Deceived

by Julie Anne Lindsey

  “Well, now you know, but you can’t dwell and make yourself unhappy. She’s already gone. You have to focus on getting yourself through this emotionally.”

  I’d never seen him look so vulnerable, sad.

  “I’ll do everything else.”

  “We need to get this guy.”

  Nicholas smiled. “Yes.”

  “I searched for hours and I’m no clearer about one thing. I don’t understand. Why her?”

  His eyebrows crunched together. Clearly he didn’t understand my question, but I didn’t have a better way to articulate it.

  I tried repetition for clarity. “Why her? Why Pixie?”

  “Pixie?” He let out a whole chestful of air. He’d apparently stopped breathing at some point.

  “Yes, Pixie. Who do you think I’m talking about? Is this a game? What’s happening? I swear, sometimes I feel like we’re having two separate conversations. This isn’t the first time.”

  “This isn’t a game. I’m sorry. You confused me for a second. This situation has moved beyond complicated to insane. I promise you, I’m not trying to be coy or difficult.”

  I softened for a moment at his sincerity. It didn’t last.

  “The answer to what you asked is classified.”

  I threw my arms into the air and jogged up to the house. Classified. Pft. I stomped through the house then took my time in the shower so he’d have to rush to get ready on time. I refused to care that he’d have to take a short shower. Maybe a cold one. Soaking under the streaming hot water loosened the knotted frustration in my back and shoulders. I stepped out in a better mood than when I got in. Steam hung thick in the air. I wrung the water from my hair and rubbed a strip on the mirror so I could see.

  I took my time combing out my tangles and brushing my teeth, but even I couldn’t put on makeup in the steamy conditions. I headed back to my room wrapped in a giant white towel made in heaven. Nicholas waited in the hall.

  “Elle!” He threw his hand up to cover his face. “What took you so long?” His fingers widened over his eyes. “You were in there forever. I expected you to come out ready to leave. Where’s your uniform?”

  “In my room. I see you peeking.” I wanted to stay mad at him, but disarming the tough guy was fun. Before he got past the towel to see I had no makeup on and my hair sopped over my shoulders, I moved on. “Excuse me.” I brushed past him and headed down the tiny hallway. When I grabbed the bedroom doorknob, I spun around.

  His eyes widened and his cheeks darkened. Let him think about that in the shower.

  My uniform took two minutes to put on and so did my makeup. My hair was another story. He hadn’t thought to grab my blow dryer, and he didn’t have one. I twisted my hair up and secured it with pins I fished out of the bottom of my bag. Then I packed up and waited on my bed until the bathroom door opened.

  “Clothes.” He motioned with his hands to his ensemble. He shook his head and walked toward the kitchen. When I got there, he handed me an apple and took my bag. He slung the bag over his shoulder and put a bottle of water in my free hand. He poured himself a mug of coffee.

  I made a point of staring at the coffee. I imagined he thought coffee wasn’t good for me. “I had a cold shower.” He held the cup near his cheek as if it could warm him. I poured my own to-go cup.

  We walked to the SUV in silence. The interior felt strange. I’d accepted a Jeep as his vehicle. It fit. The SUV reminded me of the reason for the Jeep’s replacement. I played around with the inside temperature while we drove.

  “Are you ready for this?” It was the same thing Pixie had asked me on my first day at Francine Frances. It seemed like years ago instead of a couple of months.

  “Absolutely, Brian.” I nodded, looking straight ahead. Remembering to call him that worried me. Truth be told, remembering my own name might prove difficult. Not the senior year I had expected.

  “Do you want to talk about anything you read last night?”

  “No. All the things I want to know are classified. Everything else was in the old papers. The only thing that matters now is that he’s stopped.” I should’ve expected he’d monitor the Internet. I knew the new phone monitored my calls, too. He didn’t have to say it. I watched prime time. Without Pixie, I’d only call my dad. Nothing scandalous there. Phone surveillance would put him to sleep.

