Conviction (13 page)

“So you know he wants you, and what? You go there to show him what he can’t have? To make him want you more?”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

As he sighed, it was like watching the wind leave the sails, but somehow I wasn’t as relieved as I knew I should have been. “I—I just. I don’t know. I’m—”

“Hey.” I pulled him until he faced me, forced his face into my hands. “I’m yours, okay?”

He nodded, eyes closed.

“Where is all this worry coming from, anyway?”

Relief flushed me when I saw him smile. “Nowhere important.”

It took another minute before his hand relaxed in mine, but the tension was still there. Better, I thought, to put off coming clean with my family for a little while longer. That entire process would be monumental within itself, and we had both had enough drama for one day.

“Are
you
all right?”

He smiled and I nestled under his chin where he held me close.

“I love you, Addie.” The way he whispered it though was different than usual, and I shivered though he hugged me close.

***

The week started out with the same normal dullness that it usually did; the lectures, the alarm clock, cafeteria food, and sleepless nights worrying about Charlie. Every morning when he texted or called again, I could exhale that breath I’d been holding, stop counting, and think again. I knew he was safe, at least for another night, and for a few hours more I felt the intangible relief that went with knowing he was okay, that he hadn’t been caught.

Then, there was the morning I didn’t hear from him.

I had been busy, I’ll admit that. Between classes, a study group, and power surges at the library, the panic I had expected to feel when the situation came was absent, notwithstanding the chaos of the day. It was already mid-afternoon when I realized that neither of my phones had gone off. I blamed it entirely on his own hectic schedule, sent him a message, and went to class.

When the professor sent us on our way, I was one of the first out the door, expecting a response, but when there was none, brief wisps of fear went through me. I tried to shake them off by studying, but it didn’t do much good, so instead I went to Melinda’s rehearsal, hustling to outrun the thunder cackling overhead.

I had nearly forgotten what Melinda said about dress rehearsals all week. It was only another reminder that the semester was coming to a close, a prospect I both feared and relished. It wasn’t difficult to guess that rehearsal was in full-swing when I saw several guys in 16
th
century soldiers’ uniforms outside smoking cigarettes outside the auditorium. One of them was nice enough to use his key-card to let me in and I stumbled inside, eager to hide from the feeling of foreboding that was taking hold.

“Addie!”

Melinda was wearing this flowing red getup with a lush wig of black curls. But it wasn’t just her who looked liked they had time-traveled. Carter wore something that looked like a toga with riding breeches underneath; the guy playing Cassio had blood painted on his face and hands and had a sword on his belt.

Melinda jumped off the stage, her skirts trailing behind her. The green hair kid nodded at me as I passed, his arms loaded with a pallet of rubber ended swords.

Overwhelmed by the spectacle before me, I hardly heard Melinda at all. Stagehands struggled with music at a DJ prompt as professors argued over directions. The woman I had seen fitting students before was being yelled at by Desdemona and a couple of custodial workers splattered oil on squeaky seats. 

“Wow, you got here fast. Did you get a ride?”

I marveled as the techs changed the background sets onstage. In an instant it went from a calm Cyprus night to a bloody battle scene.

“Hello? Anyone home?”

“Ah no, I ran though. You look really great, by the way.”

She beamed at the compliment. “You think so? Desdemona and I had to do a quick costume change, so this is a little too loose.”

“What do you mean I got here fast?” Her words were like an arrow to the target. I froze on the inside.

“Well, you got my text, right?”

I shook my head and watched while she readjusted her bodice. “Yeah, your boyfriend was here. But I guess you just missed him.”

Charlie? No, it couldn’t be. I wondered if those prop swords could inflict any real pain if the aggressor was determined enough. How many officers at the security booths would there be between here and my dorm? Would Charlie hurt any of them? I tried to listen for sirens, for screams of terror, but my ears were fuzzy. And like static from the radio, the words were fading in and out.

“W-what?”

Melinda never noticed my distress; her only focus was on trying to enhance her chest. “Yeah, he’s why we had to take another break. He went around flashing that badge of his, asking everybody questions. You never told me he was a cop! Friends in law enforcement? No wonder you want to be a lawyer.”

