Something had happened again with Todd Flick, outside the school. There were moments that I didn't recall, and I'd come back to myself to find Jill's hand in mine.
I sat up in bed and ground my palms against my eyes, sick, frustrated, and confused. Because of all the things that disturbed me that night, the one that bothered me most was the lie I'd told my father when he'd asked me if there was anyone special in my life.
Oh, Jill...
Twice I'd stood close to her in the shadow cast by her murdered father, and the second time I'd wanted desperately to
kiss
her. Perhaps it was my own slide toward total corruption, but sometime over the course of the last few weeks, the innocence that I'd once found amusing had become touching, and then compelling, and then I'd recognized in it a strength that I lacked. A sweetness and a moral force that I needed.
If ever there were two opposites ripe for attraction, it was Jill Jekel and I. Beauty and the literal beast. Yin and yang. Pure light and pitch black.
I groaned again in the dark room.
How unlucky it would be for Jill if she were ever to start feeling the same powerful, insistent need for me that I had begun to experience for her.
Not just unlucky but tragic. For although I had the promise of rescue tucked away on my bookshelf, the clock was ticking. And 116
even if I earned salvation, I was nowhere near redemption. No, as the pieces of my life's puzzle began to click into place, I was increasingly certain that I had committed a sin back in London that a good girl like Jill Jekel would
never
forgive. Hell, I couldn't imagine ever forgiving
myself.
Chapter 33
Jill
"JILL?"
I looked up from my sociology book to see Darcy Gray standing across from me with her arms braced on the cafeteria table. I swallowed my bite of peanut butter sandwich and tried to greet her, but it came out too nervous, almost like a question. "Hi?" Darcy never sought me out. She was going to turn me in for breaking into the school...
"I've been thinking about last night." Darcy seemed to confirm my worst fears, narrowing her eyes. With her sharp-edged haircut and designer clothes, she looked like an angry boss about to dress down me, her employee. "Thinking about what I saw." The peanut butter stuck in my throat. "You--you have?" Darcy glanced around herself, making sure we were alone. Which, of course, we were. I almost always ate by myself in a far corner of the caf, using the time to study. Satisfied that we had privacy, Darcy leaned closer. "Look, Jill," she said in a quiet but warning tone, "I
saw
you and Tristen come out of the school, and unlike Todd, I don't think you two were screwing on the wrestling mats."
I stared up at Darcy, scared--and curious about this second 117
reference to the mats. Was that something people actually
did
?
Was sneaking into the gym another part of sex, a local mating ritual that I didn't know about? "Darcy, we weren't--" I had no idea what I was about to say.
Darcy didn't wait to hear excuses, anyway. "I think you two are teaming up for that scholarship and hiding your work." I choked harder on the peanut butter that I was
still
trying to get down my throat. "What?"
Darcy leaned down even farther, crouching like a wolf about to pounce, her blue eyes icier than I'd ever seen them. "I think it's pathetic that you're afraid to compete with me in the open," she growled. "It's totally underhanded, teaming up behind my back. Did you think I would steal your ideas? Or that you'd lull me into doing less than my best because the
brilliant
Jill Jekel and Tristen Hyde are forming some powerhouse brain trust? Because if you remember, I told you from the start that I didn't want to work with you or your violent, loner
boyfriend."
"No, it's not like that..." We weren't working against her. Not maliciously. And Tristen
wasn't
my boyfriend. "We ... We ..." What could I tell her?
"You're just like your criminal father," Darcy spat, rising and crossing her arms. "Sneaking around late at night, working in secret. It's uncanny! Unbelievable! You'd think you of all people would have learned a lesson from what happened to
him!"
I sat in stunned silence, ears ringing with Darcy's words.
"And with Tristen Hyde's propensity for violence," she added,
"you'd better watch that you don't end up like your dad." With that, Darcy spun on her heel and stalked away, leaving me sitting alone, my open book and my half-eaten sandwich in front of me, not quite sure what to do. Run and cry? Act like nothing 118
had happened, even though it felt like the walls were closing in?
