Delusion Road (33 page)

She felt a tug on her arm, and she spun to face him. “Get your hands off me!” His eyes were wild now, and suddenly she felt fear of her own. She reached into her pocket for the pager her father had given her, only to remember it was in her other jeans, the ones she’d taken off when she’d showered. She glanced up and down the corridor, but it was deserted. And why
wouldn’t
it be on a Friday afternoon?

“Please,” he said, “show me what you found.”

“Are you crazy?” After what she’d learned about him, there was a good chance he was. After all, she’d only known him a couple of weeks. Maybe he was even crazy enough to try something here. No,
she
was the crazy one for confronting him by herself. Maybe if she took out her phone to show him what he wanted to see, she could dial 911. But responders would take at least a few minutes to get there, and a lot could happen in those minutes. She
needed to get to an adult. Fast. “I’ll show you in the library.”

Her heart sank when they arrived, but she shouldn’t have been surprised to find it, too, deserted on a Friday afternoon. A note on the door from Ms. Ruggles said she’d return in a few minutes—librarian-speak for
I’m in the bathroom
—but Keegan didn’t wait, pushing through the entrance.

She realized she’d have to humour him until Ruggles returned, so she headed toward the bank of computers, pointing to a chair.

“No,” he said, dragging a hand through his hair, “you do it.”

Willa glanced toward the door. Still no librarian. She forced herself to sit down, touching the monitor in front of her, which lit up with a login screen. She typed in her student number and password, then brought up the browser, opened Facebook, and located the page that Celia and Britney had shown her. She could hear Keegan’s rapid breathing above her as he began to read.

“What—?” He reached over her and touched the screen, scrolling through the text.

As much as it hurt her, sickened her to read it again, she once more scanned the information that had been posted by a retired Vancouver nurse whose home had been robbed months earlier. A widow, she’d arrived home earlier than expected, interrupting the break-in. The burglar had beaten her badly, smashing out two of her teeth and leaving her with a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, several cracked ribs, and bruises over most of her body. The seventeen-year-old multiple offender had been apprehended quickly, yet, when the case went to court, he’d received a year’s probation—”a slap on the wrist,” wrote the former nurse, who still suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and had lived in fear ever since, certain her attacker would return for his revenge.
In defiance of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, she had posted the teenager’s name—Kevin Fredericks—and photo so others would be on the alert if they saw him. Willa had recognized the guy immediately. It was Keegan.

“T
his is what you were looking at on my laptop last night, isn’t it?” demanded Willa.

Reading the information on the screen, Keegan wasn’t surprised by the venom in her voice.

“Gloating over what you’d gotten away with?” Before he could answer, she continued, “You and Wynn must’ve been separated at birth.”

“Willa, none of this is true. You have to believe me.”

She glowered at him. “Yeah, because believing in liars has been working so well for me.”

“I’m not lying. Somebody made all this up.”

“Is your name Keegan Fraser?”

Anger and disbelief blazed like twin bonfires in her eyes, and he knew he had only one chance. She would know if he tried to lie. “No,” he said softly.

“And yet none of this stuff here is true,” she said, her words seared with scorn. She turned away, and he could tell she didn’t want him to see the tears that threatened. “You disgust me.”

“Willa, please,” he said, “I know how it looks, but—”

“I don’t give a damn how it
looks.
I only care how it
is
,” she said, and he could see she was about to get up.

He moved closer, towering over her so she couldn’t stand, and he saw her flinch, saw something else join the anger and disbelief. She’d turned to the doorway, and he knew she was looking for the librarian.

“Please, Willa,” he begged, dismayed by the realization that she could fear him,
did
fear him. “I’m not that guy! I’m
not
Kevin Fredericks!”

Turning back to the computer, she jabbed her finger at the screen. “Isn’t that
you
?” She pointed to the photo of him standing outdoors, the easy grin on his face suggesting what he already knew—he was unaware of being photographed. “See the caption?” she asked. “‘Taken outside the courthouse.’ No wonder you were smiling. A slap on the wrist must’ve felt pretty good compared to what they could have given you.
Should
have given you.”

