“Yeah.” He was right. Tensions had been running hot. Another punch could have been thrown, this one landing, and all hell may have broken out as others joined in the fight.
“Didn’t want to have a riot on our hands.” They walked toward the building together. She noticed some people had followed the altercation outside, including a couple of kids who’d been at Reservoir Point. Preston Tufts and Donny Justison stood on the steps, smoking cigarettes and blatantly watching her. She sensed they had been hoping for more of a fight. As they eyed her, she saw the bloodlust in their eyes, the desire for more action and violence.
“Besides,” Blackwater continued as the boys each took a final drag, then tossed their cigarettes onto the steps and ground them out, the smell of smoke still lingering as they disappeared inside, “we’re not out of the woods.”
“What do you mean?”
“I came here from the office,” he said quietly. “Wanted to tell you, the paternity test came in on Donny Justison. The lab compared his DNA sample with that of the fetus.”
She waited, feeling a cool breath of a breeze roll off the river two blocks north, but she knew from his expression what he was going to say and he confirmed it a second later:
“Donald Justison Junior is not the father of Destiny Rose Montclaire’s unborn child.”
* * *
Lindsay Cronin left the Big Foot meeting more worried than ever.
She’d seen the cops looking over at her, all of them. No matter what he said, they were all suspects, every last person who knew Destiny, and sooner or later, the truth would come out. It always did.
The cops wouldn’t let it go.
The Montclaire family wouldn’t let it go.
She drove ho
me, parked her Ford Focus on the street and, with the excuse that she was tired, went directly to her room.
Her mom checked on her, of course. Darlie Cronin was nothing if not a perfect, doting mother, and she expected great things from Lindsay. “You’ll be the first woman in the family to graduate from college,” she’d said often enough. Her eyes had always shined at the thought, and though she didn’t think her father really gave a crap if she went off to Montana State, or Oregon or even UCLA, he always went along. Lindsay knew he was worried about money; he always was. He was pushing for a junior college and Lindsay living at home, but she really didn’t think she could stand another year or two in Grizzly Falls.
But that all seemed so far away now. Her life was a cluster-fuck. Make that a major cluster-fuck.
She waited until she heard her mother go into her bedroom, where she’d probably read for an hour. A while later, she caught the sound of her father coming in the back door, his footsteps pausing in the kitchen, then trailing past her room to theirs.
She gave them another half an hour to settle in, until she could hear the rumble of her father’s snoring. She couldn’t imagine how her mother could stand it, sleeping in a queen-sized bed, right next to the old buzz saw, but at least Roy’s snores made it easy for Lindsay to leave without detection.
She created some bumps in her bed with some pillows to make it look like someone was actually sleeping in the bed. It kinda looked like a person. Then she made certain the window was unlatched and raised a little, in case, on her return, she didn’t want to risk using the door, like if one of her parents couldn’t sleep and went into the living room to watch TV or whatever.
Gathering her courage, her nerves stretched thin, she sneaked out of her room, tiptoeing down the hallway, through the living room and small entry hall, then outside and into the night. She closed the door softly behind her and dashed to her car, letting out a pent-up breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding.
She drove down her street and the next without her lights. Once she was out of the neighborhood, she flipped on the beams and headed out of town to Horsebrier Ridge, where they’d met before. Already, she was feeling a little better. He would take care of everything; he always did.
She was still panicked, of course, but less so as she drove out of town, then sped up the long road to the ridge. On this side of the hills, the road was straight, like an arrow, the climb slow and easy, but once she reached the ridge and started down the steep side, the narrow lanes twisted and looped, like a sidewinder. No one was following her on the straightaway. In fact, it was eerily lonely.
“That’s good,” she told herself and yet was spooked, her fingers circling the wheel in a death grip.
Something jumped out of the shadows and she hit the brakes, skidding a little as a coyote darted across the road. Her heart slammed into her throat. And she swore as she saw the shaggy beast stop and watch her from the ditch on the far side of the road.
“It’s nothing,” she told herself, but her pulse had skyrocketed, her case of nerves taking her anxiety to the stratosphere.
Calm down. Just take a deep breath. You’ll meet with him and he’ll make things better.
She crested the top of the craggy ridge, then started downward into the canyon. Rolling down the window, she smelled the dry forest and felt the night air seep into the car, the wind snatching at her hair. That was more like it. Cool. Calm. Rational.
She hit the brakes repeatedly, keeping her little Ford on the road, hugging the center line. Still, she met no other cars, but as she rounded the tight curves she thought she caught the flash of headlights in her rearview. Odd. The car hadn’t been behind her on the straightaway. Had it pulled behind her here in the mountains, or had she slowed so much that someone she hadn’t seen before, a speeder, had caught up to her?
She kept driving, but her concentration was distracted, caught between the empty, winding road ahead, and the quicksilver hints of headlights behind. She’d thought the beams weren’t steady because of the trees and hills and curves in the road, but maybe it was because the driver was turning his headlights on and off, trying to chase her down.
No way.