by D. Laine
“Aw, Jake. I think that’s the closest you’ve ever come to telling me you love me.”
“Not now, Dylan. Just move.”
“I’m moving.”
I disconnected the call with Jake as I made the turn that put me in front of The Nest. Too late to let him know that finding Thea would take a little longer than I anticipated.
The entire front half of the restaurant had crumbled. Stone and brick and glass littered the sidewalk and most of the street. A mob of people—some injured and bleeding, others helping the injured—hovered across the street in front of the coffee house. None of them were Thea, which meant . . .
I slammed on the breaks, coming to an abrupt stop at the entrance to the alley that ran alongside the restaurant. Thea’s name tore from my throat as I threw the door open. My feet propelled me against the mass of panicking bystanders, straight toward the front of the building.
The front wall was obliterated. Chunks of concrete and splintered wood blocked the entry. Again I yelled Thea’s name, but I heard nothing over the shrieks of the terrified and injured around me.
I quickly turned and raced past the Hummer, slipping into the shadows that lined the alley. It was quiet there, almost surreal. All I heard was the sound of my shoes striking the pavement.
In the parking lot, I spotted Thea’s Metro. At the back door, I found two guys, both draped in white aprons. One lay sprawled on the ground while the other leaned over him.
“Are you okay?” I called out as I approached.
The younger of the two glanced up. I recognized him as the cook I met a few nights ago—Shane. “He got hit in the head. It’s bleeding bad.”
I stopped to peer down at the older gentleman. Blood trickled from a head wound at his hairline. His eyes blinked open to look up at me.
Likely concussed, but nonfatal. I didn’t think.
I jabbed a finger over my shoulder. “Help is coming. Can you manage to get him to the street?”
“I’m trying,” Shane groaned.
I would help, but not until I made sure Thea was alright. “Go. As fast as you can. I’m going to check for others inside.”
“I couldn’t,” he sighed. “She’s . . .”
I didn’t wait around to hear what he had to say. I heard the fear and sadness in his voice, and it propelled me into the back of the building with desperate urgency.
Food and equipment littered the floor, slowing me down. When I finally emerged from the rear, I saw what had upset Shane. The dining room had collapsed. The normally wide and open room was now cut down to half its size. The wall of concrete and wood muffled most of the noise from the street, smothering me in eerie silence.
I swept my gaze around, peering through the dust and smoke that filled the air. To one side of the room, I saw movement and a flash of red.
What had Thea been wearing when I left? I couldn’t remember now, but I hoped like hell it had been red.
I hurried toward the muffled sounds of struggle that I could now hear over my racing heartbeat. Long waves of dark hair were the first thing I saw. The second was the blood on her hands and the motionless lump at her feet.
“Thea?” Her head turned to show me her face, and I nearly collapsed in relief. “Come on. We need to get out of here.”
“I can’t. She’s stuck. We tried to move it, but it’s too heavy.”
I looked down to find Thea’s hands gripping a piece of fallen wood. One of the ceiling beams, it appeared. Whatever it had been was currently crushing the torso of a girl I didn’t recognize.
“Thea . . .” I put a hand on her shoulder.
“Help me,” she pleaded.
“I can’t.” I dropped to my knees beside Thea and put two fingers to the girl’s neck—only to prove to Thea what I already knew. “She’s dead. We can’t help her.”
Thea sniffed as tears filled her eyes. “I can’t just leave her here like this.”
The ground trembled slightly under our feet, and I darted a wary glance at what was left of the ceiling. Just as suddenly as it started, the shaking stopped. What had David called those? Aftershocks?
Nothing to worry about.
Not yet.
“We don’t have time, Thea. We have to go.” I eyed the blood on her hands. “Are you hurt?”
“This?” She lifted her hands as if she were just now seeing the blood for the first time. “This is Donald’s blood. I haven’t seen him since—”
“Is he a cook?”
Her gaze dropped to the dead waitress and she nodded.
“He’s fine,” I assured her. “Shane got him out. We need to get out too.”
Staring at her dead friend though a pool of unshed tears, Thea nodded. I pushed to a stand then helped her up. Another aftershock tested our balance as we hurried through the kitchen toward the rear exit. Outside, Shane and the older cook were gone.
I took Thea’s hand in mine and steered her toward the Hummer where I had left it in the alley. I barely caught a glimpse of the roof over the heads of the crowd gathered around it when Thea pulled on my arm.
“Wait, Dylan. We should help.”
“The paramedics got this. We’ll just get in the way.” I waved my arms around, indicating the large crowd around us. “All these people need to start evacuating, and so do we.”
“Evacuate? For what?”
I grinded my teeth. “For the eruption. The volcano’s going to blow and—”
“Not you, too,” Thea grumbled.
“What?”
“They’ve been talking about an eruption for as long as I can remember, Dylan. It’s never happened, and it never will.”
“It will this time.” I pulled her close to me so that she could hear me over the chaos around us. “I can’t tell you how I know, but I know. We need to go now.”
She stared at me for several seconds before she shook her head. “You’ve been talking to David, haven’t you?”
