On Fire (20 page)

“I want to know all about you,” Ms. Argent said, breaking his reverie as he took another bite of sandwich. He realized that the entire time he had been devouring flesh, he had been staring at her. “Your favorite color, your lucky number, when your birthday is.” She daintily pressed a napkin against her lips. “Guess what my favorite color is.”

Why
did she have to ask him a question when his mouth was full? He chewed quickly, swallowed, and said, “Um, pink?”

“Green.” She smiled and surveyed his face as if it were her marked territory. “Like your eyes. But there’s brown in them, too. At first I thought they might be blue. They’re very expressive.”

Whoa.
She liked his eyes. And she had spent a lot of time studying him. Tingles played at the small of his back and along his cheeks, and she smiled as if she knew how much her words had affected him.

Then she fluttered her lashes and said, “Now tell me. What is
your
favorite color?”

She held her head still, as if inviting him to look. Inviting him in. For a dizzying moment it seemed as if there was nothing in the world but her lovely, lovely eyes. That they were like moons for him to race beneath, proud, wild, free.

“Your eyes are green, too,” he said.

“Good answer.” She tore off a piece of her sandwich and popped it into his mouth like a piece of candy. Then she ate a little nibble, too, clearly enjoying the taste.

“Do you believe in fate? That some things are just meant to happen?” she asked him.

“I—I don’t know,” he answered. He wanted to tell her that he was pretty sure he believed in love at first sight. But maybe she would laugh and tell him that what he wasn’t feeling was love, but a stupid little teenage crush that meant nothing.

No
, he thought.
Ms. Argent would never say something so cruel. And besides, maybe . . . maybe she believes in love at first sight, too.

“So, have you been swimming long?” she asked him.

He was grateful that she’d asked him another question.
He needed something, anything to distract him from his thoughts. He was a little afraid he might blurt something out that would reveal how he felt, and it would turn out to be the wrong thing. He didn’t want to mess this up. But suddenly he was overcome with the idea that he
would
mess it up. He was so nervous even contemplating that that part of him wanted to run away now, before he could wreck it. But of course everything else urged him to stay, and never, ever leave.

“Derek?” She peered at him. “Swimming?”

“Most of my life,” he managed to answer.

She ran her gaze up and down his body. He squeezed the edge of his plate hard. He pulled in his stomach and pushed back his shoulders as discreetly as he could. He wanted to look good for her.

“It shows,” she said. And for a moment he couldn’t remember what she had asked him about. Swimming. Lap after lap, to burn off the excess energy. To be able to maintain in the human world. To stay disconnected from the ordinary humans who weren’t in his family.

“You’ve got a great swimmer’s body and you really know your . . . strokes.” She rested her head on her arm, gazing at him. “You seem driven when you swim.”

“There’s just so much pressure,” he blurted, and then he stopped, afraid he had just said the wrong thing. He could never talk about his double life with anyone outside the pack. And if he complained about typical kid stuff, she might think he wasn’t mature enough to handle an adult relationship.

“The pressure can be enormous,” she agreed. She leaned
forward, placing her forearms on her thighs. He was aware of how her sweater front bunched, and he could see her cleavage. He made himself let go of his plate so that he wouldn’t break it and clenched his left hand tightly against his own thigh.

“I hated high school,” she said. “They tell you you’re responsible for your life and then you come home and find out your family’s moving. Or that your parents are getting divorced. And you have no say in any of it.”

“I know,” he said, nodding. She got it—at least the human side of it.

“It’s such a mishmash, and you have to deal with all of it,” she went on. “And the people you have to hang out with, day after day. Some kids in high school are babies and others are all grown up, ready for the real world. Like you.”

Wow, could she really tell that? She was probably just flattering him.

But you’re in her apartment,
he reminded himself.
She must like something about you. She’s risking her job just to be with you.

With
you.

She leaned toward him and took a sip out of his wineglass. As she looked over the rim at him, he thought he would drown in her beautiful green eyes.

“So let me ask you, Derek,” she said. “
Are
you ready?

He set down his sandwich. His heart was about to burst out of his chest. His body was quivering and trembling. He felt as if he were burning up.

“Yes,” he whispered. “I’m ready.”

I
n Jackson’s living room, Lydia sat tied to a Louis XIV gilt wooden chair while the two robbers—Ski Mask and Gravelly Voice—methodically went through each room of the Whittemores’ home. They knew their valuables, skipping the big plasma TV for the elegant, if plain, sterling silver tea set. They bypassed the matted prints Mr. Whittemore had given Mrs. Whittemore before they could afford fine art and took the original oils and acrylics. Sooner or later, they would take the chair she was sitting on. It was a valuable antique.

Lydia had found out there was a third thief, one she had nicknamed Worker Bee, because his entire job consisted of loading the Whittemores’ belongings into whatever enormous vehicle they had brought with them. She hadn’t seen him at all, and she hadn’t seen the faces of Ski Mask and Gravelly Voice. She was praying that meant that she would come out of this alive.

