Better Off Dead (27 page)

I thought I saw one of the shadows move.

Maybe the wind? It had picked up again. I
noticed clouds on the edge of the horizon, moving toward the stars.
A storm rolling in? The air smelled tangy, probably the first fire
of the season for someone. How I longed to be back at Helen's,
poking a log and watching the sparks swirl.

This is what happens when you lie. I should
have told Bobby D. what I was doing. I should have told Burly about
meeting Luke.

Someone was watching me. I could feel it. If
I stood very still, I could hear something hovering on the edges of
my consciousness. An engine slowing? The faint squeal of car
brakes? A medevac helicopter approaching Duke Medical Center? What
was it? I waited, then walked some more.

There it was again. I held my breath.

Someone was watching me.

I checked the darkness behind me. What had
been the outline of two streetlights melded into one. Had someone
stepped out of view? I narrowed my eyes, trying to see through the
darkness. Bushes quivered near the street lamp. A person waiting?
The autumn wind?

I needed to reach a busier section of the
campus—and quick. It was getting close to midnight. I was going to
be late. Would Luke wait? Most lights were out in the buildings and
dorms that dominated the distant skyline. Even the hospital complex
loomed darkly like a slumbering giant, the main parking structure
rising above the trees like a behemoth venturing out at night to
feed.

Maybe I should just turn back, I thought,
and make a run for the hospital. I eased the Colt out of my
knapsack and held it ready. A car door slammed in the near
distance. I upped my pace.

I reached the other side of the open lawn
and considered my options. I could make a run for it through the
middle of Duke Gardens and save myself a mile of trudging around
it. After all, I was armed. And prepared for an assault, so the
element of surprise would be gone.

I wasn't that much of an idiot. I decided
not to take the chance. Instead, I followed a sidewalk that curved
around one end of the Gardens, then arched in a stone bridge over a
shallow pool that gleamed in the moonlight. The stars reflected off
its surface with aching clarity. This part of the garden was home
to some of the largest magnolias in the South, but I gave them a
wide berth. No shadows for me tonight, thank you. Not with the
clouds racing toward the moon. It would be dark enough, soon
enough. I needed to get the hell home.

Footsteps approached on the path behind
me.

I whirled. No one was there. The footsteps
had stopped.

I waited, then started down the
sidewalk.

Footsteps. Again.

I slipped into the cover of the nearest
magnolia, hiding beneath the canopy of an overhanging limb still
thick with flat leaves as wide as a dinner plate. Last season's
leaves crunched beneath my feet. I froze, not breathing. The sound
could give me away. Footsteps approached.

In a moment, Luke came hurrying down the
sidewalk. He was looking to the right, then to the left, an odd
expression on his face. He had his knapsack slung over one
shoulder.

I started to call out, but something stopped
me.

What was he doing here? How had he found
me?

Luke was a sophomore. He'd been at Duke
nearly a year and a half.

The same time frame as the attacks.

He was tall and lanky.

Rougher, privileged information now rose to
the edges of my consciousness. I felt sick to my stomach. Had our
episode in the bushes been a... tryout for this? What had I been
thinking? More to the point, what had Luke been thinking while it
was going on? What scenario had been running through his head?

I realized I didn't know him at all. There
was so much I didn't know about him. And what I did know hit me
with a sudden and terrifying new impact.

He was majoring in psychopathology and often
near the department. He hated Brookhouse—and constantly pointed a
finger at him.

He had followed me home to Helen's house,
insinuated himself into my case.

But most of all—why was he following me
now?

He stopped and peered into the darkness of
Duke Gardens, searching the shadows. He ran a hand through his
spiky hair. I was close enough to see that he was chewing on his
lower lip.

"Casey?" he finally called out, his voice
sounding panicked, yet hushed.

Guaranteed to get me to respond.

The sound of his hushed voice made my skin
crawl. Why was he being so quiet?

"Casey," he called out again, the whisper
floating over a hollow that lay between two small hills. "It's me.
Are you in there? I saw you come this way. I've got my car. I can
give you a lift. It's not safe for you to be walking."

