Echols, Jennifer (7 page)

" Yes,
in high school. Tiffany said you were friends with Will Billingsley and Rashad Lowry and those track guys." "Yeah," he said slowly. "Do y'all still hang out?" "No, they're at UAB." "Why didn't
you
go to UAB?"

"I told you," he said. "I wanted to be a cop." He looked around the park like this conversation was making him uncomfortable and he needed a way out.

"Why didn't you get a degree first in, whatsit, cop studies?"

"Criminal justice," he said. "I wanted to be a cop sooner.”

"Won't you need that degree eventually to move up in the department?"

"Yes. I don't necessarily want to move up. I'm happy doing this."

Yeah, you look happy,
I wanted to say. But this convo was interesting. I couldn't sound too rude and give him the excuse he needed to walk away. "If Tiffany hadn't spilled the beans, were you going to tell me who you are?"

"You mean that I'm nineteen and we went to high school together?"

Duh,
I thought. I couldn't say
Duh.
Too obvious. My brain would not cough up an alternative witticism. I hadn't slept in thirty hours.

"I wasn't trying to hide it from you," he said. "But I'm in a position of authority, and I'm trying to control people in sometimes dangerous situations. Naturally I'm not going to offer to people, 'By the way, here's where I'm vulnerable.'"

"Vulnerable," I repeated thoughtfully. Yes, this had been a very interesting convo. I'd discovered all sorts of buttons I could push to make him feel vulnerable and keep him off my ass for the rest of the week.

And then he turned on me. "So, why
do
you run? Not for health. That doesn't seem like you."

Where was that low hum coming from? I looked around, probably rather frantically. It was a streetlight malfunctioning behind Johnafter, flickering on in the middle of the sunny day, splashing additional light on his white head and shoulders.

"More out of blind fear," I blurted before I thought.

He stepped forward and opened his mouth to ask me for more.

"See you tonight," I said, and dashed off.

I was relieved when I finished my first lap and saw that his truck was gone. I felt a lot more comfortable with him in his police uniform. Impudence in the face of authority—
that I
could do. And after running the obstacle course of emotions in the park with hunky Johnafter, I much preferred a good old-fashioned high-speed car chase.

Chapter 7

Hold on," he said.

This suggestion was completely unnecessary. I'd fastened my seat belt tonight. Still, I clung to the door and the dashboard for dear life as he slung the cop car around 180 degrees.

He sped the car in the opposite direction after the suspect. The engine hummed low, then higher as he floored it. "Siren would be nice," he said.

"Oh, sorry." I flicked a switch on the box below the dashboard and got the chirping sound. "Sorry, sorry." I flicked another switch to produce the proper wail.

Lois had fed us a call that drug deals were going down on the wrong side of town. In typical Johnafter fashion, we snuck around the streets with the headlights off until we surprised the driver of this Kia in mid-buy. Officer Leroy and some other cops had stayed behind to clean up the sellers while John and I chased the buyer who got away.

"Where do you think you're going?" John murmured. John talked to himself a lot—I'd noticed this last night. Actually he was talking to suspects who couldn't hear him. My guess was that he'd been on night shift by himself way too long. "Please, not downtown."

"Yes, downtown," I said, as if he were talking to me. We flew through the deserted streets and went airborne over the speed bump beside the jail/courthouse/city hall. "Yee-haw!" I hollered. "I've always wanted to do that."

"Try not to make us sound like
The Dukes of Hazzard,"
he said. "At least not with the window open."

"Sorry, sorry."

"Not the roundabout," he said. Sure enough, the Kia entered the traffic circle in the center of town. We chased him around it twice.

"Okay, damn it," John said, and I knew what he was about to do. At the last second, he jerked the car off the roundabout, down a street that was hard to see if you didn't know it was there. He accelerated through three turns and re-entered the roundabout to cut the Kia off.

The Kia was too wise. He was out of the roundabout already. His taillights glowed way down at the high school. John cussed.

"You need some backup here, John."

He nodded toward the CB. "That's what Lois is telling me. There's no one to help me. They took the sellers into custody, and now they've all gone to a wreck at the Birmingham Junction."

"What if he starts shooting at us?"

"You watch too much TV. He's small-time, like Eric." John whipped out of the roundabout and floored it again. "I really don't want to let this guy go. There's no way my Ford is outrun by a Kia. That's just wrong."

