The Summer Man

Chapter TWENTY-FIVE





Stan Vincent sat in his office, waiting for the call. Henderson was out cruising Route 12 where it connected to the highway, watching for Dean. The deputies would be here any time, ready to take over the barely five-hour-old search for Max Reeder, a missing ten-year-old boy. Wes Dean would be sticking his big f*cking face into Vincent’s yet again, grilling him on what he’d done so far, pushing his way in, mucking things up. This time, Vincent wasn’t going to step aside just because Dean thought he should.

Got my own boys now, he thought, and smiled, a grim little smile. Four of them, as dedicated to him as he was to seeing justice served. Ian Henderson, of course. Frank LaVeau. Kyle Leary. And the kid just on this summer, Trey Ellis; Trey had already proved his usefulness, making conversation over coffee, drawing out the uniforms who weren’t ready to make the leap. Margot Trent, Dave Miller, a couple of others, they were mostly on board but with reservations, so Vincent left them out of the serious planning. He needed to know who he could trust if things went hard, who he could count on, and he was satisfied that his people could go the distance. They’d already handled the thing at the marina, and some other things as they’d come up…

He’d assigned Trent and Miller to head up the search for the missing child, and they were doing a damned fine job. At least fifty volunteers had shown up for the door-to-door, and there’d be a hundred more searching the woods and beaches if the kid didn’t turn up by tomorrow. Max Reeder appeared not to be the only missing child, unfortunately, and wouldn’t Dean just love to jump all over that, tying in the runaway from last week…or the three last month. But it was Port Isley’s business, not county, and Vincent would handle the matter.

The radio on his desk blipped, and Henderson’s voice spilled out. “I see ’em, chief. Three, four cars coming in. Dean’s in front.”

“Follow them in,” Vincent said. “We’ll meet you here.”

Vincent stood up and paced around in front of his desk. Everything had fallen so neatly into place, it was as though his fondest wish—to get Western Dean the f*ck out of his hair—were destined to become a reality. LaVeau had gone through their files of plates recorded leaving town in the last six hours and had already matched two to registered sex offenders. One of them was certainly harmless, guy named Armstrong; he’d had sex with a seventeen-year-old girl eleven years before, when he’d still been a teenager himself. No play there, but the other one, that was their ticket—Neil Elwes had twice exposed himself to grade-school kids at an elementary school in Texas back in the late eighties, flapping his penis at them through chain link while the children screeched and laughed. He’d spent some time in a hospital, done some community service, and had not reoffended. Elwes had moved to Port Isley six years ago to see an uncle through end-stage cancer and had stayed on after his uncle’s death—and stayed on the straight and narrow, so far as anyone knew. The man worked from home and kept to himself, he didn’t have any friends, and best of all, according to the recorded message on his phone, he would be in Bend, Oregon, until next week, visiting his cousin. They couldn’t have planned it better.

Vincent stepped out of his office, nodding at Kyle Leary, who was on the phone. Leary nodded back at him. The station was quiet, every free hand out looking for the Reeder kid. Except for one of their part-timers at the front desk and Debra on dispatch, they were alone. The station was an antique in its own right; built in the forties, the two-story building was a monument to sturdy, handsome architecture. The airconditioning sucked, though, and the showy, period ceiling fans actually served a purpose, pushing the stuffy air around a bit. Vincent liked the heat; it felt like movement, like action, like things getting done.

Leary hung up, stood, and moved to meet him.

“They here?”

Vincent nodded. “Five minutes, give or take. Was that Trey?”

Leary grinned. “Kid’s got a pair, don’t he? All taken care of.”

Vincent nodded, not ready to smile yet. Poor Mr. Elwes was going to be the focus of a statewide manhunt pretty soon, considering what Wes Dean was going to find in Neil’s closet. Nothing like trying to explain a box full of boy porn, latex gloves, condoms, and duct tape. Young officer Ellis was also going to make a point of breaking the glass pane set next to the front door so that there’d be sufficient reason to walk in. None of it would hold up if Elwes got himself a half-decent lawyer, but it’d take some time to sort everything out; enough time for Vincent to figure out who’d really snatched up Max Reeder. He was sure he could find him if Dean would f*ck off. All they had to do was drop the name; Dean would do the rest.

