by Diane Hoh
She pitched forward out of the fourth-floor window.
Chapter 15
THE TERRIFYING MOMENT WHEN jagged, half-frozen mounds of dirty snow rushed up to meet Hailey seemed to last an eternity.
Too breathless to scream, she closed her eyes.
But they flew open again as her body was suddenly, cruelly, yanked to a standstill.
And then she was hanging from the window, spinning crazily from the force of her abrupt stop. Something was tugging painfully at her chest and shoulder. Terrified and dazed, she was vaguely conscious of movement above her, at the window, and of someone cursing.
She stopped spinning, and hung at a slight angle. What was holding her up? It hurt, pulling so harshly at her chest and shoulder … but if it gave way, if it broke …
Dizziness overwhelmed her. She could feel the icy ground far beneath her … waiting for whatever was holding her up to break and send her plunging to the ice below.
People hurrying across campus saw her and gathered below her, staring up in disbelief at the figure hanging precariously from a fourth-floor window of Devereaux Hall.
Lost in shock and terror, Hailey thought she heard a door slam above her … was he gone? Or was he still there at the window, trying to remove whatever it was that was keeping her from plummeting to the icy ground below?
Her chest hurt. Her shoulder was on fire. The gentle swaying motion was making her sick.
She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. Terror had stolen her voice.
Everything after that was a blur.
There were more shouts. There were voices, calling up to her. There were doors slamming, windows cranking open, more shouting.
The nauseating swaying motion stopped. And her mind stopped, too. Because the realization that whatever was holding her up, away from the cold, hard ground could, at any second, break or be broken and allow her to fall, was unbearable. She stopped thinking, stopped feeling. She closed her eyes and mind. She didn’t even feel the cold.
What brought her back to awareness was Finn’s voice above her warning, “Easy, easy, pull slowly!” And Pete’s voice said, “Watch her arm there,” and Nell, her voice shaking with fear, asked, “Is she conscious? Is she?”
And Hailey was being pulled upward, very slowly. After what seemed like hours, she felt herself being pulled over the sill and into her room. They had been very careful with her. And then she was on her bed, shaken and dazed and dizzy, but alive.
Hailey opened her eyes.
She hadn’t fallen.
She hadn’t died.
She was alive.
Something soft and bulky was being slipped up, away from her chest, and over her head.
“Are you okay?” Finn asked.
She looked up at him. “No. I’m not. But I will be.”
He was holding up her purse, the black shoulder bag with the extra-long strap.
“This,” Finn said, “is what saved your life.”
Hailey stared at him blankly. “My purse?”
“Yep. The strap caught on the window crank. Acted like a sling holding you up.”
“Actually,” Nell said, her voice a bit shaky, “you can thank me, Hailey. Remember, I told you to wear the strap across your chest, so no one could run by and snatch your purse off your shoulder?” She smiled weakly. “This time, my paranoia came in handy, didn’t it?”
“It sure did,” Pete agreed. To Hailey, he said, “The strap made a kind of harness for you when you fell.”
“You were very lucky,” Finn said.
“But I didn’t fall.” Hailey began to tremble from shock, cold, and fear.
The three stared at her.
“I didn’t fall,” she repeated. “I was pushed.” Remembering accelerated her trembling. Her teeth began to chatter.
Finn turned quickly to crank the window shut and lock it. Nell grabbed a blanket from her bed to wrap, shawl-like, around Hailey’s shoulders.
“Someone pushed you?” Pete asked. “Are you sure?”
Hailey nodded. “When I came home, the window was wide open. I ran over to close it and … and something hit me. Someone. And when I didn’t fall right away, he hit me again. And I went out the window. If my purse strap hadn’t got caught on that crank …” She closed her eyes, shuddering.
Finn moved to the bed to place a comforting arm around her shoulders.
“Hailey,” Nell said, “we’re four stories up. You … you could have been killed.” Nell’s lower lip trembled. “Hailey,” she whispered, “this is scary.”