  He bit his lip and looked at me. “What’re you doing for Thanksgiving?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing this weekend, let alone in three weeks.”

  “Well, this weekend you’re attending the fall festival at school. For Thanksgiving, I thought we’d go see your father.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  There were no words for this insanity. First of all, being stalked by a killer seemed like a solid reason not to go to a festival. They needed to cancel that thing. Secondly, I didn’t plan to go home for Thanksgiving. I didn’t even know how to find our new home, and if I had to go, I certainly wasn’t bringing a guy with me.

  “Elle.”

  “You’re joking, right? I’m not going to some festival. No one should go to that festival.”

  “They’re reasonably safe. There’s no reason to cancel the festival.”

  “Reasonably safe. Why? Because of the crowd? You’re wrong. You’ll see today.”

  The vehicle slowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we went to a party last night. We moved right through the center of a huge crowd, and no one saw us. If they did, and I’m wrong, then everyone will be gossiping about it today, but they didn’t. I think a crowd is actually worse than having only one or two witnesses.”

  His mouth turned down at the corners. “Elle, in a crowd you have more people within an arm’s length to grab onto. Get their attention. If you’re in danger, do whatever it takes to get someone’s help. That’s the point of a crowd. There are more opportunities for you.” He shut his eyes then, though the SUV continued to move. He opened them. “We’ll work on this. We’ll start this afternoon.”

  “Nicholas.” I’d been dying to ask him since he had dropped me off to decorate.

  He glanced in my direction. The muscles in his arms clenched and his fingers tightened around the steering wheel. A major overreaction.

  “Tell me about our apartment.” I kept my eyes on the road, unsure of how much I wanted to hear.

  “On the way to Ohio, I worried myself sick over how well I could protect you. Since the plane landed, I’ve done everything wrong. I had a strict no-contact order, which I’ve completely violated.” He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Now, circumstances have changed and I’m … ”

  “Involved.”

  He cleared his throat. “Nothing in my training says it’s acceptable to have a personal relationship with the witness.”

  “The what?” I eyed him and watched for a response. I’d told him more than once that I hadn’t seen the guy, only the glow. He usually dealt with witness-protection people. The slip reminded me how hard this assignment must be for him. He was forced out of his element. Not to mention returning to high school.

  “Your curtains were closed.”

  “What?” How much of our conversation had I missed?

  “You never close your curtains. Also, the stoop light was out. You always leave that on.”

  “Okay.”

  “I knew something had happened. I hoped I wouldn’t find Pixie in there.”

  “What if the light had just burnt out?” I forced images of Pixie in a gunnysack from my mind.

  “I had just changed it.” He looked sideways at me. “Anyway, the curtains.”

  “Oh, right, the curtains.” Did we leave the curtains open? Weird. I hadn’t noticed.

  “Glass was all over your stoop when I got there. Broken light. That’s good for cover and a good way to let him know when you’ve made it up to the door. Stepping on glass is louder than you think.”

  I shivered and swallowed hard.

  “I cleared every room. He wasn’t there, but
he’d killed your pumpkin.”

  “Thank you for the pumpkin.” I’d never thanked him. “Then what?”

  “I called my team and told them to set up a perimeter. We knew roughly where to start looking. They came and swept the apartment for any kind of clue or note or anything and staged the fire.”

  He looked my way and took a deep breath. “I gathered some things for you and Pixie, and I left. Well, you called Pixie’s phone, we talked, and then I left. You know the rest from there.”

  “Okay. What else?” I wanted to be cool like him, but curiosity and I never got along. Besides, he already knew everything. I’d probably be more relaxed if I had the same details. “You knew he was in town.”

  “We suspected as much but needed confirmation.”

  “Tell me how you ended up here without confirmation. You must’ve had some reason to come. I have a theory.”

  Nicholas looked at his watch. The SUV coasted to the side of the road. A few yards into a random field, he shut down the engine and unlocked his seat belt. I followed his lead. He cocked his knee up on the seat between us.