Once that f*cker’s gone, we can get some actual work done; we can get down to brass tacks. He had some ideas about staking out the parks, getting more cameras set up to track down the bad guys—including, maybe, the sicko who’d taken Max Reeder, the real offender…assuming that was what had happened, which he did; things were too batshit crazy for him to dismiss his gut instincts. Vincent was already in the early stages of organizing a neighborhood watch, one that included blunt instruments, as needed; he thought he might get the Jessups involved, maybe a few of the dockworkers. The streets would be safe if they had to walk down each and every one of ’em…and once everything was firmly in hand, Vincent’s family could come home.

He felt his heart break a little, thinking of Lily. He’d apologized enough to Ashley; she understood that he was under tremendous stress, and she would come back when she realized that he would never hurt Lily, never would have except that he’d been on the phone to one of his boys after what had happened in the marina and it had been very, very important to get things done in a certain period of time, to make sure that no one went to jail for taking out the trash. The trash in that case had been a seedy Mexican dope peddler who’d been working the docks, and some local boys had taken offense. Someone had called the station, and LaVeau had caught it, and there had been decisions to be made, serious, life-changing decisions. And Lily kept talking, repeating the same nonsense phrase over and over again, trying to crawl up his leg, and he’d been trying to hear what LaVeau was telling him, and she wouldn’t shut up, she wouldn’t stop pulling at him, grinding her grubby heels into the tops of his feet, tearing the skin there, hanging from his pockets. When he’d snapped he’d only pushed her, he hadn’t hit her, and she needed to learn that there were times she had to listen to Daddy, that Daddy’s voice was the law. That was just a safety issue, really. Ashley should have been on top of her anyway, would have been except she’d run to the store for “half a second” about half an hour before, leaving him to watch the baby, who was still screaming and rubbing at the spreading bruise on her back when Ashley finally came home. Kid had landed on one of her own goddamn baby dolls, that was bad luck, just bad f*cking luck, but she was fine, she’d hurt herself worse that time she’d slipped in the tub, also because Ashley wasn’t watching her…which he’d been forced to point out once she’d started accusing him of things. She’d taken the baby and gone to her mother’s, and although he missed them, it was better that they were gone, for now; he needed to be able to think, to listen to the cool voice that told him what was what, that reminded him of his duties. He could hear it best at night, before he slipped into the brief two-or three-hour coma that passed for sleep lately, the cool voice echoing sometimes in the empty house.

“Lucky break,” Leary said.

“What?” Vincent blinked at him, frowned.

“Elwes going out of town,” Leary said, and chuckled. “This’ll keep that a*shole busy.”

Vincent looked around them, back at Leary. “Shut the f*ck up,” he said. Of all his boys, Leary had the biggest mouth; he’d want to watch that. Besides, it wasn’t luck, it was f*cking fate. He had the town’s best interests at heart; he would keep it safe.





“Did you hear about Jaden? Jaden Berney?”

Tommy shook his head, and Jeff smiled, a weird, excited smile. “I knew him, kind of. He moved here last year. Ninth grader? They think some pervert got him. His mother thought he ran off, like, a week ago? But some other little kid disappeared, day before yesterday, ten years old. Another boy. You think it was that same guy off the pier?”

They were in Tommy’s room. Up until five minutes ago, he’d been alone in his room with the door locked, surfing the net for pictures of naked girls. Not the gross stuff; he didn’t want to see all their…their parts, but the pretty girls, the smiling ones that weren’t wearing much and seemed to be looking at him while they smiled. He’d looked around for stuff every day, lately. Sometimes for way longer than he realized.

Thinking about the guy on the pier in connection to his own jerking off made him feel uncomfortable. Not the same thing at all, except it was the exact same thing. Not in the same way, then. Tommy shrugged. “Maybe, I dunno.”

“I bet it was. I read this thing once about a guy who ate little kids, you believe that? Like in the twenties or something, his name was Albert Fish. He molested them and then he ate them.”