“Did you see anything?” Finn wanted to know. “Hear anything?”
Hailey thought for a minute. “I heard something … soft … sneakers, maybe. And after I’d fallen out, I heard him swearing.”
“He must have heard us coming,” Nell said, “and taken off.”
“Did you see anyone?” Hailey asked. Her trembling had finally stopped, but her face was gray. “Out in the hall?”
“No. Not a soul.”
When campus security and then the town police asked Hailey later if she had any idea who her attacker might have been, she stared at them from her bed and said, “I don’t know.” She thought about Darlene’s rage the night of the pizza party, and Robert Q’s fury when his car burned, and Bo Jessup’s anger the night of the Sigma Chi party. “Did you check out Bo Jessup like I asked you to?”
“Couldn’t have been him,” an officer said cryptically. “Left town. His mother says he left without a word.”
“Well, where is he?” Hailey’s eyes swept the room, as if she expected to find Bo Jessup lurking in a corner.
“Don’t know yet, Miss. But we’ll find him.”
“When?” Hailey demanded. “When did Bo leave town?”
“Not sure, Miss. No one seems to know. When we locate him, we’ll let you know.”
“Was he the suspect one of the officers told me about?”
“Can’t say, Miss.” Armed with Hailey’s statement, the officers left.
Hailey sank down among her blankets. So many questions were spinning around in her brain, just as she had been spinning, so high above the ground, a short while ago.
If Pete hadn’t brought her purse back … if she hadn’t worn it the way Nell told her to …
Shuddering, Hailey burrowed deeper within her blankets.
Where was Bo Jessup? And how angry was he?
Chapter 16
HAILEY STAYED IN BED all the next day, too shaken to leave her room. Nell, Amy, and Jess took turns staying with her so she wouldn’t be alone.
But by the following day, she was too restless to stay inside, and went to class, in spite of the constant, painful throb in her right shoulder.
Everyone she encountered on campus wanted to talk about what one girl called Hailey’s “near-death experience.”
Hailey couldn’t stand it. That was the very last thing she wanted to talk about. How could people be so insensitive? Couldn’t they see that talking about it brought back a flood of terror? Couldn’t they see the fear in her eyes, see her hands begin to shake? She kept seeing the snow-covered ground rising up to meet her …
At noon, she took refuge in the administration building, where she began a search for Darlene’s brother Mike. Darlene had said she and Bo dated in high school. So wouldn’t Mike Riggs know something about Bo? He might even know where Bo would have gone when he left town.
There was no Mike Riggs listed in the university’s records.
She sought out a clerk, a harried-looking woman carrying an armload of papers. “Are students who commute listed separately from resident students?” Hailey asked.
“If they’re part-time,” the woman answered. “Only a class or two, that kind of thing. Wouldn’t be in the directory. Ask over there.” She pointed to a young man in a dark suit sitting at a desk. “George can help you out.”
But George was no help at all. After flipping through a pile of folders neatly stacked on his desk, he shook his head. “I’ve got all the part-tim
ers right here,” he said, patting the pile of folders. “No Michael Riggs.”
“But I know he’s a student here,” Hailey protested. “Are you sure he’s not in there?”
The young man looked insulted. “If he was a part-timer,” he said haughtily, “he’d be in here. And he’s not.” And he swiveled his chair around so that his back was to Hailey.
It was clear that she’d been dismissed.
She left Butler Hall despondent. The only other person she could ask about Bo was Darlene, and all she wanted to talk about was Robert Q. Besides, Hailey still had plenty of questions about Darlene.
Hailey had to find Mike Riggs.
Why not try their house, she thought suddenly. Even if Darlene’s brother isn’t there, one of his parents might be. They can tell me where to find Mike.
If they wanted to know why she was looking for him, she’d make up something. No point in worrying them about Darlene.
She didn’t want to go alone. She didn’t want to go anywhere alone. Someone had tried to kill her, and no one knew who that someone was.
She didn’t even know what or who to watch out for.
Which meant she might tell the wrong person that she was going to Darlene’s.
