Forgiven (Ruined) (23 page)

             
I raise my brows, take a breath, thank them and see them out.

             
Trial.  Of course there will be one.  A trial where Kellan and I will probably end up having to spill our guts about the relationship.  Wonder how understanding Bruce and Mom will be about that?

             
"Have you told Kellan?"  My cell materializes in my hands. 

             
"He's being informed probably as we speak," says the blond.  "But unless you have questions, we'll be going and you can call him."  He looks like he might smile in a fatherly way at that idea.  Which is silly, since he looks like he's all of maybe five years older than me.

             
Could I be a police officer in five years?

             
Yes, actually, but I've already had more than enough of people who want to kill me.  Maybe I'll just try to gee on one of the remaining newspapers and write the crime beat.

             
Maybe I get cocky, then, or careless, because things are going right.  But after promising everyone who asked that I would never go back to the station at night by myself, that's exactly what I do.  Not because I'm thinking about it but precisely because I'm not.  I go by cab, because I'm not off the crutches yet, though once I am, I'm learning to drive and getting a license and a car.  I can pay Bruce back.  Or ask him to take it out of the bonbon fund.  That makes me smile.  He and Mom have been much better ever since that night, and more so once Stacee was arrested.

             
And then Zach says he'll drive me home, only I forget that and send him off long before I stand, totter because I've forgotten the walking cast
again
, and then realize two things at once: It's night and dark outside, and I don't have a ride.

             
"Well, shit."

             
That's when I hear it.  The sounds I heard the first time.  Sounds of somebody in the building.

             
This time my reaction's really bad.  This time I get mad.

* * *

             
Only I'm not crazy.  And I'm not careless.  I'm not going to go running after whoever it is, and that's only partly due to having a broken leg.

             
Part of it's due to the fact of how I
received
the broken leg.  So great, Stacee Jacobs is behind bars.  One thing I've learned, there are crazies out there in the world, and then there are some stone cold sober and sane people who are willing to shove you into traffic.

             
Lesson learned.

             
So even as I'm listening hard to where the sounds are coming from down the hall, which same as last time means the production room and the library there, and good thing I had Dexter backup the tapes that are now stored offsite, I'm pulling my phone out of my bag and dialing.  The sounds are random but they're ongoing. 

             
Someone is in the building with me.

             
I hit
send
.  Not the police, because 911 connects me to off-campus help.  Fastest response on campus is campus security.

             
"Erin Balliol."

             
Keeping my voice low, I ease around the desk so I can start down the hall.  The walking cast means I don't have to have crutches, but there's no way whoever is here doesn't know I'm walking their way.  My footsteps are the soft splat of a running shoe, and then the hard click on industrial tile floors of the hard plastic bottom of the cast.

             
"Balliol, it's Willow Blake at the DCTV building.  I'm here alone and there's someone in the building again."

             
To her credit she doesn't waste time calling me a jackass for this behavior, though she'll be perfectly within her rights to do so later.  It occurs to me Balliol might not even be on duty and that I should have called campus security dispatch.

             
Too late now.  Balliol's the guard who patrols our side of the campus.  If I guessed right, she'll be faster than going through dispatch, and the noises are continuing, so I haven't been noticed yet, but doesn't mean I won't be, long before Erin Balliol gets here.

             
"I'm en route," she says.  "Calling for backup as soon as I hang up.  Don't know where Fergie is but my ETA is at least 5 minutes.  You call security dispatch and stay on the line with them.  Can you get out of the building?"

             
"Yes."  I'm at the front, in the executive command center that still looks like a receptionist's really messy desk.

             
"Then do so.  Wait outside.  Do you have your car?"

             
"No."  Haven't gotten that far with my Willow Takes Back Her Life plans.  No car, no license, just me in a walking cast.

             
She snorts, which I think is Balliol managing not to swear.  "Go outside.  It's better than in.  At least there's some chance others will be around you.  Go now."

             
By go now, I take it she means hang up.  So I do.  Stuffing the phone into the back pocket of my jeans, I start for the same hallway that will lead me either into the station and to the production room where I've been hearing the sounds.

             
-- though I'm not hearing them now --

             
-- or up to the front door of the station and out into the night where I can wait for security to arrive.

             
Maybe I'll do what she suggested, though I won't feel any more safe outside at this time of night. 

             
I move around the table that serves as a desk and past the first room, just into the hallway.

             
There's no point in following Balliol's suggestion or arguing about it.

             
The intruder is standing in the hall, halfway between the front of the building where the desks are and the production room at the end of the hall.  Normally I'd say my chances are good of making it to, and through, the front door, before she got to where I'm standing.  I'm about 15 feet from the front door and she's about 20 feet down the hall.

             
But the circumstances aren't normal.  Nothing has been normal in a long time.  The walking cast on my foot and leg means at best I'd be considerably slowed down.  At worst I'd slip on the ancient, yellowing tiles in the hall and splat out flat.  Then she wouldn't even have to chase me.

