Exposure Point: A gripping small town mystery. (The Candidates Book 1) Read online

  THE CANDIDATES, PART I

  EXPOSURE POINT

  M. D. ARCHER

  First published in 2020 by SWARM Publishing

  Auckland, New Zealand

  Copyright © M. D. Archer 2020 All Rights Reserved.

  Exposure Point is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents, except those clearly in the public domain, are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, names, places or incidents is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Emily

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Brooke

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Bella

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Mitchell

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Liam

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Harvey

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Amanda

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Randall

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgments

  Other titles

  preface

  I knew my life was going to change after summer, but nothing could have prepared me for what happened.

  My boring existence suddenly got complicated and weird.

  And then it got dangerous.

  I even thought I might die.

  But it wasn’t just about me; the whole town got turned upside down.

  And it all started with the night I saw him at the Montrose High health centre.

  No, it started before then.

  1

  I wound down the window to watch the pine trees slide by, their pointy silhouettes reaching into the sky as if trying to escape. I let the crisp evening air swirl around my neck and buffet my hair for a moment before turning to Isaac. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, concentrating on the road. I wanted to tug his arm and make him face me. How long would it be before we did this again? This was his last night in Montrose, and somehow I already missed him.

  “Callie?” Isaac said into the silence.

  “Yeah?”

  He glanced at me. “You’re making that face again.”

  “What face?”

  “You won’t even notice I’m gone.” He took a hand off the wheel to gesture at the moonboot strapped to my right foot. “That’ll heal in no time, you’ll get a place in the dance school, and then”—his eyes slid to mine—“you’ll be in the city too, right?”

  “I guess.”

  He was my best friend in the world, but I still couldn’t tell him I’d started waking up at 3:00 a.m. in a cold sweat. I couldn’t ask him to stay in Montrose for a little longer to help reassure me this was just nerves. Not when the little crease of worry between his eyebrows had started appearing more regularly as his departure date got closer. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go to college—it was his dream—but it was a big deal, and he had a lot to think about. I just had to ride it out. I had to wait for my injury to heal and get on with it. I’d been training for my future my whole life, and getting the jitters now was lame.

  Isaac frowned. “I know I’ve been a bit AWOL getting ready to go, but… you all good?”

  I looked over at him, taking in his messy brown hair—always sticking up at weird angles—and ached to say, “I’m not sure,” but I couldn’t.

  “You know what I’ve been wondering?”

  Isaac’s eyes cut to mine, a flicker of concern appearing as he waited for me to continue.

  “Whether you’re ever going to discover hair gel.” I reached over and ruffled his hair. “I mean, what is this?”

  A smile broke across his face as he jerked back. “C’mon, Callie. Quit it. You know it won’t do anything no matter what I try.” A bloom of colour spread to his cheeks, and I grinned.

  Abruptly, he pulled off the road and turned into a parking lot. “We’re here.” He shut off the engine. “The one and only Discovery Diner.”

  I took in the diner’s weathered exterior and dusty windows. I eyed its flickering welcome sign, illuminating us with bursts of neon. Finally, I regarded the parking lot itself—just an old pickup and a couple of other cars—and turned to Isaac with a sceptical expression.

  “Seriously,” he said. “Best pancakes for miles.”

  Just off the highway and next to a motel and a gas station, this place wasn’t a regular spot for us, but Isaac wanted pancakes, and I wasn’t going to get between him and a food craving.

  “Come on, I’m starving.” Isaac jumped out and jogged to the entrance.

  “Wait up,” I complained. When he turned around, I pointed accusingly at the moonboot then hobbled across the lot. Isaac watched, smirking at my awkward progression. “Still funny to you, huh?” I said. I’d been wearing it for two weeks, but it still got in the way. Isaac thought it was hilarious.

  “When you’re back to normal shoes, I’ll treasure the memories.”

  Inside, we took a booth next to a window, sliding across the cheap vinyl and dumping our coats on the seats next to us. Isaac picked up one of the huge laminated menus and pointed at the front. Best Pancakes in Montrose, it proclaimed.

  “See?” He waggled his eyebrows.

  “But how much competition do they have?” I teased.

  Isaac shrugged and turned to cast his eyes around the pink-and-blue-tinged interior, drumming his fingers against the table as he searched for someone who would bring him food.

  “So… I start at the Montrose High admin office on Monday.” I rolled my eyes.

  “I still can’t believe you’re going to be working there. It’s like, what kind of body snatcher scenario is this?” He narrowed his eyes. “What have you done with my best friend?” he added, hamming it up.

  I grinned. “It’ll pass the time until I re-audition.”

  “But it’s only going to take, like, another month or so for your foot to heal, right?”

  “It was Ms. Spencer’s idea.” I cast my eyes upward. “Trust me, it’s easier to just go along with it.”

  My dance coach was not the most chill person in the world. She even made Mom seem relaxed about my training.