Better to go alone.
So, in spite of a queasy stomach, after classes Hailey went straight to the blue Ford and drove downtown.
When she passed the diner, she wondered if Finn was working.
When she passed the mall, its parking lot half-filled with cars bearing university stickers, she wondered if he was in there.
Stop thinking about Finn Conran, she scolded mentally. You don’t have time for romantic feelings now. Not with everything else that’s happening.
And then when she pulled up in front of the tired gray house on Fourth Street, there was Finn, making his way down the icy steps.
If he was surprised to see her at Darlene’s, he didn’t show it. He smiled and said, “Hi. How are you feeling?” when she joined him at the foot of the steps.
“I’m fine.” Hailey glanced up at the house. “Darlene hasn’t come home, has she?”
Finn shook his head. “Nope. Still in Willowcreek.”
Hailey decided he looked very good, standing there, the collar of his brown jacket turned up against the wind, his prominent cheekbones red with cold. His hair could use a comb, but then, her own hair had lost its battle with the wind the minute she stepped out of the dorm that morning.
“Your hair looks great,” Finn said.
Hailey laughed. Then she remembered why she was there. “Is anybody home?” she asked.
“Nope. I was looking for Darlene, too. I thought she might have a clue about who pushed you out that window. She might know where Jessup is, too. But she’s not here. Nobody’s home.”
Hailey swallowed her disappointment. If Mike Riggs wasn’t home, she wasn’t going to get any answers today. Her questions would have to wait.
“How did you get here?” she asked Finn.
“I hitched.” He grinned down at her. “If you’re headed back to campus, feel like giving a foot soldier a ride?”
And then Hailey allowed herself, just for a little while, to put all of the horror behind her and focus only on the moment at hand. “It’ll cost you. A burger, maybe? At the diner?”
“Done,” Finn said cheerfully. “But that’s not much of a fare for a ride back to school. I get a discount at the diner, remember?”
“Well, maybe I’ll think of something else,” Hailey teased, surprising herself, and then quickly added, “fries, maybe.”
They got into the car laughing, but Hailey hadn’t even hit the first stop sign when Finn said, “We need to talk about yesterday. I think you were targeted because of Darlene. That’s been the connection in every incident. Gerrie, Robert Q, Richard—they all knew Darlene. And if you’re right that Susan and Puffy were set up, well, they knew her, too. That bothers me.”
Hailey felt a rush of warmth. It bothered Finn that she wasn’t safe: He worried about her? Didn’t that mean he cared?
That would be nice. Very nice.
She felt a little less alone.
“But I wasn’t rotten to Darlene,” she said. “At least, I don’t think I was.”
“No, you weren’t. But maybe our crazy doesn’t know that, or doesn’t care. Maybe he’s out to get everyone on this campus who even knew Darlene.”
Hailey shuddered. Where, she wondered, was Bo Jessup? Why hadn’t the police found him? Was he hiding? Did he have reason to hide?
At the diner, they were promptly joined by Jess and Ian. Neither of them noticed Hailey’s lack of enthusiasm. She had been looking forward to being alone with Finn. There was still so much she didn’t know about him.
Telling herself she should be grateful for their concern, Hailey slid over in the booth to make room for Jess.
“Hailey,” Jess asked after they had all ordered, “how did someone get into your room? Did you forget to lock the door?” She didn’t add the word “again,” but Hailey heard it, anyway.
Irritated, she said, “No. It was locked. And the police said there was no sign of forced entry.”
“Then doesn’t that mean someone had a key?” Ian asked. “Who, besides you and Nell, had a key?”
“I guess the security guards have a passkey. But why would anyone else have a key?”
The diner had become so crowded, they had to lean over the table, heads together, to hear each other.
“You didn’t give a key to anyone?” Finn asked Hailey.
She shook her head. “Of course not.”
“Then someone stole a key,” Jess suggested.
