Betraying Innocence

by Phoenix, Airicka

  He’d known he had new neighbors. He’d seen the lights going on and off inside. But it had been well past midnight and he’d known the fence would get fixed soon, taking away his secret love shack. He’d never been inside, but the girls liked the whole gazing at the stars naked thing. Tina had been no exception. He’d hoped to get one last use of the broken barrier before it was mended. How was he supposed to know he’d get caught by a pint-sized beauty with full, kissable lips and a body made for wet dreams?

  His eyes opened and he stared down the deserted street. He exhaled.

  As trouble went, Ana was the worst and she had no idea, which was somehow both endearing and frustrating. How was she able to set such a huge claim on him when he’d done everything in his power to push her away? Was that the problem? Maybe he was trying too hard. But what was he supposed to do? He couldn’t let her see what a failure he was. He couldn’t let her into his life, not with Dan an ever persistent shadow. He had enough people depending on him to keep them safe. He couldn’t bring more into the mess.

  He swiped a hand back through his hair. The strands tumbled back over his eyes and made him snort a chuckle as Ana’s remark about getting a haircut prickled at the back of his mind. He did need a haircut.

  He glanced at his watch. First class wouldn’t end for another hour. He readjusted his seat, put the car into drive and maneuvered his way into town.

  It was lunch by the time he returned to school. The crisp breeze ruffled through the short crop of freshly shorn locks. He’d let Maggie, the stylist, pick the style and she’d buzzed it short around the back, but left it longer and spiky on top. It was a style he hadn’t considered in the past, but the girls at the salon had sworn it suited his face, and from the slack-jawed expression on the girls he passed on his way to the cafeteria, they agreed.

  Concealing his smirk, he marched through the double doors into the cacophony of midday chatter. Most of the tables were crowded, but there was only one face he was interested in finding. He wanted to see her when she spotted his new look, not that it should matter. He hadn’t done it for her, not really. Maybe a little.

  She wasn’t there. He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. Disappointed, he decided, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets.

  “Are you waiting for Wendy?”

  Rafe started at the unexpected question from behind him. He turned and squinted down at the tiny Goth Cupie doll blinking up at him with enormous blue eyes circled with thick, black eyeliner. He recognized her as Ana’s friend, but her name completely evaded him. It started with a T, or a J, or something.

  “You’ve got the wrong person,” he muttered, inching his way around her.

  “Ana, right?” the girl said, arching a finely penciled eyebrow. “She’s at the nurse’s office. There was an accident—”

  Swearing, Rafe turned on his heels and ran, shouldering his way through the wave of students making their way in for lunch. He ignored the shouts and profanities as he burst through the cafeteria doors and took the corridors at a blinding pace. His mind roared with images of her pale and bleeding as she had been in Chemistry the day she’d hit her head. His hands shook as he swiped the back over his mouth, wiping away the taste of paste making home in his throat. God, he’d been useless that day, so scared. Was that what happened? Had that thing gotten to her at school again? Damn it! He never should have left her alone.

  The rubber on his soles screeched as he skidded to a halt on the threshold of the nurse’s office. Ms. Dawnay’s head came up quickly from the folder open on her desk when Rafe scrambled to the counter.

  “Where is she?” he demanded, his voice uneven and wrought with panic and fear.

  Ms. Dawnay blinked in surprise. “Who?”

  Rafe opened his mouth, fully aware he was about to start shouting when a softer voice beat him to it.

  “Rafe?”

  He whipped around and stared at the tiny figure standing in the short hall leading into the patient rooms in the back. Her hair was in tangled waves around her pale and tear stained face. Her green eyes locked with his, wide and wet and pleading. But there was no blood.

  “Jesus, Ana!”

  In three dominating strides, he was on her. His arms encircled her, crushed her into his chest. His fingers fisted into her hair, gentle not to agitate her wound as he pressed her face into his shoulder. He closed his eyes and mashed his into the curve of her neck.

