Kissed By Moonlight (32 page)

I forced the nervous shakes taking my body away. Adam took his position, leaning against the wall next to the door. He couldn't come with me on this, no matter how much I wanted him to. When I looked at him, he gave me a smile and a nod.

I swallowed the lump rising up my throat, forced a smile onto my own lips, and returned that nod.

Then I rang the doorbell. The chimes sounded inside, muffled by the wall. God, this was worse
than going up the hill at the start of a rollercoaster. I pulled at my coat, straightened my hair and brushed it back over my ears, doing anything I could to avoid being still.

Chapter 48

The door opened. Joseph poked his head out. They even wore those stupid letterman jackets inside, it seemed. He smiled when he saw me.

Why did Joseph have to be a part of all this? He still had a boyish face, and an innocent smile. But Eric had pulled him in and he'd made the wrong choice.

"Hi," he said.

"Hey, Joseph.
Is Eric's offer for a party still open? I just need to unwind, you know. All that stress from writing papers and all that."

When he grasped what I was saying, his eyes widened.

"Yeah. Yeah! Come on in. Eric's upstairs."

Joseph turned away to lead me up there.
Right before I slipped through the doorway, I caught Adam's eye again. I needed another dose of reassurance. He nodded again.

Again, I
marveled at how clean the frat house was. How stately it seemed. It was just disgusting and heartbreaking, the rot it had in its core. It needed more people like Vick, and fewer like Eric and Joseph.

The carpeted stairs creaked a little, and the mahogany rail felt cool and smooth under my palm as we went up. When I was sure Joseph wasn't looking, I unzipped my coat and stuck my cell in the inner pocket. I hit the "record" button on it.

Adam and I had checked the recording function on it yesterday. Even with it being buried in a pocket, it easily picked up what we'd said. I hoped it would do the same with Eric.

I followed Joseph down a hall lined with pictures going back decades and decades of all the various members of the frat. A long carpet lined the hall, leaving a bit of space on either side so that you could see the rich hardwood floor underneath.

We came to a door near the end. Joseph knocked on it.

"Yeah?"

My heart started racing as I recognized Eric's voice. I swallowed against the bile rising up my throat. It took every last ounce of willpower I had, with a fair bit borrowed from Adam, to go through with this. It was the right thing to do, I knew. But the right thing so often turned out to also be the hardest..

"Come on," Joseph said, looking at me over his shoulder as he opened the door.

As soon as he did, some awful heavy metal spilled out into the hall. The kind that was all some guy screaming unintelligibly. It made my throat ache in sympathy as I tried to block it out.

Eric had a king-sized bed (of course he did) with gold-trimmed sheets. An enormous computer monitor sat on his corner desk, and a sixty-inch
flat screen was mounted over a fireplace.

This was much more like the frats I was used to from movies. He had posters of
swimsuit models all over the place, with a few of the stereotypical ones that all college aged guys seemed to have. There was the obligatory
Scarface
one, a large one of a red Ferrari, another displaying what seemed like a hundred different guns.

The place reeked of expensive cologne. I wrinkled my nose at it.

The man himself lay on his bed, his arms crossed behind his head. He grinned when he saw me. I fought the urge to run out of there.

"Hey,
Stephie," Eric said. I could feel his eyes crawling over me, down past my open jacket, "What brings you here?"

"She says she wants to party!" Joseph added.

Eric shot him a look and he shut up, hunching his shoulders and looking bashful.

"It's always you uptight chicks that secretly want it the most," Eric said, standing up.

He had one of those white wife beaters on, showing a pair of decently muscled shoulders and the top of a hairless chest. His letterman jacket hung on the back of his desk chair. It was somewhat jarring not to see him in it.

He came up so close I could smell his breath. It seemed he'd eaten a whole bag of Doritos not long before. I almost gagged, but managed to keep my smile as he looked down at me with those hungry eyes.

"What kind of party did you have in mind, Stephie?" he said. His fingers flexed at his sides, and I knew he wanted to touch me so badly.

I flicked my hair back and pretended to have some interest in a poster on the other side of the room of two girls kissing.

Panic flashed through me. This was the point where I had to really put the plan in motion. What if I did it wrong? What if he didn't say what I wanted him to?

I had to keep reminding myself that Adam was right outside the door. All I had to do was
scream. Vick wasn't far behind, either.

I licked my lips as I turned back to him, trying to make the gesture as sexy and distracting as possible. He seemed to buy it, his eyes again admiring my body. I wanted to pull my coat closed, but I also wanted to make the recording as clear as possible.

"I don't know... How about the kind of party you and Joseph threw for Jenn?"

I could barely hear myself over the rush of blood past my ears.

Joseph looked like I'd just kicked him between the legs. I found myself enjoying his discomfort. Eric, on the other hand, just frowned.

"Jenn?
Jenn who?" he said.

My body stiffened as a hot ball of anger burst in my chest. This couldn't be happening. How could he not even remember her? Just what kind of monster was Eric Putnam?

"Jenn McClaughlin," I said through clenched teeth, "The girl you and Joseph raped and murdered."

I could barely spit out the words. I basked in the heat of my anger. It made me brave. Yes, I could do this. I could get through it. This asshole needed to go down.

Eric's eyes widened for just a moment, a muscle twitching in his cheek before he got control of himself again.

"I don't know what you're talking about.
You gone crazy or something, Stephie?"

We'd all known he would deny it. Still, it was a bit disappointing. It would have been so much nicer if he'd just admitted to it right then and there.

