Holiday left shortly after that, but not without leaving orders. Della was to call her mom, then go to bed early. She wasn’t allowed to go out for a run until she got some sleep. How Holiday knew about Della’s nightly runs was a mystery. Then again, Holiday probably knew a hell of a lot more than she let on.
Sitting in the quiet room, Della reached for her phone on the bedside table. Her stomach hurt at the thought of talking to her mom. And how she was going to convince her to say yes to going to Kylie’s.
She was still staring down at the cell and coming up short with convincing methods when her cell rang. Please be Chan? She looked at her phone. No. Ready or not, she had to talk to her mom.
Della came up with one idea: Channel the old Della, the one who wasn’t insecure in her mother’s love. The one who used to know exactly how to persuade her mom to give in. The one who hadn’t been vampire.
“Hey, Mom!” Della grimaced at the false cheeriness in her tone.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Really.”
“Holiday said you took a blow to the head.”
“It was nothing. Holiday’s pregnant, and she’s a worrywart these days. Seriously, I can’t even find where I was hit.” She reached up and flinched when she found the large lump, making it a whopper of a lie.
“You do sound good,” her mom said, and Della congratulated herself on pretending everything was okay. Maybe her mom would pretend then, too. Wasn’t a pretend relationship better than what they had lately?
“I am good.” Della bit down on her lip, debating if she should bring it up. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “Sorry about … what happened.”
“You were getting into your dad’s liquor, weren’t you?”
Frigging hell. Why had she said anything? Should she just say yes, admit to something she wasn’t guilty of doing? She opened her mouth to say yes, but instead said, “I didn’t touch his precious brandy. I wouldn’t do that. I was … I was thinking about Chan and wanted to see a picture of him. I remembered Dad kept his photo albums in there.”
Silence filled the line. Oh, crap! She’d really flubbed things up now. Her mom would probably go look at the album and see the missing picture.
“Why … why didn’t you say that? Why didn’t you tell your dad that’s what you were doing?”
“Dad just started accusing me. He’s … he’s so disappointed in me, I just … It hurt.” Still hurt.
“You should have spoken up,” her mom said.
“I’ll try to remember that.” Della realized it sounded like the conversation was winding down, and she still needed two things. “Oh, Mom. I … I was wondering if you would mind if I went to see a friend next weekend? Kylie, my roommate, you’ve met her before, she’s invited me and Miranda, my other roommate, to her house.”
“To do what?” her mom asked, suspicious.
“To hang out. You know, like I used to do with Chelsea. To go over some homework.” Her mom used to be a sucker for anything involving group study. Every date with her ex-boyfriend, Della used to bring her schoolbooks, and she’d actually open them at least once, so she didn’t have to lie when she said they’d spent “some” time with their nose in a book.
“Can’t you do that at school?”
“It’s not as fun.”
Her mom was quiet. “Can I talk with her parents?”
“I’m sure her mom would be happy to talk to you.” Della hoped.
“If her mom will talk with me, then … then…”
“Thanks,” Della said, not wanting to give her mom a chance to back out. “Oh, one more thing. We’re writing essays, and one of the things we have to discuss is where our parents went to school. Where did Dad go to high school?”
“Klein High. You don’t want to know where I went?” her mom asked, reminding Della that there had been a day her mom had been a little jealous of her relationship with her dad.
“I know where you went,” Della said. “You went to Freemont High. You told me.” And Della did remember. She remembered they used to talk a lot. She used to talk a lot with both her parents. Though, she just now realized how little her dad talked about his past. Her father was always focused on the future.
The line went silent again. “I remember the story about how you and two other girls got caught letting the frogs go before the school used them as lab experiments.”
Her mom chuckled. “I haven’t thought about that in a while.” She exhaled. “I miss you, Della.”
