Meg Cabot - Safe House

Of course! Of course he hadn't known I was back! He wasn't in school anymore. How would he know it had started on Monday? And, being at work all day, it wasn't as if he'd have seen the buses, or anything.

So that's why he hadn't called or stopped by. Well, that and the fact that I'd asked him not to, on account of my parents not knowing about him, and all.

I gazed up at him, feelings of warmth and happiness coursing through me. Until Rob asked, "So, who's the guy?"

Oops.

The feelings of warmth and happiness vanished.

"Guy?" I echoed, stalling for time. A part of me was going, Why, he’s jealous! Ruth’s stupid Rules thing actually works , while another part went, Hey, he’s the one who insists on the two of you not dating, and now he’s got a problem because you’re seeing someone else? Tell him to deal with it , while a third part of me felt sorry for hurting him, if indeed he was hurt, which was impossible to tell from his voice or expression, both of which were neutral.

Way neutral.

"Yeah," Rob said. "The one my mom saw you with."

"Oh, that guy," I said. "That's just, um, Mark."

"Mark?" Rob took his hand out of his pocket and ran his fingers through his still-damp hair. Which didn't, I decided, mean anything, really. "Yeah? You like him? This Mark guy?"

Oh, my God. I could not believe I was having this conversation. I mean, I was not the one with the problem with his arrest record and his age and all of that. He was the one who seemed to think he'd be robbing the cradle if he went out with me, even though he was only two years older and I am, I think, exceptionally mature for my age. And now he was upset because I'd gone out with somebody else—somebody else who, by the way, was his exact age, just minus the conviction?

So far, anyway.

I almost wished Ruth had been around to witness this. It was truly classic.

On the other hand, of course, I was wracked with guilt. Because if I'd had a choice between going out for pizza with Mark Leskowski and going to the dump to scrounge for used car parts with Rob Wilkins, I'd have chosen the dump any day of the week.

Which was why, a second later, I realized I could take it no longer. That's right, I broke the Rules. I ruined all that hard work, all that not calling, all that not chasing him, all that making him think I liked someone else, by saying, "Look, it's not what you think. Mark's girlfriend is the one who turned up dead on Sunday. I just went out with him to, you know, talk. The Feds are after him, now, see, so we have a lot in common."

Both of Rob's hands shot out of his pockets and landed, to my great surprise, on my shoulders. The next thing I knew, he was shaking me, rather hard.

"Mark Leskowski?" he wanted to know. "You went out with Mark Leskowski? Are you nuts? Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

"No," I said, between shakes. "He didn't do it."

"Bullshit!" Rob stopped shaking me. "Everyone knows he did it. Everyone except you, apparently."

I shushed him. "Do you want to wake my parents up?" I hissed. "That's the last thing I need, them finding me out on the front porch in the middle of the night with—"

"Hey," Rob said. "At least I'm not a murderer!"

"Neither is Mark," I said.

"Says you."

"No, says everyone. I know he didn't kill Amber, Rob, because while we were out together, another girl disappeared, Heather—"

I broke off with a gasp, as if somebody had pinched me. Pinched me? It felt more as if somebody had punched me.

"What is it?" Rob asked, grabbing my arm and looking down at me worriedly, all of his anger forgotten. "What's wrong, Jess? Are you all right?"

"I am," I said, when I had caught my breath. "But Heather Montrose isn't."

A fact I knew for certain, because the moment I'd uttered her name, I remembered the dream I'd been having, just as Rob's pebbles had woken me up.

Dream? What am I talking about? It had been a nightmare.

Except, of course, that it wasn't. A nightmare, I mean.

Because that was the thing. It had been real.

All too real.

C H A P T E R

11

"Come on," I said to Rob as I darted down the porch steps into the yard. "We've got to get to her, before it's too late."

"Get to whom?" Rob followed me, looking confused. On him, of course, even confusion looked way sexy.

"Heather," I said, pausing by the dogwood tree at the end of the driveway. "Heather Montrose. She's the girl who disappeared this afternoon. I think I know where she is. We've got to go to her, now, before—"

"Before what?" Rob wanted to know.

I swallowed. "Before he comes back."

"Before who comes back? Jess, just what, exactly, did you see?"

I shivered, even though it couldn't have been much under seventy outside.

But it wasn't the temperature that was giving me goosebumps. It was the memory of my dream about Heather.

Rob's question was a good one. Just what had I seen? Not much. Blackness, mostly.

It was what I had felt that had scared me most. And what I'd felt was surely what Heather was feeling.

Cold. That was one thing. Really, really cold.

And wet. And cramped. And in pain. A lot of pain, actually.

And fear. Fear that he was coming. Not just fear, either, but terror. Stark white terror, unlike anything I had ever known. That Heather had ever known, I mean.

No. That we had ever known.

"We've got to go," I said with a moan, my fingers sinking into his arm. Good thing I keep my nails short, or Rob would have been the one in some pain. "We've got to go now ."

"Okay," Rob said, prying my hand from his arm and taking it, instead, in his warm fingers. "Okay, whatever you say. You want to go find her? We'll go find her. Come on. My bike's over here."

Rob had parked his bike a little ways down the street. When we got to it, he opened up the compartment in the back and handed me his spare helmet and an extremely beat-up leather jacket he kept in there for emergencies, along with some other weird stuff, like a flashlight, tools, bottled water and, for reasons I'd never been able to fathom, a box of strawberry NutriGrain bars. I think this was just because he liked them.

"Okay," he said, as I swung onto the seat behind him. "All set?"

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I was afraid if I did, I might start screaming. In my dream, that's what Heather had wanted to do. Scream.

Only she couldn't. Because there was something in her mouth.

"Uh, Mastriani?" Rob said.

I took a deep breath. All right. It was all right. It was happening to Heather, not to me.

"Yeah?" I asked, unsteadily. The sleeves of the leather jacket were way too long for me, and dangled past the hands I'd locked around his waist. I could feel Rob's heart beating through the back of his jean jacket. I tried to concentrate on that, rather than on the dripping sound that was the only thing Heather could hear.

"Where are we going?"

"Oh," I said. "P-Pike's Quarry."

Rob nodded, and a second later, the Indian roared to life, and we were off.

Ordinarily, of course, taking a moonlit motorcycle ride with Rob Wilkins would have been my idea of heaven on earth. I mean, let's face it: I am warm for the guy's form, and have been ever since that day in detention last year when he'd first asked me out, not knowing, of course, that I was only a sophomore and had never been out with a guy before in my life. By the time he'd figured it out, it was way too late. I was already smitten.

I like to think that the same could be said of him. And you know, the way he'd reacted when he'd heard I'd been out with another guy was kind of indicative that maybe he did like me as more than just a friend.