Deceived

by Julie Anne Lindsey

  “You don’t need to be afraid. He won’t get near you again … ”

  Those were the last words I heard. The syllables whooshed through my head, hazing it up like the smoke from our fire. We’d stopped walking; Brian held me by my shoulders. The panic and terror hit. A combination of real-life fear—fear I’d felt recently—plus the lifelong stress of my dream. My tummy coiled.

  “Elle? What is it? Please say something.”

  I pictured myself vomiting on his shiny black boots.

  “Near me again?” I whispered the words. I hoped they were audible.

  “Elle.” His voice encouraged, as if he spoke to a child. He held my shoulders tight, and I wondered if I might pass out. “I shouldn’t have said that.” He tilted his head all the way back, looking exasperated. “My mind is having a hard time keeping up lately.”

  I knew exactly what that felt like.

  “Ugh! I know you know things, but I don’t know what things. At the gas station you were running and screaming and said someone was in the parking lot with you.”

  “You were. Where did you come from that night anyway? No one else saw you. Only me. Then you disappeared. Someone tried to get into the car with me.” Fire returned to my cheeks. I had so many things to be screaming about. I couldn’t pick just one. “I thought I was crazy. Like I imagined you, him, everything!”

  “I might need to transfer soon. This arrangement isn’t working. I’m not supposed to be distracted. I’m certainly not supposed to be so out of focus every time I get you alone.”

  “What are you talking about? Can you please focus now, for a minute? Answer one of my questions before you go off on your own tangent?”

  He rubbed his face with one hand and tried to hold me up with the other.

  I shook my shoulders against his palm. Anger ignited, replacing fear.

  “What do you mean you might transfer? You’re distracted? By what? We’ve only been here six weeks. Where are you going? What are you concentrating on? Are you a Mensa student or something?” Betrayal burned my frosty cheeks. How dare he plan to leave over a little distraction when he was the only guy I’d ever wanted to want me? I didn’t know how close he thought we were, but he was the only person I’d told about being followed and the guy at the gas station. I needed him to stay. I trusted him with my secrets. How could one person feel so strongly about another who didn’t return the feeling? Life was cruel. I threw my hands into the air. I wanted to stalk off and leave him, but I had no idea where we were. I turned and headed back to the pergola.

  As I traipsed along the sandy riverbank, a sixth sense tickled at my neck. I worried the predator watched me. The forest seemed scarier. Darkness had covered everything while I was engrossed in our conversation.

  Could someone dangerous enough to be on the news be the same man outside the diner and gas station? Did he follow me to the coffee shop that night? The pile of ashes on our doormat flashed through my mind. Chills covered my skin. I needed to get far away from the cursed academy. Maybe it wasn’t too late to go with Dad. Maybe Brian and I could pick up later, after he did his thing—whatever that was—and I secured a place at a good college. I considered all of the options. Having options made me feel less helpless.

  I sighed in relief when my feet hit the stone under the pergola. From the safety of the fire, I watched Brian. He was smart enough to give me space to think. I appreciated it. I had plenty to think about.

  He bided his time tossing rocks into the river and apparently talked to himself. After several minutes, he made his way back in my direction.

  Evening had transitioned into night, and the fire cast eerie shadows. Of course, romantic didn’t ever describe what he seemed to be going for, and talk of me being stalked ruined that anyway.

  “Can I still make you dinner?” His tortured expression was lit by waving flames.

  “You’re making dinner?” Did he ever end? I burned grilled cheese.

  “Come on.” He reached for me, and I met him in the middle. I left the fire warmer than I’d been all night. This, I had to see.

  “So what am I supposed to call you?” I stopped in my tracks. I refused to take another step without an answer. How ridiculous to be out alone with someone who wouldn’t tell me his name.

  “Nicholas.”

  What the hell? “What?”

  He tugged me along behind him. “Come on. It’s warmer inside.”

  The cute little cabin was neat as a pin. Not a lot of furniture, but the kitchen looked fully stocked. He’d already set the table. This was a date, then.

  “What are you making?” I could be mad at him later. Whatever he had in the oven smelled delicious. With any luck, my stomach wouldn’t roar its approval and embarrass me further.

