Rising Tide: Dark Innocence (The Maura DeLuca Trilogy Book 1) (24 page)

“Does she have another
dinner?  I thought she didn’t do those back to back?”

“No, so I have to get out. 
I’m going to see if Susie will go to the library downtown with me tomorrow
night.”

“Downtown?”  I could tell by
his expression he didn’t like this part of the plan.  “I hope she’ll go,
because I don’t like the idea of the two of you there at night by
yourselves.  So you going alone is definitely a bad idea.  You should
just go to the library in New West.”

Who was being overprotective
now?  I decided to ignore it.  “Well that would defeat the second
part of my plan.  I’m going to ‘steal’ my health card out of mom’s purse
and go to the clinic instead.  I have to go downtown, because the one in
New West is closed for renovations.”

“Oh wow, so you’re going to the
doctor behind her back.”  He thought about this for a moment.  “Well,
I can’t say I’m against the idea.  I don’t know why your mom would put it
off, but I can’t see a good reason for it.  You might be right, and she’s
too distracted by this new guy to see how badly you need to go.  I mean if
nothing else, for your own peace of mind…and mine, of course.  I don’t
want anything to happen to you…I can’t lose you.”  He actually looked
fearful when he said that.

I was desperate to take that
frightened countenance out of his eyes . “Another great reason to do this my
way.  Don’t worry!”  I unconsciously brought my hand up to the
screen, wishing I could touch him across all the stupid miles between us.
 “I’m going to have them do all the blood tests in existence and check
everything out, those weird, sporadic headaches, too.  It’ll be ok.” 
I was saying this to myself as much as to him.  Facing the actuality of
going to the doctor made the chance of getting bad news a rock-solid reality.

 “Oh!  She’s home!” 
I heard Caelyn’s key turn in the lock.  “Let’s cut the anmay and octorday
talk.”  I winked and smiled at my own joke.

“Cool.”  He gave me a thumbs
up.

“Mink!”  My mother called out,
as she came into my room with a small knock.  I fumed at her with my eyes,
and she remembered she wasn’t supposed to use my nickname in front of
others—any others—especially this one.  “Sorry! 
Maura
, is
that Ron?”

“Yes!”  I couldn’t help but
transmit back happy, I was so glad everything had been straightened out between
us.  Having Ron back, after I’d felt like he was being torn away from me,
gave me a good chunk of calm amid all the other wars raging inside me.

“How are you, Dear?  How’s
your mother?”

“She’s a lot better, thanks, Ms.
DeLuca.  I’m fine, too, just studying and playing a lot.”

“Well, don’t you wear yourself out
too much.”  I noticed Caelyn’s eyes had a misty, dreamy kind of look to
them.  Her dinner date must have gone well.

“I won’t,” Ron promised.

“And if you need anything, anything
at all, you let me know, ok?  You have my cell number.  You can call
anytime.”

“Thanks Ms. DeLuca.”  Ron
looked a little uncomfortable.  I knew he didn’t like the
suggestion.  The pride in his voice, when he told me how he’d been paying
all the bills not covered by his mom’s disability check, told me he felt good
about being able to take care of himself.  

“Well, don’t stay up too late,
ok?  I’m going to bed, but Maura, we can have dinner together tomorrow,
spend some time together.  Do you want to go out?”

“Actually Mom, I can’t.”  I
couldn’t help but notice Ron squirm onscreen, out of the corner of my
eye.  I shot him a quick look that I hoped would remind him to stay
cool.  “I have a huge paper due next week, and I have to go to the library
downtown tomorrow night.”  I had a weird, swirly kind of flitting in my
stomach…the product of lying to my mother’s face with her wide, green eyes on
me.

“Downtown?”  She didn’t like
it, that was apparent in her frown and the troubled furrows in her brow. 
“Why can’t you go to the library in New West?”

Apparently my skill at concocting
untruths on the fly was improving.  “Because that library sucks! 
Susie and I went there after school, and they have
nothing
!  Come
on, Mom, Susie’s going with me.”

“Ok…” she paused, thinking, “but
only if you two meet me for dinner after.”

“Mom!”

“That’s the only way to get a yes,
Maura Maxine!”

“Mom!  Not the middle name!”

Ron chuckled, “Maxine, huh?”

I turned briefly to dart my tongue
out at him, “Hush you!” 

“Well, do we have a deal?”

“Alright, alright!”  I was
turning it over in my head and realized I’d have plenty of time to get to the
clinic before I had to meet Caelyn.  And by the time I did, it’d be too
late for her to stop me.  If she just wouldn’t discover my missing health
card.  I sighed.  It was going to be another sleepless, restless
night.

The next morning I was a bundle of
nerves, knowing what I had to do.  Even though I knew Caelyn’s routine
better than my own, I was positive this would be the morning she’d come out of
the bathroom early and catch me digging in her purse.  I worked at being
quick, but that only caused me to drop her bag on the floor…again.  My
hands were shaking so bad, I couldn’t get a grip on anything.  I pulled
out her health card instead of my own, cursed under my breath, and put it back so
I could retrieve the correct one. 