Jeff’s inappropriate smile had widened. Tommy had no idea what to say. He’d been looking at a girl named Angel and playing with his second boner of the day, and then there was his mom’s voice, calling up that Jeff had come by and he’d had to scramble to put everything away and unlock the door before they came up the stairs. It was weird; Dad had given him “the talk” when he was ten, about how jerking off was normal and sex and stuff, but it was still totally embarrassing. He still felt a sick thrill of something like guilt every single time he did it. He didn’t even like to think the word masturbation; jerking off seemed way less disgusting than masturbating. He couldn’t imagine getting caught by his mother, how terrible that would be. Especially now, with what she’d been doing.

“Maybe that guy is like that; maybe that’s where Jaden and that ten-year-old ended up. Like, boiled, on his stove.”

“That’s gross,” Tommy said, with a measure of real disgust.

Jeff nodded happily and abruptly changed the subject, catching him off guard. “Yeah. Hey, you weren’t at the raid this morning. I didn’t see you last night, either. Where you been?”

Tommy felt himself flush. “Here. I’ve been busy, is all.”

“Doing what?”

Tommy opened his mouth, not sure what would come out. “What the f*ck do you care? You taking a survey?”

“Jeez, lighten up,” Jeff said. “You know the carnival’s coming in next week? They’ve got a Zipper and an Octopus and this giant slide, you go down on a little mat. They’ve got a bunch of baby shit, too, but it’s mostly pretty cool. Everybody goes.”

Tommy wanted to ask if Jenny Todd was going, but he already knew it didn’t matter. He wasn’t even an actual teenager yet, and she was perfect. “What’s a Zipper?”

“You know, one of those cage-spinner Ferris wheel things, only it’s like more tall instead of round?”

Tommy nodded. There was something like that at the fairgrounds outside Tacoma, only they called it the Terminator. He’d stood in line for it twice, but chickened out before he got to the front. Not like he’d tell Jeff, who’d call him a p-ssy.

I’d go on with Jenny, though, he thought, and that was exciting, but then he thought about the man on the pier again, and then his mom’s voice not five minutes ago, calling up the stairs, her voice all sweet and motherly while he was jerking off, masturbating. The swoops between sexual excitement and total disgust with himself were dizzying, which made him feel angrier for some reason. Why should he care if Jeff thought he was a p-ssy? F*ck him.

“Two years ago, this guy Clark, he was a senior? He was shit-faced on beer, right? Him and his girlfriend started spinning, up at the top? And he threw up and puke went everywhere; it was like this watery beer-puke, and they couldn’t stop spinning for some reason, so they got soaked, and so did like six other people in the cages all around theirs. Some of them threw up, too.”

“Nice,” Tommy said, smiling in spite of himself. “Think I’ll skip that one.”

Jeff nodded. “No shit, those cages are gross. Hey, there’s these guys up there every year, though, the carnies? There’s a couple of them that’ll sell you drinks. There’s this one guy, he carries a big flask around full of tequila, for a buck you can take a drink.”

Tommy grimaced. “You know how many diseases carnies must have?”

Jeff laughed, but that creeping smile was behind it. “Yeah, but they could buy us beer, though. And my mom’s got some stuff she wouldn’t miss.”

Tommy didn’t say anything. He’d had a sip of beer a couple of times; it tasted like soda made out of moldy bread. Nasty. Ditto with the tiny glass of rotten-grape juice his mom let him drink last Christmas. Having the option, though…that was interesting.

“And there’s this other guy, he’s like the manager or something? He’s always trying to get guys to go in his trailer. He says he’s got a bunch of porno, and all kinds of liquor. And pot.”

Tommy made a face. “That’s—nobody ever does it, do they? That’s freaky.”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s mostly older guys, like sixteen, seventeen. I know some guys who did it, and they said he just wanted to brag about all these women he f*cked and how he ran a nightclub about a million years ago, and all these people he beat up. He says f*ck like every other word, they said, and he says he killed people for money, twice. He’s old, though.”

“Oh.” Tommy wasn’t sure what to say to that. That didn’t sound so safe, but they were too young, anyway.

“We should go up there, when they’re setting up,” Jeff said, as though he was just thinking of it, but Tommy could tell they’d gotten to the reason for Jeff’s visit. “It takes them like two days; there’s always kids going up there after dark, running around in the woods, drinking. It’s like an unofficial party.” He leered. “Jenny Todd will definitely be there, with her equally hot cousin, Allison. They hang out with a bunch of girls.”