  Okay, I probably wouldn’t be mad at him later either.

  “I have the makings for a nice salad,” he pointed to a stack of fresh-cut vegetables near the sink, “and I planned Hubbard squash, all from the garden.”

  Of course they were.

  “And trout.”

  “From the river?” I joked.

  He shrugged and we laughed.

  “So, where are your parents?” I asked as he arranged the vegetables into a large bowl and moved it to the table.

  “D.C.” He watched me. “I rented the cabin to get away from the others. It helps me to … ”

  “Concentrate?”

  He grabbed a dishtowel off the counter and lifted a baking dish from the oven. On quick feet he crossed the distance to the table and set dinner beside the salad. He shook his hands at the wrist and motioned for me to eat up. Dishtowels weren’t the best potholders. We filled our plates in silence. I piled on the salad and fish, but I wasn’t sure I could eat. No guy had ever cooked for me before.

  He sighed and shoved a forkful of fish into his mouth.

  “Do you miss them?”

  Every minute I sat there was more than too much for my heart to handle. I wanted to explode or at least extend the night. I prayed for daylight savings to happen right then, but an extra hour wouldn’t be enough either.

  “My family is huge and intrusive and crazy.” He smiled around a mouthful of lettuce. “For being a military family, I think half of them are legally insane.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Really. They’re nuts. No one does anything without everyone knowing.” Pride inflated his words. His eyes twinkled.

  “Like small towns,” I offered.

  “We could populate a small town.”

  “Really?” I let that thought settle. What did a big family feel like? All those people caring about your life. Nicholas had roots. I rolled the name around in my head. It fit. “You all get along?”

  “Mostly. Yeah. It takes some effort on everyone’s part, though.” He chewed and looked at the ceiling a minute. “We hang out a lot, go to ball games, fish, whatever.” His words were aloof, but his face told the truth. He loved them, and he missed them.

  “I wish I knew what it was like.” I’d never admitted it out loud before. “It’s always just my dad and me.” I craved what he had. I wanted roots. “He taught me to fish, though. We have a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains we use to get away when he’s not on assignment somewhere. It’s my respite.”

  He stopped chewing and watched me. Then he put his fork down and watched me some more.

  I began to worry something might be wrong.

  “What are you doing here? Why are you alone at a boarding school all of a sudden?”

  I cleared my throat and wiped my hands against the napkin on my lap. “My mom died when I was six. Dad thought putting me at a private school was more practical than keeping a nanny for an eighteen-year-old. My birthday is in December. I don’t need watching over anymore. Of course, Dad disagrees. I’ve always had some random live-in babysitter, and they weren’t the English grandmotherly type either. Nothing like that. Dad always chose someone too much like himself and not much like a mother. I used to think he did it intentionally, so I’d never
try to replace Mom with a nanny.” I paused, wondering if there was truth to the idea. “Seriously, though, he could’ve done better. I think he made ‘businesslike’ and ‘paranoid’ requirements. ‘Nurturing’ didn’t make the list. Some of them were painfully preoccupied, and from my vantage point, I felt like something to be looked over, not interacted with. I had a super childhood.” In case he missed the sarcasm, I rolled my eyes. He laughed.

  “I begged to lose the nanny. I’m an adult. Besides, everyone always thought having a nanny was weird.” I shifted my gaze from his. “Then again, everyone else had a mom.” I shrugged. I’d never spilled so much about myself to one person before.

  “Are you okay? Being alone? Really?”

  “I’m not alone.” I supposed it seemed that way to him. “No more than ever. Dad’s always traveled. We always move. It’s normal to me.” I looked up and my belly flopped. My life probably sounded terrible to him. “I don’t love it, but it is what it is, and I’m okay with what it is.” I sat a little straighter, determined not to be unhappy. I knew I was very lucky in a ton of other ways.

  “You’re braver than I am.”

  I choked. “I’m not brave. I’m Chicken Little. You have mistaken me for someone else.”

  “I don’t think so.” He looked at me way too long. It reminded me how much I needed him to be there.

