Where Evil Waits by Kate Brady

than once. But even the cheap prepaid phones might have GPSes, so he accounted for that. He always disposed of them somewhere out of the way, the minute he was finished sending Kara a message.
    This time, he hadn’t gone as far as usual: He still had to catch Megan tonight and time was ticking. But this would do—a secluded old bridge in Sandy Springs. It would be the first time a message had been sent from the Atlanta area, but even if Kara did have a way of tracking it, which was doubtful, it wouldn’t do her any good. The phone would be in pieces at the bottom of the river and Sasha would be long gone.
    Besides, Kara wouldn’t go to the police now. Not after what happened to Louie Guilford. And not after he’d made it clear that Aidan was in his sights, too.
    Sasha dropped the battery and the cell phone onto the pavement, crushed both with the heel of his shoe, and tossed them over the bridge and into the river. He wiped off his palms and hurried back to his van.
    Megan was waiting.

CHAPTER
8
     
    P OLICE? K ARA’S BREATH STOPPED. She stepped down two more stairs to look out the window with Varón, but the doorbell rang. Oh, God.
    “What do they want?” Aidan asked in a whisper.
    “I don’t know,” said Varón.
    “They found Penny Wolff,” Kara said. “They must have. They must know I was there.”
    “You don’t know that.” Varón cupped both her shoulders, turning her square to him. “Listen to me—last chance. Do you still want to go underground?” he asked, and Kara could hardly think. Too many images in her mind… Penny Wolff, with the scarf piled on her lap and a coil of wire, her throat marked and her eyes bulging… Louie, lying on the sidewalk bleeding with the boys looking on… And the picture of him on her phone:
How is Aidan?
    Varón’s fingers bit into her upper arms. “Kara,” he said, and her first name coming from his lips startled her into looking up at him. “Do you want to go through with this?”
    Reality rolled back into grasp. “Yes,” she said, takingAidan’s hand. He seemed taller and older than he’d been just yesterday. And yet, still a child. “Can you do this, Aidan?”
    “We have to,” he said, “before he kills someone else.”
Me.
He didn’t say it, but Kara knew the thought was there.
    Varón took the pillowcase and handed it to Aidan, along with the macramé bag. “Take these,” he said in a hush, then turned back to Kara. “Aidan and I will go down the back stairs and wait in the dining room. You find out what the police want. Don’t offer any information about Penny Wolff.”
    “I have to tell them—”
    “She’s dead, Kara, there’s nothing you can do to change that. Listen to me. You’ve always had reason to hate Penny Wolff. You went to her house and were probably the last one to see her alive. Your son is carrying her bloody neck scarf in that bag.”
    Kara closed her eyes. He was right. “What if they’re here to arrest me?”
    “They aren’t. There’s only one car and no lights or sirens.”
    Yes. The arrest of an Assistant District Attorney would be a bigger deal than that.
    Varón’s hands came to her face. He rubbed his thumbs over her brows, then drew them down over her lashes and cheeks, hard. “Easy,” he said when she tried to pull away. He ruffled her hair. “It’s the middle of the night. You need to look like you fell asleep in your clothes.”
    Oh. Yes, of course. She wasn’t thinking clearly. The world was spinning and her one source of stability was Luke Varón.
    The doorbell rang again. Varón held his hand open in front of her and for a second she didn’t understand. Thenit dawned on her that she still held her pistol. This one was loaded, but up to now, he’d never made a move to take it from her.
    So this was the moment: Trust Varón or not. She turned and looked at Aidan holding a bag of disguises she’d already gathered and a pillowcase filled with bizarre evidence of some terrifying murder scheme, and