Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (12 page)

It wasn’t the detailed seating arrangement of the dignitaries, the marked spot where President Noland would be sworn into his second term of office, nor the designated Secret Service positions on and around the platform that struck hardest at Cass. It was what someone had penciled over the diagram. Someone had clearly marked the position of the piano on the upper tier of the platform, the exact time Liesl Bower was scheduled to perform, and a series of lines emanating like a sunburst from the piano. Penciled over that were two words,
TIMED BLAST
.

All sense of space disappeared, and Cass felt herself falling backward into an abyss. Until someone’s arms caught her and held her close. “Cass!”

Jordan?
She heard his voice in her ear. He was cradling her like an injured child. When her head cleared, though, she pulled away from him. When she looked up and saw the fright in his face, saw him reach for her
again
, she could bear no more. No one could ever make the grotesque things right. No one ever had.

She shot to her feet, grabbed her jacket, and ran from the room, pounding the worn treads of the stairs to the bottom landing. Jordan followed, but she had wound her way through the house and fled through the back door before he could reach her.

Chapter 14

C
ass half ran, half stumbled into the back yard and across the withered grass to the dunes. She stopped long enough to look back and see Jordan emerge from the house, calling to her in a voice she’d not heard before. His soothing baritone now shrieking her name, imploring her to stop. But she couldn’t. What had seized her in the study now swung her around and pushed her roughly down the weathered planks that stepped loosely over the dunes.

When she reached the beach, she paused long enough to confront the scolding surf and its unrelenting echo. Then she turned to the old shed, where she and her young friends used to throw back the latch and drag the Hobie Cat from its sandy mooring. In the affected heave-ho cadence of Volga boatmen, the giggling teens would haul the small vessel across the beach and into the breakers, unfurling its sail like a victory flag. They would hop aboard and fling themselves at the Atlantic, feeling it draw them to its risky playground. They feared nothing.

“Cass, wait!”

Feeling his eyes boring into her back, Cass turned east and sprinted down the night-shrouded beach only faintly lit by a lopsided moon. She ran full stride for as long as it took to reach the hurting place. Like an animal that hungrily gnaws its wounds, Cass had returned many times to the
spot
, to scrape its salt deep into the grain of her sinful flesh.
That’s what it was
, she thought as she ran. Sin. The church word that never meant much. Not until it meant everything that she was.

And now, sin raged again. Hans had brought it back home, if it had ever left. Whatever he had done, whatever his connection to that monstrous assault on the steps of the Capitol, it would pull her mother into the abyss, too. She couldn’t let that happen. She didn’t care what happened to Hans. If he’d visited the shame of a nation upon them, he deserved whatever he got. But not her mother. Cass would stop him. And the others.
You don’t know who you’re messing with
.

“But I’ll find out!” she cried as she ran into the biting wind.

Then something else threw its weight at her. The news clippings, the story, the piano and its bomb. With all certainty, she knew the timed blast was meant for Liesl Bower.

Cass was almost there now. Near the inlet, she slowed and angled toward the open water, hugging her jacket close to her body and feeling her inner garments sponge the sweat trickling down her. She pulled the hood over her damp hair and stood before the filmy curtain of black over the horizon.

She looked toward the inlet waters running swift with the tide. Nearby, a house rose behind the dunes, a security light in its back yard casting sparkles of light over the tumbling currents. She could almost see the fire her friends had built on a night like many others. Just another forbidden, late-night gathering on the beach with friends, but this time, Rachel wasn’t there. She and Adam had broken up, and Cass was glad, for right and wrong reasons. She’d caught Adam flirting with other girls behind Rachel’s back, though Rachel excused him for it when Cass regretfully reported her observations. “Oh, he’s just full of himself, that’s all,” Rachel once said. “He just wants to make friends with everybody.”

Soon, though, it was obvious to all but Rachel that Adam had lost interest in the “homespun mountain kid,” as the sleeker city girls had tagged her.