  “She said festering at home is bad for injured dancers.”

  “Still, it’s pretty weird. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do anything other than dance.”

  I eyed him. “I walk, I talk… I go to school.”

  “School, huh? Really?”

  “Cut it out. Okay, I used to go to school. And I was there. Sort of.”

  Isaac laughed and I did too, but inside, my guts were churning. My presence at Montrose High had been distracted, at best, but it had never mattered because the plan had always been to transfer to a full-time dance academy fo
r my last year of high school.

  Since my injury, though, I’d realized that not only did I have a bad case of tunnel vision, but everyone thought that was all I could do. Dance. It was as if I wasn’t a real person at all, I was Dance Barbie. A plastic representation of a girl who waited motionless in a box until it was time to dance, then came to life.

  “Whoa,” Isaac said, pointing across the room. I turned. There was a Breaking News alert running along the bottom of the TV mounted on the wall.

  “They found the hiker’s body in the park.”

  Our town backed onto a pretty epic national park—rated the best in Ontario and famous for its freshwater swimming and beautiful woodland trails, but also for its challenging hiking routes—and we’d lost more than our fair share of hikers. Some due to bad luck, others because they ignored the warning signs.

  “Be a few days before we get cause of death,” a waitress said, setting down two glasses of water. She leaned forward conspiratorially. “Word is, it might not be an accident.”

  “You really think someone….”

  She lifted her shoulders. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Robert Symonds had gone missing a couple of weeks ago. After a few days, no one had expected him to make it out alive, but there’d been a buzz about him because there were signs of a struggle near where he had disappeared. And even though he was hiking alone, others had heard him talking to someone right before he vanished.

  She nodded back at the TV, now showing a different photograph. “They think the missing kid is lost in the park too.”

  “Who?” Isaac said.

  “Kade Liston.” I nodded knowingly. “It was on the news last night.”

  “You watch the news?” Isaac said, raising one eyebrow.

  “Yes,” I said, making sure my indignation was audible. “Mom and I do. Sometimes.”

  “He was hitching near here, heading toward Montrose,” the waitress continued. “The police asked me, but I didn’t see him. Poor thing.” She pulled out her notepad. “My name’s Kathleen. What can I get you?”

  “The pancakes special, please.” Isaac grinned, wriggling in his seat like a kid.

  Kathleen glanced at me. “Anything else? It’s probably enough for two….”

  She obviously hadn’t served Isaac before.

  “Grilled cheese, please,” I said, pointing to my selection on the huge menu.

  “Coming up.”

  Only moments after she’d left, Isaac made an uncertain face and picked up the menu again. “You know what?”

  “You’re going to need more food?”

  “I’m gonna need more food.” Isaac nodded to himself. “And coffee. We’ve got to finish packing tonight.”

  I shook off the unpleasant tightening in my stomach from Isaac’s casual reference to packing and forced a smile. “We?” I raised one eyebrow.

  “Yes.” He nodded seriously. “We. You and me. Packing. Tonight.” He grinned, then turned to scan the room for Kathleen. “I’ll find her.” He jumped over the back of the booth—Isaac only got athletic when food was involved—and jogged across to the counter where a big sweaty guy wearing an apron and an unimpressed expression stood. Isaac gestured for a moment, abruptly stopped, then took a couple of steps back.

  Kathleen reappeared next to the booth. I pointed to Isaac. As she watched him, she raised one hand to fiddle with her hair, brown but greying at the temples. She looked tired and kind of fed up. What was her life like, I wondered. Did she even like this job? She probably started working here when she was young and somehow, without noticing, twenty years passed.

  “Is he trying to order food from Big Mike?” she said, then hurried off without waiting for an answer.

  A few moments later Isaac clambered back into the booth.

  “Did you make the chef mad?” I raised one eyebrow. “Is that wise?”

  He shrugged. “That dude is grumpy. I got the food to go.”

  “But we only just got here.”

  “C’mon. It’s my last night. Plus, a random food mission is a Callie-and-Isaac tradition.”

  “Fine. Where to?”

  “I was thinking, The Hill?”

  I grinned. “Also tradition.”

  There was a lookout at Craddock Hill, a small peak overlooking Montrose, and Isaac and I went there all the time to eat or just hang out.

  Isaac took the scenic route back, looping through what we called ‘downtown Montrose’: about one square mile of restaurants, retail shops, a few bed and breakfast places, various hiking and camping-related stores and tourist companies, and some multistoried brick buildings which contained offices for things like lawyers and accountants. All of this was bordered by the town plaza on one side and the historic Montana hotel on the other.

  He then turned up Main Street, pretty and tree-lined, with quaint old-fashioned houses converted into businesses and shops. He drove slowly, not saying much, glancing out the window a lot. I got the feeling he was soaking up Montrose, storing it away.

