The Biker (Nightmare Hall) (15 page)

“Yes,” she snapped, “you’re right! I’d rather be dead than seen on campus with you!”

“Well, yes, but you don’t have any choice, do you? And I wouldn’t be wishing for death so casually if I were you. Someone just might grant your wish.”

Echo wished the officers could hear Pruitt threatening her. But the door was closed. “You’ve killed innocent people,” she cried.

“I guess they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.” He shrugged carelessly.

“That’s what you said about Lily!” Echo cried. “You drove straight at her! There was no way she could have avoided the bike. You never intended her to, and you know it.”

“Maybe I was bored and needed some excitement. Life on campus is really pretty dull, don’t you think, Echo?” He moved away from her, to the windowsill, where he reached down and inspected the potted plants. With his back to her, he said, “I’ll let you know when I want your company on campus again. It’ll be soon, I promise.” Then he added, his voice gone cold and harsh, “And stay
away
from Liam McCullough, or you’ll
both
be sorry!”

Echo moved to the door and opened it. Deejay had been telling the truth. Pruitt
had
been following her. Otherwise, how would he know about Liam?

Disheartened and thoroughly frightened, Echo let the officers walk her back to Lester. She didn’t waste her breath trying to convince them she was telling the truth. What was the point?

It wasn’t until she was back in her room that she guessed the truth about the handwriting. In the journal she’d found in the cave, Pruitt had written about an arm injury. He’d written that he was having trouble writing. No wonder the journal entries had looked a little weird. He’d written them with a seriously injured arm!

Echo reached for the telephone, and then quickly let her hand drop. Suppose she did call the police and explain about the difference in handwriting? Would they listen to her?

Not likely. The officers had made it very clear that they believed Pruitt, not her. There wouldn’t be any point in contacting them until she’d found the bike and enough proof to link it positively to Pruitt.

She reached under her pillow for the notebook. She was glad she hadn’t shown it to them. It just would have convinced them further that she would do anything to frame Pruitt, because he’d rejected her.

Her fingers slid around under the pillow, expecting to feel the hard cover of the notebook.

They touched nothing but the cool, rumpled sheet.

Echo sat up, and lifted the pillow.

The notebook was gone.

E
CHO PUT HER EMPTY
hands in her lap. No wonder Pruitt had insisted she show him and the police officers the notebook. He
knew
she didn’t have it. He’d slipped into her room somehow and stolen it. He must have seen her with it at some point and realized what it was.

Was he watching her every second of the day?

Sick at heart and feeling trapped, as if she were still in that crevasse in the cave, squeezed between two solid rock walls with no way out, Echo went to bed.

Tuesday morning, she discovered very quickly that Liam
was
mad about her leaving Vinnie’s so abruptly. She saw him on campus shortly after her first two classes. When he passed her on the walkway, he refused to speak to her. His face flushed angrily and he brushed by her as if he’d never met her.

Not that she was surprised. He must have been incredibly embarrassed when Deejay and Marilyn came back to the table to announce that Echo had left. Sneaked out the back way, like a common criminal.

Well?

I’m not, she told herself, I’m
not
a criminal.

So why did she feel like one?

She went to the rest of her morning classes, ate lunch alone on the riverbank, attended her afternoon classes, and then walked slowly to the infirmary for her shift, glancing around her continually for some sign of Pruitt.

The first thing she did when she got there was try the medical records file cabinet again.

To her astonishment, the drawer labeled “P-R” opened and slid forward smoothly and quietly.

Someone had forgotten to lock it.

She located Pruitt’s file after only a moment, and sagged against the cold metal cabinet in disappointment. There was no “Ross” listed under “Relatives,” living
or
dead.

How could that be? She’d been so sure.

Maybe the “Ross” mentioned in the now-missing journal was only a close friend, no relation to Pruitt at all. But then why were his parents so shattered by the death?

She closed the cabinet, more confused than ever. She had focused on the unidentified Ross, someone she had thought of as Pruitt’s close relative, maybe a brother or a cousin, as the motive behind Pruitt’s madness. Without Ross, what did she have?