  “I was back home in D.C., shooting hoops in my mom’s driveway with my brothers and a cousin, when I got assigned to this case. I’d just gotten home from a mission in Chicago, where I removed a threat to a family in witness protection. I relocated them again for the sake of due diligence.”

  I bit my tongue. I wanted these details.

  “I celebrate with my family after every mission because they’re crazy. Everyone gets together at my parents’ house for a barbecue. Honestly, they’re always on the lookout for a reason to throw a party. Anyway, the house brimmed with guests, and the street out front resembled a parking lot.” He rolled his eyes and smiled. “I try not to take it for granted, but it can be nuts.”

  “We call ourselves a team.” He laughed lightly. “Everyone plays their part, each one strengthens the whole. My great-grandparents started the team mentality when they arrived in New York after leaving Europe. They were in a new place and barely spoke the language. The way they got by was to be united with one another. It worked. They set a precedence that has been honored in every generation that followed.”

  “So, you’d gotten home from Chicago … ”

  “Protocol mandates a standard three-to-five-day break between assignments. This time, I guess, someone fudged the protocol because my phone rang before lunch.

  “I never expected it to be anyone other than my partner wondering what he and his wife should bring to the cookout. Headquarters called me in, said I was reassigned—immediately.”

  I couldn’t help notice he looked sad. He loved his family so much. I felt awful. He’d just gotten home and was sent out again. He’d been stuck in Ohio alone for months. How rotten.

  “There were so many people. People on the lawn, on the deck, in the driveway. My parents like a crowd. Essentially, I missed my party because ‘immediately’ means ‘right now.’ I couldn’t even dip home to shower and change. Everything had to wait until I got the details and went to pack. I handed the ball to my youngest brother and went inside to tell Mom.” He raised an eyebrow.

  I pictured what he described and pined for it. I needed to hear more. My eyes widened, telling him to go on.

  He sighed. “I had to go to the station, wearing an ‘I’m in Witness Protection’ T-shirt Mom had bought me as a joke.” He laughed. “I had on jeans with holes in the knees and back pocket. I didn’t even pull on a pair of socks before I left. Let me tell you, I regretted the flip-flops every step of the way. They cracked hard against the marble steps on my way up to the office, and everyone heard me coming.”

  I had had my own experience with loud flip-flops. I nodded.

  “My superior officer hates me. He glared at my outfit. He wore a perfectly pressed suit, properly shined shoes, the whole bit. He had never approved of me as a Marshal. It took him years to get into the program while I seemed to slide in on namesake, which isn’t true. I’m qualified on paper. I have the credentials and the military training. I was born to do this. I know it, and I plan to prove it.

  “Anyway, he led me into a big empty conference room and gave me the details of another break on the Reaper case. They wanted me on it, which is funny because they think of me as too young and inexperienced. This time, they needed someone who could blend. Youth came in handy. This case is their pet project. All the older guys were in my shoes back when the Reaper made his way across America. Now those agents are in positions of authority. There are new leads again, and they’re bent on getting him this time. I think they think it’ll validate them somehow if we catch him. They want to make up for the mess he caused.”

  “What’s so special about this guy? I mean, I’m sure you see lots of similar lunatics. More criminals than the Reaper have gotten away.”

  “Well,” he worked for the words. “My superiors witnessed the effects he had on one of the Bureau’s agents and his family.” He stopped short and worked his jaw. “The Reaper’s the Bureau’s equivalent of ‘the one who got away.’ Being assigned to this case is an honor.

  “My grandfather ran the department when it all came to a head. He retired after, but he still talks about the Reaper. I couldn’t wait to tell him about my assignment. I knew he’d be proud.”

  Another smile graced his face.

  I smiled, too.

  “For my briefing, they played a slide show. They showed me kids in uniforms in what looked like the Midwest. Cobblestone streets, small shops, pretty typical stuff for a safe location. Small towns are often chosen for families to begin again. I spend a lot of time in small-town America. Then I saw a shot of a girl inside a coffee shop.”

