Deceived (17 page)

On my bed, I turned on the local news and watched as the anchor covered reports of a serial killer in the area. Oh no. My nerves frayed. It was all true. On a stomach filled with coffee and nothing else, that equaled sick. I had zero chance of sleep again. Ever.

My senses heightened. Something made noise in the kitchen. I silenced the news and scooted to the edge of my bed. The sound came again. On instinct, I grabbed my bag and dug for the tiny scrap of paper. Another creak of floorboards, this time in the hallway outside my door. My thumbs danced over the keypad texting “Someone here 911” to the number on the paper. I brought up the dial pad and dialed 9-1-1, ready for the worst. Before I pressed send and brought the cavalry, I found my voice.

“The Marshals know you’re here.” I slipped off my bed and dropped to the floor on the side farthest from the door. My voice surprised me. Despite the tremor in my hands, I sounded confident and assured.

The footfalls stopped outside my room. I braced myself to run, even tackle him if necessary, but I would not die. Dragging a pencil from my bag as my only weapon option, I hovered my thumb over the green button.

“I called nine-one-one. You want me bad enough to risk it?”
Please don’t.
I scooted along the floor to the corner and pressed my back to the wall, hoping to find leverage for an attack.

Tears stung my eyes. My knuckles turned white around the pencil.

One deep breath later, my phone vibrated in my palm. I answered but couldn’t speak. I didn’t have to.

“Elle, what’s wrong?” In the background, a car door shut and footfalls thundered.

I would die alone in my room. Nicholas would never get here in time. I swallowed hard, thinking of my dad.

“Hello? Elle?” Nicholas barked into my ear. “Answer me, dammit!”

“I think the killer’s outside my bedroom door.”

Chapter Thirteen

“Elle?”

“Nicholas?”

Joy rushed over me when he pushed open the door to my room. I hated the way my heart skipped when I saw him.

Relief washed over his features. He lifted a finger to his lips and left. Through the open door, I watched him check every room before he returned.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“Your front door wasn’t locked. It wasn’t open, but it wasn’t locked. Do you remember locking it when you came home?” Bright green eyes pierced mine, begging me to think carefully.

I nodded. For a minute, we stared silently at one another. His eyes fell to the tank I had pulled on after my shower, the strip of bare tummy above my favorite jeans and then my bare feet. “Uh … ”

A zing of anticipation sent shockwaves through me. “How’d you get here so fast?”

“I was close.” He looked everywhere but at me. Sliding down to meet me on the floor, he pulled me into his side and leaned his head to mine. “You’re safe now. I didn’t see any signs of forced entry. I won’t ever let anyone hurt you.” The fury in his voice told me he meant it. “When you’re ready, will you take a look around? See if anything’s missing, new, or out of place.”

“Okay.” I sat nestled against him until I trusted my legs to hold me and then pushed myself off the floor. I inhaled deeply to steady my breathing. I needed time to put myself back together, or at least find shoes and a sweater.

“New?”

“Sometimes they leave things.”

Bile rose in my throat. I didn’t ask any follow-ups. My imagination filled in the blanks.

Nothing was different in the apartment. Tears sprang to my eyes. “Someone was here.” I stomped my foot with indignation. “They were. I swear it.” I swiped away the falling drops with the pads of my thumbs. My voice choked and cracked with effort.

“I’ll wait outside.” He swallowed and looked around again.

“Are you afraid to be seen here?” I crossed my arms over the ribbon of skin I knew he’d seen and didn’t want to see anymore. Instant loathing began. How could I be so wrapped up in a guy who couldn’t care less?

Nicholas moved through the apartment to the door. “Do you want to go back to the cottage? When will Pixie be home?”

I followed. “Whatever.” At least I could try to get some information out of him, and if he was a Marshal, maybe he could use my experiences and/or paranoia as a lead. I hated the truth in that. I didn’t want to be crazy even more than I didn’t want to be stalked. I walked down the hall to my room and yanked a brush through my hair with shaking hands. I opened the drawer that held my caffeine pills and cringed. This wasn’t the time to be addicted. This was the time to be strong. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and slammed the drawer closed.

