I tried to kick up the speed a notch, and found that, by going another couple miles an hour faster, I could actually maneuver the bike much more easily. I tried not to concentrate so much on the trees, and instead concentrated on the open spaces around them. It sounds weird, but it actually helped. I figured it was like using the Force or something. Trust your feelings, Jess, I said to myself, in an Obi-Wan Kenobi voice. Know the woods. Feel the woods. Be the woods. …

I really hate the woods.

It was right after this that I burst out of the trees and skidded up the embankment to the road. There was a moment of panic when I thought I was going to tip over. . . .

But I threw out a foot and stopped myself at the last minute. I don't know how, but I managed to get the bike upright again and was off. The whole thing took barely a second, but in my mind, it seemed like an hour. My heart was thundering louder in my ears than the bike's engine.

Please be there, I was praying as I raced toward the place where we'd passed the squad car. Please be there, please be there, please be there.... Now that I was on the open road, I could really let loose, speedwise, and so I did, watching the speedometer go from ten, to twenty, to thirty, to forty. . . .

And then the squad car was looming up ahead of me, the overhead light still on, the cop inside, sipping a cup of coffee. The tinny sounds of the radio drifted out from the open window on the driver's side.

It was against the driver's side that I braced myself as I pulled up, to keep the bike from falling over.

"Officer," I said. I didn't have to say much to get his attention, because of course when someone on a motorcycle pulls up next to your car and leans on it, you notice right away.

"Yes?" The guy was young, probably only twenty-two or three. He still had acne. "What is it?"

"Heather Montrose," I said. "We found her back there, inside a house off that road, the old pit road, the one they don't use anymore. You better call an ambulance, she's really hurt."

The guy looked at me a minute, as if trying to figure out whether or not I was putting him on. I had Rob's helmet over my head, of course, so I don't know how much of my face he could make out. But what little he could see of me, he must have decided looked sincere, since he got on the radio and said he needed backup, along with an ambulance and paramedics. Then he looked at me and said, "Let's go."

It turned out the cops already knew about the house. They'd searched it, Deputy Mullins—that was his name—said, twice already, once right after Heather had been reported missing, and then again after nightfall. But they hadn't found anything suspicious inside . . . unless one counted a plethora of empty beer bottles and used condoms.

In any case, Deputy Mullins led me toward a clearly little-used dirt track just off the road. It was better, I found, than the way we'd originally taken through the woods, since I didn't have to dodge any trees. I wondered why my psychic radar hadn't led me this way before. Maybe because it ended up taking longer. It took us almost fifteen minutes of slow going over weedy, bumpy terrain to reach the house. It had only taken me ten minutes to get to the road through the woods. I knew from Rob's watch.

Deputy Mullins, when the house appeared in his headlights, pulled up beside it, then got on the radio again to describe his location. Then, leaving the headlights on, but his engine off, he got out of the car, while I leaned Rob's bike carefully against it, turned the engine off, and climbed down.

"She's in there," I said, pointing. "On the second floor."

Deputy Mullins nodded, but he looked nervous. Really nervous.

"Some people got her," I said. "She's afraid they might come back. She—"

Rob, having heard our approach, came out onto the porch. Deputy Mullins was even more nervous than I'd thought—either that, or the house was creeping him out as much as it had creeped me out—since he immediately went for his sidearm, sank down onto one knee, and, pointing the gun at Rob, yelled, "Freeze!"

Rob put both hands in the air and stood there, looking slightly bored, in the glare of the headlights.

May I just say that Rob Wilkins is the only person I know who would find having a gun drawn on him boring?

"Dude," I said to Deputy Mullins, in a voice high with suppressed emotion, "that's my boyfriend! He's—he's one of the good guys!"

Deputy Mullins lowered his gun. "Oh," he said, looking sheepish. "Sorry about that."

"It's cool," Rob said, putting his hands down. "Look, have you got a blanket and a first-aid kit in your car? She's not doing so hot."

Deputy Mullins nodded and raced around to the back of the squad car. I pulled my helmet off and hurried up to Rob.

