Spiked (Blocked #3)

by Jennifer Lane

  Lucia stared at me after he crutched off. “Do you know what’s going on?”

  “No idea.” I took Dane’s still-full glass to the sink. “I was on the treadmill when he flew in here in a panic. Have you ever seen him like this?”

  She swallowed. “Once, when he was a sophomore. I hope his parents are okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t they be?”

  “Forget I said anything.” She headed toward her bedroom.

  As I placed the glass in the dishwasher, I reviewed what Dane had told me. He hadn’t mentioned anything about his parents that I could recall. But he had said he “should’ve been there for her” and “she was acting weird.” Who was he talking about? His mother? He’d alternated between freak-out and fury, and I was totally confused.

  My hand turned the basement door handle, and I froze. The cheers at Highbanks Arena filled my ears. At Lucia’s volleyball game a couple of weeks ago, Jessica had bolted to the bathroom, leaving Dane and me to stare at each other with confusion. He’d shrugged and said, “She’s been acting weird since she came to school.”

  He hadn’t been referring to his mother a minute ago, but to his sister. Was Jessica okay? My fluttering heart told me I had to find out. I crept toward Lucia’s bedroom.

  Her door was still slightly ajar—our agents preferred we didn’t close our doors all the way if we didn’t have to. I backed against the wall closest to the opening and eavesdropped on their murmurs.

  “…ever been so pissed off you want to do something bad?” asked Dane.

  “Like what?”

  He muttered something.

  “Kill someone?” Lucia drew in a sharp breath. “You’re scaring me. Tell me why you’re so upset.”

  “Can’t.”

  “This is about Jessica, right?”

  Dane paused. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I know where you were this morning. And you’re not denying it, so this is about Jessica.”

  “Fuck.” He blew out a breath. “You know me too well. I wish you’d figured things out better that night, though. I should’ve been there.”

  “What night?”

  No answer.

  The bed squeaked, and Lucia said, “Here, lie on your belly. You’re so tense.” More sounds of shifting on the mattress, followed by a moan.

  “Lower,” Dane said.

  I hoped to God I was listening to a massage and not my sister having sex.

  “Ohhhh. Right there.” He moaned again.

  After a beat, she said, “Tell me why you’re so troubled. What happened with Jessica?”

  “She’ll kill me if I tell you. I’m already dead if she finds out you know she failed the drug test.”

  Jessica had tested positive for drugs? Intriguing. That didn’t seem like her. I leaned closer to the door.

  “Only because I dragged it out of you when you wouldn’t let Frank drive you to therapy,” Lucia said. “Did you find out why she smoked pot?”

  I heard a choking sound, followed by harsh intake of air. Dane crying made me feel sick. It just wasn’t right. I wished I could help him feel better.

  “Oh, GD. Mi gigante.” Lucia’s soothing voice kept murmuring little words of comfort as I imagined her rubbing his shoulders.

  A creak behind me caught my attention, and I spun around to see Karen frowning. Busted. Her eyebrow cocked, questioning my obvious invasion of privacy. When she didn’t move, I exhaled and walked back to the basement. Espionage was difficult when living with government agents.

  I picked up my earphones and resumed listening to my music homework as I settled back into my jogging warm-up. Alejandro had written my workout today—an easy warm-up followed by all-out sprints. He’d gotten all geeked out about a cycling study showing three twenty-second sprints were just as good for the heart as forty-five minutes at a moderate pace. I doubted such a short workout would do anything for me, but to shut him up, I’d said I’d try it.

  When I switched over to sprints in a few minutes, I’d have to change my audio selection to music for some motivation. Maybe I’d listen to Twenty One Pilots, a local band that was making it big. I liked their lyrics.

  But at my current level of distraction, my sprints were going to suck no matter what music I chose. I kept thinking about Jessica. What had turned Dane from a stoic jock into a weepy character from Days of Our Lives? Something bad must’ve gone down. Real bad.