  “I thought…” His grip on her tightened as the horrific images of her unconscious or worse pounded through him.

  She yelped, her entire body jerking in his arms. Rafe released her instantly, but kept his hands on her shoulders as his gaze raked over her anxiously.

  “What’s wrong?”

  It was then he noticed how she cradled her right arm and how that arm was mummified in white gauze to the elbow.

  “What happened?”

  She bit her lip. Her gaze flicked to Ms. Dawnay for a split second of hesitation before returning to him.

  “I tripped,” she whispered. “I was heading up the stairs to English and I … I missed a step.”

  She was lying. It was in the way her eyes brimmed, becoming round and wet with tears and in the way she almost cut a gash into her bottom lip.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, taking her chin between his fingers and prying her lip free before she drew blood.

  She nodded, dropping her gaze. “Just my wrist.” She snorted rolling her eyes. A tear slipped and he caught it with a sweep of his thumb. “And my dignity, but I think I lost that ages ago.”

  He lightly took her injured arm and studied it.

  “It’s just a sprain,” Ms. Dawnay said as Rafe ran his thumb over the bumps on Ana’s knuckles. Ms. Dawnay rose from her chair, a clipboard in hand. “She should be fine in a few days. Keep pressure off and no sports for a while. I need to send home a note for your parents. Just give me a second to find my…” She set the clipboard down and began rifling through the papers littering her desk. She opened and shut the drawers, moved folders and books. But whatever she was looking for wasn’t there. “Stay there,” she told them. “I’ll be right back.”

  “What happened?” Rafe asked the moment Ms. Dawnay darted past them and disappeared in the direction of the patient rooms.

  “I saw him,” she gasped, her voice a shrill whisper. “I was headed to class and … there he was, at the top of the stairs, watching me.” She shuddered and he drew her against him. “I lost my footing and fell, hitting my arm on the steps.” She sucked in a shaky breath and lifted her gaze to his. Another tear slipped her lashes. “Why won’t he leave me alone? What does he want?”

  Rafe pulled her even closer. He brushed a kiss to the top of her head. “I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ana

  He pulled into an empty parking spot at the public library after school and cut the engine.

  Ana studied the two story structure with its faded gray stones and bell tower with confusion.

  “What are we doing here?”

  Rafe pocketed his keys. “What better way to find information than a library?”

  Still bemused, she watched as he threw open his door and rolled out. She grabbed her backpack and did the same. He was rounding the hood by the time she slammed the door shut behind her and had her bag over her good arm.

  For a building that appeared voluminous from the outside, the library was actually very small with only a few shelves, a small cluster of tables and four computers. There was a metal desk in one corner piled high with novels and magazines. A push cart stood next to it, lined with more books. Behind the mess sat a petite woman with a wild mane of cornrows and skin the color of a mocha cappuccino. She held a chapter book open in her slender hands and appeared engrossed in its pages. It took two fake coughs from Rafe before she blinked dark eyes and focused on them. The plaque on her desk, barely visible beneath all the papers, named her as Sally Moore, Head Librarian.

&nbs
p; “Yes?” she said in a tone that suggested she was only partially aware of them. The other half, Ana guessed, was still lost in the book.

  “We were wondering if you keep old newspapers,” Rafe said.

  “Old newspapers?” she repeated, still looking dazed.

  “We’re doing some research,” Rafe said. “On a house here in Chipawaha Creek.”

  This seemed to get her attention. Clarity returned to her eyes and she tucked a bookmark into the folds of her book.

  She rose. “What sort of research?”

  “We just need to know if anything happened there,” Ana said, picking up on what Rafe was doing. “Maybe any previous owners still in town.”

  Interest sparked behind the woman’s gaze. “Yes, we keep newspapers. We even have them uploaded on a Microform now. Do you know what year you’re looking to search?”

  Ana glanced at Rafe.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Is it something specific?”

  He shrugged. “We don’t know.”