Alcohol, parties, girls, after dark. Jenny. Even thinking about going, he felt scared and excited…and the fear was losing ground fast. He was practically a teenager already. And everyone was always saying how much older he seemed, because he was smart. He could handle himself, and it wasn’t like he was going anywhere alone. Still, there was no way in hell his mother would let him go, even if she hadn’t heard anything about kids disappearing. Which she probably had, by now.

The lure was too great. He’d find a way. “Yeah, whatever. Sounds good.”

Jeff raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

“You gonna get permission?”

“Are you?”

Jeff’s grin was wicked, and Tommy thought his probably looked the same. That was how it felt, anyway.





Amanda sat on John’s back porch alone and smoked and drank iced coffee. John was at work and Bob was in the study, still on the phone to one of his so-far-useless reporter friends, trying to drum up interest in the plight of Port Isley. There were news vans scurrying back into town, but Bob only knew newspaper people, it seemed, mostly in Seattle, and almost everyone he’d talked to had blown him off as cracked or drunk or both.

It was day three of living at John’s, and she felt restless—but strangely, not so bad. Her life had just gotten too f*cked up, she figured; she maybe wasn’t capable of freaking out anymore. At least not with any real enthusiasm. She felt daydreamy all the time, distant from herself, wandering around John’s house, randomly jotting down images and ideas, reading his books, napping. Maybe she was in shock, but since John had first led her up the stairs to the guest room, she’d felt…it wasn’t like anything had really clarified, but she felt better, like she was taking a step in the right direction. She couldn’t describe it exactly. It was like…like waking up afraid because you can’t remember if the test is today, and then realizing that you studied for it already, that there is nothing to worry about; she felt like that, that warm, sleepy relief like she’d done the right thing and could feel good about it. That was stupid, probably, but there it was. She was still afraid when she thought about Eric, but compared to her freak-fest on poetry night, she was, like, relaxed, practically.

Sid had been great about everything, even Eric showing up and shouting for her on their doorstep the night after the poetry reading, the same day she’d sneaked out. John had talked to him, explained how it was—leaving out the psychic stuff, obviously—and Devon’s uncle had promptly volunteered to file a police report and take turns “sitting” with Amanda, although so far it hadn’t come to that. Sid had put deadbolts in, too, which made her feel better. She didn’t know if Devon knew what had happened, but she supposed he’d find out. She didn’t spend much time thinking about it, actually, which she recognized as unlike her. Normally, her reality kind of revolved around Devon, but he, too, seemed distant, too far away to worry about, to wonder if he would call, to wonder what she would say. As for the police report, the cops were all busy organizing and running a search for that little kid; Bob had been giving her updates. Following up on a teenage summer kid yelling his girlfriend’s name wasn’t going to be topping any lists anytime soon. She felt bad the trouble everyone had to go through, apologetic as hell, but she also recognized that guilt wasn’t going to help anything. She kept her self-torture to a minimum where she could.

On Eric, there was no word. He hadn’t popped up anywhere since making a scene at Sid’s. John had been to his house twice in two days, and his father had been as clueless as he’d seemed when she’d met him, insisting that Eric was being a typical teenage boy. When John had continued to push the idea that Eric might need help, Mr. Hess had finally taken offense and ordered John to leave his family alone. Both times that John had been there, Eric had conveniently been “out.” Lurking in the basement, probably. Working himself into stalker mode. It was bizarre that all her feelings for Eric had turned bad so fast, the change so seemingly complete. She didn’t miss him or moon over happier times; they’d f*cked a bunch and he’d turned out to be a creep; the rest of it was just…just her believing what she’d wanted to believe, and that was all.

