Deceived (11 page)

“Coeds?”

He slid his eyes my way.

“I do like it here.”

He furrowed his brow, unsure.

“What’re you doing here?” I touched his sleeve to be sure he was real.

“Well, when we spoke the other night, you seemed unhappy, and I never want that for you. I worried.” He rubbed a hand over his knee. “I stopped by to make sure you’re okay. Like I said, I won’t be that far from you again. I’m sorry. I meant what I said about working around here for a while.” He looked truly heartbroken, as if he’d done me a terrible injustice by going away on business. I never thought he minded traveling.

Emotional from the night’s events, hearing him sound so guilty pushed me over the edge. I threw my arms around his neck, and tears ran free again. “I really miss you, Dad. I hate when we’re apart. I’m not unhappy. I was just homesick.” I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and felt about ten years younger.

He kissed my head and pulled my hair away from my face until I finished crying and sat upright.

I wanted to remove any guilt I might’ve saddled him with. “I like it here.”

“Not too much, I hope.” His eyes narrowed, and I knew he wanted to know about boys. His biggest concerns next to security when he chose Francine Frances had been the boy-girl ratio and campus policies on dating. As if he thought there might be some.

“Why?” I hoped I sounded as innocent as I intended.

“Well, honey.” He stalled before he rallied. “I’d like to move you to a school closer to our new home.” Gentle emphasis hung on the word
new
. He didn’t mean the latest new home, the one that was my favorite so far. He meant we were moving again.

“What? We’re moving? Again? When? Where?”

“Well, it’s a part of the job. It provides us all the comforts we’re accustomed to, like food and shelter.” His face gave warning. “This time we’re moving west. There’s a small town outside of Dallas where we can set up our homestead. You’ll like it because you can drive into the city anytime you want. You want city life, right?”

I hated that he meant to please me. I didn’t want to move again. “Do we have to?” The words sounded petulant.

“Honey, it’s for the best. Trust me. I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way.” He stared at me. Authority dripped from his words.

“No.”

His eyebrows crept toward his hairline. Would they stop? “No?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “No. I want to stay this time. I just got here and I like it. It’s my senior year. Next year I’m going somewhere completely different. Let me finish what I’ve started here.” I pleaded silently with eyes I knew looked like Mom’s. “You said you’d be working in this area more. If I move to Texas, then what? We’re separated by a thousand miles again? Can’t you wait to move until the end of the year? You travel all the time anyway. It doesn’t matter where you live. Why not stay at the cabin?” He didn’t jump in or push back. Hope rose in my chest. “Please, Dad.”

His gaze darted over the room. Honestly, if he’d asked me to return to the cabin with him, it would’ve been harder. Mom was there. Every inch of the surrounding hills and forest reminded me of her. The new houses for every assignment location reminded me she was gone.

“Do we have to go now? Can’t it wait until the end of the school year?”

“I have to move now.”

“I don’t?” Well, this was new territory for me. I didn’t know how to proceed.

“You’ll be going to college in a few months.” He deflated. That wasn’t like him.

“Gabriella, you’ll be eighteen in two months. A year from now you’ll live who-knows-where enjoying college life.” He rubbed his chin. “I’ll be working in the area for a while. You’re right about me being closer to you if you don’t move right away. Maybe I will visit the cabin.”

“Is that a yes?”

He looked weary and older than I’d ever seen him. “If you want to stay here until graduation, you can. I won’t make you leave, but I’d appreciate it if you’d take those self-defense classes the school offers and maybe carry a gun.” The sparkle in his eye told me he only half-joked about the gun.

My cheeks hurt from the ridiculous smile. I could stay.
Stay
. The word had to settle in. Stay was the opposite of anything I’d ever known.

“If you’re going to be … ” He cleared his throat. “If you’re going to remain here, we’ll need to talk about security.”

Ugh. My stomach sank. I couldn’t talk about school security with Dad. If he had any inkling that I thought someone followed me around my new town, he’d pack my bags immediately and toss me in the car. I said nothing. I waited to see what he thought he knew.

