CHAPTER 39 MATT

39

Matt

THEY DROVE IN SILENCE, Riley sandwiched between them, trembling.

Matt didn't slow until a block before Main Street, and he only slowed because he didn't have a choice. People were jumping in front of his cruiser, trying to stop him. Yelling and beating on the vehicle when he didn't. Even Artie Johnson, all 350 pounds of him; he thundered out from the sidewalk and smacked both meaty palms against the driver-side door. He had a black eye and his nose was bloody, resting at a weird angle, certainly broken. He shouted something about Henry Wilburt, the man who owned the local drugstore, then flipped Matt off and wobbled back to the sidewalk when Matt only shook his head and pressed the button that chirped his cruiser's siren.

"What the hell is happening, Matt?" Gabby said in a voice that might have come from a child. "It's like they're all …"

She didn't finish the sentence, probably for the same reason Matt couldn't complete the thought in his head, not for lack of trying, but he couldn't find a word that fit—

Sick? Infected? Crazy? Angry? Paranoid?

Maybe all of the above. Maybe this couldn't be described with one word.

He was only certain of one thing—it started this morning with the birds. It started when that girl appeared from nowhere.

Hitting the siren one more time to clear the space in front of the sheriff's office, he parked at the curb and killed the motor. From outside, the sounds of all the chaos rolled in—alarms, shouting, a scream in the distance. He could only imagine what was going on inside. Matt turned to Gabby. "When we get in there, I want you and Riley to head straight for my office and lock the door. You don't open for anyone but me, Sally, or Ellie, understand?"

Gabby's eyes were still rimmed with red, but she had moved on to anger. It only grew worse when Addie Gallagher appeared at the front door of the sheriff's office, motioning for Matt to get inside with a frantic wave of her hand.

Gabby looked like she could tear the woman's throat out with her teeth. "No. I don't think I'll do that."

Grabbing Riley by the arm, she started to get out of the car.

Matt stopped her. "Promise me you won't start anything in there."

She snorted out a breath. "Yeah, because I'm the problem."

Her daughter held close, Gabby was out the door and inside the building before Matt could respond. He swore under his breath and chased after them.

Addie caught him at the entrance. "Thank God you're back!"

She tried to hug him, and he shrugged her off. "Don't, Addie."

"Don't what?"

"Just don't."

He pushed her out of his way with a little more force than he probably should have used, and that wasn't lost on the people watching him from inside. Those numbers had doubled since he left earlier. Standing room only now. Everyone watching him. Judging him. Making up their mind about things they couldn't possibly know. Things that were none of their business.

Conner Evans must have lost the battle with the vending machine, because it was lying on its side, the glass shattered. Matt spotted Gabby and Riley hovering over it, Riley picking a Snickers bar from the rubble. He started toward them, but Gabby shook her head and pointed at Ellie's office. At the strange girl sitting calmly in front of Ellie's desk, her back to them.

He realized she was right—he'd smooth things over with Gabby later. Right now, he needed to talk to that girl.

"Matt!" Sally's shrill voice cut through all the others. She shoved her way through the crowd and grabbed him by arm, pulled him toward her desk. "I need to show you something."

"I need to talk to that girl, Sally. I think she knows what's going on."

Sally huffed. "Half the people in here have tried to talk to her. She still hasn't said a word. Got so bad, I had to lock the door. Got worried someone might try to hurt her. She can wait. This is more important."

Matt gave the back of the girl's head another look before following Sally to her desk. A map of the area was loaded on her monitor. "Remember how I said I was tracking Ellie with GPS?"

"Yeah, sure."

She tapped at a pulsing red dot in the top left corner of the screen. "Well, her cruiser hasn't moved since I showed it to you earlier. She's still parked up on 112 near Lower Falls."

Matt frowned. "She didn't take Mr. Newton to the hospital?"

"You listening to me? She hasn't moved, period. Can't get her on the radio. Can't get her on her cell. Her car's been sitting there in the exact same spot for the better part of an hour. She's either broke down, or something worse."

Matt bit his lip. "Have you had any luck getting us some kind of help?"

She shook her head and ticked off two of her fingers. "No cell service. No radios. And get this—best I can tell, landlines only work in town. I can dial someone local and get right through. I dial anything else, I get two rings, the call sounds like it connects, then it drops. Same thing every time."

"What can cause that?"

"This ain't no line down or system outage. Something's got us cut off on purpose," Sally told him. "Watch this—"

She minimized the tracking software and opened a Google search, typed in best food near me . That hung for a second, then filled with results.

Matt didn't understand. "So the internet is back up? Just slow?"

Sally didn't answer him. Instead, she opened another search and typed Barton Police Department . This time when she hit Enter, nothing happened, the screen froze. "I can pull up random bullshit—restaurants, movie times, mating patterns of aardvarks, but the second I try to search for law enforcement, government agencies, hospitals, the screen hangs. Same thing seems to be going on with email. I'm receiving just fine, but can't send outside the Bend, and watch this—"

She composed a quick email to herself with test in the subject and hit Send. It took about thirty seconds before it appeared in her inbox. She folded both arms across her chest. "See?"

