The Dead List (26 page)

“You okay?” Jensen touched my arm.

“Yeah.” I opened my locker. “Can we hit the warehouse? I’d like to-”

“Ella!” Linds shouted from down the hall, causing several heads to turn. She hurried up to my side, placing her hands together under her chin. “Can I ask you a huge favor?”

“Sure.” I shoved most of my books inside my locker, keeping only my English text for homework. “But it better have absolutely nothing to do with haunted anything.”

Her face fell. “Actually, that’s on hold until we find a new location. Obviously, no one wants to go to a fake haunted house that actually might be…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Anyway, no. I’m not asking about that. Mom and Dad are out of town-my aunt had to have emergency surgery. They didn’t want to go, you know, with everything going on, but they had to. Can you stay with me? My parents won’t be back until tomorrow night. Please? Pretty please?”

Jensen stiffened beside me, and I glanced over at him. One look told me he was not happy at all with the idea of me spending a night alone with Linds. The thought only made me a little uneasy, but common sense told me there was safety in numbers. Everyone who had been attacked had been by themselves.

“Come on,” she pleaded. “We haven’t hung out in ages. And we can rent stupid comedies. Ones with Ryan Reynolds in them. Sorry.” She glanced at Jensen, smiling. “He’s hot. So are you, but he’s Theo James hot.”

“I’m trying not to be too offended,” he deadpanned, and I grinned.

“Anyway, we can get a ton of junk food. I’ll go to the store and get whatever you want. We can even invite Heidi,” she added, and that was a big deal. “
Please
.”

She was right. We hadn’t hung out in a long time. Closing my locker door, I slung my bag over my shoulder. “Yeah, you know, I think that would be a good idea.”

“Oh!” she squealed, throwing her arms around me. “Thank you!”

“I’ve got a few things to do first,” I said, once she stopped strangling me. “But I can come over around seven or so.”

“That’s perfect. Gives me enough time to go shopping after practice.” She sprinted forward, hugging me again. “Thank you!”

After Linds headed off in the opposite direction, I turned to Jensen. He didn’t look thrilled. “We’ll be okay,” I told him.

He nodded. “Maybe I can-”

“Girls’ night,” I said even though the thought of him coming over to Linds’ house didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

“Yeah. Yeah.” He took my hand, squeezing it gently. “I’m really going to work your ass during training now.”

That sounded kind of dirty.

He glanced down at me, eyebrows raised. “And not in the way you’d enjoy it.”

“Boo,” I murmured.

Chuckling under his breath, he took his sweet time walking beside me as we made our way outside. Since I didn’t have to be at Linds’ until seven, we had time to spare.

The weather was cool and the scent of fall was in the air as we trekked up the slight hill leading to the parking lot. It seemed like the leaves had begun to change to gold and red while I was in class or I was just that unobservant.

“Jesus,” Jensen growled, dropping my hand as he came to a standstill.

Up ahead, a few kids were hanging around, snapping pictures of a car. My jaw hit the ground when I saw what they were snapping with the camera phones, and anger coursed through me like bitter acid.

We were a few feet from Gavin’s car. It wasn’t something fancy-an old Honda, but Gavin loved that baby, practically bathing it more times than he did his dog. Spray painted across the hood, the windshield, and the trunk was one word in blood red paint.

Murderer.

#

My stomach muscles were killing me.

Jensen hadn’t been kidding when he said he was going to work my ass today. I’d lost count of how many kicks and punches he made me do, working with the punching bag. Right now, I wasn’t doing much of anything other than watching him slam his wrapped fists into the bag.

Shirt was off.

I was officially distracted.

The ropey muscles of his back tensed and rippled as he swung. His skin glistened with a fine sheen of sweat, and under the rim of his baseball cap turned backward, his hair was damp.

My mouth dried.

The dips. The knee jabs. The punches. He was absolutely stunning as he moved around the bag, working it like I imagined a pro boxer would.

Jensen backed off, lowering his arms as he glanced over his shoulder at where I stood. His pale blue eyes glimmered, and that was the only warning I got. He spun and rushed right at where I stood in the center of the mats. I knew in the back of my head this was a test of sorts-practicing self defense moves when an attacker was coming at me from the front, but there was something about having a six foot and then some dude rushing your ass that took you a moment to react.