“Gabriella, tell me anything that’s happened since you got here. Anything at all that didn’t seem right to you. The ribbon you found in your locker bothered you. I’m glad you told me, but there might be other things you blew off. Some things, by themselves, mean nothing but together are quite serious.”

“Nothing.” My mind ticked off a growing list—the car with the squeaky belt, the orange glow, feelings of being followed, a guy who had tried to get into Pixie’s car with me, Davis’s and Brian’s strange appearances … I hated lying to my dad. As far as I knew, he had never lied to anyone a single day in his life. He valued honesty above everything else. He said honesty was a defining quality of character. Lying was low, even for me, and I was ashamed.

“Honey, anything at all that wasn’t quite right. It might’ve been someone you encountered or a situation you found yourself in?” He searched my face.

I tried to seem surprised at the questions. “No.”
Liar.
“Nothing I can think of.”

“How about your dream?” Dad worried about my dream as much as I did.

I could think of no sane way to tell him that the dream had become an entity. I couldn’t explain the power my dream had over me, or how desperate I was to overcome it.

In my dream it was always dark. I was on a street I didn’t know, and I wasn’t alone. Though I had relived the moment a thousand times, I never saw who was with me. I only knew I loved them, and we were in danger. A third person, whom I couldn’t see clearly, lurked nearby and I knew he wanted to hurt us. I also knew it’d be the lethal kind of pain. From there, things happened faster than I could process, but the night felt as real as a memory or premonition.

The hardest part was trying to separate the dream from reality. Like with the invisible smoking man, the dream crept into my waking hours and messed with me long after I woke up. I barely stayed focused long enough to live in the present. Until I moved to Francine Frances, the dream had only kept me tired and preoccupied.

I’d never tell my dad any of it. Losing Mom hadn’t been easy for either of us. I wouldn’t add to his pain by pointing out that the loss was literally driving me crazy.

“The dream is okay. It’s just a dream.” I feigned a smile.

Dad shoved some bangs off my face. “Elle.” He faked a smile right back at me. “We need to talk about the security here.”

“Yeah?”

“Have you been watching the news?”

“No.” Honestly, I hadn’t even turned on the television.

“You should be keeping up with local news.”

“So, campus security has something to do with local news?” He wanted to talk about it, but then I had to pull it out of him. Frustrating.
Please don’t tell me the serial killer is for real. It’s a misunderstanding. Kids trying to scare the freshmen. Nothing more.

“No. I have a friend at an office in Columbus and his brother’s in law enforcement. When he heard you moved here, he said there are rumors of a man stalking young women in this part of the state. You want to be sure you’re vigilant. Keep an eye on the news.”

Vigilant?

“You think he’s right? Some guy might be stalking near campus?” I wasn’t sure whether this made me feel better because I wasn’t crazy or worse because he might be following me.

“I’m not sure, but I do know, with all things considered, it’s better to be safe than sorry. I’ve let the school know what I heard and also about the issue with your locker.”

Whoa.
I sucked in air. Maybe Dad had taken a dip into my crazy pool. Lots of girls wore black ribbons. I mean, it was a ribbon, not a threatening letter.

Best to focus on the facts. “Do you think I’m in some kind of danger? Or Pixie?” Pixie ran around all the time. What if someone hurt her? I had to nix the cat-and-mouse with Brian. I needed straight answers. Pixie needed to know what Dad had just told me. “How reliable is your friend’s brother? How do you know him?”

“He’s not the sort to tell tales.”

I hoped Dad’s report had made its way from the school staff to the security detail. We were all being followed. How many other girls thought they were in danger and didn’t know how true that was? It occurred to me I should be miffed that school administration had failed to mention we were being stalked. Seemed like an important little nugget of information.

“Shouldn’t the school tell the students? The dean must know.” How could we stay safe if we didn’t know we were in danger? I doubted my classmates watched the news any more than I did, which was never. My heart pitched into double time.

“Not yet. The school says they have things under control. They don’t want to cause a panic.” He huffed. “They’ve beefed up security.”

