Out of Time
an excerpt

The first forty-eight hours were crucial, the detectives had said over and over. Jeremy thought that was a bit rich of them, since most people had to wait at least that long before they could report someone missing. Fortunately, Cassie was still a few months away from eighteen, so they could report her right away. Some girl had probably died to make that possible.

He had told them the truth. There wasn’t anyone on earth he could think of who would want to hurt Cassandra Parker. It simply didn’t make sense. There were plenty of people who would want to be her friend, sure. There were probably more who wanted to date her, Jeremy knew firsthand. He frowned, wondering if he should have told the detectives that he’d heard a few girls talking about being jealous of Cassie. But they were just freshman, jealous of the pretty, popular senior.

Jeremy hadn’t had to wait until Monday morning to find out something was wrong. Cassie’s parents had called him that evening, demanding to know if he’s spirited her away somehow as a joke. He didn’t flatter himself that he was the first person they had called, or even in the top ten, but it was nice all the same to know that they’d gotten his number from Cassie’s notebook. Well, it would have been nice to know that before it became a race to find her before something horrible happened to her. Or before more horrible things happened to her.

Her face was all over the news. There was a consensus in their town during the first weekend that at least Cassandra Parker was such a lovely girl, someone would be sure to notice her. She’d been turning heads since puberty, after all, and she only had to turn one that would call the police, and all would be well. Besides, girls went missing all the time, but they turned up again. Perhaps she had run off with one of the many boys who were always hanging around. It wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened, after all, even if no one would suspect it of Cassandra. But isn’t that what they always said? About serial killers, runaways, mothers who beat their children? No one ever suspected the murderer next door, even though everyone watching on the news would stare at the clueless neighbors in amazement, shaking their heads and wondering how anyone could be so blind.

Cassie had never judged the neighbors on TV, Jeremy thought. She would say, “What about the people who were murdered? You never see their relatives on TV, saying, ‘I would never have suspected she would walk home alone on a dark night.’ Then their whole lives become something that was just leading up to being a victim. That isn’t fair. If someone’s a murderer, they’ve always been a murderer. But shouldn’t victims be allowed to be something else first?” She had leaned closer to him, eyes still troubled by Kitty Genovese. “Promise me something?”

Of course he had said yes. He always said yes to Cassie. “Sure. Anything.”
“Promise me that if I ever get murdered, you won’t mention the ‘tragic’ way I died in my eulogy OR my obituary, or let anyone else mention it?”

“Cassie, that’s not going to happen.”

She had laughed, brushing her red hair away from her face. “What, you think making me a promise like that is going to make someone pop out from behind a tree and murder me?”

He had flushed, again. He always did when se was around, and she always teased him for the way even the tips of his ears would turn red. “I just think it’s bad luck.”

“Just promise. You said you would.”

He never said no to her. “I promise.”

He thought now that she’d never mentioned what to say if she disappeared off the face of the earth. But really, even if she had, there wasn’t much he could have said. He hoped they didn’t name a law after her, like the Amber Alert or Meghan’s Law. He thought she’d probably hate that, too.