  Dane had said he wanted to kill someone. Someone Jessica knew? Who would he want to kill? I knew I’d want to kill anyone who tried to hurt her. She was so pretty, so spunky. Well, she’d seemed that way at the party that first night, at least. After that, she’d turned spacey and unhappy. She’d jumped out of her skin or gone off on me randomly a couple of times. Then she’d told me she was sorry for being a mental case.

  “I’ve had a rough start here,” she’d said at the hospital. Why? She’d seemed fine at the party. When I’d gone for it and given her my number, she’d had to turn her phone on first. Her hands had trembled as text messages poured in. Had she been scared of them?

  Who’d texted her? Though I’d wondered about Man Bun, she’d joked about him—he was probably harmless. And maybe gay. So was it Suave Swimmer Shithead? At the volleyball game, I’d asked her about him. As I thought about it, that had been one of her freak-out moments. She’d yelled at me, then apologized, calling herself a bitch. She could never be a bitch in a million years.

  Wait a minute. SSS had been at the party. The party was when she’d changed. “I want to kill someone,” Dane had said. Was it swimmer guy? Had he hurt Jessica? A surge of dread filled my chest, spiked my heart rate. I ripped off my earphones.

  I pressed the emergency stop button on the treadmill and dashed up the stairs. Once I reached Lucia’s room, I shoved open the door.

  “Matty!” Lucia looked up from her position, straddled across Dane’s naked back. Thankfully she was dressed. “Have you heard of knocking?”

  Dane must’ve noticed my wild eyes, because he said, “You’re mad at me, right? Sorry for snapping at you. It was misdirected anger.” He grimaced. “My specialty.”

  My head shook double-time. “No. I’m here about the tall swimmer guy. Suave Swimmer Shithead.”

  Dane’s head shot up, and his eyes bulged.

  “He hurt Jessica.” I swallowed. “Right?”

  From the expanse of his wide eyes, I knew I’d hit on the truth. My breath caught in my throat. I wished I’d been wrong.

  “What?” Lucia turned Dane’s shoulder toward her, bringing his chest off the mattress. “What swimmer guy?”

  Tingles of horror climbed up my spine. “What’d he do to her?”

  When Dane’s eyes welled up in tears, I stepped back. I was about to get sick.

  “The worst…” He took a shuddering breath. “The worst thing a guy can do to a girl.”

  No. With zero control over my body, I backed out of the room and closed the door. No. The tremble in her hand when I’d held it…her sheer terror when she’d looked at her phone…No.

  “I should’ve been there for her,” Dane had said. His words flooded me. I understood what he meant now. I understood the devastating depth of his guilt. It was my guilt, too.

  “Johnny!” I shouted.

  He was next to me in a second. “What’s wrong?”

  “You gotta take me to Jessica’s.”

  “No!” Dane yelled. Lucia’s door opened, and he filled the doorway, balancing on one foot. “No way you’re going over there. She’ll never forgive me for telling you.”

  Dane’s tears had stopped, but Lucia’s had begun. Her eyes glistened as she nudged around him and looked up. “But you didn’t tell him. Matty figured it out on his own.”

  “Figured out what?” said Johnny.

  I darted into my room and grabbed a long-sleeved running shirt to throw on over my tank top. What else did I need? With Dane’s shouts in the background, I couldn’t think. I looked at my bed. Jessica had scrambled off the mattress when I�
��d come in the other day. She’d stared at me like I was an ax-wielding attacker, which had puzzled me then, but made too much sense now. No wonder she’d been so scared.

  “Don’t go,” Dane said when I emerged from my room.

  Johnny looked from Dane to me. “What’s going on?”

  “I have to go.” I have to see her.

  “Dr. Valentine said she needs to be the one in control now. Not me, not you.” Dane glared at me. “You can’t crash her dorm room like this. She might not even be there this time of day. She went to class a little while ago.”

  My phone. Where was my phone? I zoomed into my room and scooped it up. When I looked at the time, I ticked through her schedule, which I’d memorized. With the hope they wouldn’t think I was a crazy stalker, I returned to the hallway and said, “Her class just ended.” I pulled Johnny’s arm. “She should be there.”

  Dane now leaned on his crutches, and he pointed one at me. “Don’t do it.”