I chewed hard on my bottom lip. So, campus security had bigger issues than my dirty welcome mat. I was afraid, but I didn’t want to leave. What was right and what my gut would allow were forces on opposite ends of the spectrum at the moment.

“Security?” I hoped to press him for more information and wondered how much the school divulged to parents.

“Yes, they’ve doubled the number of watchmen on campus and added additional shifts to patrols on the streets. You should notice a security car come by here hourly, if not more often. If you don’t, let me know.”

“Wow. Watchmen. It’s like martial law,” I whispered. “Will there be a curfew for everyone or something?”

“I’d like that, but there are laws. Can I see the ribbon?”

“Sure.” I dug through my backpack and pulled it out. He took it with unexpected care and I wondered if he thought of Mom, too. He turned it over in his fingers and examined the frayed edge.

“It got stuck in the zipper on my backpack.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “There’s no reason to worry until there’s a reason to worry, right?” He kissed my head.

Balling the ribbon in his fist, I thought I heard him mutter something about security doing their jobs. He looked my way. His face stayed red for a long while.

“So, you like it here?” He sighed. “Tell me everything.”

He got comfortable, and I settled in beside him.

Dad and I sat and talked until he crashed on the couch. I couldn’t bring myself to ask if what he really meant by
stalker
was
serial killer
. Voicing the words might make them true. I didn’t want to be responsible for that. Years of worry, airline food, and jet lag looked like they had taken their toll. I pulled a quilt over him and waited for Pixie to get in. I chuckled at the thought of simply going to bed and letting her walk in to find a grown man asleep on her couch. Chances were she would’ve gone with it. No questions.

While I waited, I wondered about his strange arrival. When he knocked, he had seemed pretty upset. He had gotten the photo of the ribbon I sent him and gone right back to his work. I’d heard him typing. Maybe there was something else to be worried about. Of course there was. Didn’t he just say there was a stalker in town? Not to mention I was followed twice in two nights. He snored softly beneath the blanket. I needed to ask him to tell me the truth about what he had heard.

I rubbed my forehead.
Get a grip, Gabriella
. Stalked by people who smoke? Don’t be silly. What would a serial killer want with me in a school filled with beauty queens? Maybe someone wanted to kill me via secondhand smoke? Out of all the interesting, outgoing girls on campus,
I
caught the creeper’s interest? No one else had seen him. I hadn’t really
seen
anyone either. Not a face anyway. Someone had tried to get into Pixie’s car, but it was a long shot to try to connect the two nights. Still, the orange glow worried me. What if it had been the same man and no coincidence? I felt it instinctually. I should be afraid.

That train of thought brought me back to Brian. Dad didn’t ask me about boys. He didn’t press me about the girls at school either. Though he did seem to know everything about Pixie. He told me most of what I knew about her, her family, her friends, before we met.

Pixie came in a few minutes later, complaining about the cancer agents on the mat, and my heart seized. I planned to worry about her next. Knowing our campus needed added security, it made sense to worry. Thank goodness she had come home. What if the person smoking outside our door wasn’t a girl hiding a nicotine habit? Ice clogged my throat. Had he been right outside my door? Over and over.

“There’s a man on our couch.” Pixie pointed as she walked past.

I frowned at the lack of concern in her voice. A simple statement of fact. Oh, by the way, there’s a man on our couch. “Dad stopped by to visit.”

She craned her neck. They’d only met once. I wondered if she truly recognized him or if it would matter. Emotion passed over her eyes. Regret? Maybe loss. I wished desperately that her parents would call. Or just one of them. I didn’t care which one. Someone should want to know she was happy.

“You missed a massive bonfire. Ah-mazing.”

“What about movie night?” My voice broke and snapped on every word.

“We ran into Davis on campus, and Darcy snuck out with us. If she didn’t get caught sneaking back in, we’re going over for movie night Thursday.”

“Oh.” My mind raced to put the pieces together. I clamped my lips shut to keep from spilling all my suspicions to Pixie. I felt manic.

“First bonfire of the year. I hope you feel better ’cause you missed it.”

There’d be a dozen more before the snow came. “I promise to catch the next one with you.”

She rolled her eyes.