How could Darcy have said those things? Thrown my dad's
murder
in my face?
I got up the courage to look around the crowded room, sure that the whole school must have heard. That Darcy's words must have been projected over the loudspeaker. But everybody else just kept eating and talking and enjoying their blissfully normal lives. Everybody, that is, except Tristen, who I spotted at the opposite corner of the caf. He was alone, too, but as usual solitude didn't seem to bother him. He was leaning back, balancing his chair on two legs, his long legs propped on another seat, seeming absorbed in a book, his hand absently reaching now and then for a tall Styrofoam cup of coffee that featured the logo of a nearby gas station.
Darcy had called Tristen my boyfriend. But she was wrong. He didn't want me that way.
As I watched, he yawned and stretched, which made him seem even taller, more imposing.
Violent loner.
Darcy had called Tristen that, too. Although I knew a different side of Tristen, a sweet side, I hadn't been able to defend him against her charge. And as for Darcy's prediction about me ending up like my father ...
I
watched as Tristen flipped his coffee cup into a nearby trash can, remembering the feel of his hot palm against mine on the night he'd threatened to tear off Todd Flick's head. I'd felt safe with him in the school. But then he'd snapped.
Tristen stood now, stuffing the book into his messenger bag, which seemed like a bottomless pit for possessions that were treated with the same casual disregard he offered Mr.
Messerschmidt and all authority.
119
Tristen and I were distant... but getting closer, in a weird way. He didn't lust after me, but we had a connection. A connection rooted in bloodshed and grief.
Darcy's words echoed again in my brain.
With Tristen Hyde's
propensity for violence, you'd better watch that you don't end up
like your dad.
Feeling suddenly hotter, queasier, I turned my back on Tristen and wadded up my uneaten sandwich in a napkin, not hungry anymore. Because, as I knew all too well from years of fighting for academic supremacy, Darcy Gray was rarely wrong twice in one day. She'd been mistaken about Tristen and me being
together--would she be right about how I'd "end up"?
And to make matters worse, even though Tristen didn't have feelings for me, even though I was afraid he really might harbor a monster inside, I turned around one more time, unable to keep my eyes off him. Unable to stop wishing that the gorgeous, talented, complicated, potentially murderous guy who was shouldering his battered messenger bag then sauntering out of the cafeteria like he owned the whole school really was my boyfriend.
Chapter 34
Jill
"TRISTEN, WHAT ARE YOU
doing here?" I asked, pulling my robe around myself, not because my pajamas were revealing but because they were so ugly. "It's almost midnight!"
"I know." Tristen pushed past me into the foyer. "I need to show you what I've discovered."
"Can't this wait until morning?"
120
"No." He walked into the living room and switched on a lamp. I saw then that his brown eyes were bright with excitement. I also noticed what he held in his hand.
The list. Which I hadn't seen since that night in the garage.
"My mom ...," I said, eyes fixed on the paper. "You shouldn't even be here, and if she sees
that
... I told you, she hasn't mentioned the list since that night she broke down. I don't know how she'd react."
"She's sedated, right?" Tristen guessed, taking a seat on the couch and smoothing the list on the coffee table. "And we'll be quiet."
He was right: my mother was sleeping soundly. Still...
"Come sit down." He patted the cushion next to him. "I need to show you. Then I'll be gone. I promise."
"Okay," I agreed, stepping around the table to join him. By the light of the single lamp I could barely make out the words on the paper, but the bloodstains looked like fingerprints marked in dark ink. I looked away.
"Jill, look," Tristen directed, edging closer, shoving the list under my nose, so that I was crowded both by the strange things I was feeling in the present and a recent, horrific past. It got a little hard to breathe. Dad ... Tristen ... Two powerful presences, hemming me in ...
Tristen was so excited that he didn't seem to notice how I was squirming. "At first I thought your father was irrational," he said. "I could see that he was systematically manipulating salts but with nothing recognizable." He jabbed a finger at one of Dad's notes. Dad's familiar handwriting next to those terrible stains ... "Still, there's a clear pattern. And when I started thinking about patterns, I thought of
codes."