             
I have no idea why she'd want to.  I've never seen the girl standing there before in my life. 

             
She looks like she's about 16, maybe 17.  Couple years younger than me, anyway.  She hasn't moved and I seem fixed to the spot, like someone seeing a snake and going still so it won't strike.

             
The longer I look at her, the more familiar she looks, though.  If a stranger can look familiar.

             
Why isn't she moving?  She hasn't spoken but then, neither have I.  I've just opened my mouth to say
The police are on the way
though there's a good chance she overheard every word of my side of the phone call with Erin Balliol, when her stasis breaks.  She starts up the hall toward me and now I'm actively backing away, fumbling my way, splat of running shoe, click of cast, as I back toward the door, hand out for the door, meaning to shove it open, but they're glass doors leading into the building and I locked it, unlocked when I came in, turned the quarter-sized silver knob that shoots the deadbolt once I was inside. 
             

             
Even if I were near the door – and there seems to be a good half mile between me and it, where'd all the space come from? – I probably wouldn't make it.

             
Panic, my brain fills in calmly.  It's still the same distance.

             
But the game has changed.  I couldn't have beaten her out the door even if I hadn't been shoved into traffic.

             
One thing after another, says a distracted voice in my brain.

             
The rest of my attention is focused on her.  "I don't know how you got in here," I say, trying not to shout, or ask questions, or let my voice waver.  "But police are on the way
right now
."

             
She's still walking toward me, almost prowling, like a cat confident in whatever it is it's going to pounce on.  She waves away my statement like it's actually something in the air she can shove aside.

             
"It's so easy for you," she says.  That's a mean girl voice.  That’s anger, growling out of her voice.

             
My fear ratchets up a notch.  Where the hell is Balliol?  Maybe the space between me and the door hasn't actually grown, but I swear more than five minutes has passed.

             
And the girl looks even more familiar.  What, is this another deputation from the Avenge Aimee Reynolds Club?  Did she have sisters or half-sisters that didn't look like her?

             
Because Stacee looked like Aimee.  But while this girl is familiar, she doesn't look like Aimee.  At all. 

             
She looks like.

             
My thoughts drop off completely.  But she has the strawberry blond hair, the same hair that blows in my face on the beach and never responds to me shaking my head to flick it back.  Light, flyaway strawberry blond hair.

             
No.  No, no, no, no, no.  I'm an only child.

             
What was I thinking instants ago?  Whether Aimee Reynolds could have had a stepsister.

             
"What's easy for me?"  I'm still backing away from her though I don't think it will help.  The way she's moving, if I make it to the door, the minute I start to fumble with the lock mechanism, she'll pounce on me.

             
"What isn't?"  She practically hisses that.  "Want a new life?  Everybody feels sorrrrry for you.  Want a new life?  Just commit a little murder and you have everyone's sympathy."  She hisses that last word, too. 

             
My heart pounds in my temples.  My vision blurs with fear.  My palms are sweating, my phone held slickly in both hands.  But my mind is clearing.  She looks familiar.  She's angry.  She knows about Kate Lambert and what happened in Seattle with Kate Lambert's father. 

             
"Want to move away from the place where a couple people are annoyed at your new life?  Momsy finds a
millionaire
and poof!  You're in the money, you're in Charleston, you're in a mansion on the beach."

             
"It's not a mansion," I say without thinking. 

             
Lame
, Willow.  Potentially deadly.

             
"'It's not a mansion,'" she mocks.  "Want to know where
I
lived?"

             
Abruptly, no, I don't.  Abruptly I've had enough.  I'm tired of waiting for Balliol and stalling.  The girl isn't carrying a weapon that I can see.  She's wearing jeans and sneakers and a tank top and I don't see anything on her which doesn't mean she doesn't have a knife in her pocket or a gun shoved down the waistband of her jeans in back, gangsta style.

             
But damn, I've been shoved into a car and deserted by my boyfriend, I've watched him put himself at risk to keep me safe and somebody has been stalking me, this girl, I guess, and I'm supposed to be a reporter, which means I really shouldn't be taken by surprise.

             
It also means all the pieces are flying together too fast to even separate the thoughts.  They come all together: the same hair.  Familiar face.  Emmy telling me she'd seen my double.  Somebody who knows about Seattle.  Somebody who thinks I got away with murder and fell up into a new life. 

             
Somebody pissed because while I think before I just had a life, which morphed into life with monsters when my father kept getting worse, this person would have traded up to be in my shoes.

             
Because she didn't have
any
of the good father.

             
At least that's my guess.

             
"So you're my half sister?"

             
Her footsteps falter.  Apparently I've been really unobservant and blank, because clearly she didn't expect me to get this.

             
Everything happens at once then.  She rushes me.  I stumble, falling back against the door I'd been trying to reach.