The Watchers (20 page)

“I might have said the wrong thing to him,” I
answered.

A second passed, then another. I dropped my
hands slowly, realizing what I had done. I started to form an
excuse. She cut me off. Her thoughts were racing around the fact
that my answer matched her thoughts too closely, but when she spoke
she was calm.

“What did you say to him?”

I stared at her for a moment then ran a hand
through my hair realizing I needed a shower. I hadn’t bathed since
my encounter with the pool. The pool! Why did everything have to
change?!

“I’m not going to go into all the details,
but he shared something personal with me, and I told him to leave,
because I wasn’t ready to handle it.”

“Clare!” Her voice was exasperated.

“I know! I know! I feel like an ass! You
don’t need to add to it.”

“You can’t expect me to give you any kind of
advice without knowing the particulars.”

I frowned then realized that I
was
looking for her advice; that I
wanted to know what to do. But I couldn’t tell her all the weird
stuff, and the weird stuff had a lot to do with, well,
everything.

“It’s okay,” she said all at once, surprising
me, “you can trust me with your secret. I know how strange you
are.” She paused and smiled at me. “And I don’t just mean
personality wise. You and Daniel are both strange in ways that
other people aren’t.”

My insides turned to ice. She knew I
was different. She knew
we
were different. I went through a dozen excuses trying to come
up with an explanation or some way to make her less suspicious.
Everything I came up with sounded ridiculous. She was too smart,
and I was too awful at lying. She looked at my panicked face and
reached out to pat my hand. “Don’t have a heart attack. I’ve known
for ages that Daniel is different. It’s pretty obvious.” She
frowned as she searched for the right words. “When he’s around
people, it’s like he’s thinking light years ahead, analyzing every
movement before he acts. Sometimes, I can see that it’s a thin
thread holding him back from the damage he could do. It’s as if he
wanted to, which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t, he could kill every
single person in town and not get a scratch.”

I shivered as her words, which were bizarrely
accurate, brought up another reason for my fear. I had seen what he
was capable of. The vision swam in front of my eyes again: a score
of dead rapists and murderers lying in a pool of their own blood.
They had deserved their fates, but I knew he enjoyed killing them.
Too much.

“Clare!”

“Huh?” I asked dazed.

A satisfied smirk crossed her lips. It took
me a moment to understand why. She hadn’t said anything out loud. I
cursed my tired brain, but Alex didn’t bring up the knowledge she’d
just learned. She brought up the thing that mattered most to her.
“What did he share that made you force him to leave?” she
asked.

I stared at her without answering.

“Okay, well, if you’re going to be all
secretive, I’ll just guess.” Again, she didn’t have to think about
what she was saying. It came out in a boiling rush. “He did
something, like protecting you from whatever happened at the pool,
and in doing so you saw how much he liked you. You, in turn, pushed
him away, because you’re so freaking used to depending on yourself.
You pushed him away, because something about him scares you. Maybe,
it’s the fact you’re used to people ignoring you and he can’t. He
won’t.” She x-rayed me with her eyes. “Well, here’s my advice, take
it or leave it. I don’t think there is a better person for you to
divulge those feelings to than Daniel. He’s craving the same kind
of companionship you are. Only, unlike you, he knows he craves it.
I think he would keep your secrets, support your weaknesses, and
celebrate your strengths, until his dying day. That’s the type of
person he is. That being said, I think you should show him you want
him. If you want to be with someone, you shouldn’t let your fear
keep you from them.” She stood abruptly. “But you don’t have to
take my advice.”

I stood as well. Even though I towered over
her, I felt as if she were the one doing the towering.

“How do you do that?” I demanded, wondering
if she had a superpower too.

Something about her…she just saw everything
free of pretense and clutter. It’s like when she took a look at me
with her baby blues she could look past the surface and see
straight into my soul.

“I look. I listen.” She brushed her
short hair back and pain flashed in her eyes for a second as I
heard:
I wish I could keep out some of what
I saw.
“Now, go take a shower, and I’ll drive you to
the sheriff’s office so you can give your statement. It’s why I
came over. Well, that, and I really wanted to skip
math.”

“I don’t know why you’re being so bossy all
of a sudden,” I huffed.

She ushered me out of the kitchen, putting
her hands on the small of my back to get me moving. “Because that’s
the only way people get through to you – brutal honesty with a hint
of bossiness thrown in for good measure.”

“I don’t like it.”

She gave me another gentle push to get me
walking up the stairs. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed
to.”

“Promise something?” I paused on the steps,
fighting a smile.

“Sure.”

“Promise to talk to me like that more
often?”

“I’m certain that won’t be a problem.” She
went to the living room and flipped on the television, settling
onto our old sofa. “You don’t have to hurry with your shower,
either. I told Mr. Simpson that I might not make it to his class. I
would love you forever, if you could help me miss Chemistry,
too.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I did everything I needed to, taking extra
time as promised, and went back downstairs to find Alex sprawled
across the couch watching one of those horrifying modeling
shows.

“Are you serious?” I asked when I saw what
she was watching.

“Shhh!”

“You
are
serious!”

I sat down on the arm of the couch and stared
at the TV in amused disgust. One of the anorexic looking women
started crying, because another model had talked about her behind
her back. It cut to the model who had said the mean things, her
sassiness obnoxious and overdone.

“God!”

Alex clicked the program off and jumped up.
“It’s just one of those guilty pleasures,” she said
defensively.

“You
should
feel guilty.”

“It’s just a show!” she disagreed.

“It’s a show that teaches girls that being
generic and bland is beautiful. It also teaches that backstabbing
and insincerity is how you get things in this life. It shows that
to be beautiful you must first be awful. I can’t think of anything
worse than pushing those ideals onto the rest of us. I mean, most
people don’t, and shouldn’t, look like that! Shows like that is one
reason there are so many insecure girls, and I hate them with a
fiery passion.”