You’d think I’d have gotten used to
doing things behind her back, starting several months ago with the whole
swimming incident.  I even took her driver’s license out of her wallet and
put it in my missing health card’s place—with the back facing out, so that the
incorrect replacement wasn’t as noticeable.  Once I finished burying the
card in my pack, my palms covered with a thin sheen of nervous sweat, I ran to
my room to get dressed.  I needed as little contact with my mother as
possible. 

I’d purposefully only gotten into
my bra and underwear.  When she came into my room to say goodbye, I had a
dress ready to cover my front. 

“Mom! I’m getting dressed!”  I
had my line planned.

“Mink, I’ve seen it all before,”
she rolled her eyes.  “You do realize I used to bathe you?”

“Yes! Several hundred years ago…” I
protested.  The banter was keeping my mind away from all the things I was
deceiving her about, just as I’d hoped, so that I wouldn’t do something to give
myself away.

She came over to kiss me goodbye—as
always—anyway.  “Have a good day at school, Mink.  Do your best.”

“Don’t I always?”  I gave her
my best angelic smile.

“Can’t argue with that.”  She turned
to go, “But, hey, you two stay away from Hastings Street, you got that?  I
mean it, Mink, there are prostitutes and drug dealers all over down there.”

I shuddered, and it was real…My
mother and I had driven down that street once.  “No problem!”

“7:00, ok?”

I did some mental calculating in my
head.  That should give me more than enough time.  Caelyn must have
thought I was coming up with an argument.

“If you need to go back to the
library, I’ll drive you on the weekend.”

“Ok,” I said agreeably.  It
worked, she thought she’d won, and looking satisfied, turned to leave.

“Love you,” she waved one more
time.

“I love you too.”  I really
did, despite my lying and scheming…*And,* I reminded myself, *I’m not the only
one doing it.*

Now, if
Caelyn
didn’t get pulled over for speeding or running a red light, my plan should work
just fine.  In fact, if something did turn out to be wrong with me, my
mother would probably thank me for following through with everything I was
doing.

“Sorry Maura, I can’t.  Not
tonight.  It’s my mom’s birthday and my whole family’s going out.” 
Susie looked disappointed.  She shouldn’t have.  If I were her, I’d
much rather go to a birthday dinner than sit in a boring clinic waiting room
all evening.

“It’s ok,” I assured her.  “I
don’t mind going by myself at all.  Besides, it would just be boring for
you, and I really just want to get it over with.  It’s not like it’ll be
any fun.”

“The dinner with your mom would be
fun!”  Susie was quite taken with Caelyn.

“I’ll make sure we go out with her
sometime soon then, I promise.”  I smiled back at her, hoping she wouldn’t
keep feeling bad about not going along.

So, I’d be going alone.  I
felt more than a little nervous about going downtown solo.  I’d never been
downtown anywhere before—Indiana Pennsylvania’s downtown was too small to
count.  It was a few blocks along one street. 

Susie kept looking at me all
through lunch, and I knew she was trying to gauge my true reaction, but I
managed to hide it well.  I launched into a full-scale discussion of my
plan to talk Ron into a Christmastime visit.  Everyone in our group perked
up their ears to listen…I so rarely talked about Ron, I knew it would be like I
was revealing some kind of big secret.  But as Susie walked off to her
Biology class, I watched her back as if it were a life preserver floating away
in the middle of a vast, empty ocean.

The trip downtown wasn’t bad. 
No one bothered me on the Skytrain while I read my English assignment.  As
fate would have it, our teacher actually
did
give us a rather large
research paper to complete.  Going to the larger library would now be a
necessity, so I was glad Caelyn had offered to drive me on the weekend…and I
was relieved at least part of my story had become truth.

I found the clinic easily. 
The Broadway Station Clinic was an easy walk from the Skytrain stop of the same
name.  However, the waiting room was past capacity, with people standing
against the wall sniffling and coughing into their sleeves, since there weren’t
enough chairs for everyone.  Now that schools were back in full swing,
cold and flu season was too. 

The wait was two hours!  It
wasn’t even 4:00 p.m. yet, so I’d still have almost an hour with the
doctor.  That would surely be more than enough time.  Besides, if he
ordered any blood tests, I already knew from searching the internet, I’d have
to go to a separate lab to have them done.  The Biomedical Lab, unlike the
clinic, in New West was open and would be easy to get to right after
school.  Now I just had to find a two-hour distraction close by.

The library!  Maybe I wouldn’t
have to bother Caelyn with driving downtown on the weekend, and having a few
books with me would prove that was where I’d been. 

I figured out which bus to take,
from one of the friendly drivers waiting along the side of the street near
Broadway Station.  It wasn’t far, about 10 minutes on the bus.  Once
there, I got a card first thing, in case I found books I wanted to take along,
then went to lose myself among the stacks.

