T*Witches: Double Jeopardy by H.B. Gilmour, Randi Reisfeld Page A

child abuse rant. She could buy that.
    What set Alex’s alarm ringing were Kenya’s dumb answers to what she’d wanted to see Dylan about. Ranging from “I don’t know” to “borrowing a book” to “homework help,” the jittery girl couldn’t lie and look Alex in the eye at the same time.
    “Run that by me again,” Alex suggested.
    “Okay, okay. I just wanted to catch him before —” Kenya stopped and switched from nail-gnawing to lip-nibbling. “Not
before
,” she corrected herself. “I mean, I just needed to talk to him, you know?”
    “Not really.” Alex cocked her head and listened intently.
    Kenya’s brain was a babble of fears, excuses, questions, and pain. Alex was having a hard time cutting through the hysterical mess to find out what the wigged-out girl was really thinking. She’d caught one complete sentence —
How could anyone think my parents did this to me?
— when a weird click-clacking noise broke her concentration.
    Alex glanced over at the police cruiser.
    Did the cops have a laptop? Were they using some handheld computer device? The officers weren’t even in their car, Alex realized; they were still inside with Dylan’s panicked parents. She looked up at the blond boy’s window, half expecting to see him at his desk, hunched over his PC. But he was gone. MIA. And probably in bigger trouble than Emily and Dave could imagine.
    So who was tapping on a keyboard? “Can you hear that?” she asked Kenya.
    “What?” the flipped girl asked.
    “A computer,” Alex said. “Someone’s on a computer —”
    Kenya went ashen. “He told you,” she cried. “Dag, I can’t believe it.”
    “Who told me what?” Alex asked.
    But Kenya, bandaged knee, sore cheek, bruised eye, and all, tore out of there without another word.
    Alex hoped Cam was having better luck.
    Not so far.
    Cam and Jason had checked out three different Candle Connection locations and hadn’t found a Dumpster that matched the one Thantos had shown the twins.
    “I don’t get it,” Jason said after the third stop. “Imean, I know you get these wild hunches. And you said your brother mentioned a Dumpster. But how do you know it wasn’t that green one we saw behind The Candle Connection on Pierce Street?”
    “Um, because …” Cam tried to come up with something believable. “That one was … plastic,” she mumbled as they pulled up behind The Candle Connection superstore in the mall outside of Salem.
    She didn’t say that she’d developed a reverse game of hot-or-cold, that at the earlier sites, she’d felt a dull warmth, but that as they’d approached this mall, her hands and feet had felt strangely icy. And that now as they pulled into the parking lot at the back of the buildings, chills were rattling through her.
    “It’s h-here,” she managed to stammer.
    “Where?” Jason asked, scanning the lot.
    “You must have passed it,” Cam told the confused boy. “Go back.”
    Jason did a U-ee and headed back in the direction they’d come from.
    “There it is!” Shivering, Cam was hugging herself, staring at the gray metal Dumpster hidden from view behind piles of boxes. “Over there. See — there’s the store.”
    Jason could see The Candle Connection sign on thewarehouse-sized building but not the Dumpster, the massive iron box with its half-worn-away logo. But, following Cam’s directions, he parked near the trash, then watched, scratching his handsome, dark-haired head, as she bolted from his car and raced through an obstacle course of refuse behind the store.
    Shaking with cold, Cam scaled the hill of rubble hiding the Dumpster and peered down into the box. At first, almost relieved, she saw nothing important. Huge green plastic bags surrounded by bubble wrap, wrapping paper, bottles, and cardboard cartons.
    Then a bit of twinkling gold metal caught her eye. She telescoped in on the object.
    There, wedged between a plastic bag and a collapsed carton, was Dylan’s earring.
    Her heart froze. Was