Seeing her look toward the doorway again, he could tell she was no longer willing the librarian to return. She was looking for a chance to bolt. Keegan fought the urge to put his hands on her shoulders to keep her in that chair. Instead, he leaned over her again, peering more closely at the screen. And then he saw it. “Look,” he said, pointing at the bottom left corner of the photo.

Willa continued to face the door.

“
Please
, Willa.
Look
!”

Cringing from the intensity of his voice, Willa turned toward the monitor. “What do you want me to—”

He dragged his fingers across the screen, doubling the size of the image he was pointing at. In the photo, he was standing beside a black vehicle, only a small portion of which could be seen.

She leaned closer to the monitor. “Is that—” She enlarged the photo even more. On the back of the vehicle was a sticker
bearing a stylized V and M. The logo of Valley Motors. “It’s the SUV from my dad’s dealership. How—?”

“That photo was taken here in Brookdale.” He zoomed out again, pointing to the corner of a building in the background. “And look. That’s my house. I’m standing in my driveway.”

Willa turned to him, her face furrowed with confusion.

“I’ve never been to Vancouver, Willa.”

She looked at the image again, clearly trying to reconcile what she’d seen with what she thought she knew. “But you
came
here from Vancouver.”

“That was our cover, a story they created for us.”

“Who?”

He shook his head. “It’s better if you don’t know.”

“Look, a few minutes ago I told you I’d found out about the thefts and the violence, and you asked me how I knew. You’re caught up in something, aren’t you? Something bad. What is it, Keegan?” She frowned, tears springing again to her eyes. “Or
whatever
your name is.”

He could hear his father in his head warning him once more against doing the very thing he’d longed to since their afternoon together at the look-off. “It doesn’t matter what my name is. You just have to know that I would never do anything like this.” He pointed at the monitor. “Trust me.”

She wiped savagely at fresh tears on her face. “Like I trusted Wynn?”

He winced.

“Tell me this, then,” she said. “What were you looking at last night in my bedroom?”

“What do you mean?”

“You were on my laptop and then deleted the browser history. What were you looking at?”

“It’s not important.”

“It’s important to me. If you want me to start believing you, tell me. If you don’t, I’m out of here.”

A part of Keegan knew now that his father was right, the part that had lived in fear for months, terrified by what had happened and what still lay out there waiting for them. But there was another part, the part he’d thought was gone but had come roaring back to him in that cottage on Delusion Road. That was the part he listened to now. “I was on Facebook. I wanted to check on somebody.”

“Who?”

“Someone I knew from before I came here.”

“
Who
?”

He sat down in the chair beside her, taking her hands in his. She flinched, pulling away. “A girl,” he said. “Her name’s Talia.”

She said nothing, her silence its own condemnation.

“She was—” He paused, unsure now what to say. So much could happen that changed what you thought you knew, what you thought you felt. “She was someone I cared for.”

Willa looked down, but not before he saw fresh pain in her eyes. “Do you still care for her?”

Keegan didn’t want to make her flinch again, but he reached out anyway and gently raised her face toward his the way he often did with Isaac. “Not like I used to,” he said softly. “Not like I thought I did.”

The lines on her face changed direction. “Then why were you—”

“On her Facebook page? I wanted to make sure she’d moved on. This thing between you and me, I couldn’t feel good about it if I wasn’t sure she was okay, too.”

This seemed to satisfy her for a moment. But then, “Why not just call or message her? Why use my laptop to creep on her?”

“I can’t have contact with her.”

He felt her draw back again. “What did you
do
to her?”

“I didn’t do anything, Willa. None of what happened had anything to do with me.”

“
What
happened?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s not safe for you to know.”

“You’re scaring me,” she said, her voice suddenly small.

“I’m glad.” Seeing her grow more alarmed, he knew he had to tell her some of it, the part that would make her understand. “There are people after my family, Willa.”

“The police?”

“No,”
he insisted, his voice more forceful than he’d intended. “Bad people.
Very
bad.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that no one can know we’re in Brookdale.”

