"No, you stay," Grey said. "I need you here if anything happens. Kate, don't be ridiculous, just go wait for the ambulance and flag them down."

"Fine," Kate said, annoyed, rolling her eyes, as she walked up the beach toward the roadside above them.

"I'm okay," Chloe said, trying to sit up.

Grey pushed her back down, "You are not okay. Stay there."

He left his hand firmly on her chest just below her collarbone. Chloe could feel the warm pressure of his hand on her skin. She did feel a little weird. Grey wasn't paying attention to her. He was looking at Jake.

"Has Chloe told you that someone's out to get her?" Grey demanded.

"What?" Jake said, incredulously. "This was just an accident. Kate and I weren't paying attention. We didn't see her go under."

"Yeah and that might be true, but it's really weird to me that this girl has had more than one close call this week," Grey was looking at Jake intently.

"Are you accusing me of trying to kill my friend?" Jake's eyes were wide with shock and indignation.

"Well..." Grey left his statement open for translation.

"I. Was. With. Kate. We were making out. I didn't notice that Chloe went under," Jake's cheeks were turning pink, his fists balled at his sides.

"Well, a few days ago I found Chloe locked in the darkroom. There was a chair thrown into the rotating doors to keep her inside," Grey said.

Jake smirked, "Sounds like something someone just thought would be funny."

Grey shook his head, "Well, Chloe didn't think so. She practically jumped out to attack me when I walked in to see if she was in there."

Jake paused in silence and then said, "Well, I still think that was probably just a joke and this was an accident. Chloe, tell him what happened, will you?"

Jake and Grey looked down at her almost simultaneously. Chloe felt a little confused. Had she almost just drowned? Did Grey save her? Had he given her mouth-to-mouth? She felt her cheeks start to burn.

Grey spoke before Chloe could, "You don't have to tell me anything. Just rest."

Then he looked over at Jake, "I'm just trying to warn you to watch her. I think someone's got it in for her and I think she thinks so too."

"It was an accident," Chloe croaked.

"What?" Grey and Jake said simultaneously.

"It was an accident," Chloe said again, her voice hoa.r.s.e. "The wave pulled me under. There was an undertow or something. I couldn't get back up. There was n.o.body near me. It was an accident."

"Don't worry about it right now," Jake said, quieting her and putting a firm hand on her shoulder to prevent her from getting up.

Chloe looked between the two of them with frustration. Obviously what had happened had been an accident. Grey still seemed reluctant to believe her, but before he could say anything more, the paramedics had arrived.

A few hours later Chloe was glad to be walking out of the hospital. The doctors had given her a clean bill of health and warned her about the dangers of swimming in the ocean. All she wanted to do at the moment was go home and take a long, well deserved nap. She was completely exhausted.

Random thoughts kept running through her mind. Chloe was still trying to push away the images of water surrounding her and closing in on her. It was all she could see when she closed her eyes. Chloe didn't know if she'd ever want to go swimming in the ocean again. She felt like she had just gained a phobia of water. She needed to think about something else. Chloe smiled. There was one plus side to all of the chaos. Grey had come with her in the ambulance to the hospital. Jake and Kate had followed in Jake's car, just behind them. Grey had held her hand for the whole ride, Chloe thought warmly. Although, she frowned, he left as soon as he saw that she was okay.

Jake and Kate had been wonderful as well, Chloe thought. It was almost hard to believe how two-faced Kate had been just hours before. She had spent the last few hours trying to entertain Chloe as they waited for the doctors to examine her. Kate had even made her laugh by telling her funny stories about Jake, to his utter embarra.s.sment.

Still, Chloe thought as she, Jake, and Kate climbed into his car, she couldn't wait to get home and forget the day had ever existed.

Chapter 8: The Suspicious Girl.

Grey was waiting at her locker on Monday morning when Chloe walked up to it. Chloe tried not to smile too enthusiastically as she walked over to him.