I kicked back a leg, bracing myself and raised my hands, picturing the “punch and run” points-what Jensen had dubbed them. Throat. Eye. Solo plexus. Groin. Other ouchie parts. I was going to go for the solo plexus with my knee since I had more strength in my legs.

I brought my knee up, but Jensen easily avoided the direct hit. His arms went around mine, clamping them to my sides, and I slammed the heel of my foot down on his, a little harder than I attended, but he shifted at the last second, and my foot hit the mat

Cursing under my breath, I went for the groin. Obviously foreseeing my next move, he rolled his weight, and thrown off balance I went down, cussing like a cracked out sailor.

Jensen shifted, taking the brunt of the fall, but the air still wheezed out of my lungs when I landed on top of him. Laughing, he rolled me onto my back and came above me, his hands planted into the mat on either side of my head. He was sweaty and gross, and I didn’t care.

“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” he asked.

“I kiss you with it.”

“True.” He dipped his head, brushing his lips over mine as he spoke. “And I kind of like it when you talk like that.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Nothing about me should surprise you.” He shifted his weight to one arm, scooping up a loose strand of hair that had escaped my ponytail. He brushed it back. “You almost got me.”

I scrunched up my nose. “Almost doesn’t quite count.”

“It doesn’t.” Jensen settled his hips between my legs as his hand got distracted, sliding down my face, to my neck, and then to the curve of my shoulder. “But it’s close. I’ve had years of practicing. You’ve had a month tops.”

“How did you get so many years of experience doing this?” I asked, biting down on my lip as his fingers traced the curve of my collarbone.

“I didn’t tell you?”

“No.” My breath caught as he abandoned my collarbone and went for the v-neck on my shirt.

“I started at the end of eighth grade, during the summer.” His gaze veered away from mine, to what he was doing with his finger. “I had a lot of… anger in me.”

“You did?”

His finger dipped under the hem, causing muscles deep inside me to clench. “Yeah. You know, with everything that happened with Penn. I never thought it was our fault.” His lashes lifted and the clarity of his eyes held me. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel anything. I was pissed at him, at myself, at a lot of things that had nothing to do with him.”

I figured the ‘a lot of things’ had to do with his brother. I never knew any of this, so I watched him quietly as his gaze went back to his hand. He was silent for a long moment.

“One night I ran into Shaw. I was mouthing off, and instead of knocking me into next week, he got me involved in Krav Maga and here I am.”

“God, that’s kind of suck for Shaw-the whole Gavin seeing Vee thing and people thinking the worse.” I smoothed my hand over his jaw. “So you’ve known Shaw that long?”

He turned his head, kissing the center of my palm. “Yeah, he came around a few times after… Penn. I think its because he isn’t close to Gavin, so he was helping me when he probably want to help Gavin. And he did help.”

I smiled. “I’m happy to hear that. I didn’t know that you were having problems.”

“I know you think I didn’t feel anything just because I don’t think of it the way you do, but that shit with Penn tore me up for a while.” His gaze was back to mine. “I know you don’t like to talk about Penn, but you’ve got to understand, we didn’t do that to him.” He caught my chin as I started to look away, forcing my eyes on his. “I’m not saying we were completely devoid of responsibility. We weren’t. But we were just kids. We made a stupid decision and Penn… God, as much as I miss him, he had problems. You know he did, Ella. It went beyond what was happening at school.”

I drew in a deep breath, causing my chest to press against his. Penn did have problems, bouts of extreme hyper happiness and then long stretches of sullen moods. The crap at school and his parents fighting hadn’t been the catalyst for the behavior switches. Sometimes it would happen when he was with us and nothing had gone wrong. Dr. Oliver once told me that he believed Penn may have suffered from depression-a disorder aggravated from outside influences-and that if he’d gotten help, things most likely would’ve been different. I’d never really took those words to hurt, thinking someone that young couldn’t suffer that way, but that was dumb. Depression could strike at any age really, but Penn always seemed to bounce back from whatever was plaguing him. Not a day went by without him smiling.

“I know,” I whispered.