Maybe the person who had been in my apartment was only a regular stalker like the guy Dad had mentioned. Stalkers followed people and what else? Were they pervy like in movies, collecting used napkins when we left restaurants? With any luck, they didn’t flash, because that was not how I wanted to be first exposed to the male form. I whimpered. My hands flew to my mouth. What kind of state was I in to hope I had a stalker?

The place where my alternative was a serial killer.

“Elle. You okay in there?”

I marched back to Nicholas, who stood a complete and total two inches away from the door.

I pulled on red-and-white-striped knee socks under my jeans and shoved my feet into well-worn Chucks.

In the Jeep, my fingers worked on a thread hanging from the hem of my shirt. On the main road outside campus, we passed a group of girls I recognized and two guys I didn’t. Each guy took deep drags on a cigarette. My cheeks flamed as I pictured the same scenario happening every night. The girls walked them as far as the stairs in front of our door and said their goodbyes. I was such an idiot.

“Okay,” Nicholas said, as the night flew past on the windy country roads. “Tell me every detail you remember. Leave nothing out.”

In my periphery, he turned to me again and again, but I had no words, no time to decide what I wanted to say and what I could never say.

“Elle, you’re safe. Okay?” His voice was confident, thick with assurance. He believed the words. Why wouldn’t he?

I turned. “I’m not so sure.” Obviously, he had no idea I was going insane. Instead of college, I’d end up in a psychiatric ward next fall, if not sooner. All the military training in the world couldn’t save me from myself.

“Talk to me.”

“I have serious issues.” I laughed a little at the truth of the statement.

“No doubt.”

Hurt from his behavior inside my apartment resurfaced. I sighed. Dense. Stupid. He was clearly embarrassed. In keeping with his cover, he flirted with a kid. That must’ve been how it seemed to him anyway. Though, I wasn’t a kid. Far from it. I’d celebrate my eighteenth birthday in six weeks. Chronologically and physically, I wasn’t a child. Intellectually, I was already at college level, and emotionally—forget about it. I’d been through so much that I’d aged inappropriately beyond my years. Of course, he had no way of knowing any of that.

Nicholas looked young. I kept trying to make him fit the role he played, but I couldn’t. He’d been through a lot, too. A tour overseas was enough to age anyone, plus his new routine as a Marshal and our protector.

“I was pretty mad at you earlier.”

He slid his eyes my way and slowed to make the turn into his drive. “And now?”

He shifted the Jeep into park and cut the engine. Sounds of the river played against the glass as it steamed around the edges from our breath.

“I’m a little more understanding.” I took a minute to give him an accusatory stare. “I went to the library after you left.”

“With Davis.” A new edge bit into his words.

“Before he got there, I had a lot of questions. Questions you wouldn’t answer. I hate being lied to.” My teeth gritted tight.

“You Googled my name.” A statement of fact. A fact I hated to admit. It seemed too personal, like I’d hijacked his phone while he wasn’t looking.

“First, you told me your name was Brian. Everyone calls you Brian. Then you said Nicholas was your name. You said to call you Nicholas. I mean, what the hell? What’s that about? Are you lying to me or to five hundred students and faculty?”

He groaned a long, deep growl and jumped out the driver’s-side door. He opened mine a second later and reached for my elbow. I didn’t have time to complain before he hoisted me out and moved to his front door, scanning the night as we walked. He flipped on the lights and motioned to the table. I sat.

“Go on.”

Rude.

“When I searched for
Nicholas Austin
, your picture came up. I realized you … ” I didn’t want to give away the fact that I’d spent nights trying to know him, or let on he’d become my own mystery man, “ … weren’t really a student.”

“Not a student. This is where you want to leave it?” Skepticism dripped over the words.

“Do you? I mean, I don’t know what’s classified.” I squinted.

He rubbed his faced roughly, then his hair, then the back of his neck. “What else?”

His expression frightened me a little. I’d never seen him less than composed. Knowing all I knew and seeing the wild look in his eyes only emphasized his size. I had no doubt he could cause some serious damage if provoked.

“That’s why you called me when you thought there was an intruder. Do you want coffee?”

I didn’t like the edge to his voice, or the way he said
thought
.

