In Your Dreams (In Your Dreams #1)

Chapter 26

The clock on my nightstand tells me it's nearly midnight. Even though I'm grounded, I'm getting ready to go out, and for the first time in my life, I'm not using the front door.

"You're sure you're up to this?" Kieran whispers from where he stands outside my bedroom window, which faces the fields at the back of the house. My response is to sit down on the sill and swing my legs out, Kieran reaching to grab me under the arms so he can help me to the ground. I inhale the night air into my lungs, my first taste of the outside world in the week-almost to the hour-since the accident. And although my head still aches sometimes, my legs are still bruised, and my right hand's still bandaged, stepping out into the darkness works some instant therapeutic magic.

"Never felt better." I smile, silencing Kieran's groan at my response with a quick kiss. "Kayla's parked by the road?" I check with him when we part.

"Just like we planned. Come on."

Kieran takes my hand, and we start walking in the direction of his house, but we turn toward the blacktop once we're a safe enough distance from my house anyone looking out the windows wouldn't be able to see us against the night.

"Any trouble getting over here?" I ask.

"Nope. Once Kayla put the car in gear, I just gave it a little push, and she was able to coast all the way down to the road without starting it. Thanks for the tip."

"No problem." I snicker, knowing my mom would regret telling me about how Jimmy McCaffery used to sneak out of his house when they were our age if she had any inkling of what I'm up to right now.

Kayla starts the Jeep once she catches sight of us near the blacktop. She shoots me a quick "hi" as I crawl into the back seat, and after Kieran buckles himself in on the passenger side, she revs the engine to make the u-turn, her right front tire skidding through the dirt on the shoulder before she straightens up to head down the road in the direction of, and then past, the Lanier house. In minutes, Kayla's slowing to take the left turn onto the gravel path leading to the boat launch. "You might want to hit the brights and take this slow," I suggest, not bothering to hide the sarcasm in my voice. "Road's kind of tricky."

"So I've heard," Kayla says, smirking at me in the rearview.

We rumble down the path at about fifteen miles an hour, a speed that almost seems as if we're moving backwards compared to the last time I drove down here. Without any reminder, Kayla slows to a nearly complete stop and rolls over the final rut, coasting us out to the boat launch area, where she pulls over next to the tree line at the left and turns the engine off about a minute before we're scheduled to meet Morgan Levert.

"I still can't believe you thought meeting here was a good idea," Kayla says as we gather next to the passenger side of the Jeep, the still-burning headlights casting an eerie glow out on the river's surface. Both Kieran and Kayla squint into the darkness ahead of us, looking for Morgan to come walking out of the woods, but the water grabs my attention, the tiny ripples revealing no hint of Frank's car-or Frank-resting on the muddy bottom.

"We needed to meet somewhere private we could all get to easily in the middle of the night," Kieran starts. "I don't remember you suggesting anyplace better."

Kieran switches on the flashlight he's holding to reveal Morgan Levert standing near the trees on the opposite end of the boat launch, near where the Camaro came to rest after the accident. His sudden appearance, as if he's a stain only visible under infrared light, makes my skin crawl.

"Light's in my eyes, you know," he yells over at us, and Kieran instead angles the flashlight towards his own face. Morgan pulls a smaller, pen-sized flashlight from his jeans pocket and holds it under his chin, prompting Kayla and I to fish our phones out of our jacket pockets, allowing the lit-up home screens to show our faces to Morgan. He takes a few steps toward us, but as soon as he's more than halfway across the gravel, Kayla holds out her hand and yells "Stop! Don't come any closer."