour of the suburbs where Michael pointed out every handhold that could be used to climb the side of a house like Sarah’s, whether it was up through the windows, over the back, or even across a tree that even leaned vaguely towards the window. The last option was one he had specified was reserved for the most acrobatic people due to the level of skill some of those tricks would require, but he still pointed out the possibility.

It was information she could use to defend herself, to make sure that nobody would come for her before she could leave. He was giving her tools to keep herself safe. On two of those occasions, he had agreed to go out for food again after, once from the fast food place again and once getting takeout from the pizza parlor that everybody agreed was far from superb quality but also wasn’t bad enough to make people actually stop going there. It had been fun.

But he had never taken back the suggestion he’d made. Michael still thought that there was something wrong, and that Brad’s plan was connected.

He had never actually said that, but the evidence supported the idea.

“He was watching you?”

“He was, yeah.” Jane’s end of the phone call crackled with static interference from her sink running. “He said he wasn’t going full stalker, he was just using me to find other leads on this whole conspiracy thing.”

Sarah dropped her pencil onto her desk, homework vanishing from her focus. “Well? Did he find anything?”

“That’s what you’re worried about? Really? Michael Jay was watching me for two weeks and your biggest worry is what he found?” The static hid most of her tone, but Sarah could tell that Jane was smiling on the other end. “Weren’t you just hanging out with him earlier this week? You should have hit him for me.”

“Honestly, he’d probably let me get away with it.” She leaned back in her desk chair. “If you said he stopped then he probably doesn’t care anymore. I don’t really know, though.”

“You should anyway.” There was a clattering noise as Jane put the phone down, and Sarah waited for the sound of shuffling fabric to finish before she heard anything again. “Even if it was a stakeout, I almost called the cops on him. He could have at least told me what was going on.”

“...so is that a yes or a no–” “Yes, Sarah, punch him. He deserves it.”

“Alright, alright.” She put one hand up in surrender. “I’ll try and not die in the process.”

Jane scoffed, absently moving something in the background. Her wounds had been healing decently well, the scabbing having faded to irritated scars by now, but she was still being sure to keep what scabs were left clean while they healed. The scars were worse on her neck than on her face, a clear and waxy line compared to a few faint marks up by her ear. It could have been far worse.

Sarah pursed her lips, a sudden weight in the back of her mind. “Jane?” She muttered into the phone.

“Yeah?”

“Isn’t it messed up that we’re just sort of on board with being staked out?”

There was a burst of confusing noise, and it took Sarah a moment to realize that it was Jane snorting. “Yeah. There’s a conspiracy that wants you dead and thinks I’m a fair target. That’s the screwy part. Being hunted like that sucks.”

“No, no, I mean–” She sighed. “Why is that normal? Why are assassination conspiracies and stakeouts of people you expect to be dead in a week normal? It’s insane, that this–this is just the daily schedule here. You almost died! Somebody tried to cut your throat open! This entire thing is just absurd!”

Jane let out a long-suffering exhale, the sound that Sarah knew she made whenever the questions of Ravenville’s rules and their consequences were raised. “Look, Sarah, that’s just sort of how it is. Just roll with it, okay? Honestly, they might have even given up by now. It’s been so long since they tried something.”

“But it still happened, even if they’re done. And I don’t think they’re done, because Michael still thinks they’re active.”

“Did he say that?” “He didn’t say they weren’t.”

“Look, Sarah, whatever Joe and Brad and Matthew and whoever else were cooking, they did it on their own. They didn’t do it because the demon sitting under the superintendent’s house told them to. They’re not going to magically give you all the answers you ever wanted.”

“So you’re saying there are answers.”

The sudden silence was conspicuous, the total lack of noise one makes when they are uncertain they can speak even to the open air. Sarah waited, letting it stretch on for a full minute before Jane dared to whisper something again.

“The rules are the rules. The payback rule, the cops, they’re here for a reason. Whatever it is, we don’t need to know, we’re just leaving it there and doing what we can.”

“I’m not going to sit here and let myself die, Jane!” Sarah shouted. “Or you! I’m going to find out what’s wrong with Ravenville before I leave. Whatever it is. I’m not going to stand for sitting through this bullshit of people dying every other week just because that’s how it’s supposed to be. I’m not–it’s all wrong, Jane! It’s all screwed up and wrong, and I don’t want to see this happen again.”

A different type of silence silence, shocked this time, and Jane didn’t whisper when she broke it. “God, Sarah, I know you hate it here. Just calm down. Please,” she added. “Just calm down.”