  “I have to. C’mon, Johnny.”

  Lucia sniffed. It hurt me to see her crying, but I didn’t have time to comfort her. I had to get to Jessica.

  “Jess needs someone right now,” Lucia said. She circled her arm around Dane’s waist and leaned into him. “Let Matty go. You’ve seen them together. He’s good for her.”

  Dane’s jaw muscle squeezed as he looked to the side, but he tucked her in closer to him. “Fuck.”

  I took that as a sign he wouldn’t stop me, and I headed to the garage. I felt Johnny on my six. He pushed his hand against the car door before I could open it.

  “Mr. Ramirez, Karen’s not here. She had to meet with the backup team. Tell me what’s going on, or I’m not driving you.”

  I sighed. “I can’t. Just…please. Please, Johnny. I know you care about Jessica, too. I need to see her.” I blinked quickly. “Please.”

  He assessed me for a few long moments.

  “Do you know where her dorm is?” I asked.

  “Of course.” His eyebrows lowered. “Karen won’t like this.”

  “She’ll get over it.” I reached for the door handle and exhaled when he let me open it. “Just tell her my blood sugar was low. I wasn’t thinking straight and made you drive me.”

  He started the SUV with me in the backseat behind him. “What is your BG?”

  “Really?” Was he going to get on my case, too? I wasn’t the one who needed help here.

  He nodded. “Really.”

  I did a quick test. “It’s fine.” Okay, it wasn’t fine—my BG was kind of high. I administered a quick bolus as we drove through the gate. Happily the media had lost interest in me once I started classes. Maybe they were too busy slamming my dad for decreasing public assistance and increasing border security. At least that’s what Alejandro had told me.

  The number of pedestrians increased as we neared campus. Many of them wore light jackets even though it was September. It was a cloudy day, and I was glad for my long-sleeved shirt. But envisioning what Jessica had gone through still made me shiver.

  “Could you drive faster?”

  He didn’t respond, though it did seem like we picked up speed.

  My mind drifted back to high school, thinking about Iris. Joey and I had befriended Iris in music class, but mysteriously she’d stopped talking to us a few weeks later. When we’d confronted her about it, she’d yelled about staying out of her business. But months after that, Iris had confessed to Joey that she’d been raped. She’d wanted Joey to tell me because she couldn’t do it herself. I’d been shocked, but Joey had told me to play it cool. When we’d started hanging out again, Iris had said she wished she’d told us sooner. She’d said keeping the secret was almost worse than the rape.

  “I have an uncle,” Johnny said.

  When he didn’t elaborate, I met his eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “He has diabetes, too.”

  Why hadn’t he told me that before? “Uh, sorry.”

  “He got really sick a few years ago. Almost lost his foot.”

  I closed my eyes. One of the White House physicians had tried to scare me with stories like that, but I didn’t want to think about it now. I needed to focus on Jessica.

  “I don’t want that to happen to you. I asked Karen to keep close tabs on you.”

  I opened my eyes and saw him studying me. “So it’s your fault she’s on my case all the time?”

  He shrugged. “She has her own reasons for that.”

  “Like what?”

  His mouth tightened. “Not my story to tell. Just don’t want you to think Karen’s the bad guy all the time.”

  “She’s not the bad guy, I know.” I frowned and patted the pump in my pocket. “Now that I’m used to the pump, everything’s okay. I probably should’ve gotten it sooner.”

  His eyebrows flew up.

  “But don’t tell Karen I said that.”

  He smirked. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  We had to wait for students taking their time in the crosswalk. Scrolling through their phones as they walked slowed their progress.

  “You’re pretty worried about Jessica, huh?” He kept his eyes on the road.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s got you so worried?”

  I studied the back of his head, his short, blond hair in a military cut. I’d already said I couldn’t tell him. “I see. You tell me one of your secrets so I’ll tell you mine? Don’t think so.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  Uh-huh. Damn Secret Service.

  He pulled the SUV into a loading zone next to a rundown brick building. Itch hadn’t lied when he said Jessica’s dorm was one of the oldest on campus.