Yeah. Right. Not safe at all. Better just to
climb into the front seat of your car like some pathetic older
woman blinded by your phony devotion.

"Where are you?" he said, his voice rising.
"I got to your apartment early and followed you back here. What's
going on?"

Like I was going to tell him anything. I
didn't want to shoot him. I didn't want to confront him. I just
wanted to go home and think about it. Without him.

He wasn't that much of a kid, I realized. He
could have played me for a fool. Oh, man. I'd been a fool not to
see it. And a fool to believe his reasons for wanting to stick
close to me. Love? What a joke. What woman doesn't want to hear
that she's not too old? That she's beautiful? That a young man
wants her? What a fucking idiot I'd been.

If I returned to the sidewalk, he'd see
me.

I slipped into a night-shrouded patch of
azalea bushes instead, then headed for the heart of Duke Gardens.
As long as I knew where Luke was, and he did not know where I was,
I was safe. I kept my gun ready.

The azaleas gave way to a series of
stone-terraced flower beds that were thick with marigolds, day
lilies and patches of winter cabbage. These layered gardens were
beautiful throughout the year. They would also expose me to Luke's
sight. I followed a hedge to the lower path of the garden instead,
sticking close to the tree line as I made my way around a koi pond
and past a stand of Japanese cherry maples. I could hear a body
moving through the bushes behind me, someone in a hurry, someone
not bothering to cover their tracks.

No one else was in sight. Normally, at least
a few lovers would be huddled in the shadows, stealing some privacy
away from their shared dorm rooms. But publicity over the recent
attacks and warnings posted by a women's organization had pretty
much brought night traffic through the Gardens to a halt.

Which meant it was just me and my
shadow.

A few feet from the main pond that links the
regular gardens with the Japanese section, my pursuer made his
move. As I was cutting across a pile of boulders clustered beside a
small beach, someone dropped to the ground behind me from the top
of the highest rock. I heard the thud of shoes hitting granite, but
a stiff palm chopped my gun from my hand before I could react. My
knapsack tumbled to the ground. A hood of thick cloth was slipped
over my head from behind. Someone grabbed my arms, twisting them
backward. A rope tightened around my neck.

How did Luke get here before me?

All I had left to fight back with were my
thunder thighs. I used them.

I lifted my right leg in a high kick
position then drove it backward, visualizing a steel rod pistoning
at full force. I hit a shin. A man screamed in pain. Hands let go
and I started to pull the hood from my head. But even stronger
hands stopped me. Yet the man was still screaming. Were there two
of them?

"Let me go, Luke," I screeched. "I know it's
you."

The attacker laughed. It was a sound I had
never heard before. High-pitched. Almost a giggle. But frayed along
the edges. Out of control.

Just like Helen had heard.

That single thought inspired a surge of
panic-driven power. I threw myself forward and knocked someone over
my fallen knapsack. We tumbled down together; I heard a thud as his
head hit rock. I rolled free, pulled the hood from my head,
scrambled in the darkness for my gun and knapsack, then scooped
them up and ran. Like hell.

Behind me, I heard cursing. Someone had
recovered. A body was crashing through the bushes toward me, coming
up on me from behind. I scrambled and slid over a series of
slippery rocks arrayed along a shallow edge of the pond. If I could
just reach dry land again, I could haul ass out of there. I knew
the edge of the pond was lined with a series of short overlapping
docks that were arrayed on different levels, creating walkways for
humans and shelter for ducks. If I could get to them, I'd be able
to move quickly above the muddy ground and put distance between me
and my attackers.

Someone crashed through the bushes ahead of
me. How had he gotten in front of me so fast?

There was nowhere to go but into the pond.
But I had to protect my knapsack. It held the data I had pulled
from the drug trial files and it was all I had, all I had in the
world, to go on right then. If I survived, it might give me a clue
to who was after me and why.

Where could I stash it?