Tears filled Della’s eyes. Was her mom pretending, too? Or were they being real? “I miss you, too.” God, what was she saying? The last thing she needed was for her mom to try to make her come home. “Not that I don’t like it here.” Della swiped a lone tear that had escaped her lashes. “I’ll text you Ms. Galen’s number later.”
“Okay,” her mom said.
Della was about to hang up.
“Della?” her mom said in a rush.
“Yeah?”
“I know your dad is hard on you, but he…”
You’re both hard on me, Della thought, remembering when she caught her mom going through her bags, afraid she’d brought home drugs and might pass them to her sister. But Della didn’t say it.
“He what?” Della asked.
“He loves you.”
“Yeah,” Della said. Part of her almost believed it.
Almost.
By eight o’clock that night, Miranda had taken off to meet Perry. Kylie had given Della her mom’s number so Della could text it and then she had skipped out to meet Lucas. Alone, and exhausted, Della turned the lights off. Surprisingly, she did sleep. Well, until four that morning. She wasn’t sure what woke her up. She tucked her feet under the blankets to keep her toes from freezing. Okay, so maybe she did know what had woken her, and just didn’t want to admit it.
She stayed in bed, covers up to her chin, leery of the cold. Cold she hadn’t felt in a long time. Was it the ghost or was it the fever?
She feared it was the ghost. Trying to push that thought away, one equally disturbing hit and this one came with images. She saw the dead girl. Then her mind created images of her fighting a shadowy attacker. Fighting and losing.
The temptation to wake up her friends bit hard. But Della’s fear of cowardice bit harder.
Crawling out of bed, she slipped on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and jumped out the window. Since she’d slept some, she wasn’t breaking Holiday’s rules. The only downside was she couldn’t expect to run into Steve. Thoughts of him had her thinking about Jessie, the doctor’s daughter, and she ran faster.
Wanting to feel the rhythm of her feet hitting the ground, she never went to full flight. But it was fast enough. The cold wind swept away most of her negative feelings. Moving at this speed offered a sense of freedom and an escape from the humdrum stresses. No, it didn’t solve problems, but Della would take the reprieve.
In a matter of minutes, she’d made it around the Shadow Falls property twice. Her heart thumped against her chest bone, her skin tingled from the October air, and she drew in fast and hard gulps of oxygen.
Slowing down, she bent at the waist and waited for her heart to slow down. When she went to rise up, she saw a figure fall behind the trees right outside the fence. Her first thought was of Steve. In spite of her leeriness of the doctor’s daughter, in spite of her insisting she needed a slowdown between them, a warm smile filled her chest.
She lifted her face to catch some air, hoping to identify his scent. No scent came. But she saw the person shift again. This time, it didn’t remind her of Steve.
She inhaled again. The scent of woods and trees, adorned in fall colors and preparing to shed their leaves, filled her nose. Yet no other aroma.
So her smelling was acting out like her hearing, huh? But not her eyes. Through the trees she could make out the figure. Not enough to see the face, but enough to know it was male.
Was it Chase?
She started running again, got almost to the fence, and took another breath. Still no scent. “Show yourself!” she demanded, not knowing if he was friend or foe.
She considered it could be the vamp who killed the couple, or perhaps the culprit who’d hit her on the head. Her muscles tensed. She debated leaping over the fence and facing the scoundrel. But knowing it would piss off Burnett, she forced herself not to act.
“So you hide like a coward, do you?” she spit out, gripping the fence and shaking it.
The intruder darted deeper into the woods, hid for one second, and then took off. Fast. But not so fast that she didn’t recognize him.
Chapter Thirteen
His gait. His jet black Asian hair. His skinny legs.
“Chan stop. I need to talk to you,” Della called out
He didn’t stop; he ran into the woods and became nothing more than a speck in the night. “Call me!” she yelled. “I need to—”
Why the hell would he run from her? Better question, why had he come here? She’d told him numerous times that Burnett had installed an alarm. Then again, he wasn’t on the property. Not yet, but no doubt he’d been about to jump it. He had to be here to see her, right? So why hadn’t he?
