This is the second book in the series, An Actress is Missing.
For the introduction novella, read the first chapter of A Student Has Drowned.
For Book 1, read the first chapter of A Rockstar Has Exploded.
For Book 3, read the first chapter of A Fiancé Has Flatlined.
Chapter One
Unknown
She wasn’t even supposed to be here.
All her friends had told her to stay away from him, and her family as well. Oh God, if her Dad found out she was with him right now….
No, there was no use thinking about that. She was catastrophizing. She had to think about what to do.
“We have to call the cops,” she said.
The boy she was with—the boy she shouldn’t have been with—dragged a hand over his face.
“We just have to. Right? It’s our only option. We have to call the cops.”
He looked at her. His eyes were small—too small. His eyebrows were growing closer together, and moving in a scary diagonal shape…. No, he looked normal. It was the drugs, that’s all. But he did look disappointed in her. Mind-boggled that she could be so stupid.
“We can get rid of the drugs. We can toss them in the river,” she said.
She had an answer for everything. It was all gonna be okay. Why was her heartbeat so damn loud? She could hear it throbbing in her ears.
“Babe. Chill,” the boy said.
She was speaking too fast. “I’m chill, I’m chill. I need to just … I need to think for a second.”
She paced down the road, barely feeling the downpour. Rainwater had puddled in the undulations in the old road, and was drenching her sneakers. Her toes felt like they were made of jam.
“Babe—you’re all wet.”
Her hair was soaked, dripping down her shirt. In seconds her hoodie would be sodden, and maybe she’d catch a cold. Then she could stay in bed all day, not have to talk to the cops, not have to relive what she’d just seen, not have to say how she’d seen it. She walked further along the bridge, her eyes fixed on the gigantic dark mass of water ahead of her that had just taken a life. Or two lives. Or three…. Damn, her memory had already grown hazy.
She held a hand up to the road. Balled it into a fist. It looked huge.
“Come back to the van,” the boy said. “Let’s turn the gas cooker on. It’ll warm the place up.”
She rotated her fist, miming the car losing control. The whine of the motor as it had sped across the bridge. The thick grating sound of the tyres as the car had swerved to avoid the man standing on the bend.
The shockingly loud crunch of metal on metal as the bonnet had hit the barrier. A groan, a spluttering, and finally a _ka-splash—_heavy and final.
The splash echoed over and over in her mind. It was a bad time to be high.
“They might still be alive,” the boy said.
She couldn’t help a scoff escaping her lips.
“True,” the boy conceded. “But you know, stranger things….”
The man—where had the man gone? The man with the bag. The briefcase. The satchel, or whatever it was. He had been standing there in a trench coat. Or was it an anorak? She cast her mind back but the image kept changing, morphing like churning butter.
Where had he gone? Had the car clipped him? Was he dead too?
She ran to the barrier and grasped the bent cables. They thrust out into the rain like a broken giant’s bones.
“Babe! What are you—?”
She held up a hand to silence him.
Below her the river lay placid, the dark grey surface dimpled with the pounding rain. Down on the banks under the gnarled willows she saw movement.
“There!” she yelled.
Clapping footsteps as the boy ran over.
“Hey!” She waved her arms above her head. It was a person! Somebody had survived! “Up here! Are you okay?”
The figure stumbled up the muddy bank, doubled over and gripped its knees. Long hair—it was a woman. And she was alive!
“Holy shit,” the boy said.
“We have to call an ambulance!”
“No, we gotta jet, babe—”
“What—?”
The boy spun her to face him. The world kept moving for an extra second after she stopped.
“We have a van full of molly, coke and K. If we call an ambo, the cops are bound to come with the paramedics, and then we’re done. Like, done. I know you wanna help but we just can’t.”
“But—”
“We just can’t, babe.”
She glanced back through the gaping hole in the bridge’s barrier. The figure was stumbling up the bank toward an open paddock.
“See? She’s fine. She survived.”
She couldn’t just leave. “There were two people in the car. I saw them. And the man … there was a man on the bridge. He waved them down. You saw it, didn’t you?”
“Shit—lights.”
Headlights lit up the side of the hill ahead, the glow diffused by the curtains of rain.
The boy grabbed her hand and pulled her back along the bridge, her jammy toes squishing in her shoes. They hopped the fence and scrambled over the wire netting that held protective landslide-preventing rocks. They were back in the van.
The boy fired the ignition before she could gather her thoughts. Everything had moved too quickly—why was she so wet? That’s right, it was raining. Shouldn’t she be cold? As soon as she thought about it she felt it, and her body prickled with sweat in a desultory attempt to warm her.
“We should call someone,” she said weakly, knowing he wasn’t listening. “We should tell someone what we saw. Shouldn’t we? Maybe we shouldn’t. Should we?”
The boy pulled the van onto the country road, leaving the headlights off. She peered out the back window and saw that a vehicle had pulled over. Good, that was good. Somebody was helping.
As they drove back to the city, they passed two ambulances, two police cars and a highway patrol car. Their lights and sirens were whirring, screaming, and urgent as they vanished in the opposite direction.
The girl turned in her seat and watched them speed through the rain as the van crossed back into Silverbridge.