  “Don’t go, Nicholas.” I tested his name on my tongue. The words sounded like an order, and I was okay with that, too.

  His throat bobbed once at the sound of his name. “I can’t.” He sighed and stretched his feet out beneath the table, bumping mine. His eyes moved to his plate and back to me. “I should. It’s the right thing to do, but I don’t think I can go.”

  “Okay.”

  He took and released a deep breath. His face revealed nothing. I hated making his decision more difficult, but I was deeply thankful he wanted to stay.

  “So, I suppose you aren’t planning to make dinner for everyone at Francine Frances.”

  “No.” His dimple appeared. “Obviously.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing.” He rested interlaced fingers on top of his head.

  “Why aren’t you using your real name?” I swirled the ice in my cup and waited for an answer that never came.

  I put my fork down. Dinner was phenomenal, but I couldn’t eat another bite. The butterflies flew back, and it felt like they brought along their friends, the hummingbirds. Maybe a swarm of bees, too. I laid a hand over my stomach under the table’s edge.

  I doubted I’d have another chance to figure him out. Faced with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, my cheeks probably glowed scarlet. I rolled my lips in over my teeth for a minute and then forged ahead. “It’s nice, being here with you. I’ve had a tough time wondering what you really think of me. You act so different at school.”

  His eyes slipped shut. They rarely did. I noticed. Nicholas lived on alert. When he opened them, he seemed to have made a decision not to talk openly any more. Whatever measure of trust he’d allowed to flow between us was clamped off. Done. “We should get you back before Pixie comes home.”

  “So she won’t see you dropping me off.”

  One stern nod from him and I blew out the door to wait by the Jeep.

  Chapter Twelve

  “You’re baaaaack.” Davis smiled a wide cheesy smile as I approached the lunch table. He had a large Styrofoam cup situated in front of him on the table. “For you. I made an unauthorized trip to the teachers’ lounge.”

  It was my first real smile since leaving Brian, or Nicholas, or whatever his real name was, the night before. I had refused to look at him all morning and prayed he’d keep his distance at lunch. Thanks to Davis’s kind gesture, I now had a weapon.

  “Thanks.” I lifted the cup and blew over the top of the stale-smelling contents.

  He walked in, took one look at my face, and moved to a small table against the wall.

  “Uh-oh. You and your buddy on the outs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to talk about it?” His voice held the hope I didn’t.

  “No.”

  “You up for watching some practice tonight?”

  At a loss for words, and any reason under the sun I couldn’t make it, I caved. “Sure. Yeah, I can stay a while.”

  “Excellent.”

  After school, I climbed a set of metal bleachers and positioned myself in the sun. Fall had burst all over campus, lighting everything in shades from amber to crimson. Purple and gold mums lined cobblestone walkways, and pumpkins appeared with hay bales at an alarming rate.

  I pulled out my journal at the first whistle and started writing. Between plays I waved at the guys and smiled, but my mind was miles away.

  “Are you logging all the ways you want to kill me?”

  The journal fell to my feet and nearly slipped between the bleachers to the ground below. Nicholas grabbed it and handed it to me like a peace offering. At the sound of the whistle, a cluster of players gaped upward at us. I waved a small nervous wave.

  “Who are you watching?”

  “Davis. I don’t know anyone else.”

  Silence stretched between us until I turned on him. “Do you want something?”

  I followed his silent gaze beyond the field, to a mass of trees on the outskirts of the general landscaping. At first I didn’t see anything, and then something moved. With no rush, a man turned and disappeared into the shadows. Blending with the trees, he was gone.

  “Stay.”

  Nicholas placed one palm on the railing beside me and hoisted himself over the edge. A second later a muffled thud preceded footfalls. Two seconds later, he ran across the field’s edge and into the trees. I stood on shaky legs to peer over the edge where he’d jumped. If it had been me, I’d still be lying there eight feet below.

  Stay. Jerk. I stuffed the journal into my backpack and marched with purpose down the loud metal stairs. I threw a wave and a smile in Davis’s direction and swung around the corner to the library. Stay. Who says that to a person?