Not much.

A rash of sunburn and insect bite cases from the day off came in then, and Echo was busy for a while. Then there were towels to be washed, dried and folded, and sweeping to do. When the night nurse asked if Echo would stay while she grabbed a quick bite to eat, she said sure. She felt relatively safe in the infirmary, and she wasn’t in any hurry to go back to her dorm room.

When she did leave, she regretted that decision. It was already dark. Campus was so quiet. The student body and the faculty had been stunned by the violent deaths of the Miata’s occupants and the lone runner. A heavy silence filled with dread seemed to have settled over the rolling lawns and tall stone and brick buildings.

Echo walked with her head down, her shoulders hunched. Realizing that she was hoping Deejay, Marilyn, and Ruthanne would be visiting Trixie when she got back to their room surprised her. But the more, the merrier, seemed like a good idea right about now. The room would feel safer if it was crowded and noisy.

She was just about to step off the curb and cross the Commons when she heard the sound that inevitably sent icy tremors of alarm up her spine. That roar, that low, growling roar spilling out of the darkness from somewhere behind her … she knew it could only be one thing.

She whirled around, and tried to race back to the safety of the infirmary, but before her legs would do her mind’s bidding, the roar was right there, right at her back. Then strong, viselike hands were around her waist, yanking her backward, pushing her down on the leather seat. Her wrists were pulled forward and pinioned tightly in front of the black leather jacket as the bike, its light on now, roared off into the darkness.

It had all happened so quickly, Echo hadn’t had time to catch her breath to make a sound. Hadn’t screamed, hadn’t shouted, hadn’t called out for help. She had kicked and slapped, but to no avail.

Now, she screamed. But the rushing wind swallowed up her cries.

And then they were racing along the highway toward town. He drove with one hand, using the other to keep her wrists imprisoned around his waist. The grip forced her to lean so far forward, her face was roughly pressed against the back of his jacket.

“Where are we going?” she shouted into the smooth black leather. “Where are you taking me?”

No answer. Only the steady slap-slap of the wind against her cheek.

He was angry because she’d been with Liam the night before? This was her punishment?

Where were they going?

The bike raced on through the cool, dark night. Trees and houses and cars whizzed by in a dizzying blur. Echo’s eyes began to tear. From the wind, she told herself, although she couldn’t be sure they weren’t tears of fright.

They didn’t go all the way into town. Instead, when they neared a minimart just outside of town, the motorcycle suddenly veered sharply to the right and crossed the highway, racing into the parking lot and narrowly missing one of two yellow gas pumps.

Only then did he let go of Echo’s hands, to maneuver the bike. But her sudden sense of freedom was short-lived, because the biker never slowed down enough for her to jump clear.

The bike slammed, full force, into a parked, compact car, denting a fender. Echo’s body lifted up off the seat and she might have been flung off if he hadn’t reached behind him with one hand to slam her back into place. The bike bounced backward, veered around the car, and then raced forward to target a tall stack of tires.

Echo screamed as the tower toppled sideways. Tires, looking like giant doughnuts, rolled out across the parking lot, some bumping up against the gas pumps, others escaping onto the highway.

And still the bike failed to slow down. Its speed, plus the certainty that if she jumped free Pruitt would run over her as he had Lily, kept Echo frozen in place.

The motorcycle raced backward, whirled around, and sped toward the entrance to the small store just as a woman in a long, brown coat carrying two sacks of groceries, opened the door and stepped out.

“Don’t hit her!” Echo screamed. “Don’t hit that woman!”

But Pruitt bore down and slammed into the defenseless woman.

The woman screamed just once as she was struck and catapulted backward. Cans and boxes of food flew into the air. The victim landed on her back a few feet away, her head slapping against a tall stack of newspapers, which Echo was certain had saved the woman’s life. If her head had hit the cement instead, she probably would have been killed instantly.

“Stop it!” Echo screamed, pounding and clawing at the back of the leather jacket. When that didn’t work, her fists began hammering against the hard plastic helmet. “Stop it, stop it! Let me get off! Stop!”