I forced myself to ignore the blood and follow Tristen's finger as he traced down the list. "CaCl 2 plus R..." Calcium chloride 121
plus ... what? Yes, clearly Dad had been marking something in code, adding another layer of secrecy to his hidden life. "Do you think we can crack it?" I asked, not sure if I wanted the answer to be yes or no.
Did I really want to know the truth about my father when the few facts that
had
been pieced together were so damning? What if there was more ugly reality hidden, encrypted, on that sheet of paper?
"I've already done it," Tristen informed me, ending my inner debate. "It was a very unsophisticated code--no offense to your father." We both turned to the list again, Tristen edging even closer, so we were practically collapsed on each other on the sagging cushions. "See?" he said, pointing. "He simply divided the alphabet in half and transposed 'A' for 'M' and vice versa. Very simple. A halfhearted attempt at subterfuge at best."
"But why even try?"
Tristen was too focused on his goals to worry about the mysteries that interested me. "Who knows?" he asked. "The point is, when you match this list to Dr. Jekyll's notes, it's very clear that your father was working from the basic formulas and systematically tainting salts--seemingly with materials that would have been common in a pharmacy or laboratory in the nineteenth century."
"It seems like you've thought everything through," I said, pushing his hand away. The list... the
blood
was too close to my face. "But are you sure you're right? How do you know about the historical part?"
"The Internet," he said. "We may live in a rural backwater, but I can still access cyberspace."
"Still..."
"I'm right, Jill," he said firmly. "This is about my life--and death. I am
positive
I'm correct."
I looked down at the "last, bloody list."
122
"It's about my father, too," I muttered, more to myself than Tristen.
"And me."
Tristen got quiet then and placed the paper on the coffee table, turning to face me. "Jill," he said softly, "I haven't forgotten that this list raises even more questions about your father." He seemed pained as he added, "Believe me, I've thought long and hard about what role this document might have played in his last moments. But you must forgive my excitement for myself. I promise, if I manage to save myself, I'll devote my energy to winning the contest--and helping you solve your father's mysteries, too, if that is what you want. I promise. Just let me do this first."
I stared into Tristen Hyde's brown eyes, just inches from my own. He wasn't violent. Right then, I couldn't believe it. He was warm. Kind. Gentle. He
would
help me. If only he felt more ... felt what I did at that moment...
And then, as we sat face-to-face, it was almost like my wish came true, because I saw something change in Tristen's eyes. Not the frightening change that I'd seen when he'd gotten angry with Todd. This was the change I'd seen in the lab on that same night. I thought I'd seen a new kind of warmth in his eyes back in the classroom and maybe again in the garage, but I was
sure
right then.
Almost
sure ...
We searched each other's face, like Tristen was looking for clues to my feelings, too--although I was sure my emotions must have been obvious, written large in my eyes, whether I really wanted him to know or not.
"Jill," he finally murmured, raising his hand and brushing my ever-wayward lock of hair behind my ear.
I sat stiffly, spine rigid, even as something deep inside of me started melting, tingling. I was afraid that if I moved, Tristen would 123
move, too, and take away the hand that lingered behind my ear, and the melting would stop.
He kept studying me, eyes moving to my cheeks, my nose, down my throat to my hideous pajamas, and when he raised his eyes to mine, he seemed almost confused. Yet I was certain, absolutely certain, that I heard desire in his voice when he whispered,
"You're such
a good girl,
Jill."
I was used to hearing that word in a mocking way. Jill Jekel the goody two-shoes, always good. But when Tristen said it... it sounded like the most beautiful compliment in the world. His words barely registered, though. All I could think about was the feel of Tristen's fingertips against my ear, and the warmth that was spreading, radiating from the very core of my body, as he drew the back of his index finger against my cheek and down along the line of my jaw with the same slow, deliberate confidence that had enabled him to wordlessly wrest control of a chemistry class or an out-of-tune keyboard.
My heart was pounding with anticipation--and fear.