Delusion Road (26 page)

Keegan felt Willa flinch beside him. “
We
don’t need to do anything, Wynn,” she said as he reached her. “
You
need to stay away from me.”

The few remaining students froze. Even Greg, bent over his backpack, was motionless.

“You don’t wanna do this,” growled Wynn, anger radiating off him in waves.

“What she
doesn’t
want is to talk to you,” Keegan said, trying to keep his voice casual. But all he could think about was Bailey running through the woods on Valley View Road and then fighting him off again on Casino Night, and he was glad she’d already left the classroom. He and Willa were still there because he’d asked to borrow her math notes, certain his own would be useless to him. Neither had noticed that Wynn had held back, too.

Wynn’s eyes widened, and then he smiled. It was all teeth, though, the expression never reaching his eyes. They held something far different. “You’ve been a pain in my ass since you got here, Vancouver,” he said, his murmured words like smooth knives in the air. “How about you and I go someplace and sort this out once and for all?” His hands at his sides made fists the size of grapefruits.

Willa stepped between them. “The only thing that needs to be sorted out is you, Wynn. We’re through.”

But Wynn ignored her, glaring over her head at Keegan.
“How about it, Vancouver? Ready to get your ass handed to you?”

“Interesting metaphor, Wynn. Care to elaborate?”

They turned to see Richardson in the doorway. As he did at the end of each class, he’d stood in the corridor chatting briefly with students as they passed, and Keegan could sense Willa’s relief at his return. Keegan, however, was disappointed. He’d have liked nothing better than the chance to slam his fist into Wynn d’Entremont’s face.

Wynn shrugged. “We were just fooling around.”

Richardson addressed the room. “Would the rest of you mind stepping out?”

The spectators were startled into action and the room emptied in moments, Richardson closing the door behind them. “Is there a problem here?”

Keegan glanced at Willa, but she was looking at Wynn, his eyes aglow with brash confidence as if he was taunting her, daring her. Keegan looked at the floor, mentally willing her to say something.

But it was Wynn who spoke first. “Willa and I were just having a conversation.”

“It’s the conversation you were having with Keegan that I’m interested in,” said Richardson.

“We were just—”

“Fooling around,” interrupted the teacher. “So you say, but we both know that’s not true.” Keegan raised his eyes to see Richardson looking at him. “Care to jump in here, Keegan?”

“This is about me,” offered Willa. “I broke up with Wynn yesterday and he hasn’t accepted that it’s over between us.”

“And you’re saying that it is?”

“Definitely.”

The teacher turned to Wynn. “Look, letting go can be hard, but a person can’t force someone to be in a relationship.”

Keegan almost snorted. Force was Wynn’s middle name.

“Nor,” continued Richardson, “can we expect to rekindle a relationship by threatening to hand someone else his ass. Understand?”

Wynn gave a grudging nod.

“Good,” said Richardson. “What you may
not
understand is how committed this school is to preventing violence of any kind, including intimidation. If I hear you’ve harassed Willa or Keegan in any way, I’ll report you to Mr. Caldwell, who will then bar you from all extracurricular activities for the remainder of the year. Is that clear?”

Keegan watched Wynn’s eyes, imagined something in there writhing as he struggled to keep his cool. “As a bell,” Wynn said.

“Good,” said Richardson. He turned toward his desk and began gathering up the assignments his students had piled there earlier.

Wynn looked at Keegan and smiled again, his expression almost reptilian. “Later,” he said, the word suggesting more promise than leave-taking, then reached for the door, yanked it open, and disappeared.

Keegan and Willa collected their books and made their way toward the corridor.

“I meant what I said.”

They turned to the teacher, whose face looked uncharacteristically grave. “If he tries anything, anything at all, let me know, okay?”

“He won’t,” said Willa quickly, and Keegan was surprised by the conviction in her voice. He doubted she believed her own claim, but he could tell she was keeping the heat off Wynn to give her father the time he’d asked for.

“I hope you’re right,” said Richardson.