But that was okay. We had planned for this, after all. I looked at Joseph.

"Really?
Because Joseph told me all about it. Didn't you, Joseph?"

It was simple, really.
Obvious, even. I remembered how pissed Eric was that first day I'd overheard them. It was clear how little trust Eric put in Joseph. Roman history wasn't really my area of expertise, but I still knew a little.

I knew stuff like "Divide and conquer" and what it really meant. However, it was even more impressive to see Julius Caesar's strategy put into action.

"Joe... what the fuck did you say?" Eric said.

Eric's arms, shoulders, neck, face and chest were all flushed a deep, angry red. His face was twisted, his teeth pulled back from his lips. A little wrinkle formed between his eyebrows.

I almost felt sorry for Joseph, and was definitely happy that look wasn't directed at me.

Joseph recoiled from that look, almost tripped over Eric's desk chair. Eric's letterman jacket slipped to the floor, and Joseph stepped all over it in his effort to move farther away.

"I didn't say anything, Eric. I didn't!" Joseph said.

"Yeah
, right. You stupid asshole. I told you when we did her that you couldn't say a fucking thing to anyone. You don't tell other people when you kill someone, you moron!"

Excitement thrilled through me, then. That was it! I had him admitting to killing her, recorded safe and sound on my phone.

"I swear, Eric. I didn't say anything! It's her! She found out, but I didn't tell her!"

Joseph knocked that big computer monitor back, cracking its stand. Eric hit him, then. One punch, straight to Joseph's exposed gut.

All the air rushed from Joseph's lungs as he doubled over at Eric's feet. He was still trying to apologize, even though he couldn't breathe.

I'd been watching, stunned by the display, and enjoying it far more than I thought proper. It was only after Eric turned around and glared at me that I realized I should've run when I had the chance. I had the
recording; there'd been no need for me to stay.

"You... bitch..." Eric breathed. A big vein throbbed in his forehead, looking ready to burst. Hate rolled off him in waves so powerful I took a step back before I could think about it.

"No, you're staying right here!" he said, jabbing his finger at me like it was a spear.

My plan of just screaming if I got into trouble wasn't good enough, I could tell now. He'd be on me before Adam or Vick could race up the stairs, and I knew what he was capable of.

So I ran, gripping my phone through my coat so that it wouldn't jolt from my pocket.

I bounced off the walls in the hallway in my hurry. A big, black and white picture in a steel frame crashed down behind me, sending shards of glass at my heels.

I couldn't look back. He was right there behind me, I knew.

"Stop!" he said.

A few guys poked their heads out of their bedroom doorways, confused about the noise. Most of them had their letterman jackets on.

When I got to the staircase, they started cheering, calling out to Eric to "Get that slut!" and other colorful phrases.

They thought I was just his latest conquest or something, rather than a girl he wanted to chase down and beat.

My grip slipped on the rail. For a moment, I was airborne over the staircase. My stomach tried to stay behind as the panic and adrenaline fueling my muscles made me windmill like crazy.

All I thought about was keeping that phone safe.

Even as I crashed in a heap on the ground floor landing, my left hip and shoulder taking the brunt of the impact, I kept thinking about that. Even as I pushed myself up on my hands and knees and scrambled for the door, trying to ignore the sweet, sharp pain blossoming across an entire side of my body.

I reached up for the door handle. My fingers touched the cold, chromed metal latch. They slipped off when Eric grabbed the hood of my jacket and used it to haul me backwards.

"Adam!" I screamed, terror flashing through my body in hot and cold waves as he dragged me back.

"Yeah! That's my boy!" some frat boy called from the top of the stairs. There were more behind him, still cheering Eric on, still not knowing what was really happening.

"Adam!" I screamed again.

I knew it must have only been moments, but it felt like forever as I got dragged backwards, watching that front door waiting for him to burst through.

The door slammed back so hard that the glass in the window cracked. Adam stood there, looking so big from where I was on the floor. He growled. It was a deep noise, from somewhere far inside his chest.

Another fear took me as I imagined what might happen if he transformed here, now, in anger.

"Let her go," he said.

"He's calling you out, boy!" the same guy who'd called out earlier said.

Eric stopped dragging me.

"Piss off, Arnold," Eric said. His shoulders and chest heaved under that stupid wife beater, sweat running down the sides of his face. I could smell it from the ground. It melded with his cologne, making the scent waft from him rank and sickly sweet.

"You get your hands off her..."

"Or you'll what? Look at this stupid emo punk!" Eric said.

"Take him!" another frat guy yelled out.

I was tired of all this macho shit. Balling my fist, I drove it up between Eric's legs. It was a solid hit, hard enough to hurt my wrist.

And its effect on Eric was immediate.

The guys watching from the stairs yelled like it was a prize fight as Eric clutched himself and fell on his side, curling up in a ball and whining.

I scuttled away from him. Adam helped me up.

"I got it..." I said, patting my jacket.

He hugged me, holding me close. His heart slammed against his ribs.

He was about to say something when the room filled with cops. Lights started flashing through the windows and the open door, coming in with that cold breeze.

The frat boys reacted instinctively, running back to their rooms or trying to get out like this was the fuzz
come to crash a kegger.

There had to be at least a dozen men and women coming in with their guns drawn. They all pointed their weapons at Eric, who whimpered even more when he saw what was happening.

"Are you okay?"

Both Adam and I turned. Vick stood in the doorway. He had his big winter coat on, one arm crossed over his chest cradling the bruised ribs he'd gotten trying to stab Adam that night.