“This has nothing to do with David! This is bigger than that. You need to trust me on this, and believe me when I tell you that we have to move. Now!”
I didn’t know what it was that she saw in my eyes at that moment. I didn’t know what it was that made her suddenly take me seriously. When she nodded her head and followed me to the Hummer, I didn’t care.
She didn’t ask me to elaborate as I maneuvered the Hummer through the mob on the street. She sat silently on the seat beside me the entire way to the hotel. Only when she saw where I was going did she open her mouth.
“Dylan, why are we—”
Her question was broken off by a startled squeal when she saw what we were driving into.
The entire town was overrun by flashing red and blue lights. Initially, I didn’t think anything of the flood of police cruisers in the hotel parking lot. Not until I saw the line of police officers standing shoulder to shoulder, with their guns pointed at us.
At me.
I braked to a stop in the middle of the parking lot so as not to show any sort of aggression toward them. Not with Thea seated beside me. With her there, I would do exactly as I was told and when I was told to do it.
“Show them your hands, Thea,” I instructed her quickly and as gently as I could. “Just do exactly what they tell you to do, and you’ll be alright.”
“What is this, Dylan?”
“Open the door with one hand,” I continued calmly without answering her. “Keep both hands up and visible as you step out.”
Holding her gaze the entire time, I did as I instructed her to do. We both exited the Hummer at the same time. The moment our feet hit the ground, the officers swarmed us.
My face was slammed onto the hood of the Hummer. Across from me, I heard Thea scream. I grimaced—not from the half dozen guns pointed at me right now, not from the cold metal squeezing around my wrists, and not from the obtrusive voice yelling in my ear.
I grimaced at the devastation I knew I had caused that girl. That was the only thing I regretted about this whole mess.
�
�You’re under arrest for the murder of Vivian Scott . . .” The officer droned on, reading me my rights and whatever other lines of bullshit they were supposed to say. I didn’t bother to listen to any of it.
The moment I was secured in handcuffs and jerked to a stand, I sought Thea’s eyes. She stood on the other side of the Hummer, flanked by three police officers. Quickly displacing the shock and fear on her face was unmistakable disgust. No doubt she had heard what this was about. No doubt her opinion of me had shifted drastically in the last sixty seconds.
Only I knew that she didn’t know the truth. That was no one’s fault but my own.
I had no explanation, no words to offer her—and not because the officers encouraged me to “remain silent” but because I realized there was nothing I could say to her to make this better.
All I had to offer was a measly, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” she wailed. “You’re sorry? You—” She cut around the front of the Hummer, bypassing the swarm of police on her way to my side of the vehicle.
“Miss, you can’t—”
The officer tailing her pulled up short when her hand shot out. My head whipped to the side from the force of her palm on my cheek. I deserved it. I realized that, but damn did it hurt.
“Thea—”
“Crawl up your own ass and die, Dylan,” she snapped, and if this whole thing weren’t so goddamn tragic, I probably would have laughed at her choice of words. She certainly didn’t find it funny. “And when you’re done with that, you can rot in hell.”
“Miss, I’m going to need you to come with me now.” One of the officers touched her gently on the arm, guiding her away from me. He shared a glance with the officer holding on to my handcuffs.
I was jerked backwards at the same time Thea turned away from me. Despite the tsunami of words threatening to pour out of me—all a little too close to the truth—I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t call out to her again. I didn’t attempt to explain. She wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
Instead, I saved my next words for the officer that tossed me into the back seat of the police cruiser.
“So when do I get my phone call?”
20
THEA
“How long have you known Jon Walters?”
“How long has he been sleeping with your roommate?”
“Whose blood is on your hands?”
These were the type of questions I was subjected to for the next hour. An hour during which I sat numbly on the curb in front of the Motel 6.
Where Dylan—or Jon or whatever his name was—had apparently been living since the day I met him. Where he had hidden the secrets of his true identity. I only saw glimpses inside the room that he’d occupied the past few weeks, but I heard plenty from the loose-lipped officers that came and went behind me.
Thanks to the elaborate network of photographs found on the wall, he would be charged with not only Vivian’s murder, but all of the recent murders. That now included Kyle Davenport and Professor Thompson, who were no longer considered missing, but just two more victims of Dylan Romero/Jon Walters.
“You’re a lucky lady, Miss Collier,” the officer told me.
I scoffed. I didn’t feel lucky. But I never realized the danger I had been in . . . until now. I suspected it would hit me once the adrenaline, disbelief, and shock wore off.
“You’re going to need to find another place to stay for a few days until we clear the crime scene,” he continued.
“You mean, my apartment?”
He nodded, unfazed by my harsh tone. “I’m sure you have a friend you can crash with.”
“Yeah, I—” I whipped my head up. “Wait. I thought the town was being evacuated.”
He peered down at me over the rim of his shades. “Because of the earthquake? No. We’ll be cleaning up for weeks, if not months. The university cancelled classes, and may close for a short while. Maybe you can return home until classes resume.”
“But we’re not being evacuated?”
“No.”