Right then, she heard the telltale sound of someone flying close by. Company. So that’s why Chan had skipped out. She turned her head and breathed in the scent. This time her nose worked. Damn Chase for preventing her from getting information.
“Who’s Chan?” the panty perv’s deep, rich voice asked behind her.
No one, she longed to say, but that would have been a lie. And he would know.
“My cousin.” She turned to face him. “I thought I saw him, but he disappeared, so there’s a possibility that I could have been mistaken.” She posed the answer so it wouldn’t sound like a lie. The fact that she didn’t believe that possibility was another matter.
Chase raised his face in the air, searching for a scent. Della’s gut knotted.
“I don’t get a trace of anyone,” he said.
“Yeah, I told you, I think I was mistaken.” She formed her words so he couldn’t read her untruths, but she cut her gaze back to the woods, relieved Chan had escaped and taken his scent with him.
“Did you get a trace?” Chase asked.
“No,” she said, another truth. The fact that her ability to pick up scents had failed her again should concern her, but it worked in her favor now. But whatever this was interfering with her senses had better pass quickly … smell and hearing were part of her defense mechanism. She needed them if she was going to work for the FRU.
“Did you get a visual?” he asked.
On the inside Della grimaced. Was he testing her, trying to see if she was lying? “I did, but it came and went so fast. And since it’s not on our property, it could have been anyone.” She stared out the fence and prayed Chan wouldn’t come back. Jeepers, why had he come here to start with? Yes, she’d called him, but not once had she told him to come here.
Feeling Chase standing behind her, she wished the vamp would go. His presence annoyed her. His scent annoyed her. For some reason, she recalled their encounter earlier: You’re cute when you get mad. She continued to stare out into the dark woods. In the distance she could hear the animals at the wildlife park. An elephant. A lion.
He actually moved closer. She could sense him only a few inches from her. She could hear the sound of his heart thumping rather fast. His scent became stronger.
“Are you sure it wasn’t the same vampire who attacked and killed that couple?”
She did an about-face and stared at him through tight eyes. Standing too close, she took a step back. “How do you know about that?”
“I’m working with Burnett and the FRU on the case.”
He was working with Burnett? Hadn’t she told the camp leader she wanted to do this? “Burnett wouldn’t allow that. He barely knows you.” Besides, this was her case. She was already invested in it. She’d gotten a trace. She’d lived the images of the dead for days.
“I guess some people around here are more trustworthy than others.”
She glared at him and lit out. It was almost five now. If Burnett wasn’t up, he was about to be.
Della landed on the front porch of Holiday and Burnett’s cabin. The front door swung open, and Burnett, hair a little mussed and looking sleepy, stood there wearing only his boxers. He did have a pair of jeans in his hands as if he’d been planning on getting dressed and had run out of time.
“What is it?” he asked, his tone tight and his voice morning raspy. Then, in one swift move, he donned the jeans. Della watched his toned legs disappear into the denim.
“Have you assigned Chase to the recent FRU case?” she asked.
Burnett ran a palm over his face as if still trying to wake up. “You … you came here at this time to ask me about that?”
“Did you?”
He exhaled. “You couldn’t have waited another hour?”
She could have, but she didn’t want to. “It’s almost five, I thought you’d be up. Are you avoiding my question?” She tilted up her chin, hurt and determined to make him see his mistake. She wanted to work this case. After seeing the ugliness of what that creep did, she wanted to help bring him down.
“No, I’m choosing not to answer any questions at this time.”
“What’s wrong?” Holiday walked out wearing a robe and a sleepy expression.
Della hadn’t minded waking up Burnett, but a pregnant Holiday, looking extra tired, dinged her conscience. “Sorry, but I … ran into Chase and he told me that Burnett had assigned him to work on the new case. The case I told Burnett I wanted to work on. Now he won’t even tell me if it’s true.”