“Okay, fine, I’ll calm down.” Sarah stood up and threw herself onto her bed. “But I’m not going to let this sit, Jane, I’m so close. I’m almost there.”

“Just let it sit,” Jane pleaded, “Sarah, just let it go. You can absolutely forget about this. Just ask Michael for a lead on the gang–”

“But that’s not it. I want the truth that they point to, not just the names and the ability to choose where they’re buried.”

“Not exactly many other options,” Jane muttered.

“There always are.”

Sarah pulled the phone away from her ear, staring at the ceiling. She was so, so, so close to something. Even the slightest clue would give her what she needed, a way to dig deeper, dig into the meat and soot and find out what was hidden at the core. But she needed that start, she needed the way in.

She would find out, however she needed to.

Jane was still talking into the phone, her voice distant. “...but you just need to wait it out. If it dies down, it dies down. Just punch Michael Jay for being weird and keep going. You’re going to get out of this okay.”

She squeezed the phone in her grasp.

“I can’t wait.”

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“What?”

“I can’t wait, Jane.” Not anymore. “I’m so close, I can’t. I want to know what it is and I’m going to find out, damn the torpedoes. It’s coming too close to me to ignore it anymore.”

“So what are you going to do?” Jane sounded morose, and Sarah understood why. She already knew her plan. It was an obvious one.

“I’m going to head them off at the source.” She stood up off the bed, holding the phone with one hand as the other began rifling through her closet for dark clothes. “If I can find out what they’re planning before they strike, then I can stop them, and get the evidence I need. In, out, and get my clues.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Jane sighed. “Please be careful, Sarah.”

“Relax,” she replied as she pulled out a black sweater, “I’m going to be perfectly safe about it. Quick, quiet, in, and out. I’m not going to be trying to fight anybody.”

The reply she got was an indistinct sound of understanding, and an hour later Sarah was hopping the fence of the house next to Brad’s, wearing a black sweater, dark jeans, black boots, and her darkest raincoat. She had a set of lockpicks in one coat pocket and her gloves in the other, the push dagger tucked into the inside pocket. No wallet, no keys, no phone, all to keep her profile as low as possible.

Sarah pulled the gloves on and took a careful look into Brad’s backyard, trying to gauge any possible hiding spots. There were two bushes on either side of the backdoor, and no actual lights on the outside of the house, but every window facing the backyard had a light behind it. She didn’t see any shadows in them, though, so she waited another moment before pulling herself over the fence, landing with a slight thump, and scampering her way towards the bushes while trying to regain her balance.

She nearly pitched face-first into the branches once she made it there, one hand bracing against the siding as she managed to get both feet solid and drop down into a stable crouch. The walls of the houses were too thick to hear anything through, and she leaned forward to see if there was anybody inside. The sliding backdoor was clear, the lights inside the sunroom and kitchen glowing a steady yellow, no shadows interrupting them until they got to the door. Sarah slowly leaned towards the lock on the door and tugged the handle to see if it was unlocked, coming away unsurprised at how little give there was. She fished the lockpicks out of her pocket and picked out a set that seemed to be the appropriate size, sliding the turning tool into the keyhole and slipping the pick in before getting to work.

It took a long while, not that she knew exactly how long, for her to get the door open. There was a definite delay in how long that actually took her versus how long she had expected it to take, but she got in eventually, and didn’t snap the pick in the process. It did take her an extra minute to get the pick back out from the lock, but once she did, the door was open, and she took a cautious step inside.

The alarm didn’t go off, and she took another two steps inside until the sound of a raised yet muffled voice met her ears. She couldn’t tell what it was saying, and she held still for several moments until the front door slammed and somebody walked out. Another person inside the house sighed, stomping back up the stairs and going somewhere on the upper floor. She couldn’t tell what was happening, crouched down just outside the kitchen and pressed herself up against a wall, but then the phone rang on her level for a moment before cutting off, and she got an idea.

She didn’t hear any steps from downstairs as she crept towards what she assumed to be an office, the single down shut next to the open laundry room. It was dull inside, a few family pictures on the wall and some small collectibles on a table full of papers and a large computer. The landline sat next to the monitor, a single indicator flashing the sign that the line was active. She slowly reached over and picked the phone up, putting the other hand on the receiver to not interrupt the call.

“So are you going to do something?” That was Aaron Fitzrun, she knew, one of Brad’s friends.

“Obviously, dumbass, that’s the whole point.” And that was Brad, on the house’s landline. “We’re going to do something. We’ve just been waiting for the chance.”

“Is that why Louis tried to call me earlier? He sounded all grumpy. You know that he’s not wrong.”

