Unmarked by Kami García Read Free Book Online

hooked them around his neck. “My granddad used to drag me to all these weird places he loved when he was a kid. Maybe Kennedy’s father took her there for a reason.”
    “Like to see the world’s largest bottle cap?” Alara asked.
    Lukas pocketed his coin. “The Shift is gone. Andras is orchestrating a murder spree, and we don’t even know where to find him. So unless you know something the rest of us don’t, this is about as dead as dead ends get.”
    “I’ll pay the check.” Alara slid out of the booth.
    Lukas nodded at Priest and they followed her, most likely a tag team effort to sell her on the road trip idea. Otherwise, we were looking at ten hours trapped in a car, on the receiving end of Alara’s sarcasm.
    Ten hours in the car.
    “Elle, did you bring any extra clothes?” I asked.
    “There’s a pair of jeans and some other stuff in my purse.” She held up her gigantic black patent-leather bag. “It’s totally stocked. Face wash, moisturizer, disposable toothbrushes.” She paused as I took the bag. “Makeup.”
    Definitely a hint.
    “Did you bring the prom dress to go with all that stuff?” Jared teased.
    Elle put her hand on her hip. I stifled a smile and hauled her purse to the bathroom.
    As the door closed behind me, I heard her say, “You obviously never read
Ten Rules for Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse
. Rule number one…”

    When I came out a few minutes later, I heard Elle talking softly to someone. I stopped in the narrow hallway leading back into the restaurant and listened.
    “She
watched
him go.”
    “I don’t get it,” Jared said.
    “I mean literally watched,” she said.
    “You’re not serious?”
    “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.” Elle sounded nervous. “Kennedy would kill me.”
    That’s right, Elle. So stop talking.
    Elle always had my best interests at heart, but thiswasn’t the first time she had overshared in an effort to protect me—something I should’ve considered before I left them alone. I held my breath, praying the conversation was over.
    “That’s why she won’t let anyone get too close,” Jared said.
    Because I’m screwed up and broken and there’s no way to fix me.
    “If Kennedy gets scared, she pushes people away,” Elle said. “It’s what she does. But you can’t let her—”
    Jared cut her off. “I did everything wrong.”
    Elle was silent for a moment. “Then I guess you’d better start doing things right.”
    You need to kill this conversation fast.
    I opened the bathroom door and slammed it, as if I had just come out. They stopped talking immediately.
    Thank god.
    By the time I came out, Jared and Elle had relocated to the front of the restaurant.
    They were staring up at a cheap TV mounted on the wall while the waitress tried to close out a check.
    “Come on, Henry, I was off at one. I gotta get home.”
    The trucker pointed at the TV. “Hold on a minute.”
    A reporter stood in a parking garage, red and blue lights flashing behind her. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I didn’t need to once the girl’s photo filled the screen.
    The trucker tossed a ten-dollar bill on the counter, shaking his head. “Another one of them missing girls.”
    Her name was printed under the picture:
Hailey Edwards
.
    Number 16.

T he museum is closed.” Elle cupped her hands around her face and peered through the window.
    Priest fished a twisted piece of wire out of his pocket. “I prefer to think of it as temporarily inaccessible.”
    Alara rubbed her gloved hands over her arms and huddled closer to the side of the house. “Hurry up. I’m freezing.”
    During the ten-hour drive to Massachusetts, the rain had turned to snow. I couldn’t pinpoint the moment when the New England temperature won out, because nineteen days’ worth of exhaustion finally won out over my nightmares.
    “Think anyone will show up?” Alara glanced down the empty dirt road.
    The museum turned out to be a three-story butterscotch-colored Tudor at