The Biker (Nightmare Hall) (6 page)

Although the window was open and the night was very warm, she pulled the rose and blue afghan her grandmother had knit for her up to her chin, hoping it would erase the dreadful iciness deep inside of her, and knowing that it wouldn’t. No artificial warmth, no matter how heavy, could reach that frozen place.

The music ended, and the announcer’s deep, authoritative voice filled the room.

Echo listened to it in misery.

“The latest in a series of unexplained motorcycle attacks on the populace of Twin Falls and the surrounding area has taken its toll this evening. Three students from Salem University have been admitted to the community hospital, and a fourth was taken to the campus infirmary following a particularly vicious attack on Tenth Street in front of the popular nightspot, Johnny’s Place.”

Echo huddled deeper into the folds of her afghan, one clenched fist pressing against her mouth.

“Two of the students at the hospital are listed in fair condition, while a third, whose name has not been released pending notification of relatives, is in the intensive care unit, in critical condition.”

Critical condition. Echo knew what that meant. It meant that Lily D’Agostino might not make it, after all. She could die at any moment.

Why was that such a shock? Why was she trembling violently again? How could she have expected anything else after seeing, with her own eyes, that poor girl struck in the back by the bike, tossed up into the air and flung back down to the sidewalk, only to be run over by the wheels of the bike?

It was a miracle that Lily D’Agostino wasn’t already dead.

“Police in Twin Falls have released a statement reading, in part, that a concentrated effort to find the perpetrators of this vicious crime has begun, and that anyone having any information about the motorcycle or the bikers in question should contact the police station immediately.”

Use of the plural was not lost on Echo. “Perpetrators,” he had said. “Bikers in question.”

They were, now, looking for two people.

She turned off the radio and buried her face in her pillow.

She was one of those people.

Still, the police didn’t know that. Or they’d be knocking on her door right now.

No one in that group could possibly have recognized her. She’d been wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Nothing distinctive there. Everyone wore that kind of clothing on campus. And she’d had the helmet on, her hair tucked up underneath it. The face shield had hidden her features.

Besides, none of the four knew her that well. The only person in that group she’d ever talked to, up close, was Liam McCullough, and he’d been so angry at her the day she’d run into him on the river path, he probably hadn’t been paying all that much attention to what she looked like. He couldn’t possibly have recognized her tonight.

Echo rolled over on her side, facing the wall. Unlike Trixie, who had plastered every square inch of the wall beside her bed with high school photos, posters of movie stars and rock groups and magazine articles on how to accentuate your best features or how to do your makeup so it looked “natural,” the wall beside Echo’s bed was bare. She could stare at it and be distracted by nothing. She had, in the past, found that soothing.

But not tonight, not now, because the bare white wall was the perfect screen for images of the destruction wrought on Tenth Street in Twin Falls earlier that night. Once, twice, three times, the event played itself out in front of Echo’s eyes, as if she were watching a movie. She saw every detail, far more clearly than she had when it actually happened. And she heard sounds that hadn’t registered then, like teeth clicking violently together when the boy was thrown up against the station wagon, and the scream of the girl who had been tossed through the glass door of Johnny’s Place.

But she’s still alive, Echo told herself, she
is,
the radio said so. Doesn’t that mean that it wasn’t as bad as it looked?

It couldn’t have been. Couldn’t have been as bad as it looked.

Unable to bear the sight replaying itself on her wall, Echo threw herself over on her stomach.

But the sights were in her mind, not on the wall itself, and, like a defective VCR stuck on “replay,” the scene played itself over and over again, all through the long, long night, adding new and more gruesome details each time.

Echo never slept at all.

E
CHO CRAWLED OUT OF
bed on Sunday morning after the longest night of her life with a headache and swollen eyes. She had cried, after all, when the images replaying themselves in her mind had finally overwhelmed her. The tears spilling out of her felt strange and unsettling, as if she were being drained of a part of herself. Frightened by that feeling, she had stopped and wiped her eyes. But every now and then during the night, the tears had come again.