The distant sound of a siren reached her ears then. It must have reached Pruitt’s, too, because without pausing for even an instant, he raced the bike across the parking lot and out onto the highway, aiming it toward campus.

Echo, her wrists imprisoned again, began crying tears of frustration, fear, and disappointment. If that siren meant that the police were on their way to the minimart, they would arrive too late to apprehend the biker.

The motorcycle made it back to campus in record time. When it pulled up in front of Lester, it failed to come to a complete stop. It slowed a little, but was still very much in motion when Pruitt reached back and gave Echo a brutal shove that sent her off the bike and to the pavement in a heap.

Then he raced away.

Stunned, she lay there for several minutes. She was grateful that there was no one around to witness her humiliation. Or to connect her to the biker. Especially after what had just happened. News of this latest attack would be all over campus by morning.

Her knees, and the palms of her hands were badly scraped and bleeding. But she hadn’t hit her head when she tumbled off the bike, and she had no broken bones.

She got to her feet slowly, feeling as if she’d just taken a wild ride on a roller coaster. That poor woman … how seriously had she been hurt? Had the owner of the market, who must have been watching from inside, managed to copy down the bike’s license number? Even if he had, that wouldn’t really help. Pruitt had said the bike wasn’t his, that he’d stolen it. And no one but her knew that he had it.

She took a careful step, wincing as the scrapes on her knee stung, then another step and another. She found that although her legs threatened to betray her at any moment and send her crashing to the ground again, she
could
walk. If she could just make it back to her room, she’d be okay.

Now, she hoped desperately that Trixie and her friends would
not
be in the room. No one could see her like this. If they did, when they heard the news about the minimart, they might start wondering.

She got lucky. No one was in the room when she cautiously opened the door and called Trixie’s name. It was empty.

Closing and locking the door with shaking fingers, Echo hurried to her bed and threw herself across it, wincing as her scraped knees and arms came in contact with the scratchy bedspread. After a while, she got up and went into the bathroom, where she cleaned up the scrapes and changed into a green sweatsuit. Her ripped jeans and sweatshirt, both boasting fresh bloodstains, were shoved into a far corner of the closet. She didn’t want Trixie asking her about them.

Then she returned to her bed, where she lay for a long time, trembling, too shaken to think.

T
HE NEXT FEW DAYS
were nightmarish. Pruitt stepped up his demands for Echo’s time, and dragged her to a party at the frat house, a play given by the drama department, and a tennis match. Each time he called or came to her room to get her, she swore to herself she wouldn’t go. She’d make up some excuse.

And each time, he smiled and whispered, “Tired of living, Echo?” and she remembered Gabriella Stone and Nancy Becker, and she went with him.

She seemed to see Liam McCullough everywhere. He never acknowledged her presence.

“You hurt his feelings,” Marilyn said. She, Ruthanne, and Deejay were sitting with Echo and Pruitt at the tennis match. Pruitt had gone to get drinks. “Liam probably can’t figure out why you picked Pruitt over him.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe you two are an item. No one can.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Marilyn,” Deejay said. “Echo doesn’t have a thing for Pruitt. She’s not in love with him, are you, Echo?”

“Go ahead, tell them,” Pruitt’s voice said as he arrived, drinks in hand. “I don’t mind. I want the whole campus to know.” He sat down beside Echo, handed drinks all around and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. “We can tell our friends how we feel about each other. I don’t mind talking about feelings. Go ahead!”

Echo seethed.

Deejay, Marilyn, and Ruthanne stared.

It was one thing, Echo realized, for her to spend time with Pruitt. After all, he was friends with them, too. Sometimes they went places with him. But it was something else entirely to think of someone being
in love
with Aaron Pruitt. They couldn’t quite grasp the concept.

If she denied it, he would be livid. He wouldn’t kill her … he was having too much fun … but she was afraid it would send him off on another insane bike attack, taking his anger out on innocent people.

She shrugged. And although she cringed at the sound of the words as they left her mouth, she said, “Pruitt and I have a lot in common.”