But something else had been working on Cass, something that had made her ashamed, as few things had. As much as she’d resisted it, she,
too
, had fallen for the handsome soccer player, even catching his eye a few times in unguarded moments of mutual admiration.

The day Rachel finally announced that she and Adam had permanently parted ways, Cass knew it was a unilateral decision. Rachel’s tears had told her so, though her words sought to convince Cass that it was for the best. “I would only hold him back,” Rachel had said. “He’s way too sophisticated and smart for such a homespun twit as me.” She’d caught Cass’s raised eyebrows. “What? You didn’t think I knew what they called me?”

A month later, at the inlet campfire, Cass had found herself on a blanket next to Adam. After several bottles of wine had been repeatedly passed around the circle, he suggested they leave the others and move off down the beach alone. The wine, the lie-down music from someone’s guitar, the lulling ebb and flow of the waves answered for her. With the few sober cells struggling for traction in her brain, she told herself that Rachel was through with him and wouldn’t mind. Besides, he was bad for Rachel. And for Cass?

Minutes later, it didn’t matter to her. She had slipped into his heated embrace and met his every move with her own willing and inebriated body.

The following morning, she was so repulsed by her actions, she wouldn’t even take a phone call from Rachel. Nor would she take the insistent calls from Adam, who’d claimed he was crazy about her. She didn’t leave the house for days, even once rebuffing him at the door and telling him never to return.

When her sophomore-year classes at NYU began a few weeks later, Cass steered clear of Rachel and Adam, whom she never saw together. Though Adam continually texted Cass, declaring his affections for her and begging her to see him, she never responded—not even the day she accidentally ran headlong into him in a hallway and he seized the moment to wrap his arms tightly around her, causing her to squirm free of him and flee, issuing dire warnings should he ever try that again.

Though Rachel pleaded for Cass to tell her why she’d withdrawn from their friendship, and though Rachel’s wrenching hurt was almost more
than
Cass could bear, she remained aloof from everyone except her biology lab partner. There was no escaping the prevailing presence of Jordan Winslow.

One day after classes, Cass was headed for the subway when she noticed Rachel and Adam sitting on a bench in a small park, facing away from her. She hung back and watched them. Rachel appeared to be crying, and Adam was trying to console her. At one point, he put his arm around her and tried to pull her to him, but she shoved him away and jumped up. Cass couldn’t hear her words, but she sensed their hurt. On the way home, she replayed the scene in her mind, trying to understand what might have happened. Then the terrifying question arose. Did Rachel know?

Two weeks later, Cass and her parents had just arrived at the beach house for one last warm weekend when Rachel called. “Your housekeeper told me you were at the beach, Cass. Please let me come see you today. I have something very important to tell you.” The voice was light and steady. Cass thought it held a ring of self-assurance she’d not heard before. She couldn’t imagine the transition from Rachel’s distress in the park to the voice Cass had just heard. With a twinge of hope for reconciliation, she invited Rachel to come and stay the weekend.

Late that afternoon, Cass heard the rumble of Rachel’s Jeep in the driveway and went to the door. The familiar face behind the steering wheel was a welcome sight. Cass had missed her old friend but didn’t realize how much until that moment. She was suddenly buoyant over Rachel’s arrival, enough to momentarily subdue the guilt. Yes, Cass had slept with the man her best friend loved. Nothing would ever change that. But as Rachel climbed from the car and raised a friendly wave, Cass could have burst with joy.

Surely Rachel didn’t know.

Cass met her at the car, opening her arms for the usual quick hug and release. Only this time, Rachel clung tighter and longer, the scent of her hair sweet and warm against Cass’s cheek, the scent of a beloved sister. Cass vowed never to part ways with her again. When they released each other, Cass led the way to the front door.

“Oh, let’s walk around back first, Cass,” Rachel suggested. “Maybe we could sit on the back porch awhile before going in.”

“Sure,” Cass said, eyeing her closely. Then she remembered the important news Rachel had mentioned. “You’re being very secretive about something,” she teased.