I slammed into a redwood bench that had been
built overlooking the pond. I almost fell, but recovered in time to
slide my knapsack under the seat, against one set of legs where it
would be partially hidden by a shrub's overhang. Then I headed for
the water where the crisscrossing dock pathways intersected with
land. I steadied myself along the side of the lowest pier as I
waded into the pond. The top of the dock barely came to my waist. I
moved faster as the crashing sounds grew louder.

Thank god the pond was warmer than the night
air; it had yet to catch up with the cold front. I felt my way
along the edge of the dock, sinking deeper and deeper into the
water, my gun held carefully above its surface. The warm liquid
seeped through my jeans and mounted to my waist. Mud sucked at my
feet. I reached a corner where the first dock was overlapped by a
slightly higher dock. Footsteps thudded along the planks of a
nearby walkway, heading toward me. I hid my gun in a dark corner
where the piers came together, then backpedaled into the pond,
sinking quietly until only my head showed above the surface. It was
a windy night. Tiny waves rippled the surface under a cool breeze.
I shivered and sank lower, grateful for the warmth of the pond. The
mud was soft beneath my feet, the bottom littered with rocks and
clumps of vegetation. But the footing was secure and I slid
silently through the darkness, easing myself away from the
shore.

"Do you see her?" a voice asked. A man. He
was too far away to hear clearly.

"No, but I heard something," a different man
answered. "She came this way."

There were two of them. Neither one sounded
like Luke. It confused me.

"Over here," the first man suggested. The
footsteps moved away from me, then stopped abruptly. "I heard
something," he said. "Check the edges of the pond. She may be in
the water."

I did not wait to hear more. I took a deep
breath and slipped beneath the surface. A calm had overtaken me.
They were the hunters. I was the hunted. But I knew just where I
was going. The spring before, there had been a modern dance
performance in the pond. Not along the edges of it. In it. Workmen
had built a series of underwater platforms near the middle of the
pond. Dancers had balanced on the platforms as they performed,
creating the illusion of skimming across the water's surface. It
had been standing-room-only three nights in a row, and I remembered
reading at the end of a glowing review for the performance that the
platforms were being left in place as a sort of multilevel
amusement park for the Gardens' many ducks.

If I could find one of the platforms, I'd be
far enough out into the pond to avoid detection, but I would not
have to tread indefinitely. The water reached just above my mouth
at the deepest part and I had to kick to stay afloat. Worse, my
fleece jacket had grown soggy and leaden—how did sheep do it?—and I
peeled it off, pissed that I was throwing away a hundred dollars'
worth of outerwear. At least my gun wasn't in the pocket. I needed
to get back to my gun, and dry land eventually, but I couldn't
afford to approach that part of the shore until the men chasing me
were gone.

I could barely see their figures as they
raced along the water's edge, pushing aside bushes, scanning the
pond, hoping for a break in the accumulating cloud cover. One man
was tall, the other chubby and of average height. I could see no
other details.

Shit. I bumped my shin on one of the dance
platforms. But at least I had found the right spot. I ran my hands
along the wood surface. It was about two feet beneath the water. If
I lay prone on the platform, my head tilted back slightly, I could
balance in place beneath the pond, with only my eye and nose above
water, like an alligator waiting for prey. I slid into place.
They'd never find me this far out. I'd wait here all night if I had
to.

Oh, no. Fuck a duck. I could not believe it.
More than men were after me. At first I heard only a few tentative
quacks. Then the sound grew louder. Other quacks joined in, until a
chorus of multi-toned squawkings filled the night air. The
cacophony was heading straight for me.

The ducks had detected an interloper.

Duke Gardens was home to dozens of tame
ducks, grown plump and lazy on bread scattered by humans. They
responded to the presence of people by besieging them for food. Two
dozen of the noisy bastards had now roused themselves from slumber
on the far side of the pond and were expecting me to dole out a
midnight snack.

They were moving rapidly across the pond
toward me in a tidy V-shaped formation, quacking their excitement.
I wanted to strangle every one of the feathery little traitors.
They reached me en masse, surrounding me, squawking and
honking—great, a few geese had joined the mob.