I opened my mouth to tell him I had heard otherwise, but stopped when a terrifying thought occurred to me. There wasn’t an evacuation. Dylan only wanted me to leave town with him. Possibly to make me his next victim. Maybe he’d planned to dump me off in the wilderness like he’d done with Kyle.
I was suddenly too nauseous to speak without fear of throwing up on the officer’s shoes.
“You alright, miss?” he asked.
I nodded numbly.
“Do you need a ride somewhere?”
I shook my head slowly. My car was in the parking lot behind The Nest. Downtown was a mess, I already knew that. The university had supposedly faired the quake a little better. I had somewhere to go, and someone I could always count on, within walking distance.
The officer presented me with a business card, in case I remembered something else to help their investigation. Finally dismissed, I began the short but difficult walk to campus. People were everywhere and I was forced to wander through the chaos in a shocked daze. I drifted toward the science building on autopilot. It was the only place I could think of to go right now.
The geology wing was surprisingly quiet, considering there had been a massive, record-breaking earthquake just a little over an hour ago. I found only one person in the lab, but it was exactly who I had hoped to find.
David glanced over his shoulder when the door closed behind me, took one look at my face, and spun around. “Thea? What’s wrong?”
I still hadn’t found my voice, and shook my head as I crossed the room. David seemed to understand exactly what I needed as I approached. His arms opened and I collapsed into them as the first choking sob made its debut.
Despite all the evidence I could see clearly now, I still couldn’t believe Dylan had done the things he was accused of. I still didn’t want to make the connection between the murders and his sudden arrival in town. I didn’t want to believe he was anything but an ordinary student as he had claimed. I couldn’t wrap my head around the danger I had unknowingly put myself in.
“Is it Dylan?” David asked softly. I didn’t bother to question David on why he suspected Dylan. David wasn’t blind or dumb. He was one of the most perceptive people I knew, so it wasn’t all that surprising when he asked, “What did he do, Thea?”
He made me like him—really like him. He’d given me a glimpse at what lay beyond his hard outer shell. Now I wondered if the tenderness had all been for show, a way to convince me to lower my guard around him. A way to guarantee me as his next victim.
I shuddered at the thought. “How well did you know him, David?”
“Not very well,” he admitted. “Just enough to . . .”
I lifted my head out of David’s chest. “What?”
David swallowed hard. “He’s not a geology student, Thea. There’s something—”
“I know,” I sighed. “I just found out what he is.”
“Really?” David tilted his head curiously. “He wouldn’t tell me. All he said was to trust him when he said he knew something was about to happen, and to get out of town. He has connections, though I don’t know who it is. He’s almost got this CIA spy-like—”
“What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?” David returned.
“He’s a murderer.” My hand covered my mouth after the words escaped. First time admitting it out loud tasted even worse than I thought it would.
David’s jaw dropped. “Murder? Who?”
“Everyone. Kyle, those other students, the hiker. He’s the killer they’ve been looking for all this time. He killed Vivian.”
“Vivian’s dead?” David’s eyes bulged. When I nodded, he muttered, “That . . . that can’t be.”
“Trust me, David.” I grabbed his arm, forcing his eyes to snap to mine. “We were both lucky to—”
I broke off the moment I felt the familiar vibration under my feet. The floor shook and rolled from another aftershock. No matter how many I had en
dured in my lifetime, I had never gotten used to the feeling of the earth moving beneath me.
I held my breath, determined to ride it out with composure like I had countless other minor quakes before. But this time, it didn’t subside as quickly as I was accustomed to. Immediately, I noticed that it was not weakening, but intensifying.
Impossible. I wasn’t a geology major, but I knew another earthquake so soon was unusual.
David spun around, nearly knocking me over in his haste to look at the seismograph on the table behind him. Over his shoulder, I watched the line spike sharply. I didn’t need to be a wannabe geologist to recognize what that meant.
“It’s bigger than the last one!” David shouted.
As if to prove David correct, the Earth pitched violently. I fell to my knees, partly from the intense shaking and partly from David’s doing. It was he that pulled me under the table and out of the path of the chipped plaster that rained down on us from the ceiling.
Over the deafening roar of destruction, David’s voice in my ear reminded me to cover my head. Peeking through my arms, I watched debris crash to the floor around us. Something large and heavy hit the table we were cowered under. At the same time, across the room, I watched a section of ceiling fall onto another table, pancaking it and the expensive equipment that lay on top of it.
I tucked my head between my legs and waited for the inevitable. David’s arm slipped around my waist, pulling me close to the added protection he had to offer. At the sound of a loud crack above us, I screamed. My own terror was the last thing I heard before everything went dark.
21
DYLAN
The round clock on the bare brick wall was the only thing in the room to fall. They kept nothing in these interrogation rooms—nothing that could be used as a weapon. That also meant I had few options for a decent place to seek shelter when the ceiling started to cave in.
The detective that had been grilling me wisely fled from the closet-sized room in search of better cover. At least he thought to suggest that I crawl under the desk first. The chain shackling me to the wall had just enough give to allow me to get mostly covered. Hell of a chore to do with your hands cuffed behind your back.