  The librarian chuckled. “Then, honey, you’re going to be here a long while.”

  “It’s about my house,” Ana said, desperation clawing into her throat. “We — my parents and I — just moved here and—”

  “You’re the French girl,” Sally said. “I knew I didn’t recognize you. I know most of the children in this town. I’ve been here a very long time.”

  Ana didn’t know what that meant. The woman barely looked fifty. But maybe in a town as small as Chipawaha Creek, doing anything felt like a really long time.

  “Then maybe you knew the people that used to live in my house,” Ana said hopefully. “It’s the one down on—”

  “I know which one it is,” Sally interrupted. “Like I said, I know all the people that pass through this town and I knew all the people that passed through that house.”

  Ana blinked. “All? How many where there?”

  Sally waved a dismissive hand. “They’re not the ones you’re here about. Tell me what it is you’re really looking for.”

  Ana shared a glance with Rafe. He gave an indecisive shrug of his shoulders.

  “Might as well,” he said. “She could save us from pawing through a million film reels.”

  Nibbling on her bottom lip, Ana turned back to Sally. “We wanted to know if anything’s ever … happened there.”

  “Happened?” Sally raised an eyebrow. “Define happen.”

  Ana shrugged, her fingers knotting anxiously at her abdomen. “Anything.”

  Sally’s eyes narrowed watchfully. “I can’t say very much ever happens here. Of course, there is the odd time, like when Macy Groody’s cat ate Maude Jacob’s begonias. That made the front page of the Gold Kernel; Feline Menace, they called it. Then there was the time Suzy Boyd wrapped her daddy’s Toyota around that tree and got her sixth DUI that month.” Her head cocked to the side. “Then there was Johnny Baits, the original owner of your house.”

  Ana’s heart sped up. “What happened to him?”

  Sally shrugged. “Nothing, other than the fact that he ran away from home.”

  Her shoulders drooped in disappointment. “What?”

  The other woman folded herself back into her chair and folded her hands lightly on her stomach as she gazed up at them with a slight grin.

  “It was nineteen eighty-three, October, if I’m not mistaken. Johnny was…” She wrinkled her nose as she stared up at the ceiling in concentration. “Seventeen? Maybe eighteen. Lord, I can’t remember. No, wait, it was seventeen. He was a year younger than my brother and Lloyd had just graduated high school the year before. Or had Lloyd been younger…?”

  “What happened?” Ana jumped in, not caring how old Lloyd was or when he’d graduated.

  Sally splayed her hands open, palms up. “Nothing, like I said. Johnny just up and took off one night while his folks were out of town. Never came back. His parents put the place up for sale a year later when it was clear he wasn’t coming back. They live in Edmonton the last I heard.”

  “That’s it?” Ana pressed when Sally fell silent.

  “What else were you expecting?”

  Disappointment had Ana’s shoulders drooping. She had no idea what else she was expecting, but that wasn’t it.

  “Did anything else happen there?” Rafe asked. “Was anyone hurt or killed in the house?”

  Sally barked a laugh. “Killed? Child, you’ve been watching too many movies. Like I said, nothing ever happens here.”

  Ana met Rafe’s gaze. There was fire and determination in his.

  “Can we see Johnny’s article?” he asked Sally.

  Ten minutes later, Ana was crammed in a tiny box of a room with Rafe squished in next to her. A clunky old machine sat in front of them, showcasing every bit of news Chipawaha Creek had to offer, and there wasn’t much. The town was ridiculously boring. It had to be when people considered a snail race front page news. A box of reels sat next to the machine. There were six in total. Ana had let Rafe handle inserting, removing and flipping. She couldn’t trust her anxiety not to freak. So she sat with her shoulder pressed into his as article after article zipped across the screen with a single flick of his fingers.

  It wasn’t until the fourth reel that they finally found the article. It was barely four paragraphs long.