She tilted her head back, heard the sound of the wind crashing high up in the trees, but there was only the barest of breezes across the deck. It was nice here, and for some reason she thought she wouldn’t be staying very long, so she wanted to enjoy it. She’d been having the oddest daydreams, some of which bled into her sleep, becoming images as she dozed out. Flying over a vast forest of dark trees in a tiny plane; walking through a desert at night. They were interesting…although if her daydreams were mild, she still saw most of the same repeating images as before in her deeper dreams, which made sleep not so restful. Some of them getting brighter, the details changing, some fading. They were all still frightening to her—she thought that they all meant death, but she didn’t know for certain. The big fire she kept seeing, maybe there were people inside the building, maybe not. The vignette with the sobbing mother and the small baby in the tub, she hated that one, there was no way around whose life was in peril, and she felt helpless and terrible when she heard the high-pitched wails of the baby and became the slumped, pale mother with tears of total abject misery coursing down her cheeks, her heart a dead black hole of exhaustion. She tried not to think of that one if she didn’t have to. The kid in the darkened hall of mirrors, he was scared, he thought someone was after him…and she was now certain that he was right. She sensed a sick longing somewhere in the dark, a rapid heartbeat, sweating hands. With that kid—those kids—disappearing, the distressing nature of the image had taken a definitely ominous tone.

There’d been other changes. At one time there had been a clear image of a woman with blood in her hair, smiling, but that one had stopped broadcasting or whatever; she hadn’t seen it in nearly two weeks. John had suggested that perhaps circumstances had changed, that the incident may have been bypassed somehow, but Amanda didn’t think so. She’d have bet on the woman having already had her bloody, smiling night, and it sucked, not knowing what had happened, how things had turned out. It was disappointing, like watching a season finale cliffhanger for a show that didn’t exist anymore, and she was thinking that she was going to have to get used to that if her newfound abilities stayed with her. She thought that they would, she hoped they would, because in spite of all the trouble, the fear, all the promise of future disappointment, she was already deeply attached to having superpowers. Not just because it was cool, but because she felt like big things would have to happen for her now: no waitress job, no average life. Maybe that was selfish, but she couldn’t help it.

Her psychic ability hadn’t grown, exactly, but it seemed to be sharpening, picking up subtleties of feeling since she’d moved into John’s guest room. There was this new thing when she was awake sometimes, these brushes of…of something that didn’t come from her, and she didn’t think they felt like anything from Bob or John, either, pretty much the only people she’d seen in three days. It was like this fluttering of chaos that edged around her wandering thoughts, something about numbers or mirrors…prisoners. Shadows. Lines of numbers. She couldn’t explain, nor could she quite catch hold of the threads to follow them anywhere. She didn’t think it was Eric…it didn’t feel like anything she’d ever felt before.

John seemed to be stuck in a kind of purgatory of inaction, frozen by too many considerations, by his romance with Sarah. He rarely said her name, but he thought it all the time, Sarah, Sarah. He’d told Amanda three or four times now that things would work out, but she could see that he didn’t have any real faith in that himself, let alone a plan on how to get from here to there. He spent his nights away. Even without being able to pick up his feelings and thoughts (which she could now, sometimes; it took only the smallest effort), Amanda could tell that his mind was elsewhere. It was in the way he couldn’t seem to concentrate, didn’t seem to be listening.

Bob was drinking less, she could tell, but he actually looked older since the paper had been canceled. His obsessive interest in reading old newspaper articles online took up most of his time. They had come up with the idea of calling his old cronies and telling them about the sharp rise in violence and general wackiness around town, hinting at a chemical spill, but the only people who had even been willing to listen had been other retirees, no one still on the job. She was starting to think that they were all just spinning their wheels, killing time until everything changed…which she felt would happen soon, but she didn’t know why she felt that way, if it was psychic or just some worst-case-scenario feeling. Everything was going to change, though, suddenly and completely. Like, maybe she was going to die. She didn’t know, but thought that panic was at least as useless as guilt.

Amanda took a sip of the coffee and adjusted her shades. Most of John’s back deck was shadowed by the park’s trees, but it was near noon; the sun laid a bright strip over the bleached and weathered wood. She leaned back against the heat of the chair. Every exposed part of her was positively greasy with SPF thirty—in shorts and a tank, that was a lot of sunblock, but she still wouldn’t stay out long. Too much direct sunlight made her feel dizzy, like her brain had turned to bleached mush, and it usually gave her a headache. Still, sunlight was supposed to be good for brain hormones or something, and she could chain smoke, and compared to Grace’s apartment, being up against the trees was nice, it was so quiet…

“Amanda.”

She sat up, her heart freezing in her chest—and there he was, Eric Hess, leaning against the porch rail on the wooded side. His face—his expression was angry, but his voice was tight with pain.

“What the f*ck, huh? You tell me to make coffee, then f*cking disappear?”

