[Ambys 2022: Mystery/Thriller Winner]
Discovering a dead body just minutes from her cottage in the trees is the last thing Dray Dinley expects upon moving to the remote town of Hero.
Being convinced by the town outcast and suspected murderer, Wells...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
..
Dray threw the sheriff's note across the counter to her left. It slid to the very edge, almost toppling over to the floor.
After a bowl of steamy pasta and a good movie, Dray fell into a dreamless nap. Unfortunately, her brain break didn't last long and she awoke with her gut twisted into a wretched knot. Whatever relief she had talked herself into flew off in the wind.
Sheriff Heron seemed awfully nice, despite the occasional weird gesture and Wells' fanciful theories about him, but she couldn't ditch the icky feeling suddenly taking home in her body.
Dray tried washing dishes to move on with her afternoon as normal, but the tension wouldn't shake. After almost finishing the chore, she threw in the towel and ended up back on the couch, collapsing and groaning into the cushions. She had the entire weekend to dwell on the session and needed to direct her focus to something else. She flipped to her back and looked at the ceiling.
She could find Wells.
With a few monotonous moments staring up at the popcorn ceiling, Dray concluded that after she found Wells, she would look into removing the dated texture up top. Rolling like a sack of potatoes off the couch—though expertly landing on her feet—Dray left in a haste for Posies with hope to find her new friend under a shady oak tree in the corner of the patio.
Her pace maintained some speed until the setting sun beat down on her forehead. With her steps relaxed to a casual stroll, Dray's mind wandered between all the useless searches on the internet for crimes in Hero. Her research on the matter stayed light, partly because of her procrastination skills and partly because the lack of information. Just like the first time she searched after meeting Wells, no single article came up holding any weight. Stories of teen pranks and incidents of light vandalism and graffiti filled the search pages, but absolutely no dangerous crime and no missing persons.
Rounding through the front gate of Posies, Dray brushed her out of control hair behind her ears—the breeze constantly kept it moving—and came to a stop in front of the familiar table.
"Where have you been?" she asked the man sitting in the shaded seat.
Wells propped his feet up and again worked on something in his notebook. "I had to lay low for a few days."
"Lay low?" Dray sat down across from him and wrinkled her nose. They hadn't even started yet.
"My article."
She pursed her lips together and tried to combat the doubt creeping up in her mind.
"They assumed it was me." Wells finally looked at her through his eyelashes. "They usually do, but I know a thing or two about the internet. They couldn't track me, but they'd find another way if needed."
Air left Dray's chest in a noisy huff. The paranoia in his words left a bitter taste in her mouth. "This is all a bit crazy," she admitted. "I just don't know. I mean, I know something is weird, but..." Her eyes looked everywhere, but him.