"How are you feeling?" Grey asked as Chloe came up to him.

"Fine," Chloe said. "I'm completely fine. All good."

"Good," Grey said, seeming relieved. "You scared the h.e.l.l out of us on Sat.u.r.day."

"I scared the h.e.l.l out of me too," Chloe nodded. Nightmares about water had woken her up all weekend. Even clutching Teddy, her childhood teddy bear, as she slept didn't help them go away.

"You need to be careful. Really careful, Chloe," Grey warned, suddenly unable to look at her, staring down at his shoes.

"I know you think that maybe what happened Sat.u.r.day wasn't an accident, but it was. I got pulled under by the tide and couldn't swim back up. n.o.body could do that to me. Jake and Kate weren't anywhere near me even," Chloe said.

Grey looked up into her eyes, "So, you trust Jake and Kate then?"

Chloe paused, "I trust Jake and I don't know Kate that well, but why would either of them want to hurt me?"

"I don't know. Everyone has their own reasons. I just think you're in danger. You've had too many close calls in one week to a.s.sume it's just chance," Grey rationalized.

"I have had a lot of weird things happen in the last week or so," Chloe agreed, "But I can't just run around freaked out. It could all just be bad luck. That note in my locker could have been a prank and so could that chair in the revolving door of the darkroom. People have been paying a lot of extra attention to me and not all of them are bound to be nice. And, the thing at the beach, well, it was just a freak accident and anyway, I'm okay."

Even as she was saying it, Chloe had to agree that it had been an alarmingly dangerous and strange week of her life. She just didn't want to think she was in mortal danger. How would she make it through her cla.s.ses if she was afraid someone was trying to kill her?

Grey frowned and then asked, still digging, "Do you remember anything? About what happened at the beach?"

"Just going under and then waking up on the beach with all of you surrounding me," Chloe said, trying to think back. "How did you end up being there?"

"I live near there, just off the beach. I like to take long walks along the ocean sometimes to think. I saw you go under and you didn't come back up, so I dove in. I thought you were gone and then your hand came up. I actually didn't realize it was you until I got you to the beach and then my heart almost stopped. You weren't breathing. I started CPR and then Kate and Jake ran up and called an ambulance. You woke up, spurting water a second later," Grey said, looking haunted at the memory.

"Wait, so Kate and Jake only got to me after you had pulled me onto the beach?" Chloe asked, mind suddenly whirling.

Grey nodded, "Yeah. They saw me pull you out and then rushed out of the water."

Chloe frowned, "I thought Kate saw me go under. Our eyes locked before the wave crashed over me."

"That's weird," Grey said.

"Yeah," Chloe said slowly and then started rationalizing, "But maybe she didn't realize that I really went under."

"Maybe," Grey sounded unconvinced.

Chloe laughed uneasily, "Look, now you've got me suspecting people. Everything is going to be fine. It was just a stupid accident. I should have been more careful. I mean, it's the ocean. It's great, but it can be dangerous."

"Well, just promise me you'll be careful...even if you're not in the ocean," Grey said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"I promise," Chloe said, almost whispering. Her mind was on Kate and a sudden wonder if Kate's hatred of her would really have extended to her drowning beneath the waves. Was Kate jealous enough about Jake to want to see her dead? To turn a blind eye as she went under water and drowned?

"Good," Grey said and then he turned and walked away from her.

Chloe watched him, before turning back to her locker. She couldn't help but wonder at his concern for her. Was it possible that he liked her? Chloe pushed the thought away. He was probably just being nice to the new girl. That was the way her luck was going at the moment anyway.

Emma ran up to Chloe at lunchtime, "Did you hear what happened?"

"No, what?" Chloe said, fork poised in mid air.

"They just found a body stuffed in a locker," Emma said, watching Chloe's reaction.

"What?!?!" Chloe's mind froze. "Who was it?"