Amanda could yell for Bob; he’d come running. Or she could probably make it inside and shut the door; he’d have to jump the rail that’ll take him a few seconds, go go—

“Why are you looking at me like that? What did I do?” Eric’s voice was plaintive. “What did I do, can you at least tell me that?”

“You scared me,” Amanda said, carefully getting out of the chair, edging behind it. “I got scared. I have to go now, OK?”

His fingers tightened on the railing. “No! I’m losing my f*ckin’ mind here, don’t leave!”

“You’re scaring me now,” she said, as evenly as she could. She continued to back toward the sliding glass doors. “I’m sorry I ran away. I’m crazy. Totally nuts. Decide that I’m a crazy bitch and drop it, please, OK?”

“Drop what? What are you doing?” Eric leaned forward and heaved himself up on one lean arm, swinging his legs easily over the rail, the movement taking about a second, and he was on the deck, he was close enough that she could see his cracked lips and bloodshot eyes and feel his need, pouring out of him like the heat of the day.

“I’m—we’re broken up now,” Amanda said. “I’m sorry, but it’s over.”

“What did you see? What scared you?”

“What don’t you get about it’s over?” She took another sliding step back, and he held up both of his hands.

“Don’t leave,” he said. “I won’t come near you, OK? Just—don’t do this. It’s not over. I love you.”

“Oh, shit,” she said.

“I love you, and I know you love me,” he said.

He hadn’t come any closer, and she was drawn in despite her fear. She wanted him to understand, to leave her alone without being angry about it. “No, listen, you think you do, but it’s whatever’s happening here; it’s the same thing that makes me see things about people—it’s making people feel things too much. We talked about this, I know we did. Think about it. Have you ever been like this before?”

“I love you,” he said again. “I don’t just think it, I feel it. We feel it, when we’re together, when I’m f*cking you, and the way you look into my eyes…we belong together.”

He stared at her, his gaze strangely flat—and then he had closed the distance between them, faster than she could think, and his arms were around her, and he was holding her, trying to kiss her.

Amanda turned her head, drew a breath, and screamed, loud and long. Eric’s arms loosened, and she tripped over her own feet trying to get away and shouted again as she fell, thumping heavily to the deck, whacking the shit out of her right elbow. Behind her, the glass door was shoved open.

“Hey! Get away from her!” She couldn’t see Bob, but he sounded mean and strong. She felt the vibrations of his shoes on the hot wood beneath her legs and her butt. Her sunglasses had gotten knocked off when she fell, so Eric seemed overexposed, like in a picture, as he turned to confront Bob, a snarl of rage contorting his white features. Whatever he saw changed his mind. He backed away, looking at Amanda, his expression going tortured, sick, lost…furious. He turned and ran, off the deck and into the park.

A few running steps against dirt and then nothing, a wind in the trees. Amanda fell onto her back, cradling her funny bone, looking up at her savior—who was holding a handgun, still pointed the way Eric had run. It was a revolver, had the cylinder thing in the middle, and Bob’s finger was on the trigger.

“Jesus, Bob, where’d you get that?”

Bob pointed the weapon straight up and looked down at Amanda. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine,” she said, and sat up. “Didn’t know I had Cowboy Gunpants as my babysitter.”

He held out his hand and helped her pull herself to her feet. “Yup. I get a senior discount on the ammo. You might want to sit down for a minute.”

“I’m fine,” she said again, and then felt her legs go wobbly all at once, like her muscles decided to lie back down. Bob caught her, supporting her against his body. He was strong and smelled like whiskey and soap, and it occurred to her for the first time that he was a man, not just an old person. The realization was surprisingly unsettling.

“Did I not just tell you to sit down?”

“You suggested it,” she mumbled, and took a breath, and willed her legs to be legs again. The mental command worked well enough for her to be able to step away from him a second later, as soon as she could. “I’m OK, thanks.”

“What happened? Did he attack you?” He tucked the gun into his belt.

Amanda shook her head. “No, he was confused. I tried to talk to him, but he was—he’s already down…”

In Crazy-town, she’d been about to say, one of Devon’s quips, but the thought ran deeper. The feeling. She chased it, suddenly sure that it was important. From the beginning, she’d felt a sense of inevitability about the things she saw, like they were supposed to happen. She felt that now, stronger than ever.