  Fueled by images of his beautiful face, I Googled. I tried local sports sections in D.C. papers and combed through Deans’ lists, looking through features on D.C. seniors. No Nicholas Austin.

  “You okay?”

  I looked up, less startled than usual. I was getting used to being snuck up on. Anger burned under my skin. The man looking down at me made me rethink my calm. He was always in the library. The last time I saw him, he didn’t speak. He stood at the end of a row of books, staring. His floppy black hair hung youthfully over one eyebrow. Maybe it was a side effect of spending so much time in a high school library. He looked closer to my dad’s age than mine.

  “Fine.”

  “You’re here quite a bit. Is there anything I can help with?”

  “Do you work here?” I didn’t see a name tag or any sort of clue that he did.

  “You could say that.” One cheek lifted his face into a half smile. The expression never met his eyes. The stale scent of cigarette smoke lingered on his sweater.

  “I’m fine.”

  “If you need anything … ” He looked over both his shoulders and pressed his palms onto the table. The sight of a pack of cigarettes stuffed into his shirt pocket sucked the air from my lungs.

  I shook my head, unable to find words. People smoked. Davis smoked. I exhaled long and slow. A group of girls bustled in through the front door and set up at the next table over. He stood poker straight and walked away. No goodbye. Nothing. He walked out the way the girls had come in. Guess he wasn’t working there. Freak town.

  My eyes burned from lack of sleep and all the hay bales on campus. I turned back to my laptop, thankful for the girls who had saved me from a creepy old man. This time I searched for Nicholas Austin without first choosing a paper. I rolled my achy eyes and prepared to start again. Minors never made headlines without a nice scholastic reason.

  The possibility that he was as old as he lo
oked hadn’t grown roots until then. I clicked on a link. A picture of my Nicholas lodged in the upper corner of my screen. Wearing a crisp white hat and uniform, a deluge of information washed over me. I read as fast as I could, hoping to pull the details directly into my brain like a download. I’d struck gold.

  Nicholas Austin graduated from D.C. Military Academy before joining the U.S. Marine Corps. He completed a tour in Afghanistan before taking a position with the United States Marshals Service.

  Holy crap. I dragged my gaze from the picture back to the article showcasing a handful of new Marshals at a fundraiser in D.C. According to the article, Nicholas had studied at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. No graduation notice. My mind reeled at the implication. Why would someone like that go back to high school? And how old was he?

  Adrenaline had me shifting in my chair. I wanted to run somewhere. Nicholas had secrets bigger than a bogus name. He had an enormous flipping secret. I’d called Pixie’s boyfriend, Michael, a poser. Man, Nicholas had him beat hands down. A U.S. freaking Marshal posing as a student at Francine Frances. I rubbed my eyes and reread the article.

  I leaned back against the hard wooden chair and marveled. It didn’t surprise me to discover he was something more than a high school student. In fact, all I’d read about him only flamed my barely hidden infatuation. This boy buying me coffee and wearing flip-flops was an all-American hero. He’d accomplished so much. Too much to be here.

  A hundred searches later, I hadn’t found anything new. I replayed all the clues: his dog tags, the missing hair on his calves, his continual distraction, the way he had launched himself over the railing. Dad had mentioned increased campus security.

  “Things I know.” I underlined it a few times. First, Nicholas took an assumed name and came here to “observe.” I assumed. Observe sounded less scary than the other night at The Pier when he said he was watching for a killer. I shivered. Second, he was a U.S. Marshal. I had no idea what that meant. I made another column and dragged my pen down the center of the paper. I needed a column for questions. Why would he use a fake name? Who knew his real name? Did the school know he wasn’t a student? That’s why there was no file. It took effort not to bounce my hand against my forehead. No wonder he was so bizarre. He had a lot to hide. Next question: What did Marshals do? Something was going on at this little school and Nicholas was the key. What if there was a serial killer? I swallowed long and hard, then took a careful look around. It wasn’t a huge jump after all the killer talk and knowing a Marshal guarded us. The number of unpleasant things that had happened since I arrived seemed to multiply when I gave them opportunity. Considering, however lightly, that I could be the target of a serial killer hurt. The realization was like someone punching a hole through my chest.