I took her by the shoulders. “Melinda!
Who
was here? There was someone asking questions about me?”

She shrugged me off. “Chill, Addie. Yeah, your boyfriend was here. And let me say I get why you said no to underclass droolers. Why have a boy when you can have a man, right? Tall, blond—”

“He isn’t—”

Then my mistake came to me, clear-cut and as obvious as the false world conceived around me. I had given Melinda a lie, something simple to get her out of my hair, thinking at the time that it would pacify her and nothing more. Yet what if it had done just the opposite and inflamed her curiosity more? And Adam was supposed to have left days ago. He should have been back on the east coast by now, but if he was here asking questions, talking to Melinda…then our conversation had gone even worse than I originally thought.

“Oh God.”

“Yeah, I’ll say. No wonder why you’re never around on the weekends. I bet you two make good use of those handcuffs.”

“I have to go.”

She called back to me as I ran down the aisle. I think she was asking me why I wasn’t going to stay, asking me if I was all right, but her words were lost in the fear, the panic of what could be.

Chapter 10

When I got back to the dorms, it was raining. Large droplets of water fell like tears from the sky, sad and overbearing. I did my best to shield myself from them, using my denim jacket as an umbrella of sorts. It wasn’t doing a lot of good though, and by the time I got the lobby of my dorm, I was soaked. The rain did nothing to sober the feeling of terror, either. It swelled when I saw the broken window in the lobby. I rushed up the stairs, following the large muddy footprints that lay in the hall just outside of my room.

Unfortunately, my dorm room was empty, but it seemed evident Charlie had been there, given the littered pieces of textbooks and notebooks. Pages were torn up and tossed around the room. Both beds had been stripped, and the desks ransacked like random destruction had been his main priority.

I began picking up things right away—mostly Melinda’s clothes—trying to straighten things out as I searched for my phone. But as I did my own ransacking through the clutter, it clicked somewhere in my brain that the outlet Melinda normally used to charge her laptop was empty. And not only was her computer not there, neither was mine.

Briefly, I panicked, as was my instinct. Then I tried to think it through. At the very least, I knew it was Charlie who had been there, Charlie who had taken them. I could tell that much by his smell that lingered slightly in the air. Yet what I couldn’t decipher was why he had taken our computers. After a minute, I realized my phone was gone as well.

I tore out what was left of my drawers just to make sure, but sure enough, my home phone was gone. I had brought my Charlie phone with me, which gave me some relief. I typed his number with shaking fingers, those extra seconds feeling like infinity. Before I could even hit send there was a knock at the door. It surprised me considerably, though I didn’t know why. I heard myself gasp out loud. Maybe Charlie had come back, maybe he knew—

“Addie? Are you okay?”

Adam Harpsten sounded concerned from the other side of the door but I felt the slightest twinge of relief, I had been right about Adam’s next stop. Knowing Charlie, he would have wanted to fight him right then and there in the hallway, not until one of them was dead or he was in jail. At least, my prediction was right so far.

I rushed to stop him as I heard the turning of the doorknob, but it was too late. I cursed myself for not locking the door behind me as I watched the evolution of expression on Adam’s face. At first, he was smiling, opening his mouth with perfect teeth to speak, but then he saw something and his face dropped.

“Addie? Why are you crying?”

I laughed and tried to think of an explanation. Odds were that I could claim a certain time of the month or even a hangover and it would be plausible, but none of that would explain the disaster of the dorm and being caught in a lie might only look worse.

“Ah, no reason.” I croaked out the words, but even I couldn’t make them sound the least bit believable. We were in the doorway at that point, and I wasn’t entirely sure if he had seen inside my dorm or not, but I thought if I could distract him and get him into the hall, then maybe I could get him to go away. On the other hand, it might have been better to change the subject, keep him there and talking as long as possible so Charlie could get further away.

“W-what are you d-doing here?” I shoved him outside as gently as possible and made a move to close the door behind us.

“I’ve been worried about you, how you left the other day.”