The teacher in-service scheduled for the following day made the Tuesday afternoon seem like a Friday, so Keegan wasn’t surprised to see the student parking lot nearly empty. The few remaining cars probably belonged to the guys at soccer practice. Wynn’s Thunderbird was among them.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked Willa when they reached her SUV.

She nodded, but the paleness of her usually tan face said otherwise. “Pretty intense, huh?”

“I’m worried he might take all this out on you.”

“I think you’re more of a target than I am right now,” she said. “But Richardson has him worried. He won’t do anything that might jeopardize his playing sports.”

“Hopefully,” said Keegan, “this thing with your dad won’t take much longer. Something needs to be done about that guy soon. Did you see his eyes?”

“I
know
,” she agreed. “Freaky.” Despite the heat, she shivered.

Without thinking, he draped an arm over her shoulder, then realized what he’d done and stepped back. “Sorry,” he mumbled, embarrassed.

“Don’t be,” Willa said, colour returning to her face. She reached out, laid her hand on his forearm. “I’m not.”

Keegan felt his face redden, felt his whole body respond to the contact. More than anything, he wanted to kiss her, but he knew how wrong that would be when she’d just broken up with her boyfriend. And then there was Forbes to think about, not to mention his father. Keegan looked away, and he felt the gentle pressure of her hand on his arm disappear.

“So,” she said, an awkwardness entering her voice, “I’d better be going. You sure I can’t give you a lift home?”

“Thanks, but I can use the exercise.” The tension caused by her touch and their encounter with Wynn had made his body wire-taut, and the walk would do him good, help him work some of it out before he got home. What he
really
wanted was to join in the scrimmage he could hear on the soccer field, but a walk was better than nothing.

She nodded, then turned and got into the SUV. Starting the vehicle, she lowered the windows to let out the heat, the air conditioner churning to life. “Later,” she said, then backed the vehicle out of its space and headed toward the street.

He watched as she stopped at the exit, waiting for oncoming traffic to pass, her signal light blinking. But when the street was finally clear, she continued to sit there, as if trying to decide where to go. Then the backup lights came on, and the SUV reversed through the parking lot before rolling to a stop beside Keegan. The driver’s window lowered again and Willa’s face reappeared, a deep flush adding new colour.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Look, are you doing anything tomorrow?”

“Not really. No.”

“How’d you like to get out of town?”

Despite what his common sense was telling him, there was suddenly nothing he wanted more. “What’d you have in mind?”

“It’s supposed to be even hotter tomorrow and I thought I’d spend the day at our cottage. It’ll be a lot cooler there,” she added, as if he needed to be persuaded.

Forbes and his father clamoured in Keegan’s head, reciting a litany of reasons why this was a monumentally bad idea, but he ignored them. “Sounds great,” he said.

“How about I pick you up around, say, eight-thirty?”

“I’ll be ready. Should I bring anything?”

“Just an appetite. I’ll bring lunch.” The window closed over her smile as she shifted into drive again, and the SUV once more headed toward the exit. This time, though, it eased into the street and drove off.

Watching it go, Keegan mentally calculated the hours before he’d see her again.

He was so screwed.

M
orozov’s New Jersey muscle finished patting Griff down. “Clear,” he said, nodding toward a second bodyguard standing outside Morozov’s office. Nearly as big as the doorway, the other guy reached for the handle and opened it, waving Griff through.

Griff hated Morozov’s office. Anyone who knew the guy might expect something crypt-like, but the place was decorated with large splashes of reds and oranges and littered with moulded plastic furniture like you’d see in old movies from the sixties. Regardless how many times he went there, Griff always felt disoriented when he walked into it—which, he guessed, was exactly why Morozov liked it that way. It put visitors off-balance.

Morozov was his usual sinister self, his pale hands lying limp on his desk. At least, thought Griff as he entered, he didn’t bring me here to off me. The freak never had people killed on the premises.

“Hey, Mr. Morozov,” said Griff.

One of those disturbingly white hands gestured toward a red chair, and Griff sat down. It was far too small for him—the moulded plastic wedged his ass-cheeks together like a vise—but that, too, was probably intentional. He gave no sign of his
discomfort and waited for Morozov to say something. Griff figured he’d been summoned to give an update on his search for the target, but it was always better to let Morozov speak first.