“We were the icing on the cake. You know? That’s all we were. I’m not saying if he had gotten help or if we had seen the signs, it wouldn’t have turned out differently, but we didn’t put the belt around his neck,” he said in a quiet, serious tone. “We didn’t bully him. We made a stupid call. And I do hate that we were the icing, but we were not the cause of what he did.”

I thought about what Jensen said, I really thought about it. That he and I were icing on a fucked up cake, nothing more and nothing less. The decision we had made had been wrong, but Jensen was right-so was Dr. Oliver and my Mom and Dad. We didn’t put that belt on him.

And for some reason I thought of the psycho-the monster, the whatever-that was stalking our town. Whoever it was behind it was also solely responsible for his own actions. Not me when he tried to grab me. Not Vee. And not Monica or Wendy. Tears crept up my throat.

“Ella?”

I blinked away the wetness. “I don’t know if I’ll ever not feel guilty, but you’re right. We didn’t do it. We made a shitty choice, but we didn’t do it.”

“We didn’t,” he repeated softly.

It wasn’t like the angel suddenly appeared, harking and glowing and whatever it was that they did. There was no big realization. Just a little bit of the pressure I carried with me since Penn’s death easing off. Not a lot, but some. I guess it was a start.

It was something.

“You were distracted earlier,” he said, trailing a finger over the bridge of my nose.

Before Jensen had handed me off to the punching bag, we practiced evasive techniques, but admittedly, my head had not been in it. “I was thinking about Wendy.”

Jensen didn’t respond immediately. “I’ve been thinking about her, too. We weren’t close, like we didn’t um…”

“Talk?” I supplied.

“Yeah. That.” Holy crap on a chip, the centers of his cheeks actually pinked. “We didn’t talk a lot and I know she could be a terror when she wanted to be, but she’s a good girl underneath it all. I hope they find her and I hope she’s okay.”

“Me too.” I obviously wasn’t close to her, but it didn’t change the fact I prayed she showed up tomorrow or something. “I was also thinking about Gavin-about his car and what they did.”

“It’s messed up.”

“It really is,” I said, once again wishing there was something that I could do.

“Maybe after I drop you off at Linds’, I’ll swing by Gavin’s,” he suggested. “Talk to him.”

Surprised, I stared up at him. That was so going to be an awkward time, but the fact that Jensen was willing to go where he was not wanted to make sure Gavin was okay warmed me in a way very few things could.

That swelling was back, along with that haunting four letter word. “Thank you.” I stretched my neck, kissing the corner of his lips.

Jensen’s eyes held mine for a moment and then moved up my body, slanting his head so our lips lined up. He kissed me gently, and a shudder rolled through me. There was something infinitely tender in the way he coaxed my lips open. My arms looped around his neck as air caught in my throat.

The kisses changed and deepened into a slow-burning caress, sending shivers all over me. When he left my mouth and dropped hot little kisses down my throat, my insides were sweltering. His hand traveled to my hip and my fingers moved through his hair, letting the silky locks sift through my fingers.

A deep sound rumbled up from his chest. “God, you have no idea what you do to me.”

“I don’t think you know either,” I whispered, my lips feeling swollen and warm.

“We can show each other.” The teasing returned to his voice. “Right now.”

“I don’t think these rooms were meant for this.” I willed my heart to slow before I had a heart attack.

“We can be its first.”

I laughed softly, feeling light. “I don’t think so.”

“Damn.” He kissed the tip of my nose and then rose off me. Rolling to his feet, he took my hands and hauled me up as he stood. “Come on.”

We straightened up, turned off the lights, and I waited just outside the doors as he locked up. Jensen grabbed my hand, pulling me toward his chest. Over his shoulder, I could see that a couple of the doors to the other rooms were open. My gaze drifted back to his. The expression on his face was serious.

“What?” I asked.

His arms wrapped loosely around me. “I don’t like what’s going down tonight.”

“Me staying with Linds?”

“Yeah.” He dropped his forehead to mine. “No one’s there but you and her. With everything going on, it worries me.”

“I’ll be fine.” I tapped his cheek with my fingers. “She has an alarm system. It’ll be turned on. Besides, everyone-including me-was by themselves when… well, when it happened.”

“I know, but maybe I should come over, too.” He caught my hand, pressing his lips to the tips of my fingers. The tiny, innocent kisses caused my heart to skip a beat. “It could be a really interesting slumber party.”