It was the first time she had really cried since her mother left her at her grandparents’ house, saying, “You be a good girl now. Don’t give Nana and Papa any trouble.”

But I did, Echo thought with sudden clarity. I gave them lots of trouble, practically every minute. I punished them for not being my parents, and it wasn’t even their fault.

Still, that trouble she’d given her grandparents: staying out too late, sleeping in on weekends when her grandmother could have used some help with the housework or errands, ignoring her homework until teachers called the house to complain, mouthing off for very little reason, dating the “wrong” boys, not because she liked them especially, but because she knew perfectly well everyone would consider them the “wrong” boys … all of that was peanuts compared to the trouble she was in now. She was in this one up to her neck.

Now she knew how people felt when they were drowning.

And there wasn’t anyone to throw her a life preserver, was there?

Your
choice, Echo, a stern voice reminded her.
You
were the one who didn’t want any close friends.

True. And she didn’t want any now, either, because anyone who was really close to her would be able to see in her eyes that she’d been on Tenth Street last night on the back of a murderous motorcycle.

I will get out of this one myself, she vowed, throwing the afghan aside and hauling herself out of bed. Just like I always do. I
will!

But she had no idea how.

There was only one person she could talk to about this. Pruitt. Not because he was a friend, oh, God, he was no friend of hers, but because, like it or not, he had shared the horrible experience. The last person in the world she wanted to see on this warm, sunny morning was Aaron Pruitt. But there wasn’t anyone else.

Echo had heard the expression, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” She wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. Something about all the wheeling and dealing that went on in politics making it necessary for people who didn’t really have anything in common to hang out together. It occurred to her now that the same could be said for crime. Pruitt was not someone she would ever have been interested in if not for the bike, and if it hadn’t been for her interest in the bike, she wouldn’t have been on Tenth Street last night in the first place. Now here she was, stuck in this weird, uneasy alliance with someone she wouldn’t normally give the time of day to, someone she really hated for what he’d done.

How could she make Pruitt disappear from her life? More important, how could she make last night disappear? Erase it from her life, and from the lives of the injured four?

She couldn’t.

Feeling incredibly heavy, as if her body were suddenly encased in a coat of metal, Echo dressed in the jeans she found on the floor and a clean blue T-shirt. She ran her fingers, but not a brush or comb, through her hair as she left the room. What difference did it make how she looked?

She found Pruitt sitting on the low stone wall around the fountain on the Commons. He was reading, his head bent over a textbook. The wide, grassy area between the tall, stone buildings was crowded with sun worshippers, Frisbee players, and joggers. At first, it struck Echo as odd that no one looked particularly upset by what had happened the night before. And then she realized that any close friends of the four victims wouldn’t be out here goofing off. They’d be at the hospital or the infirmary, visiting the injured.

She really didn’t want to be seen talking to Pruitt. Not a good idea.

“Meet me behind the infirmary wall,” she said in a low voice as she passed him without stopping. “Now.” Then she went on to the wall herself. As she passed the infirmary, she breathed a quick sigh of relief that she didn’t have to work that day. Liam McCullough was probably still a patient there. Being around him would make her more of a basket case than she already was, if that was possible. Maybe he’d remember that she’d already run into him once on a bike. That might make it easier for him to place her on that motorcycle last night.

She couldn’t take that chance.

Pruitt came around the corner of the wall shortly after she did.

“What’s up?” he said lazily, leaning against the brick.

She regarded him with cold eyes. “What’s
up?
How can you even ask that? Four people are in hospital beds right now, thanks to you. One of them might die.”

“We’re all going to die, Echo. Sooner or later.” His voice was emotionless. “I mean, you were there, right? You saw the whole thing. Did she look to you like she was going to die?”

“You
ran
right over her!”

Pruitt lifted his shoulders nonchalantly. “The guy on the radio last night said she ‘failed to get out of the way of the bike.’ Sounded to me like he thought it was
her
fault.”

