Truly, Madly, Deadly

Truly, Madly, Deadly, Part 5

Author’s note: Thanks for reading! Please vote, comment and like! Truly, Madly, Deadly is the first of my YA thrillers published with Sourcebooks – coming soon in January is See Jayne Run. All of my books are available in print and digital from any major retailer.

Copyright © 2013 by Hannah Jayne

 

Sawyer doubled over and held her head in her hands, her mind racing, trying to go back to that day, trying to go back to the day she had spent the last three weeks desperately trying to block out.

Had she taken a pill? Had she blacked out or blocked it out?

Her breath caught in her throat as her heart tried to hammer its way out of her chest. She shook her head.

No. There was no way. I would have remembered…right?

She felt the wind on her face, the moist, biting sting of the wind as she jogged down the hill, picking up speed as she put precious distance between her and Kevin.

“I was running,” Sawyer mumbled. “If I was running, I wasn’t wearing flats.”

She thought back, clamping her eyes shut, trying to remember the way it felt each time her foot hit the ground. Before a track meet she would pinch her eyes closed and concentrate on the feeling of her feet falling in perfect quick-time rhythm, hitting the red clay of the track just softly enough to propel her forward one more step.

How did her foot feel?

“Ms. Dodd?” Principal Chappie poked his head out of his office, his voice shaking Sawyer out of her revelry. She sighed as her mind failed to grasp the image of her leaving that night.

“I’m right here,” Sawyer said, standing up slowly.

Principal Chappie stood aside and ushered Sawyer down the hall. He pushed open the door and she followed him in.

“Sawyer,” Principal Chappie said, arm extended. “This is Ms. Alum, the grief counselor.”

Sawyer swallowed hard, looking from Principal Chappie to the tiny, dark-haired grief counselor who couldn’t have been more than five years older than she was. She had heavy black lashes over wide, eager, brown eyes and a pin-tucked charcoal suit that was all at once businesslike and sexy.

“I don’t need to see a grief counselor, Principal Chappie. Sorry, Ms. Alum. They already make me see a psychologist twice a week. I’m really kind of grief-counseled out.” Sawyer hiked her backpack up her shoulder and turned to go, but was stopped when she came chest to tweed-coated chest with a mustached man, his stubby fingers clutching a black leather notebook.

“And this is Detective Biggs.”

Sawyer’s breath hitched. “Oh.”