  “Was she cute?”

  “Beautiful,” he corrected.

  “If you like the highly caffeinated and deeply crazy kind.”

  “The deeper the better.”

  I shook my head. “Go on.”

  “I had orders to maintain a safe distance. I was sworn to a strict no-contact order.”

  “Fail,” I muttered, smiling widely out my side window.

  “Uh, huge, epic fail. So much for vigilant and unseen.”

  “My dad just told me to be vigilant.”

  “He’s a wise man.”

  “Hmph.”

  “I left three hours later. Here I am.”

  “You started what? Tailing all of us?”

  “I started with Pixie, which led me to you.” He chuckled. “The day you two went to the flea market I nearly ran out of gas. I started to think you were running away or something. You headed out of town and kept on going. It took you all of five minutes to separate. I realized then that my job would be harder than I imagined.”

  “Yeah, you used to buy me coffee.” I eyed the travel mug in his holder.

  “I used to have hot showers.”

  “Right.”

  “I didn’t plan on talking to you, but when I got close, I couldn’t help myself. I followed you to the coffee place, threw out my grandfather’s name as mine, and promised myself it’d be the last time we spoke.”

  He shook his head and put his hands neatly in his lap.

  “Fine. What else?”

  “I felt like a major jerk for a long time after because I let you leave. I knew I’d be seeing you again, but you couldn’t see me. I was forced to be ‘that weird guy from the flea market who followed you around all day but didn’t ask for your number,’ in order to protect you. Of course, you didn’t know why.”

  “Then you showed up at my new school.”

  His eyes lit up. “What a nightmare. When they gave me those orders, I nearly died. How was I supposed to pull that off casually? I couldn’t tell them, ‘Sorry, I went against orders already and spent the day talking to Gabriella Smith.’ So, I sucked it up and hoped you wouldn’t label me a predator and file a formal complaint with your school.”

  “Nice.”

  “Right?”

  “You thought being a jerk to me would help things how?” />
  Nicholas pulled back onto the road and headed for Francine Frances. “I thought you’d be pissed and ignore me back. That didn’t work.”

  “Not when you kept talking to me.”

  “You complicate my life.” He slid an impish look my way.

  I knew the rest of the story.

  “Where’s your partner now?”

  He turned to me and smiled. “On assignment without me, I’m guessing. We relocate families together. The Reaper case is something else entirely. For this I have an entire team, and everything is classified.”

  The guard booth appeared from nowhere. The time had come to let go of Nicholas, my only friend, my guardian. I had to replace him with Brian, an oversized Ken doll with no personality.

  I climbed out of the new vehicle near the fountain and walked directly through the front doors. From inside I watched Nicholas take the SUV around the building, to the lot.

  I got started on my new normal immediately. First, to my locker to get ready. Then I took my things to the cafeteria. I bought a pop and sat down to study. I hadn’t opened one of my texts all week. I’d pay for it soon enough. No prelaw program in the country would accept a student whose grades plummeted during her senior year.

  Students trickled into the large room a few minutes later. One more thing to distract me from my grades. They laughed, oblivious and happy. A small circle of girls I recognized from The Pier formed nearby. I listened hard. They talked about music, boys, and their clothes, nothing more. When their voices dropped without warning, I shifted nervously. I was sure they’d seen me staring. I forced my eyes up, expecting them to glare at me for my poor manners, but they were focused on someone beyond my table. I felt sorry for the brunt of their gossip.

  Carefully, I turned to retrieve a book from my bag. I hoped to steal a peek at the unfortunate soul. A giggle passed through my lips. I kept my head down until I’d recovered. Nicholas squatted before the large vending machine, pretending to make a tough decision. The girls enjoyed their view. His khakis stretched to accommodate the position, but the resulting fit was droolworthy. If he guarded the school, I had nothing to worry about. I went back to studying.