Damn it. I should have known that.

“Who me?” I waved him away and tried to seem as casual as possible. “I’m fine, just girl stuff.”

“Oh really?” He tried to look over my shoulder into the dorm as I latched the door behind us.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“It’s a mess.” I laughed. “Very embarrassing.”

There weren’t any smiles now. “I’ve seen worse.” He was determined, that much I could see in his eyes. But I was also determined and I would buy Charlie as many seconds as I could. “Addie, what’s going on?”

“You’re not getting in my dorm without a warrant.”

Then the determination left, and for an instant he looked sad. “I don’t need one.” He nodded towards the stairs. “Possible breaking and entering, possible intruder. Campus police will search all of these dorms in a few minutes.”

I only relinquished my hold on the door when I heard campus security sirens coming down the road. Adam didn’t hesitate, stepping in, leaving the door open behind him. How many minutes ago had Charlie been standing in that very same spot? The space seemed empty without him, less somehow, though he had never seen my dorm before that day.

“We need to talk.” I felt his eyes on the room. “What happened in here?”

I turned my back and grabbed the desk chair to brace myself. If I concentrated enough, I thought I could still smell Charlie in the air.

“Addie? Hey, did you hear me?” His firm tap on my shoulder interrupted my meditation, and though I tried not to, I hated him for that. Hated him immensely, though I knew he only had good intentions.

“I, ah—thought you left already.”

“I was going to, but I kept thinking about how you were acting the other day and it started to bother me.” He sighed, shook his head. “Did you know this place is only a hundred miles from where you were found?”

One hundred and thirteen, actually.
But I didn’t say that, instead I focused on his words. He had lured me in with a fact. Did he know that Charlie did the same? No, that wasn’t possible. There was no documentation of our relationship. I was always very careful to delete every text message, the call history from the phone…I had never even taken one his sketches back to the dorm. Though now I wished I had. At the idea I hugged my phone from outside my pocket, unable to extinguish the feeling that Charlie’s presence was slowly fading from the room. Maybe if I concentrated enough, thought hard enough, I could soak him up before the walls and floor evacuated him completely.

“No. Wait. What?”

I opened my eyes and tried to focus. Had I said something out loud I hadn’t meant to? How could I betray myself like that?

“I just talked with your roommate a little while ago.”

I pretended to be surprised. “Yeah?”

“She seems to think you’re in some kind of abusive relationship, that maybe someone is harassing you.”

“She has a crazy imagination.”

As if deciding whether or not he should continue, he tapped his thumb along his belt, centimeters from his gun. And though miserable I was, inadvertently drawing my attention in this way reminded me of the power he had, sorting my motivation to help Charlie and giving me a new boost of confidence.

“She and your RA say you leave on the weekends, but neither of them knows where. They both mentioned that you’re jumpy all the time—”

“It’s my first time living away from home.” I ground my teeth against each other. “Who wouldn’t be nervous?”

“It looks an awful lot like someone broke in downstairs, Addie. Do you know anything about that?”

I couldn’t even shake my head, afraid of what might come out of my mouth if I tried to speak. Instead, I concentrated on digging my longest fingernail into the palm of my hand. It gave me enough focus to dry any future tears. I counted my blinks as Adam sighed. I still couldn’t face him.

“The lock on your door has been picked.”

Finally, I nodded. “I, uh, I think someone stole my laptop. My roommate’s, too.”

I could see him stiffen from the corner of my eye and back away. I could practically hear him planning a talk on ruined crime scenes for the next time he had to lecture. “Were you here when it happened?”

If only I had been. I started wandering the room again; picking up papers and trying to sort them back into place. If I was quick enough, I could even get out the cleaner with ammonia and try to wipe down the room.

“Addie?” Adam called to me, but I ignored him. He also said something into his phone, but it only made me work faster. “Addie, you need to stop doing that.”

I tried to think. Why would Charlie come here and do this? The last time I had seen him he had been skittish but no different than usual. I told myself it was because of work, that he was tired and stressed about that problem with the competitor, but maybe it had been something else altogether, something I hadn’t been privy to.