Alex blinked at me, startled by my anger.
“You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t think about it like that. I
won’t watch it ever again.” She held up two fingers. “Scouts
honor.”

I laughed, already feeling sheepish. I
couldn’t spout off to her like I could to Daniel without feeling
guilty. He had proven he could argue back with emphasis and didn’t
resent me for my honesty. Not everyone was like that.

I held the front door open for her then we
crossed the yard to her car in silence. Alex started the engine of
her Jeep and spun it around, so we were facing the proper
direction. I held onto the door, trying to keep my seat.

“Sorry for going off on you about that show…”
I apologized, as we started down the road.

“It’s cool. I get to yell at you for things.
It’s only fair you yell back sometimes.” She smiled briefly then
over the roar of the wind asked, “Were you waiting for Daniel when
I came over?”

I should have known she wasn’t going to drop
it so easily.

I started playing with my necklace anxiously.
“Yeah, he was supposed to come over once Ellen left.”

“If it makes you feel any better, he wasn’t
at school this morning when I went in to make my excuses. Maybe
something came up?”

“Maybe.” I wasn’t betting on it.

She squealed around another corner and headed
down one of the numerous deserted highways surrounding the town.
The stores and the bright shops on Main Street faded with the turn
and the occasional farmstead became the dominant structure.

“Where’d they put the sheriff’s station?
South Carolina?” I asked after ten minutes of driving on the same
road. My mood was sour. Had Daniel thought I would show up at
school looking for him? Was he too afraid to see me again?

Alex shrugged. “Everything just takes a
little longer around here. Driving places…conversations…” She made
a face. “That and the old station on Main Street burned down when a
drunk guy crashed his car into the building two years ago. They
thought building out here would be safer.”

“Oh.”

An overwhelming swirl of thought reached out
to me in a great storm. I flinched from the sound, wishing someone
would make mental earplugs. The sound increased the closer we got
to the station. I couldn’t get specifics from the chaos, but
something had definitely happened. Something bad. The voices buzzed
like bees whose nest was being attacked by a hungry bear.

With another squeal of tires, Alex pulled
into a small parking lot. Tall pines arched over the brick
building. The trees and the dark red brick made the station look
folksy and unabashedly southern. I looked around for Andy Griffith,
figuring he couldn’t be far off.

The swirling voices grew louder, obviously
coming from the building. I tried futilely to block them out, but
it was useless. Alex frowned as she tried to squeeze her Jeep into
a space too small for it, having no other choice because of the
number of cars parked there.

“Something must have happened. There’s never
this many people here.”

They say the animal got her!

It just doesn’t make any sense!

I wonder if they’ll let ol’ Sue and me hunt
her alone or force some fool on us?

I think I’ll concentrate the majority of the
searches here near Route Seven and spread out from there. I’ll need
you to call the Adamses and make sure it’s okay for us to search on
their land. I wonder if Bubba brought his dog? Check and see,
Chuck. Jim should lead the second wave of searches here and here,
he’s got the best eye for terrain.

“I think you’re right,” I said.

As we entered the station, I saw that it
wasn’t a beehive that had been disturbed, but rather an anthill.
People swarmed around the large, open, office looking at reports
and maps, planning a course of action, often stumbling into each
other. Their thoughts and plans swirled around in my head, my brain
latching on to the information even as I marveled at the
activity.

I had gotten used to a slow way of operating
around here where people casually strolled up the streets, stopping
to talk to a friend or passerby, where conversations were conducted
over well-cooked meals. This was proof these southern folk could
move fast when provoked. It was proof I had never expected to
get.

“Who are we supposed to talk to?” I
asked.

Alex grabbed my arm. “This way.” She deftly
wove between the swarming people. We had to jump out of the way of
several very woodsy men who were gathering their gear and yelling
at each other in their hard-to-understand mountain dialect. Around
the people, Alex found the man she had been looking for. She
stopped in front of a small desk shoved into a smaller corner.
“Hey, Chuck.”

The man looked up, and his moon face
transformed into a friendly smile. “Hey, Alex, how’s your dad?”

“Just fine, thank you.”

He frowned, trying to place where he had seen
me before. I squirmed a little under his gaze, avoiding eye contact
with him. He had been one of the officers at the school yesterday.
He was the one with the quick thoughts, wondering how I had
survived when the fire had been well above boiling point. He
remembered me all at once, noting I looked better when I didn’t
look like a wet dog.

“How can I help you ladies?”

“Clare here has to give a statement of what
happened yesterday,” Alex said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Oh…of course. Daniel talked me to about
that…but with everything that’s…” His eyes swept the bustling
office. “We’re kind of swamped, but you can use the interrogation
room to write your report down.”

“Okay,” I said eager to get this over with
and leave, so I could have some peace. Chuck stood and searched for
the form I needed to fill out.

Alex wasn’t as distracted by the voices as I
was, her thoughts focusing on ant hill. “What’s happened, Chuck?”
she asked, looking around the crowded room.

He hesitated.
I
don’t want to scare them, but maybe I should tell them so they
don’t go wandering around in the woods…
“A Forest
Ranger went missing. She was one of the people we had tracking the
animal that killed Ryan.”

I hadn’t realized they were still searching
for the animal. It had been weeks. The flash of what I had seen
behind my house rose up, a stark reminder that someone had died,
and someone who cared enough to hunt for his killer had gone
missing. Alex gasped at the news, her thoughts immediately focused
with concern for the missing woman.

“Where did she go missing?” I asked before
she could get Chuck sidetracked with platitudes.

“Near Route Seven, towards the Adams’ estate.
The sheriff just told me to call them and get permission to search
their land, so…”