  “You realize the food’s getting cold,” I said finally.

  Isaac glanced at me with wide eyes. “Good point.”

  He stepped on the gas and less than ten minutes later we were at The Hill, parked in the lot next to the lookout.

  We climbed onto the hood of the car with our food. While Isaac chowed down as if he hadn’t eaten in days, I looked out into the darkness, taking in the expanse of the national park. It looked beautiful, but I wasn’t super outdoorsy, so I’d only visited the park once in the five years I’d lived in Montrose. When I turned back to Isaac, his face had taken on a funny expression.

  “Now it’s my turn to ask you what’s up,” I said.

  He lifted his chin to stare at the sky, as if it had answers, then dropped his gaze to me. “I can’t believe I’m going,” he said. “I’m kinda waiting for someone to call me and be like, ‘Whoops, we messed up. You didn’t get a place in the program after all.’”

  “Really?”

  “It’s not like I don’t think I’m smart enough.” Isaac grinned. “It’s... I don’t know. They could have given that place to someone else, you know? Someone more connected than me or something. It’s not as if I come from a lineage of college graduates.”

  “That doesn’t matter, Isaac. It’s like they designed the program with you specifically in mind. No one else could ever take your place.” I rested my head on his shoulder and sighed.

  “Thanks.”

  I could hear the smile in his voice.

  God, I was going to miss this. Hanging out but not doing anything. Talking about everything and nothing.

  Things were going to be different, but how much would they change?

  I sat up and nudged him, trying to ignore the pulse behind my eyes. “Hey, don’t forget about me, okay?” My voice was shaky.

  “As if,” he said softly. “And you’re acting as if I’m moving to a different country.” He took a chunk of my hair between his thumb and forefinger and tugged it, like he had done a thousand times. “You doof,” he added with a smile. The moment hung, but then he pulled back. “Uh, should we head home? I’ve still got a lot of stuff to do.”

  A lump formed in my throat, and I swallowed it away. “Sure.”

  Neither of us said much on the drive back.

  When he pulled into his driveway, he nodded over at my house, right next door. The kitchen light was on. “Your mom’s home,” he said. “Listen, Callie. My parents can help me finish packing.” He smiled. “Mom actually wants to. And I know you were going to, but it might be….”

  “A total bummer?” The lump in my throat was getting more uncomfortable, and I didn’t think I could stand a slow, drawn-out goodbye. I raised my eyes to meet his. “I’m going to miss you,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. Tears were choking my throat.

  “I’m going to miss you too,” Isaac said, his eyes large and full in the dim light.

  I lurched across to pull him into a hug.

  “And thi
s is not goodbye,” he whispered into my shoulder.

  ***

  In the kitchen, Mom stood at the stove, pouring oil into a large frying pan.

  My shoulders dropped. I couldn’t escape a conversation, but I was not in the mood for talking, especially since she only ever wanted to talk about one thing.

  “Hi, lamb,” she said, a wave of exhaustion weakening her features as she turned toward me. She scanned my face. “Said goodbye to Isaac?”

  I pushed my lips into a sad pout and nodded, then looked over her shoulder. She was watching a Chrissy Teigen video. Trust Mom to have a supermodel as her cooking mentor. Then again, Chrissy was no slouch in the kitchen. I pointed at the fridge. “You know there’s leftovers you could eat, right?”

  “This is for the rest of the week. I’m on nights.”

  She worked as a concierge at The Montana and often had to work crazy hours. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, rolled her shoulders, and sighed. I stood behind her, using the heels of my hands to massage the tight spot under her shoulder blades. Her long hair was pulled up in a neat bun, slicked back with hairspray, and she was still wearing a full face of make-up. It was expertly applied from years of practice, but underneath the foundation and the shimmery highlighter power, I could see the dark smudges beneath her eyes.

  Mom sighed again and stared off into the distance. “Working at a job that isn’t….” She shook her head. “It’s not fun, Calliope. That’s why you have to follow your dreams.” She turned to me with a bright smile. “Like you’re doing.”

  I dropped my hands. “Um, yeah.”

  Mom smiled, then reached her arms up into a stretch. As she let them float down, she did a grand plié and grinned from ear to ear. It had been her dream to be a professional dancer, but her parents wouldn’t let her, insisting she do something that would get her a “real” job. In the end, Mom did some sort of hospitality course but secretly continued with dance classes and auditions. She’d just gotten a taste of the dancer’s life she’d always dreamed of when she unexpectedly got pregnant with me. Just like that, it was all over. For her, anyway.

  Mom kissed me on the top of my head. “Oh, before I forget, your father called. He’s off for a few weeks on a business trip, but maybe a visit with him when he gets back? You could see Isaac too.” Suddenly she squealed and clasped her hands on either side of my face. “Oh, Calliope, it’s so exciting! It’s all going to happen soon. I can feel it.” She shook her head, her eyes bright.