What if they really are? What if no matter what they tried or did, all of it was supposed to happen, so it would happen anyway, like Devon had once proposed about a billion years ago? She’d run from Eric in the first place to avoid the scenario she’d created by running. Even thinking it hurt her brain a little, it was like one of those Escher drawings, but did that mean anything?

No, no, it can be changed. She’d seen Devon dead, and he wasn’t, he wasn’t going to be, that image was gone because he’d left town, he’d put himself out of the picture.

Does it have to be an all or nothing deal? Isn’t it possible that only some things are fated to be?

She blinked and felt that flutter of chaos she’d been picking up for the last few days, of numbers, lines, mirrors, grow stronger, become like a color she could almost see, shadow, balance, shell sea…

“For every darkness, there is light,” she said.

“Right,” Bob said, looking at her with some concern. “We should go inside.”

Amanda blinked again and felt some concern herself as the weird intensity faded. She was getting a headache, and she was suddenly quite sure that she was fated to see Eric again, that there was nothing she could do to avoid another confrontation…and she’d just made things way worse with him.

“Yeah, OK.”

Whatever limbo she’d been in, she felt like things were going to start happening, fast, and she’d better wake the f*ck up if she wanted to make any difference. She followed Bob inside feeling scared and alone.





He ran through the woods until his hurting lungs finally slowed him down, his heart torn in two, his throat stuffed with horrible hard stones that he couldn’t swallow. He finally doubled over, hands on his knees, regretting every cigarette he’d ever smoked. He felt like shit, like dog shit scraped on a curb, and what the f*ck game was she playing, anyway? He’d known she was a freak, but she was his freak; he loved her, he took care of her; what was she trying to do? She’d been touchy all day before the piss fiasco at that theater, she’d avoided him on the way home—then she’d climbed out a f*cking window to get away from him. And f*cking moved, and sent that shrink to talk to his father, for f*ck’s sake. He’d had to play it all wounded-teen-runs-to-father-for-advice or risk being sent back to Boston to stay with his batty Aunt Marla until his mother came home, and what the f*ck had happened?

He drew in great painful gasps of air, seeing her on the deck, her skin glowing white in the sun. She was so beautiful, so amazing and beautiful, there was no way she was going to leave him, no way in hell. She couldn’t just f*ck him and make him love her and then tell him it was over; that was bullshit, f*cking bullshit, and she didn’t even mean it. She loved him. She couldn’t have done the things they’d done together if she didn’t.

He needed to get her alone so they could talk. If he could just talk to her, show her how he felt, he’d make her see. He would talk to her. He told himself that they’d laugh about this someday, but there was a very hurt, very angry part of him that would never, ever laugh about what she’d done, how she’d run away from him like he was that f*ckhole who was doing her mother, like he was dog shit. What the f*ck, she was scared, what did that mean?

“F*cking bitch,” he panted, and he didn’t mean that, not really; she was his soul mate, and she had freaked out because she was a freak, but that was just part of her. He could accept that, he would, and they’d get past this. He just needed to talk to her, alone, that was all, a measly f*cking few minutes without having a f*cking gun shoved in his face, and everything would be fine.

There was still almost three weeks of his “family” vacation left, before he went home, but his father had been making noise about going back to California early; the new missus was getting bored. Eric had already planned to have Amanda come with him, at least long enough for him to pack up his shit and move wherever she wanted to go—Seattle, California, Africa, he didn’t care. He hadn’t been prepared to take no for an answer, let alone f*ck off.

She doesn’t mean it.

His breath caught for just a second. He thought about the way her face had changed when she’d been trying to convince him that he wasn’t totally in love with her. He’d seen the compassion, the pain in her face, for him. And when he’d touched her, the hesitation, the heat of her skin against his…she still loved him, and wanted him. Maybe those two numbf*ck grown men she was playing detective with, maybe they’d been filling her head with shit. She didn’t know them, didn’t know what their motivations were. They were probably hot for her ass too, even the oldster, Mr. Lone Ranger.