A timid smile curled at Rachel’s mouth as she slid a glance toward Cass, but she said nothing. When they reached the back lawn that fell gently toward the beach, Rachel stopped and gazed at the sea. In the slant of afternoon rays, the waters were like agate, their strata of crystal blues and greens flicked with sunset gold. Cass, too, paused to admire what she often took for granted.

“Let’s go out there, Cass.”

Cass turned to her in surprise. “Now? It’s getting late.”

But Rachel persisted. “One more ride on the Hobie Cat before winter,” she said, her voice calm and persuasive.

“Okay. Be spontaneous, right?” And suddenly the idea appealed to Cass, too. “We’ll have to hurry, though. Mom and Dad will be back from shopping in a couple of hours. I’m sure they wouldn’t approve.”

From inside the shed where they stored the boat, Cass removed two life jackets from the wall hooks and handed one to Rachel. “Your assignment this winter, Rachel, is to learn how to swim at the NYU pool. No more excuses. You can’t even dog paddle.”

“Okay, I’ll do that,” Rachel agreed, strapping herself into the bulky vest, then removing her shoes. She was wearing knee-length leggings and a long, plain sweatshirt.

“You did bring other clothes, I hope.” Cass looked down at her own cutoff jeans and T-shirt, which she’d often sailed in. Then she pulled two pairs of gloves for handling the lines, something Rachel had always helped with.

“You are going to stay over, aren’t you?” Cass added.

“Sure. I’d like that.”

The two slid the lightweight vessel from the shed, across the beach, and down to the water. “This will be easy,” Cass said brightly. “The waves are tame today.” She glanced up at the coral stripes on the sail. “Not much wind, though. We might not get far.”

“Far enough, I’m sure,” Rachel said. She looked to the west and shielded her eyes from the head-on rays of the setting sun. “It’s so pretty, isn’t it?”

But Cass was too busy with the launch to notice or respond. She positioned the twin-hull boat into the wind and announced, “Ready to go.”

Both girls hopped onto the trampoline deck and grabbed the lines. Clearing the last breaker, they drifted into deeper water, and Cass locked the rudders in place. Her hand on the tiller, she caught a draft and tacked into it. But the wind kept teasing them, rushing at them from different directions, taunting them, and making Cass work for distance.

Soon, though, they locked into a steady current of air and let it carry them into the far reaches of sapphire waters. Her hair twisted into a large clip, her feet tucked beneath the hiking strap, Rachel leaned backward over the edge of the trampoline deck, pulling against one of the sail sheets for support. She clearly relished the ride.

Cass watched her. This wasn’t the girl she’d seen in the park with Adam. Cass was anxious to know the important news, but she would have to wait.

An hour later, as the colors began to bleed from the sky, Cass announced it was time to head back. “It’ll be dark soon.”

“We can’t go yet!” Rachel blurted. “I mean … I need to talk to you.” She glanced toward shore and a few front-row estates. “It’s more private out here.”

Cass felt the first twinge of unease. And there clearly in the green eyes before her was something out of sync with the light-hearted mood of the afternoon. At least that’s how she had perceived their impromptu little voyage. What had just happened?

“Okay, Rachel.” She steered the boat straight into the wind, causing the sails to go limp and slowing them to a conversational speed, if that’s what Rachel wanted.

Soon, the little boat settled into a peaceful drift, and Rachel fired her first volley. “I’m pregnant.”

The words stung like a blast of salt spray, and Cass shuddered, mute with shock.

Rachel’s mouth twisted into something Cass hadn’t seen on her before.
A
snarl. Something raw, as if a mask had suddenly dropped from her face revealing a terrible truth. “It’s Adam’s child, Cass. I wanted you to know that.”

It took Cass just one excruciating instant to read the meaning in her face.
She knows!

Rachel nodded slowly as if confirming it. “You should be careful.”

An involuntary gasp escaped Cass and she struggled for words. “I … oh, Rachel, I never meant to—”