Matt looked at the message sitting in her inbox but had no idea what she was getting at. "No. I don't see."

She tapped the screen with her index finger again. "See how the subject line isn't bold?"

Matt nodded.

"Normally, when email comes in, the subject stays bold until I read it. As of this morning, none of my subject lines on new messages are bold. Somebody is reading these before they come in. Screening them. I think the same is happening with internet searches. That's why there is a delay. Someone, or some thing , is reviewing the search first, then deciding whether or not to show the results. It's happening fast, but it's happening, I'm sure of it."

"I think you're getting a little paranoid."

The moment Matt said that, he thought of the coroner, Gerald Furber. He'd been paranoid, too. Was Sally infected by whatever was impacting the rest of the town? Could he trust her? For that matter, could he trust himself? If everyone else was infected, why not him? Why not Gabby? Sally? Riley? He didn't feel any different. He thought about how he'd just pushed Addie out of his way at the door. Had he simply overreacted, or was that something else?

"Paranoid, my ass." Sally went back to ticking off her fingers. "No radios. No cell service. Local calls only. Internet partially blocked, like searches are being filtered before they're allowed to go through. Same with email. That ain't paranoid. Those are facts."

She clicked back through her screens and brought the GPS map back up. "Tell you what. You bring Ellie back here safe and sound, show me I'm wrong."

Matt stared at that blinking red dot for a long moment, then said, "I need a minute."

He spotted Gabby in the far corner of the office, near the copy machine. She was crouching down, talking to Riley, her hands on either side of her daughter's head. He started toward them.

"Ellie could be hurt, Matt!" Sally called out behind him.

He held up a finger. He'd go, but he had to talk to Gabby first.

Matt pushed through the people, nodding and attempting to calm those who cornered him with questions, concerns, or angry shouts. When he reached Gabby, she didn't look up at him. Her gaze was locked with Riley.

"Is she okay?"

They'd both checked Riley for signs of physical injury in the car and hadn't found any, but the girl hadn't spoken.

Gabby ran her fingers through her daughter's hair and stood. She spoke in a low, concerned voice, "She's not trembling anymore, but she's still not talking, not really. She muttered something about Evelyn Harper, then went quiet again." Gabby chewed her lower lip. "About a month ago, that Harper girl took a picture of Riley in her underwear when she was changing for gym, then she sent it to a bunch of boys at school. Riley was devastated. So was I. The school wouldn't do anything—Harper used some kind of app, so there wasn't proof it originated with her, but a few other kids told Riley it was her. That wasn't enough."

"Why didn't you tell me? That's technically a felony. At the very least, me or Ellie could have put the fear of God in her or her parents."

"Her parents." Gabby huffed. "They're worse than their kid. I went over there, and her dad just laughed at me. Said, ‘Might as well get used to it. Girl like her's bound to end up in porn. All she'll be good for.'"

"He said that?"

"Oh, that wasn't the half of it. He came in the diner every day for lunch for the next week and left these flyers on the counter for Marshall's Farm up in Barton."

Matt knew where this was going. Marshall's had gotten hit with a substantial fine about a year ago for hiring undocumented immigrants to pick apples at less than a dollar an hour. They housed them in these old barns that weren't fit for animals. Made them sleep on the dirt floor.

"Matt," Gabby said, "my mother worked there when she first got to the US. I don't know how he knew that, but he did, he must have."

"He was just trying to get under your skin."

"Yeah, well, it worked," she said flatly. Then her voice dropped so low he could barely hear her. "Just now, when she said that girl's name, you know what popped into my head? I wanted to grab your gun right off your belt, track her down, and drop her like some wild dog, put her down. I wanted to see the look on her asshole father's face when you told him. Like that would somehow make everything okay." Her eyes welled up with tears again. "I'm not that person, Matt."

"You're a mother. They threatened your daughter."

"I wanted the girl dead. I wanted her father to suffer. Her mother, too. All of them." She hesitated, then added, "If I had had the gun, I would have shot her. All of them." She glanced down at his belt. "Hell, I still want to."

Addie Gallagher crossed the room and stopped about ten feet away, and Gabby caught her from the corner of her eye. "And that one …" The tears were gone, and her face darkened. "You don't want to know what I'd like to do to that one …" She rattled off a few choice words in Spanish.

Addie walked away.

Matt brushed her cheek. "I need to run back out and get Ellie. I won't be gone long. I'd really like you and Riley to wait in my office."

"I'm not hiding."

"I'm not asking you to. I just want to know you're safe."

"Then take us with you."

"I can't do that. I won't be long, I promise."

On the opposite side of the room, Addie had her back against the wall and was watching them. When Matt's eyes caught hers, she didn't look away.

Matt shook his head and focused on Gabby. "Maybe when this is over, we should go somewhere, just the two of us."

She forced a smile. "I'd like that."

He kissed her forehead. "I'll get back as fast as I can, I promise."