He stood up, still breathing deeply, the idea catching hold, confirming what he suddenly firmly believed—she was being brainwashed; those f*ckers were brainwashing her. It was like that Stockhold syndrome or whatever it was called, where the hostage identified with the kidnapper or terrorist or whatever. That was why she was scared; that was why she’d screamed.

They’re probably with her all the time, working on her, f*cking with her mind…watching her. He felt a physical revulsion, thinking of either of those old men touching her, putting their hands on her smooth, soft skin…

He saw a tree he could lean against and did so, closing his eyes, thinking of her little sounds and sighs when he had his hands on her, in her, that first time on the floor, when she’d parted her legs for him. He remembered the tremble of her creamy white thighs, the crimp of hair against his lips, the smell of her sex against his mouth…

Eric’s poor, thrashed dick stirred to life. He’d jerked it for better than an hour last night and then again this morning, tortured by these sudden memories, only days old. He’d kept losing his erection, wondering where she was, why she wasn’t with him, but then kept pressing and pulling anyway, kind of liking the unpleasant, electric feel of fraying nerves, and now he felt like he’d f*cked a pinecone. He couldn’t help himself, thinking of her. The magic of the two of them, flesh to flesh, that was way too good to give up on so easily. He could remind her…and maybe break whatever spell the reporter and the doctor had cast over her. She was psychic, he believed that, and he’d let her look inside him, see how pure his love for her was. He didn’t like the psychic thing; he’d felt that she was too distracted from him, which made him feel so desperately unhappy that he could only think to pick a fight with her to get her focus back to what was important. He’d use it, though, to convince her of his feelings. He just had to get past her self-appointed guardians…

Dad had a gun. He kept it on the boat, wrapped in a piece of oily leather, under the back bench. A .22 semiautomatic.

Eric straightened his shoulders and started to walk, his breathing finally calming. The shade of the trees was cool, the path speckled with floating shafts of bright sunlight, like some cheesy postcard. It smelled like summer camp to him—the only time as a kid that he’d ever bothered with nature, when he’d been stuck there by his parents for two months every year—like green things and mold and dirt, a smell he associated with loneliness. He felt ravaged; running away, believing that she really wanted him to never see her again, that had been like running through hell, but the devastation was slipping away, becoming a call to action. He got it now. She put up a hard front, but she was a damaged little thing, hiding behind the armor of shit childhood, trying to survive. Kicked out, desperate, her future uncertain…how hard would it be for a couple of unscrupulous f*ckers to start convincing her of things?

It wasn’t over. He hadn’t lost her, only parted from her for a moment, and realistically, all the great lovers went through turmoil; their dynamic was too powerful, the forces around them too great even to be overcome in some cases. The sophomore English final had been on Romeo and Juliet; he’d written an essay about how they’d had to die so that their love would remain perfect…

No one was going to die; he didn’t even know why he’d thought that. No one was going to die because if he was holding the gun, he’d be in control. He’d make them promise him an hour with her, that was all, away from their influence, and then he’d make her f*cking listen to him, and he would listen to her, and she’d see that there was nothing to be scared of, that he would take care of her. He’d give her the gun; he could see him handing it over to her, see her drop it on the floor so she could lean in to kiss him. They could make love and then decide where they would go, start dreaming the life they wanted together, and maybe John and Bob would come back with the cops or whatever, but once she was with him again, once they’d reconnected, none of that shit would matter. He would be happy.

Still, better to avoid confrontation…he’d hang around, wait for an opportunity. He’d finally convinced the old man that he’d needed some alone time, and his father had been only too happy to comply, letting up on the let’s-pal-around scenario after Eric had tearfully, angrily confessed that his girlfriend was breaking his heart, could they please stay, he had to talk to her. Dad had hugged him in a stiff, movie-like way and promised to give him his space. As though he wanted to do anything else; he and Jeannie didn’t even leave a note most days anymore, they were just gone, shopping down the coast or out on the boat or just locked in their bedroom, humping. Being rich, bored a*sholes, pretending that he didn’t exist. He could wait for a long time. And she’d go out, eventually, or both of them would leave, and maybe the gun didn’t have to come out at all.

He smiled, thinking of their reunion, of watching her doubts fall away, of being trusted again, and was still smiling when he passed an elderly couple a few moments later, and he heard one of them say something about young love.

His smile widened. That would be them, someday. They would be together for as long as they both lived.