Echo’s mouth dropped open. “You were on the
sidewalk!
You went after those people on purpose. They never had a chance. How can you blame
them?”

He turned his back on her, began etching invisible letters on the brick with an index finger. “So,” he said lazily, “you up for another ride? Great day for it!”

Echo stared at his back. “You’ve got to be kidding! You don’t even feel the least bit guilty about what you did last night, do you?”

He turned to face her. “When I drove into that crowd at the mall, you said it wasn’t my fault they fell all over themselves trying to get out of the way. Changed your mind? Don’t find motorcycles so fascinating anymore, Echo?”

“Those people last night didn’t get hurt trying to get out of your way. You went straight for them! They never had a chance. And only someone who is really twisted wouldn’t feel guilty about doing what you did.”

He smiled thinly. “Meaning me, I guess. Sick and twisted, that’s me.”

Echo made a sound of contempt. “If the boot fits …”

The smile, which struck her as incredibly cold and humorless, stretched into a grin. “That’s cute. Of course, you’re not planning on going to the police about the boot fitting Aaron Pruitt’s foot.” It was a statement, not a question.

She hadn’t decided yet. She couldn’t think clearly enough to formulate a way out of this mess. Still, she said with false bravado, “I’m not? Why not?” She needed to know what he was thinking. She couldn’t tell just by looking at him, the way you could with some people. Nothing showed in his thin, pale face.

He sat down on the grass in front of the wall, linking his arms around his bended knees. “Look, let’s face facts here. You’re not stupid, any more than I am. You already
knew
about the other bike incidents. So you had to know coming to me, practically begging me for a ride, climbing on that bike, could lead to trouble. And you got on, anyway. You’re no innocent victim here, Echo. You took part in a crime, and in the eyes of the law, you’re as guilty as I am. You should know that.”

“I
didn’t
take part!” she shouted, and then, frightened that someone passing by might have heard her, quickly lowered her voice. “I didn’t take part. I had no idea you were going to do something so awful. The other times, all you did was scare people. Even when I saw what you were doing, there was no way I could have jumped off that bike. I’d have been hurt, too, maybe even killed.”

Although the sight of him repelled her, she couldn’t take her eyes off his face. He was sitting there on the grass, looking up at her so innocently, and the worst part, the very worst part, was that she knew he was right. She
had
asked him for the ride when she already knew he’d been flirting with trouble. Wasn’t that one of the things that had intrigued her about the bike episodes? Some guy in black leather and a helmet, driving a gorgeous, powerful bike so close to the edge without actually going over it?

She should have figured that if he gave her the ride she’d asked for, she just might be with him when he did go over that edge.

What kind of a lawyer was she going to make if she couldn’t judge people and situations any better than that?

Maybe now, she would never
be
a lawyer. Maybe she had no future. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said shakily. “You were the one who was driving.”

He laughed with scorn. “Get real, Echo. Who’s going to believe that was me on that bike? Aaron Pruitt? No one on this campus has ever seen me near a motorcycle. Their eyes would fall out of their head if they
did
see it.”

He’s right, Echo thought, no one would believe that Aaron Pruitt was the Mad Biker.

“Now you, on the other hand,” he said, his hands toying with a blade of grass, “would make an excellent suspect, it seems to me. So go ahead and tell the police, if you want. See how much good it’ll do you. But my guess is, if you walk into the police station in town, you’ll be hanging yourself, not me.”

“I don’t even
own
a motorcycle.”

“How would you ever prove that? The cops would just think you’d ditched the bike somewhere. So, without any proof to link
me
to last night, you’d go down alone.”

Echo mulled his words over in her mind. What scared her the most about them was that they made sense. Who would believe that boring, neatnik Aaron Pruitt would have the guts or the imagination to be the Mad Biker? But almost anyone who knew her or knew
of
her would readily believe that Echo Glenn had been riding on the back of that bike. Even if she gave the police Pruitt’s name, they’d never find any proof against him. She might very well go down alone, just as he said.