"Did she say anything?" I asked him. "Like about who did it, or anything?"

"Not a word," Rob said. "All she'll talk about is how they—whoever they are—will be back soon, and how we're all going to be sorry when that happens."

"Yeah?" I said, running a hand through my sweaty hair. (It was hot inside that helmet.) "Well, I'm already sorry."

I was even more sorry when I led Deputy Mullins up the rickety stairs, and found out that, insofar as any sort of first aid knowledge was concerned, he was about as useless as Rob and me. All we could do was try to make her as warm and as comfortable as possible, then wait for the professionals.

It didn't take them long. It seemed as if no sooner had I crawled back into that bathtub than the wails from a half dozen sirens filled the night air. Seconds later, red lights were swirling across the inside walls of the house, like a lava lamp at a party, and voices could be heard outside. Deputy Mullins excused himself and went outside to show the EMT guys the way.

"Hear that, Heather?" I asked her, holding the hand on her unbroken arm. "That's the cops. Things are going to be okay now."

Heather only moaned. She obviously didn't believe me. It was almost as if she thought things were never going to be okay again.

Maybe she was right. At least, that's what I started to think as Rob and I, banished by the EMTs, who needed all the room to work on Heather that they could get in that cramped space, came down the stairs and onto the front porch. No, things weren't going to be okay. Not for a good long while, anyway.

Because Special Agents Johnson and Smith were coming toward us, their badges out and ready.

"Jessica," Special Agent Johnson said. "Mr. Wilkins. Will you two come with us, please?"



C H A P T E R

13

"I told you," I said, for what had to have been the thirtieth time. "We were looking for a place to make out."

Special Agent Smith smiled at me. She was a very pretty lady, even when roused from her bed in the middle of the night. She had on pearl stud earrings, a crisply starched blue blouse, and black trousers. With her blonde bob and turned-up little nose, she looked perky enough to be a stewardess, or even a real-estate agent.

Except, of course, for the Clock 9 mm strapped to her side. That sort of detracted from the overall image of perkiness.

"Jess," she said, "Rob already told us that isn't true."

"Yeah," I said. "Well, of course he would say that, being a gentleman and all. But believe me, that's how it happened. We went in there to make out, and we found Heather. And that's it."

"I see." Special Agent Smith looked down at the steaming cup of coffee she was holding between her hands. They'd offered me a cup, too, but I had declined. I didn't need my growth stunted anymore than it already had been thanks to my DNA.

"And do you and Rob," she went on, "always drive fifteen miles out of town just to make out?"

"Oh, yeah," I said. "It's more exciting that way."

"I see," Special Agent Smith said, again. "And the fact that Rob has the keys to his uncle's garage, where he works, and the two of you could have gone there, a place that is significantly closer and quite a bit cleaner than that house on the pit road . . . you still expect me to believe you?"

"Yes," I said, with some indignation. "We can't go to his uncle's garage to make out. Somebody might find out, and then Rob'd get fired."

Special Agent Smith propped her elbow up onto the table where we sat in the police station, then dropped her forehead into her hand.

"Jessica," she said, sounding tired. "You declined an invitation to your own best friend's lakehouse because you heard it didn't have cable television. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you would so much as enter a house like the one on the pit road if you didn't absolutely have to?"

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Hey," I said. "How'd you know about the cable thing?"

"We are the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jess. We know everything."

This was distressing. I wondered if they knew about Mrs. Hankey's lawsuit. I figured they probably did.

"Well," I said. "Okay. I admit it's a little gross in there. But—"

"A little gross?" Special Agent Smith sat up straight. "I'm sorry, Jessica, but I think I'm well enough acquainted with you to know that if any boy—but especially, I suspect, Rob Wilkins—took you into a house like that to be intimate, we'd have a homicide on our hands. Namely, his."

I tried to take umbrage at this assessment of my personality, but the fact was, Jill was right. I could not understand how any girl would let a boy take her to such a place. Better to get down and dirty in his car than in that disgusting frat house.

Frat house? Rat house was more like it.