Willa’s eyes widened and she pointed at the monitor. “What about that?”

“It’s okay. It says I’m in Vancouver.”

She scrolled to the bottom, and the place where people could post comments came into view. There was only one, probably written by whoever had shown the page to Willa:
This asshole now calls himself Keegan Fraser and he’s living in Brookdale, Nova Scotia.

“Christ!” Keegan groaned. He jumped up, felt tears of his own
threaten. His father had been right all along. “We have to leave.”

“Why?” asked Willa, standing with him.

“They’ll find us.”

“How?” she asked. “If you’re not Kevin Fredericks or Keegan Fraser, anybody looking for you would never find this page.”

He pointed at the photo. “They would with facial recognition software. That’s why my dad doesn’t have a car. He couldn’t chance getting a driver’s licence because they would’ve found his picture in the DMV database. And it’s only a matter of time before they see this—” He froze. “Oh, no,” he moaned.

“What?”

“I used your laptop to check out Talia’s Facebook page. They’ll have your IP address.”

“But tons of people probably click on her page.” Then realization shuddered through her. “If they know you’re in Brookdale—” She didn’t finish. Didn’t need to.

“May I help you two?” They turned to see Ms. Ruggles in the doorway.

“We’re just leaving,” said Keegan, reaching for Willa’s hand and tugging her behind him. They brushed past the librarian and started down the corridor, but Keegan stopped. “Wait!” he said, and darted back into the library. He could feel Ms. Ruggles’s eyes on him as he clicked off that Facebook page, then deleted the browser’s history. Deep down, though, he knew it was a wasted effort—people all over town were probably posting links to that page now, increasing the likelihood that
they
would find it.

Back in the corridor, he said, “I have to warn my dad. What’s the dealership’s number? I should know it, but—”

She told him and he punched it in, listening to the automated
voice list the directory of employees. When he reached his father’s office, the phone rang several times before going to voicemail. He clicked it off. “He’s not there. Is there someone else who—”

She took the phone from him, calling the dealership again. “Hi, Shirley. I’m looking for Dad’s accountant, Mr. Fraser. Can you—” She listened for a moment, then thanked her and hung up. “He went home at noon.”

Keegan nodded. “He walks home to eat lunch. For the exercise.”

“But he didn’t come back, Keegan. No one’s seen him since. And he didn’t call in.”

An ice pick lodged itself in Keegan’s chest. “I have to go,” he rasped, turning and running for the exit.

He heard her running behind him. “It’ll be faster if we take my car,” she called.

Bursting through the exit door into the sunshine, they veered toward the parking lot. When they reached it, there were only two vehicles left, and he saw that neither of them was—

“This one,” she told him, running toward a small blue car. She hit the remote entry button on her key and they piled in.

Willa started the vehicle and shifted into drive, both their heads snapping back as she floored the gas. Whipping the car into the street, she asked, “You know who posted that page, right?”

Keegan hadn’t had time to think of it, but now he nodded. “Wynn,” he said.

“Wynn,” she echoed, her voice a jagged knife. “That miserable son of a bitch.”

In less than a minute, she tore into Keegan’s driveway, and he was out of the car before it even stopped moving, bounding up the front steps. Finding the door unlocked, he pushed inside, his
senses assaulted by the damage he found. The living room was a shambles: furniture overturned, the coffee table broken, pieces of a puzzle scattered everywhere. A lamp lay on its side on the hardwood floor, and for a moment Keegan’s brain couldn’t make sense of its colour. It was supposed to be brown, but from this angle it looked red. And then he saw it was lying in a pool of something. That pool was red, too.

“My God.” He felt Willa beside him, a hand on his arm. “My God,” she repeated, the soles of her shoes making soft squeaking sounds.

He stared uncomprehendingly at her feet, her sneakers pressing scattered puzzle pieces against the hardwood. Puzzle pieces. Puzzle—”I have to get Isaac!” Turning his back on the ravaged room, he headed for the door, Willa on his heels.