Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (7 page)

When Devon remained silent for several
seconds, I cracked one eye open and peered at her through a small
slit. My best friend’s eyes were wide and her lips were slightly
parted in surprise. “I know it was a hallucination,” I said
quickly. The statement felt like a lie; the creature’s orb-like
eyes were burned into my mind. I could feel its fingers around my
neck, cutting off my air supply. My breathing became quick and
shallow as the previous night’s panic returned.

Devon took my hand in hers. “In times
of extreme stress, people often think they see things that aren’t
there,” she said quietly. “It’s totally normal.”

I nodded my head. “I know. It just
felt so real.”

“Remember when Liz hit me in the head
with that eight-meter shot in the game against South Westwood last
year? And I had that horrible concussion? When the trainer asked me
my name, I kept telling him it was Aurora, like the Disney
princess. Hitting your head that hard really screws with your
brain. Maybe my mom should check you out.”

I laughed for real this time. “You
never told me that.”

Devon shrugged. “Yeah, because
seriously, who thinks they are Sleeping Beauty? Sounds crazy,
right?”

“Not crazier than seeing a mermaid in
Caswell Lake.”

“My point is that you probably have a
concussion. I’m not surprised you think you saw something down
there. Who knows? Maybe you did. That chick that went missing last
year, Andrea something or other, she was last seen at the lake with
her boyfriend.”

Great
, I thought.
A dead girl tried to
strangle me
. I preferred the version of
the story where an imaginary mermaid attacked me
instead.

Chapter Four

As promised, my mother
called several times throughout the afternoon and evening. Dad,
though, didn’t call the house phone. I checked my cell’s voice mail
five more times, but he hadn’t left any more messages. Devon and I
watched both Red Box movies, finished the pizza, and ordered
cheesecake for dessert from
First
Wok
.

“He’ll call,” Devon mumbled as I
checked my messages for the sixth time. We had retreated to my
bedroom and were on the verge of falling asleep.

“He already did,” I told
her.

“What? When?” Devon sounded a lot more
awake now. “If he called, then why do you keep checking your
messages and watching the phone like a girl desperate for a prom
date?”

“Last night. Dad called last night
while we were at the lake, and he promised to try again today. Only
my cell still isn’t working, so I changed the outgoing message to
let him know it was okay to call the house,” I
explained.

The mechanical voice in my ear told me
I had no new messages. I replaced the receiver and settled back
against the pillows.

“He’ll call,” Devon repeated, placing
her hand over mine.

I smiled at my best friend, so glad
she was there. Devon was one of the few people who knew all the
details of my parents’ divorce and that it was a court order that
kept Dad away, not a choice he made. Even Elizabeth thought Dad was
a deadbeat who’d basically abandoned us. It was easier to let
people believe the rumors than explain the truth. Less
embarrassing, too.

“He said he needed to talk to me,” I
confided. “And he sounded sort of…nervous. Do you think he’s
okay?”

Devon’s tired eyes turned sad as she
squeezed my hand. “I’m sure he’s fine, Eel. He probably just misses
you. Besides, he’s a history professor. Not exactly the type of
profession that breeds trouble, ya know?”

I laughed. Dad’s job was sort of
boring. The couple of lectures I’d sat through as a child put me to
sleep. “You’re right. I’m sure it’s nothing.” I rolled over and
turned the bedside lamp off. “Night, Dev.”

“Night, Eel.”

While I agreed with Devon about Dad
being worried about me, and about his profession being less than
exciting, I couldn’t shake the nagging sensation that his message
was about more than just missing me. The urgency in his voice said
more than his words had. On the other hand, he hadn’t called back
yet, so maybe I was overanalyzing the entire situation.

“Stop obsessing, Eel,” Devon groaned.
“Go to sleep. He’ll call tomorrow.”

I closed my eyes and took her
advice.

That night I dreamt of the boy from
the lake.

****

He stood amidst a crowd of
cheering fans, hands shoved into the front pockets of well-worn
jeans. The hood of his blue sweatshirt was pushed back, and the
wind blew chestnut strands across his rosy cheeks. His intense gaze
bore into the back of my head as I took my position on the
field.

A shrill whistle pierced
the air, and girls started moving around me. I went through the
motions, following the ball from one girl’s stick pocket to the
next, but I kept stealing glances at the stands, at him. A girl
with blue-black hair rammed my shoulder, sending me careening to
the Astroturf. I blinked up in surprise. The girl wore a red and
black Mt. St. Mary’s uniform and I knew her: Jamieson Wentworth.
Instead of doing the sportswomanly thing and helping me to my feet,
she sneered down at me with icy blue eyes full of
hatred.

“Pay attention to where
you’re going,
Captain
,” she spat, and ran off down the field.

I stumbled to my feet and
jogged slowly after her. When I glanced over my shoulder, a hooded
figure was walking across the track that surrounded the field, his
back to me. Suddenly he turned, as if sensing I was watching. The
hood shielded his face, but I knew it was him. A voice, his voice,
echoed in my mind. “I’ll see you soon.” The words weren’t
comforting. They held a promise of pain and every nightmare I’d
ever imagined
.

****

I woke with a start, my heart thudding
against my ribcage and a line of sweat beading across my forehead.
The clock on my bedside table read 4:00 a.m. Devon was still
sleeping beside me. I crept out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom
adjoining my bedroom, careful not to wake her. Once inside, I
splashed water on my face. It took me a minute to recall the
details of the dream. The images were hazy, like I’d seen them
through a fog. The harder I concentrated, the fewer details I
remembered.

“It’s nothing,” I told my reflection
quietly. “He will not show up at your game against Mt. St. Mary’s.”
I laughed. This was so ridiculous. I was giving my bathroom mirror
a pep talk. Of course the boy wasn’t miraculously going to turn up
at a girl’s lacrosse game in Westwood.