  The good people of Chipawaha Creek are devastated by the mysterious disappearance of one of its own. Seventeen year old Johnny Baits has vanished, leaving his parents begging for answers. Baits was last seen at the party he’d been holding at his place of residence. Eye-witnesses claim that Baits was agitated and moody throughout the evening and had left early after an altercation with another student over the amount of alcohol he had been consuming.

  “He kept saying how he was tired of it all,” one witness informs us. “He said how he was going to leave this hellhole and make something of himself. We didn’t take him seriously because he said that all the time.”

  Sheriff Larson is following all leads and asks that anyone with information should step forward and help his family put an end to this tragedy.

  There was a picture of the house and a couple huddled on the porch. The woman had her face pressed into her hands as the man held her. Ana guessed it was Johnny’s parents.

  “That’s so sad,” she murmured.

  Rafe flipped to the next article, then the next. When it became apparent there was nothing else, he went back.

  “We should make a copy of this,” he said, his deft fingers moving to do just that.

  There was no room in the closet-sized room for a printer. Ana assumed they had to go somewhere else in the library for the printout.

  Ana sighed, getting to her feet. “What now?”

  Rafe shut the machine off, replaced all the reels inside their box and closed the lid. “We keep looking.”

  “But what if it’s not the house?”

  He looked at her. “What?”

  Feeling exposed, she dropped her gaze. “What if it’s me? What if—?”

  “Stop it!” Reels tucked beneath his arm, he rounded on her. “We both saw that thing last night. You’re not crazy.”

  That was what she kept telling herself. She couldn’t be crazy because Rafe had seen the boy, too. Yet the reality of that fact had yet to settle on her. She kept half expecting to wake up and find herself alone in some padded room, strapped to a bed. But this wasn’t one of those times.

  “That wasn’t what I meant,” she said with a tired grin. “I was going to say what if it’s me, like I brought this on myself?”

  Rafe frowned. “How?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not exactly an expert on the matter, but from what I’ve read, spirits can latch on to more than just houses. What if this … boy has latched onto me because of something I did.”

  He seemed to consider this a moment as he stared back at her. Contemplation had his brows furrowing. After a while, he came to some conclusion.

  “Whatever and wherever this thing
came from.” He slipped past her into the slight alcove. “We’re going to find a way to send him back.”

  Returning the reels to Sally, he asked her for the printout they’d made. Sally rose gracefully from her seat and meandered into the glass room behind the desk. It was an office, from what Ana could make out. There was a desk under a pile of books and papers and a computer on one side and a row of counters making up the rest. Sally grabbed the page the printer spat out and brought it to them.

  “Find what you were looking for?” she said to Rafe as she passed the page over.

  “Not yet,” Rafe replied, scanning the page. “But we’re going to.” He handed the paper to Ana and turned his gaze back to Sally. “We need to book a computer.”

  Of the computers, all four were occupied. Sally put their name down on a clipboard and told them computer three would be available in five minutes. She pointed with the end of her pen towards a short, round boy staring intently at the screen. There was a flush in his cheek and an unblinking glint in his eyes that had Ana wondering if maybe the public library didn’t have parental control on their machines.

  “Marky!” Sally shouted, making the boy jump as though he’d been caught stealing money from a drug cartel. “Your time’s up in five minutes.”

  The boy nearly broke the computer trying to shut it down. He fumbled his way to his feet, stuttering something about being finished before he ducked his head and scampered out of the library. Rafe led Ana to the newly vacated machine.

  “What are we going to look for?” she asked.

  Rafe motioned for Ana to take the chair as he pulled a second chair next to hers. They both sat, but Ana let Rafe control the mouse and keyboard.

  He pulled up Google and took the page from her hand. Deftly, he punched in Johnny’s name. Several fishing websites came up, but nothing on the missing boy from nowhere British Columbia. He scratched his jaw, deleted the search and typed in her address. That brought an image of Google maps, but nothing else. He exhaled, rubbed the back of his neck. He glanced at the print out, squinted and turned back to the screen.