Except he acted like he didn’t know about the accident. But the things he said… sometimes I thought he spoke about that night.
We keep meeting like this.
His words drifted like smoke through the back of my mind. I couldn’t help but feel like he was referencing when I slipped and the man caught me. But how would he know? There was no one else on the street that night and the witnesses on the bus saw nothing. The bus driver had been so frantic to stop the bus, he remembered only his own panic.
But I remembered. I remembered everything and there was something strange about that man. There was something about him I didn’t know, something I wanted to know.
And when I wanted something, I usually got it. I was a woman with a stubborn streak a mile long. It was only a matter of time before I figured out who he was and what this vision really meant.
* * *
I was standing beside the door waiting when I heard the knock. Bursting forward, I yanked it open. “Get in here!” I said as Frankie stepped inside.
“Gheesh, what’s the rush?” she asked, but added a little speed to her step. “Did you almost die again?” she demanded, spinning to face me. Her curls were wild, most likely from the wind, and her cheeks were red.
“Frankie!” I gasped. “No, I didn’t almost die again.”
She pulled off her red coat and threw it on the end of the couch, then sat down in the middle. She was dressed in a pair of dark denim jeans, a fitted T-shirt, and a bright blue blazer over top. The chunky black necklace around her neck was the gift I’d given her for Christmas this past year.
“Why are you still wearing that uniform?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at my waitress outfit.
“Huh?” I asked, looking down. “I guess I forgot to change.”
“You smell like the diner.”
“Who cares?” I said. “I had another vision,” I told her excitedly.
“That’s like an almost everyday occurrence, Pipe. Why would you call me over here for that?”
“I had it before. The night I touched the guy who got hit by the bus,”
“So you’re having visions now without having to touch people?” she asked, intrigued.
I shook my head. “No. I did touch someone. Someone else.”
“Tell me more,” she urged.
I explained about the guy in the diner, the things he said, about getting a ride home, and how the visions were exactly the same. When I finished I stopped my pacing and looked at Frankie who was still sitting on the couch.
“You asked a stranger for a ride home?” she asked, lifting her sculpted eyebrow.
“Yes. Who cares about that? Did you hear what I said about the vision?”
“Well, I care. I don’t really want to have to ID your body at the morgue.” She sniffed. But then she said, “So what do you think the vision means?”
“I don’t know.” I frowned. I couldn’t figure it out. “I was hoping you could help me.”
“I’ll help you if you take off that stinky uniform,” she said, standing up and pulling me along to my bedroom. I stood there while she opened up the door to the tiniest closet known to man and peered in. Her blond head reappeared moments later, and she said “Your wardrobe is pathetic.”
I rolled my eyes. We had this conversation hundreds of times. “I’m a struggling college student. I don’t have money for clothes.”
“Girl, you gotta get your priorities straight. I know you want to be some hero doctor, but you gotta look the part. Dying people don’t want to look at a fugly mess.”
I laughed. But then I thought about the man on the street. I wondered if he was able to see me before he died. Suddenly, it did seem important to look pretty.
Frankie must’ve noticed the change in me because she sighed. “It’s not that bad in here. We can find something.”
“Frankie. Will you help me?” I said, plopping down on the end of my twin-size bed.
She appeared again, this time with a scarf around her neck and several articles of clothing draped over her arms. “Of course I will; you know that.” She thrust a pair of jeans at me and a long-sleeved white T-shirt.
I stood up and stepped into the jeans, pulling them up under my waitress skirt. “Well, what I want you to do is kinda illegal.”
“Oooh. Do tell,” she sang as she dove back into my closet. I had no idea what she was doing because I had hardly any clothes.
“Well, he drives this really fancy car. It’s a Mercedes Roadster.” I began and I heard her gasp from somewhere in the closet.
“You’re just now telling me this? Is he rich? Is he cute? Does he have a brother?” Her words tripped over each other.
“I have no idea about any of that stuff,” I said. “Anyway, I was thinking—”
Frankie cut me off to say, “How can you know none of this? Have I taught you nothing?!”
“He wasn’t the talkative type,” I said, discarding my uniform completely and pulling on the T-shirt.
“He’s a serial killer. I knew it. He drives that car to lure in poor women.”
I laughed again. “Oh my God, Frank. You’re so paranoid. Will you just listen already?”
She sniffed. “Fine. But if you die, I’m not crying at your funeral.”