She had no idea how much time had passed. It seemed like a lifetime ago since they had hit her and threatened her with a gun. They’d asked her over and over and over again
if she was alone in the house. And despite the fact that there were two cars in the driveway, they believed her. Either they hadn’t seen Danny’s Lexus behind her car or they had discounted it for some reason. She told them that she was Jackson’s girlfriend—true—and that she didn’t know where he was, so she had come to his house to look for him—also true.

At first she kept expecting to hear police sirens. Surely Damon or Danny would call 911. Then it dawned on her that the boys must be able to see or hear inside, because Ski Mask had told her that that they had accomplices planted in cars along the route to the sheriff’s station, and they would get plenty of warning before the cops arrived—enough time to blow her away. So Danny and Damon must have been afraid to call for help.

Call anyway. Just explain
, she thought, trying to transmit her thoughts to them via ESP or something. But in reality, she doubted she would call the police, either. Look how long it had taken to find one maniac mountain lion that had been killing people all over Beacon Hills. And the sheriff hadn’t killed it. Allison’s father had.

She still remembered the day Jackson had shown her every piece of the house’s state-of-the-art security system. These guys seemed to know about it, too. So she doubted there was some superhero or private security guard just waiting for the right moment to crash through the skylight above Lydia’s head and save her.

She swallowed hard and glanced up at said skylight . . .

. . . and, framed by moonlight, Danny and Damon stared back down at her.

She nearly fell over backward in the chair, but somehow
the thieves didn’t notice her shock. Ski Mask was busily going through the kitchen drawers while Gravelly Voice carried an enameled Chinese vase to the garage loading area. She composed herself, then peered upward, having no clue whatsoever about what they were trying to tell her. They kept gesturing and opening their mouths very wide as if they wanted to communicate something to her. Were they going to go for help? That would mean leaving her here alone. Tied up. With criminals who had threatened to kill her. What if one of their accomplices saw the boys on the roof?

Then both boys disappeared. She braced herself—for what, she didn’t know—and realized the situation was changing. Forcing her emotions at bay, her logical mathematician’s mind formed a decision tree of actions, reactions, and outcomes. She tried to think about what she knew about Danny and Damon. Danny was Jackson’s best friend, which meant that he wasn’t a loser. He was smart, and strong. He was the lacrosse team’s goalie, which meant he was willing to deliberately stand in the path of a hard rubber ball going a hundred miles an hour. She knew the scary stats: in the last twenty-five years, almost two dozen lacrosse players had died of cardiac arrest from taking balls to the chest. There were few people in the world tougher than lacrosse goalies—and Danny was the toughest. Danny put the
M
in
macho
, that was for sure.

So in a situation like this, what would a guy like that do?

He’s going to take them on
.

She didn’t know if she should cheer or scream. It was one thing to take a ball to the chest, quite another to take a bullet.

But she was absolutely positive that was what they were trying to tell her. What did they want her to do? Sit tight?

I don’t think so
.

It was one thing to sit quietly and observantly because it had seemed like her best option, but it was quite another thing to be a sitting duck. If the guys launched an offensive, the first thing she would do to stop them if she were a thief was put a gun to the head of the pretty strawberry blonde.

So I have to make sure that doesn’t happen
, she decided.

So, decision tree: if she wanted to get herself free, what should she do?

Lydia glanced back up at the skylight, wishing she could have understood what Damon and Danny were trying to tell her.

“We should get cracking,” Gravelly Voice said as he returned from the garage.

Ski Mask came out of the kitchen with the large silver platter with the rosettes that Jackson’s mother had served
the Thanksgiving turkey on. The two men stood facing each other. They lowered their voices to near-whispers. Gravelly Voice looked over his shoulder at her, then muttered something to Ski Mask.

They’re trying to decide what to do with me,
Lydia realized. Her fear level shot sky-high. It was time to solve her problem. What kind of men were they? What was her best option at getting them to untie her without hurting her?

She did the math:

Question: What kind of men did these guys think they were?

Factors:

1. They planned the robbery in advance.

2. They had the security alarm codes.

3. They lured Jackson away with some scam about his birth parents. But Jackson was smart and suspicious. They’d have had to plead their case pretty well.

4. They knew what to steal and what to leave.

Conclusion: They were thorough.

Factors:

5. They had been surprised to see her, but had taken swift action.

6. They had been careful to keep their faces concealed so they wouldn’t have to kill her.

But now they were muttering about her.

Conclusion one: They were having second thoughts about leaving her alive, but they were discussing it calmly.

Conclusion two: They were smart and ruthless. But they
also didn’t act rashly. So flirting, asking to go to the bathroom, or offering to help probably wouldn’t work.

So Lydia took action. Summoning her best acting skills—and Lydia had put on some stellar performances in her day, acting like an airhead for Jackson’s sake—she smiled to herself. She made it a secretive, sly smile, holding it just long enough so that when Gravelly Voice looked at her, he saw it. Then she made a show of letting it slip.