"John," I said. Below the siren, below the motor, a low hum vibrated the car.

He sped toward the railroad crossing, where red lights flashed in warning.

"John!" I gasped at the same instant he stomped the brakes. We skidded to a stop in front of the blinking signals. The Kia kept going, squeaking past the locomotive with inches to spare.

John and I watched the progression of train cars. We'd lost him.

Sighing through his nose, John reached to the CB to call Lois. There it was again. I'd thought I smelled cologne several times in the hour since John's shift started tonight. Not an overpowering slather—just a little, so I caught only a whiff of it when he moved.

It couldn't be him. He wouldn't dare make himself smell sexy to the blue-haired prisoner he found so distasteful. But I was pretty sure nothing else in this 1990s Crown Victoria smelled that good. I leaned closer, pretending to examine the siren controls, and tried to sniff him without letting out a big snort.

Unsuccessfully. He said. "I have some Kleenex in the trunk."

Better to admit what I was doing than let him think I had postnasal drip. "You smell good."

He stared at me, and my heart turned over. After last night riding around with my window rolled down in the cold, he'd wised up. He wore his leather cop jacket, which made him look that much more sharp and dangerous. His dark eyes pierced me, but the glow from the downtown streetlights softened his strong jaw and those sensitive lips. And his whole body was bathed in red as the warning lights from the railroad crossing blinked on, off, on, off, on.

Off, for good. The train was gone.

He looked ahead, into the empty street. "Where would you go?" he asked the suspect. Then he turned back to me. "Help me search for the Kia in parking lots as we pass. Sometimes they're that stupid."

Oh sure. I would search parking lots on the way to our destination. I knew exactly where we were going.

Sure enough, a few miles later he turned off the main road and onto the dirt road to the bridge.

"We're driving down here
again?"
I exclaimed. We'd already visited the bridge at the beginning of the shift.

He unhooked the CB from the dashboard and handed it to me without taking his eyes off the road. "If you ever feel threatened, press this button to call Lois. She'll send another car to save you from me." He sounded almost hurt.

"I don't feel
threatened
It's just that a criminal isn't going to hide where there's only one way out and you're blocking it. Criminals don't trap themselves."

He continued down the road anyway, and I thought harder about what he'd said.
Threatened?
Yes, the thought of him taking advantage of me had flashed across my mind when he first arrested me at the bridge, and last night. But that was before I knew him. It hadn't crossed my mind tonight.

It had crossed
his.

And he was wearing cologne.

"How did I end up with you?" I asked.

He turned to me, wide-eyed. "What?" The car lunged over a rock, and he put his eyes back on the road.

"Why am I riding in your police car instead of the ambulance or the fire truck? Did y'all draw straws, and you were the lucky winner? I'll bet everyone was hoping for Tiffany, but alas."

I half expected him to look all shiny and new at the mention of Tiffany. Or to protest too much, giving himself away.

He didn't answer.

"John?"

"I picked you," he said quietly.

I swallowed. It probably didn't mean anything. At least, not what I wanted it to.

"Why'd you pick me? So you could get me alone on Hot Date 911? I'm telling Angie."

"No, I'm not coming on to you at
all,"
he said, voice rising. "I don't want you to get the wrong idea. No."

"Right!" I snapped. I didn't want to snap. I never really thought he liked me for real. It was just that he made the idea sound
loathsome.
"How could I suggest something so ridiculous? You wouldn't be attracted to a loudmouthed blue-haired girl. Of course, Eric is. Of course, Eric is charged with multiple felonies."

"I'm not sure I'd call that an attraction," he said. "From the way you talk about him, he's not much of a boyfriend. He's more of a John."

I counted to ten silently. I had enough self-control to keep from punching the police. By eight, I could hear the jealousy in his voice.

He was jealous.

That was no excuse. I swiped my notebook out of the floorboard and wrote
he's not much of a boyfriend—he's more of a John.

"Meg."

"You called me a prostitute."

"I realize now I shouldn't have put it—"

"Thanks, Officer After."

"It's just because your relationship with him seems to be nothing but sex—" "So why can't—"

"—if you think he wouldn't even save you from an oncoming train."

"So why can't
I
be the John?" I asked. "You can be the John."

"Why can't
he
be the prostitute, and
I
can be the John?"

"You can be the John. God!" He stopped the car in the clearing with a jerk. The headlights shone across the gravel but didn't quite touch the end of the bridge.