“You will too,” I argued.
“Fine. I will. But only a little.”
“Anyway,” I said, trying to get back to the subject. “I was hoping you could, you know, look him up, see where he lives?”
“I knew working at the Motor Vehicle Administration would be good for something someday, other than making me feel dead inside.”
She now had a hat on her head, three bracelets on her right wrist, and one glove on her left hand.
“What are you doing and where did you get that bracelet?”
She wagged her eyebrows. “I told you I could find something.”
“I got his license plate number when he drove off earlier. I’ll give it to you and you can look him up.”
“I’ll do it on Wednesday. My supervisor is off. She has an appointment to get the broom she flies on serviced.”
“You’re too much,” I said, giggling.
“I know you love me,” she said, stepping back from the closet. It was organized into outfits that all hung together with accessories and everything.
“How’d you do that?”
She smiled and draped the chunky knit scarf around my neck. “It’s a calling,” she said and sighed. “Come on, I’m taking you to a late-night movie. You’ve been working and thinking too much lately.”
“Can we get popcorn?”
“Sure, I already have it stashed in my purse. Candy too. That usher won’t dare try to search me after what happened last time.” She wagged her eyebrows.
I grinned at the memory of the very embarrassed usher’s face. “I’ve never seen any guy get so flustered in all my life.”
“It takes a special kind of man to handle all of this,” she said, motioning to herself. “He was out of his element.”
Most men were out of their element when it came to Frankie. Most women, too. But she was the best friend I could ever hope for. I wondered about what kind of information she would find on Wednesday. I wondered what his name would be. Most of all, I wondered what I would do with the information when I got it.
Chapter Eleven
“Reconnaissance - the process of obtaining information about the position, activities, resources, etc., of an enemy or potential enemy.”
Dex
My recon mission didn’t really go the way I planned. I couldn’t call it a complete failure because I found out where she lived, but I wouldn’t call it a success either. I acted so weird she probably wanted nothing more to do with me, and then I started feeling sick. My being sick probably had nothing at all to do with her (and everything to do with that nasty BLT), but I couldn’t really shake the knowledge that as soon as I put some miles between us, I started to feel better.
Maybe the idea of killing her in such c
lose proximity made me nervous. I’d never been the nervous type before. I mean, living on the streets really wasn’t a peaceful place, so me getting nervous to the point of feeling sick around one girl seemed dumb.
Still, I wanted to go back to my decision to not get close to her. To just kill her and be done with it.
So I bought a gun.
Not a big one, nothing that would draw too much attention, but enough that it would get the job done. I stared at it now, taking in the black metal and every detail from the trigger to the tip of the barrel. I never had a gun before. All my years on the streets, I avoided guns because the fact was if you carried one around, it usually got used against you. That or someone was always a quicker draw.
I used to carry a knife for the times violence was unavoidable. But I didn’t want to get close enough to use a knife on this Target. Of course, I really wasn’t all that excited to use the gun either, but hey, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
She was a college student; that much I heard during my recon mission. Someone asked her about her classes and she gave a fairly generic answer. I had no idea what she studied. I really didn’t care. I figured she probably took most of her classes by day, then worked early in the morning or at night. There was one college here in Fairbanks so finding her shouldn’t be a problem.
I glanced at the clock. Not quite lunchtime. I took the gun and slid it into the waistband of my jeans. Then I pulled on my coat and shoes. I was going on a field trip.
Chapter Twelve
“Stalker - someone who prowls or sneaks about; usually with unlawful intentions.”
Piper
Morning classes seemed to drag by, like this entire week. I just wanted to get to Wednesday. I wanted to know what Frankie would find out about the guy from the diner. If she got his address, maybe I’d just go to his house and knock on his door. Part of me really wanted to. But part of me thought I was insane. I shouldn’t care so much about this one guy.
But I did.
I couldn’t get him out of my mind. Whenever I went to sleep, my dreams were filled with his face and then the dream would change and I’d be staring at the man who died. As much as the guy in the diner filled my thoughts, the one who died was there more. There was something about him that pulled at my insides—a part of me that wanted to know him. And now I never would.
“Girl, what’s with that long face?”
I looked up to see Frankie coming toward me. She was hard to miss in that red coat, and today she was wearing a pair of black knee-high boots and a black and white scarf full of butterflies.
“Frankie. What are you doing here? I thought you were allergic to college.” I teased.