“Dude, I know it’s been a while, I’ve just been waiting.”

Aaron grumbled. “Three weeks is a really long time.”

“Yeah, well, Mike Jay’s been on my ass the whole time. I know he’s watching me, waiting for some shit to drop. I called you to explain why Louis is being a dipshit, man.”

“I don’t know, he sounds right to me.”

Sarah took another look around and quietly sat down in the desk chair, trying to keep it from creaking as much as possible. This was important. He really was talking about something now, and she had to listen.

“Look. We give it another week, okay?” Brad’s voice sounded strained. “I don’t want to sit on my ass either, dude. But when Mike Jay’s standing around watching me like a friggin hawk, I’m not going to push my luck. By this time next week, he’s going to have stopped looking. And then we can do it all again.”

Aaron made several grunts of assent as Sarah kept her eye on the hallway, ready for any sign of somebody coming in to signal her time to go. “Do you still want to go for Polera first? You know that she’s not the target.”

“I’m like a fifty-fifty on that shit, man. She went for payback, and you gotta really be invested to go for payback. You know why we’re after her, and if she’s playing along, then it doesn’t work anymore.”

“We just look like a bunch of cats carrying a dead rat around, yeah.”

Sarah moved the phone away from her ear for a second in time to hear a handful of steps upstairs, the sound of somebody pacing. Brad was saying something, but she kept herself on the edge of the chair, ready to book it out of there when she needed to. Not yet, but as soon as she was in danger.

The pacing continued, but stayed in the same place, and she brought the phone back up to her ear.

“...chloroform.” That was the first thing she heard Brad say. “I don’t know where to buy it, but we can totally get our hands on it. There’s probably some way to cook it up. Then we just carry her out to somewhere and bam, done. Use Ken’s body stashing site for it, probably.”

“Mhm. And this is about Sarah, right?”

“Pfft, yeah. Who the hell else would it be?”

Acid spilled up all through Sarah’s throat as she listened, and Aaron kept talking. “We can’t bury her right away, remember? That’s the entire other half of the plan.”

“Shiiiiit, you’re right.” The footsteps paused, and she got the feeling that Brad was shrugging. “Ah well. We’ll figure it out. Hacksaw from the grocery store, and there’s a cooler in my garage we won’t need. Toss the chunks of her we need in there.”

All the blood in Sarah’s body felt like it rushed to her head as she stood up. They were talking about dismembering her and throwing her into the cooler like she was an over-large piece of steak. Disgust mixed with terror with rage as she faintly groped around her coat for the inside pocket, searching for the knife to end this there and then, before the sound of something falling snapped her back to reality.

She turned around in time to see the desk chair hit the ground hard, a single loud crack echoing through the house, chased by the rattle of bolts and plastic parts knocked from their alignment. The entire house seemed to hush, Brad’s pacing freezing as both people in the call went silent.

“Was that your end?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah, that was my–” Brad stopped.

The floor creaked, slowly, small steps being taken. They moved towards where they’d began, a spot near the front stairs but still set back, somewhere she thought was Brad’s room. There was a pause, save for the heavy breathing coming through one end of the call.

And then a yell loud enough to make the floor feel like it was shaking.

“Somebody’s on my FUCKING line!”

Sarah didn’t wait to see what else he was saying, tossing the phone away and running out of the office and back down the hall as fast as she could. She stumbled as she turned into the kitchen, heart clawing its way up her throat and feet moving as fast as she could. Something hit the floor behind her, vague noises of movement transforming into the distinct sounds of footsteps as she wildly flailed out towards the chair arranged around the kitchen table to knock some over behind her. The person behind her stumbled, and she all but threw herself through the sliding door and pulled it shut. It slammed into place as she slipped, back hitting the cold grass, and looked up through the glass.

Brad’s face was red and furious, panting from light exertion, and Sarah saw death in his eyes. He reached for the door handle, and she just ran, vaulting the fence as fast as she could and dropping onto the road behind his house.

She couldn’t go back to her own house. That would be suicide at this point. They didn’t just want her dead, they wanted her chopped up, and there was no way Brad was going to wait another week to try it now. But she had the plan and she had to stay alive somehow.

Her house was north, so she ran south, straight across the street and past the next row of houses, into another backyard where she began pounding on the backdoor in a panic. There was no window, but nobody responded, so she kept slamming on the door until it was yanked open and she stumbled forward a step.

James blinked at her in confusion. “Sarah? Wh–what are you doing here?”

She took a deep, shaky breath.

“I need to call Michael.”