I left the bathroom and
crawled into bed, much calmer now than moments before. I carefully
lifted the receiver on my antique phone and dialed my voice mail.
One new voice mail. My heart lifted. “Dad,” I breathed against the
handset.
Maybe he left a number where I
can reach him this time,
I
thought.

“Endora Lee?” a voice that definitely
was not my father’s said in my ear. “Endora Lee, this is Kannon. We
met last night at Caswell Lake. I was the guy who helped you out of
the water.” My hand tightened around the receiver and my jaw
dropped open. Panic and pleasure warred for dominance of my
emotions. How did he get this number?

“I hope you don’t think
calling you out of the blue like this is too weird or anything.
What am I saying? Of course this is weird, but I really wanted to
talk to you about what happened last night. You can call me back
any time, night or day,” the boy, Kannon,
continued
. He left his cell number,
but I was too stunned to write it down. “I’ll see you soon,” he
said then the mechanical voice was back telling me if I wanted to
hear the message again, press three.

I pressed three and
listened to Kannon’s message a second time. I’ll see you soon? That
was the same thing he’d said to me in my dream. Coincidence? Maybe.
But
Agent Gibbs and I,
we don’t believe in coincidences.

After replaying Kannon’s message two
more times, I finally disconnected and lay back down against the
pillows. The guy definitely had my attention. Two nights in a row
now, he’d starred in my dreams. Or was it my nightmares? Both
times, I’d awoken with my pulse racing and drenched in sweat. Was
my subconscious trying to tell me something? Maybe I needed to
research dream interpretation. Too bad the details I could remember
were few and far between.

“Eel?” Devon said sleepily. “Are you
okay? You’re shaking the bed.”

I stilled. “Sorry, Dev. It’s nothing.
I just had a bad dream. Go back to sleep.” Had a bad dream? What?
Was I five? I hoped she was too tired to ask what the dream was
about or ask why I was listening to my voice mail in the wee hours
of the morning.

“Okay,” she mumbled.

Several seconds passed before Devon’s
breathing evened out, signaling she’d fallen back to
sleep.

Life would be so much
easier if my cell phone worked
, I thought.
That way, getting answers to my questions wouldn’t require actually
talking to Kannon – I could simply text him. But I was eighteen
now, an adult, and it was time to start acting like one. I glanced
at the clock again. 4:12 a.m. Probably best to wait until a decent
hour. First thing tomorrow, though, I would call him and put to
rest all of this stupid obsessing.

Despite my vow of maturity, twelve
hours later I had yet to pluck up the courage to dial Kannon’s
number. Instead, I sat at my desk, feet propped on the edge of my
bed, staring at the antique phone and willing it to ring. I had
spent most of the day rehearsing what I would say when we did
finally talk. Unfortunately, no matter how I phrased the question,
there was no sane way to ask whether he’d had to pry a mermaid’s
fingers from my neck before pulling me to safety.

“This is stupid,” I said aloud to the
empty room.

“What’s stupid?” my mother’s voice
responded.

I jumped, nearly falling off the
chair. “Don’t you knock?” I demanded, my tone harsher than I’d
meant on account of the near heart attack she’d given
me.

My mother’s thin eyebrows shot
skyward. “This is my house, Endora. I don’t need to
knock.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, feeling stupid.
“Do you need something?”

“I wanted to give you this.” My mother
held out a cell phone in my direction. “You really should have one,
so I had my old phone reprogrammed.”

I softened. Mom was trying. “Thanks,”
I said and crossed the room to take the phone.

I hugged my mother. It was awkward at
first. She wasn’t really the hugging type, but she relaxed after a
second and wrapped her arms around me.

“Try not to break this one,” she said
when she pulled away, but a small smile tugged at the corners of
her mouth so I knew she was teasing me.

“I’ll do my best,” I told
her.

“Well, I will be downstairs if you
need any help with your paper.” Mom didn’t wait for my response.
She turned, closed my door, and padded down the hallway.

I returned to my desk and placed the
phone next to my computer. My mother’s gift, while appreciated,
took away the only excuse I had left for not returning Kannon’s
call. But, since I’m a great procrastinator, I bought myself a
couple more minutes by changing my outgoing message back to the
original so Dad wouldn’t call the house and risk encountering my
mother for nothing.

The instant I hit the end button, the
phone rang in my hand. My heart skipped a beat when instead of a
name or number, “BLOCKED” appeared on the cell’s screen. I
swallowed thickly and pushed answer.

“Hello?” My voice was barely above a
whisper.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

“Dad?” I nearly wept at the sound of
his voice.

“It’s me, tootsie. How are you? How is
eighteen treating you?”

“Good,” I lied. Since entering
adulthood, nothing that had happened could be termed
“good.”

“Do anything special for your
birthday?” Dad sounded calm and his tone was conversational. I
thought maybe I’d imaged the fear in his message.

“Hung out with my friends,”
I told him. “Nothing too exciting. How are you?
Where
are you?”

“I’m good, sweetheart. Right now I’m
out of town doing some research. Listen, I need to talk to you
about something, but I think it would be best if we talked in
person. You have a car, right?”

I was going to see him. After nearly
five years, I was going to see my father. My chest felt like it
might explode with happiness. “I do,” I confirmed.

“Wonderful. I fly back into town on
Wednesday morning. How about we meet that evening?” Dad
asked

“Okay, yeah. Where?” I replied
eagerly.

“Do you know the Moonlight Diner? It’s
on route 140, just before you cross over from Westwood County to
Baltimore County.”

I knew the place. It was a
hole in the wall and usually had a parking lot full of Harleys. It
wasn’t the type of establishment
my
friends and I frequented, though
. “I know
it,” I told him.