“I’m breaking out in a rash as we speak. Hurry, let’s go to the food court so I can get some sugar to counteract all the…”—she made a face—“learning that goes on here.”
“That’s where I was heading. I don’t have another class for an hour.”
“Yes. I know. BFF here, remember? I know your schedule,” she said, exasperated.
I smiled. “Well, shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I took a lunch break.” She shrugged.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. She never came to see me at school.
“Of course,” she said, then leaned in close. “I got the info you wanted early.”
Excitement tingled along my fingers. “How did you manage that? I thought you had to wait until your supervisor wasn’t there.”
“I like a challenge.” She smiled slyly.
I grinned and shifted the weight of the books in my arms. “Well, tell me!” I demanded.
“Girl you’re going to collapse under those books. Come on. I parked right over there.” She pointed to the parking lot. “You can put these in there until after we eat.” She grabbed a couple books off my stack and headed toward the car. “You must really want to be a doctor, putting up with all these books.”
“You know I want to help people,”
“I help people all the time. You should’ve seen this woman today that came in for her license renew. She was blind in one eye and only had half the vision in her other eye! I have no clue how she even got a license in the first place. I refused to renew it. You know how many lives I saved by keeping her off the road?”
I snickered as she unlocked the passenger door of her Jeep Wrangler and threw in my books. After I added the rest to the pile, she slammed the door and we began walking. A strange feeling crept its way up the back of my neck and I turned back, looking over my shoulder at the parking lot. I didn’t see anything other than students heading to and from campus.
“What’s wrong?” Frankie asked.
“Nothing. I just got this weird feeling,”
Frankie looked over her shoulder too and saw exactly what I saw: nothing.
“You need sugar,” she said, pulling me along.
“So what did you find out?” I asked, trying to ignore the prickly feeling I couldn’t seem to shake. It felt like someone was drilling a hole into my back with their watchful eyes.
“Crap!” I said suddenly, stopping midstride. “I think I dumped my money in your car with my books.” I turned to face back toward the parking lot and I swear I saw a dark shape almost glide behind a nearby building. My eyes narrowed on the spot, waiting for more movement, but none came.
“Are you sure?” Frankie asked.
I shook my head and stuck my fingers into my coat pocket. The little pouch I used to carry my money was there. “Oh, never mind, it’s here,”
We started walking again. “Frank,” I whispered quickly. “Six o’clock and a little to my left. Is someone following us?”
Frankie laughed like I said something funny and threw her head back and to the side. I saw her eyes darting around. “I don’t see anyone but a couple of students walking around.”
I nodded. “I could’ve sworn I saw someone behind the building back there.”
“You’re jumpy today,” Frankie said, sliding me a look.
“I do feel a little anxious.” I thought it was because I wanted to know what Frankie would dig up about the man in the diner. Now I was wondering if that had been the real reason.
We picked up our pace toward the building that housed the food court. Students were coming in and out steadily. I glanced at my left toward a pile of snow left over from the plow and caught another dark shape duck down behind me. How had it gotten just ahead of me when only moments before it was behind?
I watched the spot, but nothing happened so I kept quiet. The building was just in front of us now with a long, clear sidewalk leading to the main doors. I pulled them open and we walked inside. The student center was three stories with us coming in on the middle landing. There was a wide open area with wide steps leading down to a bookstore and some leading upstairs toward the food court. Over to my right was a large, bright blue UAF tapestry with the college logo on it—a polar bear—that hung from long cables in the ceiling.
Behind it, I saw another dark movement.
Someone was definitely watching me. Someone who was incredibly fast.
I had enough. I lunged forward, quickly covering the space between myself and the tapestry, my eyes locked on the hooded figure that was frozen. He knew I saw him. He knew he’d been caught.
I made it to the side where he stood and I pulled back the tapestry, stepping behind it, reaching toward the darkened shape that now turned away. My hands closed around his arm… and went through.
I was left grasping at black smoke… my fingers trying to hold something that had no shape.
And then it was gone.
I stood there, stupefied, staring at the wall, wondering if I’d imagined the entire thing.
I felt the tapestry being yanked forward and then from behind me Frankie said, “Umm, are you having a private moment back here with… the wall?”
“I… I thought I saw someone.”
“There’s no one here,” Frankie said gently, grabbing the sleeve of my coat and p
ulling me toward the stairs. “Come on. You’re gonna eat some sugar whether you like it or not.”
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