  Once we exited the car, a couple of students gawked at me. One snapped a photo. Shit. I was used to the unwanted attention going to class, but what would they think of me entering a dorm? Would they connect me to Jessica? Social media attention was the last thing she needed.

  “You stay close to me, got it?”

  I nodded and followed Johnny to the side entrance. I noticed a swipe pad—the door must’ve been locked—and wondered how we’d get in. But then he pulled an ID card from his pocket, and presto, the door opened. Awesome Secret Service.

  “She’s on the second floor.” He led me up the stairs.

  “Have you been here before?”

  He kept climbing. “It’s my business to know these things.”

  That was cryptic. When we walked down Jessica’s hallway, I wondered why characters from Frozen lined the walls.

  Johnny stopped and tilted his head toward room 220.

  I gulped. Now that I was here, I had no idea what to say. I only knew I’d felt a driving force to see her, to try to help her. But there was probably no way I could help her. I clenched a fist, then rapped my knuckles on her door.

  “Go away, Dane!” Jessica called.

  Dios, she was here. Part of me was thrilled and part terrified. “It’s not Dane.” I chewed my lip. “It’s Mateo.”

  The door wrenched open, revealing blond curls that shot out in all directions. Bedhead? She looked adorable. Her tired eyes bounced from me to Johnny. “What’re you doing here, Teo?”

  “I wanted to see you.” The words that I’d had trouble saying that first night now spilled out of my mouth. What if I’d said them then? I wanted to know you. I wanted to hold you. Would she want me? Could she ever want me after what SSS had done?

  She swallowed, then flinched at a sound down the hallway. I looked to see one of her hallmates sticking her head out of her room. The girl’s eyes got big as she stared at me.

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  “Um…” She glanced at an unmade loft bed, which I figured was hers, then back at me. Her roommate wasn’t home.

  “Please?” I jerked my thumb toward my guard. “Johnny’s staying outside.”

  He grunted like he disagreed, but after he leaned in to scan the room, he stepped back.

  She blinked at me for a moment. “Okay, I guess.�
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  I let out a breath as I entered.

  “Bye, Johnny.” She closed the door.

  Shirtless men covered her roommate’s wall, and I stepped closer to read the names on the posters. They were all more muscular than me. “Who’re these guys?”

  “Australian footballers. Mackenzie’s a little obsessed.”

  I examined one poster—the guy looked like an underwear model. “He’s pretty ugly, huh?”

  Her mouth twitched. She glanced around the room as she fidgeted with her sleeve. “You can, um, sit there.” She pointed to a small sofa beneath her bed.

  I hoped she’d join me, but she pulled out her desk chair to face the sofa. Before she sat, I rushed over. “I’m crashing your room. You sit on the sofa—I’ll take the hard chair.”

  “But you’re my guest.”

  “Uninvited guest. You should sit under that cool-ass painting. That’s you, right? Did you paint that?”

  She shook her head. “My dad did.”

  “I love it. The water looks alive. Go ahead, you sit on the sofa.”

  She frowned, but seemed too tired to argue. Once she’d collapsed on the cushions and I sat on her desk chair, she studied me. “So, why are you here, uninvited guest?”

  My heart thundered. I’d stalled long enough. But how could I start this conversation? “Why’re there Frozen characters all over the walls?”

  “Dorm bonding.” She rolled her eyes. “Every wing has a theme, and my RA’s a huge Olaf fan.” She smirked. “I guess the li’l snow-guy is kind of cute.”

  I remembered one of Olaf’s lines as I studied her: I’d totally melt for you.

  “So you were on the treadmill?” She stared at my bare legs.

  I hoped she didn’t think they were too thin. She wore jeans so I didn’t get to see her beautiful legs. “Yeah. I’d just started my workout.”

  “Where’s your fump?”

  I reached into the pocket of my shorts and took it partway out, but then tucked it back in. I didn’t want my stupid pump to be our topic of conversation.

  “Why’d you stop your workout?” she asked.

  Butterflies flitted in my belly. I knew I had to man up and tell her why I was here. “Dane came over.”