"Well, it's not for sure yet. n.o.body actually saw her for sure, but people are saying that it's Elizabeth Hill, Lora Kelly's best friend."

Chloe felt the shock run from her brain, all the way through her body. Had she been one of the last people to see Liz alive?

"What happened to her? Do they know?" Chloe heard herself say, as if through a fog.

"Supposedly Liz was stabbed and stuffed into the locker. A girl in my last cla.s.s said that she saw the body hanging out of the locker. She had forgotten a book in her locker and the police were there with that yellow tape and everything. She said that she couldn't see who it was exactly, but there was blood everywhere," Emma's eyes were wide with the horror of the story.

"So, maybe it's not Liz Hill?" Chloe said hopefully.

Emma shrugged, and then said hopefully, "I don't know. I wonder if they're going to cancel school, though. Everyone will know by the end of lunch."

As she said that, Chloe looked around the cafeteria, noticing the groups of whispering students looking horrified, appalled, and interested. Two murders in two weeks was a huge deal in high school.

By the end of lunchtime, the princ.i.p.al was making an announcement over the school's loudspeakers, "There has been a tragedy in our school today. Afternoon cla.s.ses are cancelled. Please gather your things and go out to the awaiting busses. First and foremost, the issue is safety. Please go straight home. There will be grief counselors available tomorrow, but we need to clear the school immediately. Thank you."

Chloe looked at Emma, who grinned, "At least we get the rest of the day off school."

"Yeah," Chloe managed to say, throwing out the rest of her mostly uneaten lunch, her mind still on Elizabeth Hill.

Chloe met Jake at his locker, "Crazy day, huh?"

Jake looked over at Chloe, his gaze slightly unfocussed, "I heard it was Liz Hill. I used to hang out with her and Lora all the time. This is insane."

"I know, but they don't know for sure it's her yet," Chloe said softly, putting a hand on his arm.

Jake nodded, not really listening, his mind trying to process the day's events.

"Let's get out of here," Jake said, slamming the door of his locker shut. "We just need to stop and grab Kate and then we can go."

Chloe nodded, "Okay."

They walked down the crowded corridors in silence. People were in a rush to get out of the school. They turned down the corridor leading to Kate's locker and were surprised to find themselves face to face with a police officer and yellow crime tape.

A crowd of students was trying to see the now infamous locker murder site. The police and the princ.i.p.al were trying to usher people away from the scene.

Chloe managed to catch a glimpse of the locker. It looked like it was number 210. Was it the victim's locker or someone else's? There was blood on the outside door and on the floor next to the locker. A limp, bloodstained hand was still visible protruding from out of it. The rest of it was blocked from vision by the police officers standing around it.

"Hey, Chloe, I've got Kate," Jake said suddenly in her ear, grabbing her sleeve to pull her away from the crime scene.

Chloe turned and saw Kate standing next to Jake. She turned and walked over to them, her mind still on the gruesome sight at the locker.

"They wouldn't even let me near my locker," Kate was complaining. "How am I supposed to do my homework? And my cell phone is in there. What am I supposed to do without my cell phone?"

"It's all good, babe," Jake crooned, taking Kate's hand, "You can just hang out at the house with Chloe and me tonight. We'll just all chill out together. I want both of you to stay safe."

Jake looked meaningfully at Kate and then at Chloe. Chloe nodded, still distracted. She just wanted to know who the murdered girl was because if it was Liz Hill she didn't know how much more connected to the murders she could get without finding herself as the next victim.

Chapter 9: The Interrogated Girl.

Chloe expected to hear about the murder and the name of its victim on the news that night. She didn't expect the police to come to her door to talk about it.

She, Jake, and Kate had been sitting in the living room trying to watch some ridiculous comedy to no avail while they worked on homework. Their minds were all too preoccupied with the murder instead.

The doorbell rang and Jake jumped up to get it only to lead in two police officers, who looked so somber and serious that Chloe was afraid someone else they knew had died.