He turned to me with his arms crossed on his chest. Which of course he should not have done, because I knew exactly what
that
meant. He felt vulnerable.

"Look," he said, "I didn't mean to get into all this. Let’s not even joke about the idea that I picked a suspect to hook up with. I mean, here we are, driving around all night alone in the dark, and I have a gun and handcuffs."

What he was trying to get across is how threatening this situation should have been for me. But I didn't see it that way. I got chills in the darkness at the thought of him coming on to me. Granted, I was allergic to handcuffs, and I didn't want to be threatened with a gun. But the whole scenario smacked of some X-rated leather-heavy adult movie, and suddenly I very much wanted to be an adult. With Johnafter.

I couldn't see his eyes clearly in the darkness, only the lower half of his face. He bit his bottom lip gently. Vulnerable.

"Why
did you
pick me?" I asked.

"You remind me of someone."

"With blue hair?" I laughed. "Who?"

"No. You know that story you asked me about the first night? Those kids getting killed on the bridge?"

I nodded at the freight train I knew was about to hit me.

"Kids think it's a ghost story," he said, "but adults still remember it as a tragedy.'

"How do
you
remember it?"

"Both ways." He sighed through his nose, this time a long, slow sigh. "You remind me of that girl who died. She was a lot older than me, but she lived in my neighborhood. You have the same eyes."

I blinked. My eyes were blue. Probably they were accentuated by my blue hair. I hadn't checked. I knew green hair hadn't done much for them.

I felt a low rumble in the floorboard of the car, stronger than the car's engine. Automatically now, I turned to the tracks and saw the white circle of headlight. The train had traveled through town and reached the bridge.

John continued. "Both of you have the same idea that you need some bad boy to show you life. You know he'll get you in trouble, and you don't care. You'd follow him anywhere." He shouted above the train's horn, which was excruciatingly loud through my open window. "And the worst part is, you won't admit that to yourself. A boy will be your downfall."

"Oh." I tried the door handle. "Let me out." I slapped the door with the flat of my hand. "Let me out, John, I swear to God!" I started to climb through the window at the same time I tried the handle again. The door swung open over the gravel, and I fell on my ass on the sharp rocks.

I thought I heard John call to me over the noise filling the clearing, but I just ran, away from him, toward the train.

The captain of the state championship high school track team caught me by the arm in two seconds. "Meg, come on. We're supposed to be looking for that Kia. We don't have time for this."

I pulled my arm away. "We don't have time for me to be completely creeped out that I'm riding around with you because I remind you of a dead girl. But we have time to drive down a dirt road and make sure the bridge is still here." I whirled around and gestured into the dark where I assumed the bridge was. "Well, I'll be damned. It's still here. It hasn't lifted up its girders and waded downstream."

"Meg—"

"You don't know me. You don't know anything about me. You see me once, trespassing, stoned, which I might add is somewhat out of character for me no matter what you choose to think, and you decide you have me all figured out? Graduating from the police academy does not qualify you as a psychiatrist."

"Was it your idea to go up on that bridge?"

"No."

"It wasn't that other girl's idea, either."

The train passed, but this time I didn't turn to watch its taillights disappear into the trees. I was locked in a stubborn stare with Johnafter's dark eyes.

The racket of wheels clacking on the rails lifted, leaving only the low hum of the police car underneath. This deep in the forest, tree frogs should have been screaming in the trees, but it was only March. They hadn't woken up yet.

"If I could—" he started, then realized how loud his voice sounded. He cleared his throat and said quietly, "If I could save just one person, just you, all this would be worth it."

"All
what
would be worth it? Carting me around for a week? Or being a cop in the first place?"

There was more gentle lip-biting. He crossed his arms and looked toward the railroad tracks. He wanted to melt into the shadows, I knew, but too bad. He was standing in the beam of the police car headlights, as brightly lit as if he were number one in a police lineup.

"John, did you become a cop just so you can save people from the bridge?"

"It's not that simple," he told the tracks.

"That's screwed up, John."

He turned back to me. "It's not that simple." he said again, through his teeth.

This was really a problem for him. I took in the whole picture of him, dark eyes, scowl, crossed arms.

Then I thought about what
I
must look like in the headlights' beam. I had crossed my arms at some point without knowing it. I looked the same as John, but with the blue eyes of a dead girl.