“No,” Hailey said. “Nell and I both have our keys. Į thought someone had my keys. My purse was missing. I thought it had been stolen at the mall. But I’d just left it on the shuttle. Someone brought it to the dorm, and my keys were still in it.”
“How long was your purse missing?” Ian asked.
“It was brought to the dorm the next morning. Why?”
Ian looked grim. “Because maybe your purse was stolen. On purpose. I mean, by someone who knew it was yours, and had seen you put your keys in there. It’s really easy to get copies made of keys, Hailey. That way, they wouldn’t have to break in.”
Hailey had already known someone was out to get her. But the thought that someone had carried out such an elaborate plan—stealing her purse, having her keys copied, and lying in wait in her own room to attack her—made Hailey’s skin crawl.
Who hated her that much?
And now that his plan had failed … did he have other plans for her?
Chapter 17
BY THE TIME HAILEY drove Finn to Lester Dorm, the sun was fading fast. She had always loved the way the tall lamplights stationed around campus cast shadows across the snow and the ivy-covered stone buildings, but now it seemed depressing, even frightening. It was too dark …
She pulled the Ford to a stop in front of Lester.
But Finn didn’t get out. He turned to face her on the front seat. “Hailey,” he said, “I don’t want to worry you, but if someone made a copy of your room key, he must still have it. You and Nell should have your lock changed. Better yet, ask for a different room.”
“No!” she said firmly. “We’ve already moved once. We’re not doing it again. We’ll put a chair under the doorknob and tomorrow we’ll see about changing the locks. But that creep is not chasing us out of our room. Not this time.”
Finn grinned. “Now, how did I know you’d say that? Though it was worth a try. Chair under the doorknob sounds good.” He looked at her for a moment with the same expression he’d had on his face after they pulled her back to safety. Then he leaned forward, put an arm around her shoulders to pull her close to him, and kissed her. He smelled of winter, crisp and clean, but there was nothing cold about his kiss.
It lasted a long time.
And for those lovely, long seconds, all of the tension and fear left Hailey and she felt only the warmth an
d caring in Finn’s arms around her.
When he lifted his head, he began, “Hailey, I—” Then he stopped, shook his head and said, “Later. Sleep well.”
And then he was out of the car. He stood on the curb, watching as she pulled away. In her rearview mirror, she saw him. And thought, he’ll be around tomorrow and the next day and the next …
She hadn’t learned that much about Finn. But she knew now that his best friends were Ian Banion and Pete Torrance, that he was interested in politics and hoped to practice law, and that he had a sense of humor, something Hailey considered essential.
And he had the greatest smile on campus.
She slept fitfully all night, in spite of the straight-backed wooden chair propped under the doorknob. When she awoke in the morning and saw it there, her stomach turned over. I hate it, she thought despairingly, that the bad things disappear during the night while you’re asleep but return in the morning when you wake up.
Nell’s mood wasn’t any better. “You know,” she grumbled, rubbing her eyes, “you’d think with all the police hanging around campus all the time, they’d have caught the creep who pushed you out the window. I didn’t come to college to sleep with a chair against my door. My parents would have a fit if they knew. Paranoia is hereditary, Hailey. I got it from them. They’d yank me out of this school so fast …”
Hailey had explained Ian’s theory about the key to Nell the night before. “Look, Nell,” she said now as she dressed in jeans and a bulky peach sweater, “all of this has something to do with Darlene. I’m going to try to track down her brother. Mike Riggs. She said he’s a student here. Maybe he’ll know something.”
Nell looked at Hailey uneasily. “Are you going alone?”
Hailey swept her hair up and fastened it with a clip on top of her head. “I was planning on it. Why?”
“How do you know he’s not the one who pushed you?”
Hailey turned around. “Darlene’s brother?”
“Yes. Her brother.” Nell glanced in the dresser mirror as she stood up, and groaned at her reflection. “Aren’t motive and opportunity the two things the cops look for? Well, I’d think Darlene’s brother would be really mad about the way everyone, especially Robert Q, treated his sister. That’s motive. And since he’s a student here, that’s opportunity. Right?”