“Addie? Addie?”

I stopped and turned to face him. “What?”

“You need to stop.”

I smiled. “Sure.” I nodded, feeling more like a robot than a person. “Okay.”

I waited just outside the building on a bench, too overwhelmed to listen while campus police took photographs and knocked on doors. And of course it wasn’t long before word got out and a crowd of onlookers stood beyond the sidewalk. Someone handed me an infinitely long form on a clipboard but I only filled it out about halfway, putting little checkmarks in the boxes that indicated “Electronics, unaccounted” before signing the bottoming and initialing.

Police checked IDs once, twice, and sometimes three times for people who gave them a hard time before letting the residents though. I heard Melinda swear as she escaped under the yellow tape, letting her hair fall from its headband and into her eyes.

“Addie?” She held her hands out to keep one of the security guards from reaching out for her. “What the hell?” Melinda flung her bag from her back and let it drop to the ground.

“Sorry.” It was all I could say because I was, in fact, sorry. I had tried to think of reasons why Charlie would take Melinda’s computer along with my own, but hadn’t so far. And I didn’t want to risk texting him when I had reported my phone stolen. So far, one of the few things I did understand was that I felt awful for inconveniencing her the way I had.

Eyes wild, she looked around and tried to fix her hair. “I’m going to guess fire?”

I laughed, shook my head.

She sat beside me and sighed. “Damn, the school might have given us a break on tuition…though I guess I should have known, given the lack of sexy firefighters.”

“There was a break-in.” I handed her the clipboard for proof. “Some of our stuff got taken.”

“Please tell me you’re screwing with me here.”

I leaned back and stared at my shoes.

“Crap.” She dropped her head on the clipboard.

“Excuse me, ladies.” I looked back just as Adam walked out of the building. His presence perked Melinda up quite a bit, but I wanted to keep looking back down at my shoes, focus on a point that would keep me from frustration.

“Hello again, Agent Harpsten.”

“Hi, Melinda.”

Like a swooning damsel, Melinda fanned herself with the clipboard; though it seemed to me, she had recovered nicely. “Jeez, what a day you’ve been having!”

Adam smiled, all politeness and charisma. “You must have pulled the winning ticket yourself, because so far it seems like your room was the only one broken into.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Afraid not.” He looked back and forth from me to Melinda, as if unsure of how to continue, but I knew what was coming next, and I wanted to avoid it as long as possible.

“Melinda, the campus PD needs you to fill out some forms, look through your valuables, see what’s missing, that sort of thing. Do you mind if I steal Addie away for a second…?”

“Oh crap. Right, I’ll get on that.” She tossed the clipboard back on my lap. “Catch you later?”

I smiled, annoyance seeping through me. “Like a bad cold.”

She stood up, laughing, and dragging her bag behind her until an officer offered to help. Once she was out of sight, Adam took her spot without invitation, and though I wanted to be as far away from there as possible, I had few options. Local police had joined campus security and people with their cell phones drooled at the sight. My dorm was off limits, but with the ongoing investigation I knew it might have looked suspicious if I just wandered off.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“You kind of freaked out back there.”

I scoffed, but the lie came easy. “I had a lot of work saved on that computer. I thought I had lost it all until I remembered my backup USB.”

He nodded, but I could tell he still wasn’t convinced. “It’s pretty obvious even to the campus police that your dorm was the only one violated.”

“Junkies.” I shrugged.

“We both know it wasn’t junkies, Addie.”

“No,” I whispered. “It could have been anything; a scavenger hunt or a prank meant for someone else. Melinda isn’t exactly an unpopular girl; it could have been an angry boyfriend or something.”

“None of that explains the mailboxes, Addie.”

“Well, use your imagination.” I got up and started walking to an untrimmed tree at the corner, but he followed me. I picked one of its many leaves off a branch and stared at a pattern I saw there. But waiting for me to speak, Adam became impatient.

“Threatening people is against the law, Addie. I know you understand that legally no one can make you do anything you don’t want to. If someone used any means of persuasion—”