The little fuck kept him waiting, opening one of his desk drawers and taking out a sheet of paper that he laid on his orange blotter. He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together across his nonexistent belly, and Griff was again reminded of white worms. Finally, Morozov spoke. “Do you believe that things happen for a reason, Griff?” His words had their usual soft, wet sound.

Griff wondered if this was a trick question, a land mine that could blow up in his face if he didn’t step carefully. “Never really thought about it.”

“Think about it now,” said Morozov.

Griff took a moment to marshal his thoughts, and his mind returned to that evening in Joliet, Travis Hubley screaming in his basement each time Griff shocked him back to consciousness. What Travis went through that night had definitely happened for a reason, but he doubted that was what Morozov meant. “I guess it depends,” said Griff.

“On what?”

“On who stands to gain from it.”

Those empty eyes blinked at him, and then the impossible happened: Morozov smiled. “As it turns out, you’re the person who’s gaining this time,” he said.

Griff cocked one eyebrow but didn’t comment, knowing it was better to let Morozov offer what he had to say in his own good time.

“It would appear,” said Morozov, “that it was fortunate your device failed to kill the target.”

Again Griff waited.

Morozov leaned forward. “I’ve recently acquired a—” He hesitated for the briefest of moments before continuing, “well-placed associate. Someone who is only too willing to make his considerable resources available to me.”

Griff nodded, struggling to hide his impatience, wishing the little mutant would just say what needed to be said.

Morozov pushed the sheet of paper across the desk. “Have a look at what our target was up to the last night he worked for Battaglia.”

P
ulling into Keegan’s driveway, Willa was grateful all over again that her father had agreed to let her take a guy he barely knew to their cottage for the day. But maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised—after all, he’d known Wynn and look how that had turned out. Her mother might have been harder to convince, but since she and Rachel had decided to spend the rest of the week in Halifax, Willa hadn’t felt obligated to ask her.

Before she had time to shut off the vehicle, she saw Keegan come out his front door and lope toward her. “You didn’t need to bring anything, remember?” said Willa, nodding at the bag Keegan tossed onto the back seat as he got in.

“Just trunks and a towel. I figured we’d probably go swimming.” He pointed at the exterior temperature displayed on the instrument panel’s touch-screen: twenty-seven degrees. And it was only eight thirty.

Willa laughed. “You’ve never been to the bay before, have you?”

“Why?”

“You’ll see,” she replied cryptically. She backed out of the driveway, then hit the brakes, the SUV coming to an abrupt halt in the street.

“Something wrong?” asked Keegan.

Out of the corner of her eye, Willa saw him glance left toward Main Street, the traffic check she herself had just done for cars coming down Maple Avenue, but there were none. “Thought I’d forgotten something,” she lied as she pulled away.

Because Keegan had been looking out her driver’s-side window, he hadn’t seen what the dashboard’s touch-screen had just shown her: Wynn’s Thunderbird parked in the driveway diagonally across the street. Most of his car was hidden by shrubbery, which was why she hadn’t noticed it before. It was only the wide-angle view of the backup camera that had caught it.

Willa knew she should’ve said something, and she’d opened her mouth to do just that, but the screen had shown Wynn pulling out of the driveway and heading in the opposite direction. He may have trailed her to Keegan’s house, but he wasn’t following them now. Maybe he could see that she’d moved on and realized he needed to do the same. And if that was the case, why mention it to Keegan now and allow a shadow to fall over their day before it had even begun?

“What’d you think you forgot?” asked Keegan.

“Gas,” she lied again, “but we’re fine.” She pointed to the gauge that showed a full tank. “My dad must’ve filled it up for me.” She was amazed at how easily the fabrication fell from her mouth, but she was determined that Wynn d’Entremont wouldn’t ruin their day. He’d ruined enough already.

In moments, they passed a sign that read “You’re now leaving Brookdale—Please come again,” and she felt tension release inside her. Reaching toward the instrument panel, she pressed the auxiliary function to activate her iPod, which she’d paired
with the entertainment system. Because the device was always on shuffle, she wasn’t sure what would begin playing.