So far, anyway.
I almost wished Ruth had been around to witness this. It was truly classic.
On the other hand, of course, I was wracked with guilt. Because if I'd had a choice between going out for pizza with Mark Leskowski and going to the dump to scrounge for used car parts with Rob Wilkins, I'd have chosen the dump any day of the week.
Which was why, a second later, I realized I could take it no longer. That's right, I broke the Rules. I ruined all that hard work, all that not calling, all that not chasing him, all that making him think I liked someone else, by saying, "Look, it's not what you think. Mark's girlfriend is the one who turned up dead on Sunday. I just went out with him to, you know, talk. The Feds are after him, now, see, so we have a lot in common."
Both of Rob's hands shot out of his pockets and landed, to my great surprise, on my shoulders. The next thing I knew, he was shaking me, rather hard.
"Mark Leskowski?" he wanted to know. "You went out with Mark Leskowski? Are you nuts? Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
"No," I said, between shakes. "He didn't do it."
"Bullshit!" Rob stopped shaking me. "Everyone knows he did it. Everyone except you, apparently."
I shushed him. "Do you want to wake my parents up?" I hissed. "That's the last thing I need, them finding me out on the front porch in the middle of the night with—"
"Hey," Rob said. "At least I'm not a murderer!"
"Neither is Mark," I said.
"Says you."
"No, says everyone. I know he didn't kill Amber, Rob, because while we were out together, another girl disappeared, Heather—"
I broke off with a gasp, as if somebody had pinched me. Pinched me? It felt more as if somebody had punched me.
"What is it?" Rob asked, grabbing my arm and looking down at me worriedly, all of his anger forgotten. "What's wrong, Jess? Are you all right?"
"I am," I said, when I had caught my breath. "But Heather Montrose isn't."
A fact I knew for certain, because the moment I'd uttered her name, I remembered the dream I'd been having, just as Rob's pebbles had woken me up.
Dream? What am I talking about? It had been a nightmare.
Except, of course, that it wasn't. A nightmare, I mean.
Because that was the thing. It had been real.
All too real.
C H A P T E R
11
"Come on," I said to Rob as I darted down the porch steps into the yard. "We've got to get to her, before it's too late."
"Get to whom?" Rob followed me, looking confused. On him, of course, even confusion looked way sexy.
"Heather," I said, pausing by the dogwood tree at the end of the driveway. "Heather Montrose. She's the girl who disappeared this afternoon. I think I know where she is. We've got to go to her, now, before—"
"Before what?" Rob wanted to know.
I swallowed. "Before he comes back."
"Before who comes back? Jess, just what, exactly, did you see?"
I shivered, even though it couldn't have been much under seventy outside.
But it wasn't the temperature that was giving me goosebumps. It was the memory of my dream about Heather.
Rob's question was a good one. Just what had I seen? Not much. Blackness, mostly.
It was what I had felt that had scared me most. And what I'd felt was surely what Heather was feeling.
Cold. That was one thing. Really, really cold.
And wet. And cramped. And in pain. A lot of pain, actually.
And fear. Fear that he was coming. Not just fear, either, but terror. Stark white terror, unlike anything I had ever known. That Heather had ever known, I mean.
No. That we had ever known.
"We've got to go," I said with a moan, my fingers sinking into his arm. Good thing I keep my nails short, or Rob would have been the one in some pain. "We've got to go now."
"Okay," Rob said, prying my hand from his arm and taking it, instead, in his warm fingers. "Okay, whatever you say. You want to go find her? We'll go find her. Come on. My bike's over here."
Rob had parked his bike a little ways down the street. When we got to it, he opened up the compartment in the back and handed me his spare helmet and an extremely beat-up leather jacket he kept in there for emergencies, along with some other weird stuff, like a flashlight, tools, bottled water and, for reasons I'd never been able to fathom, a box of strawberry NutriGrain bars. I think this was just because he liked them.
"Okay," he said, as I swung onto the seat behind him. "All set?"
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I was afraid if I did, I might start screaming. In my dream, that's what Heather had wanted to do. Scream.
Only she couldn't. Because there was something in her mouth.
"Uh, Mastriani?" Rob said.
I took a deep breath. All right. It was all right. It was happening to Heather, not to me.
"Yeah?" I asked, unsteadily. The sleeves of the leather jacket were way too long for me, and dangled past the hands I'd locked around his waist. I could feel Rob's heart beating through the back of his jean jacket. I tried to concentrate on that, rather than on the dripping sound that was the only thing Heather could hear.
"Where are we going?"
"Oh," I said. "P-Pike's Quarry."
Rob nodded, and a second later, the Indian roared to life, and we were off.
Ordinarily, of course, taking a moonlit motorcycle ride with Rob Wilkins would have been my idea of heaven on earth. I mean, let's face it: I am warm for the guy's form, and have been ever since that day in detention last year when he'd first asked me out, not knowing, of course, that I was only a sophomore and had never been out with a guy before in my life. By the time he'd figured it out, it was way too late. I was already smitten.
I like to think that the same could be said of him. And you know, the way he'd reacted when he'd heard I'd been out with another guy was kind of indicative that maybe he did like me as more than just a friend.
But I could no sooner rejoice over this realization than I could enjoy our ride. That, of course, was because of what I knew lay at the end of it. The road, I mean.
We did not encounter a single other vehicle along the way. Not until we reached the turnoff for the quarry, and saw a lone squad car sitting there with its interior light on as the officer within studied something attached to a clipboard. Rob slowed automatically as we approached—a speeding ticket he did not need—but didn't stop. His distrust of law enforcement agents is almost as finely honed as mine, only with better reason, since he'd actually been on the inside.
When we'd gotten far enough past the sheriff's deputy that we could pull over without him seeing us, Rob did say, keeping the motor running as he asked, "You want to ask him to join us?"
"Not yet," I said. "I'd rather … I want to make sure first."
Even though I was sure. Unfortunately, I was really sure.
"All right," Rob said. "Where to now?"
I pointed into the thick woods off to the side of the road. The thick, dark, seemingly impenetrable woods to the side of the wood.
"Great," Rob said without enthusiasm. Then he put down his helmet's visor again and said, "Hang on."
It was slow going. The floor of the woods was soft with decaying leaves and pine needles, and the trees, only a few feet apart, made a challenging obstacle course. We could only see what was directly in front of the beam from the Indian's headlamp, and basically, all that was was trees, and more trees. I pulled back the sleeve of Rob's leather jacket and pointed whenever we needed to change directions.
Don't ask me, either, how I knew where we going, me—who can't read a map to save my life and who's managed to flunk my driving test twice. God knew I had never been in these woods before. I was not allowed, like Claire Lippman, to swim in the quarries, and had never been to them before. There was a reason swimming here was illegal, and that was because the dark, inviting water was filled with hidden hazards, like abandoned farm equipment with sharp spikes sticking up, and car batteries slowly leaking acid into the county's groundwater.