“No.” My hands shook. I couldn’t hold a cup steady.

“Oh.” He flopped back against his chair, exasperated. “Am I scaring you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He tilted forward and rested his forehead in his hands for two seconds. “I’m at Francine Frances on assignment. I’m not supposed to frighten you.” He raised his face to mine.

The tormented expression softened me. “There was someone in my apartment.”

“What happened?”

I shrugged, unsure of what was real and what I had imagined. I’d already covered everything. I heard footsteps and then I made a threat through my bedroom door. Whoever stood on the other side of it believed my bluff because they were gone before Nicholas arrived. It only took him a minute to get there, which made me wonder how close he was when I texted. “Tell me why you’re here on assignment.”

“That’s classified, but I’m guessing you know who I work for, so I’m willing to put that much out there if you’ll help me along a little with what else you know.”

“You’re on assignment as a Marshal.”

His missed a breath, a hiccup no one else on the planet would probably notice, and then kept pace. “Yes. Your school is believed to be in need of extra surveillance.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Dad told me. I watched the news.”

“I’m keeping an eye on things.”

“Is there anything you don’t do?”

“Apparently, I don’t do undercover very well. Perhaps my mere presence is enough to alert the unsub to vacate.”

“Unsub? Is that like a perp?”

“Yes.” He choked out a laugh. “Do you watch crime shows?” The agony melted off his face.

“Occasionally.”
Hope he never checks my TiVo.
I loved crime shows.

“I’d end up covering a budding detective.” He rolled his eyes the way I did, then winked.

He was the second boy to wink at me in one day, but my physical reactions to the acts were as different as night and day. When Davis winked, stress faded and I wanted to smile. I knew I could count on him. He was my friend. When Nicholas winked, my heart stopped. My tummy rolled. My muscles tensed, and then my frozen heart leapt into a senseless sprint. When he looked at me like that, it was hard to remember why I cared if someone had been in my apartment or not.

I was intoxicated.

“Unsub is short for unknown subject.”

“So you’re watching the whole town?”

“The school.”

“Yes, but I’m just one girl.”

“Elle, you’re far more than just one girl.”

I blinked.

“We’ve suspected he was in the area for a few months.” Conflict played in the line of his brow.

“Was he at the flea market?” Wow, this guy was everywhere. The other girls at school had no idea how much danger they were in. “Wait, who is he?”

He took a long time to answer. He went to the kitchen and poured two glasses of ice water, then set them in front of us. Clearly stalling. “That’s classified.”

He shot up a finger at me before I released one of the rude comments weighing on my tongue. “But he’s dangerous. There’s no mistaking that. Please understand you need to be aware all the time, of everyone and everything.”

“How do I know you aren’t him?” I hoped to lighten the mood before it crashed. Wondering if he could mean
every
one. Did he know anything about the guy? What was his M.O.?

He reached into his back pocket and placed a leather bifold on the table. His badge.

Ohmigosh
. It was so shiny and official. I felt honored getting to look at it. “Nice.”

“Right?” Pride changed his expression. He should’ve been proud. My chest swelled with emotion at the sight of his name etched across the metal, and I barely knew him. He should show that thing to everyone. I tried to focus on his warning. No easy task. Unsub or no unsub.

“Okay, so this man is a stalker?”

“Yes.”

“Is he a serial killer?”

Pain hardened his face. The grim look was too much. I looked away before he answered. “Yes.”

Breath caught in my throat and I started at my response. “It’s so ironic!” It hit me and nervous laughter erupted. Another sign of my pending commitment to the loony bin.

“How is this ironic?” His brows crumbled in frustration and maybe a little anger. He shoved the badge back into his pocket.

“Well, my dad’s been overprotective of me my entire life. When I didn’t want to live with another nanny, he sent me here to keep me safe. How much safer can you be than in a prep school in the Ohio Valley?” I laughed. “I mean, it’s hardly a crime mecca. The campus police practically
are
the police. The fire department is made up of volunteers. Oh, and there’s no hospital.” My laughter started sounding giddy. The whole scenario tickled me. Talk about an emotional roller coaster. “Dad sent me to the most inconsequential of towns, and it has a killer darkening its streets.”