I hadn’t meant to, but ended up
losing track of time and staying at the library until my two hour wait time had
nearly run out.  Jumping up from the table I was sitting at in a panic, I
knocked my chair over and almost tripped over the jutting legs, in my attempt
to avoid it.  I didn’t look up to see if anyone had witnessed my
humiliating move, but made my way to the front desk to check out a small stack
of books—three for my class assignment and two I couldn’t resist for pleasure.

I was hurrying, worried I’d lose my
spot in line at the clinic if they called for me, and I wasn’t back.  As
luck would have it, I saw the bus pull away from the stop, just as I was
running up to it.  It would be fifteen minutes before another arrived, so
I decided to walk to the next stop in an effort to keep warm.  The late
October air was pretty chilly, now that the sun had disappeared behind the
snow-capped mountains, and I was wearing a fall-weight jacket that was proving
too thin for the evening temperatures.

I walked along quickly, but I
wasn’t scared of being downtown.  It turned out to be something different
in real life, than what my mind had imagined.  There weren’t dark
characters lurking in the alleys or sides-streets, waiting to draw in innocent
victims.  Rather, the sidewalks were filled with happy people. 
Students with backpacks, laughing and joking.  Couples, arm-in-arm or
hand-in-hand, leaning into one another or whispering intimately, in a way that
made me long for Ron, my heart aching.

There were several cozy, well-lit
restaurants lining my walk.  I noticed I was hungry, and more than a
couple looked especially appealing.  I almost stopped at a cute little
coffee shop, the smell of the roasted beans making me sniff appreciatively, but
remembered the clinic and hurried on. 

I caught sight of a sushi place—I
was absolutely dying to try sushi!—as I passed by an alleyway.  It sat at
the end of the darkened space, beckoning like a beacon in a storm.  My
stomach growled fiercely, and in another moment I was having flashes of the
delicious, little ricey pieces in front of my eyes.  All I could think of
was food…well, that specific food.  Oddly enough, although I’d never tried
any of the exotic-looking rolls, I could smell every fragrance.  Essences
of avocado, fried shrimp and teriyaki-style meats invaded my senses.  Some
small, insignificant part of my brain alerted me I should be doing something
else…something important…

I took a step into the alley, like
a rabbit being lured into a carrot-filled trap.  The sight of the sushi
restaurant made me move forward.  A couple steps more, and I was enclosed
in darkness.  A wariness came over me, but then the smell and imagined
taste of sushi assaulted my senses again.  Then, they picked up on
something else.

It was the smell at first.  A
dark, delicious smell.  The best male cologne I’d ever inhaled.  I
knew whoever was wearing that alluring scent was in the alley with me. 
There were no footfalls behind me, no sound at all, besides the traffic I could
hear on the busy streets above and below me.  But I could feel a
presence—that itch in the back of your skull that screams you’re being
watched—or followed in this case.

There weren’t any doorways in which
to hide down this stretch of alley, and I’d realized, once I’d started toward
the restaurant, it was deceptively longer than it had seemed upon first
inspection.  Every time I turned around, the space behind me was empty, as
it had been the last five times I’d jerked my head around, certain I’d catch a
glimpse of whoever I
knew
had to be there.  I was about halfway
through the narrow, dark walkway now, my skin consumed by the cold-running
chill of fear.

Maybe I should call Caelyn?
 *No, Maura,* I stubbornly told myself, *you’ll scare her to death. 
You’re probably imagining it.*  I could envision the near hysterics at the
other end of the line and ruled that option out completely.  Besides, I
was almost at the other end. 
If
anything should happen at this
point, I was sure someone would hear me scream.  Wow…I really didn’t want
cause to scream…I rubbed my hands over my arms in an effort to calm, comfort
and warm myself.

I tried to put myself at ease by
telling myself anyone who smelled as good as this guy could be no homeless drug
addict.  And if he meant me harm, wouldn’t he have made his move before
I’d gotten this close to the crowded street?  As I inched through the last
quarter of the alley, I took in a deep breath, just to catch one last whiff of
whatever scent this guy was wearing.  I tried to store it in memory, so I
could try to find some to give Ron—and myself—as a Christmas present. 

“You know I’m here, don’t you
Maura?” 

My legs felt like cooked spaghetti,
and it was all I could do to keep from collapsing in utter fear, right there on
the sidewalk.  Though the deep, male voice was smooth and beautiful…it
still should not carry across the night in the syllables that made up my name.

My brain fumbled around inside
itself for a reasonable explanation.  One of the teachers must have been
at the library?  A far more rational part tossed out the thought that even
if
one of the teachers from my school was the mysterious, sweet-smelling
man in the alley, he had been lurking around, not allowing me to catch a
glimpse of him.  And I just couldn’t propose any way that could be a good
thing. 

Then my brain tossed out the oddity
that this person, whoever he might turn out to be, had stalked me, frightened
me, made me doubt my own perceptions, only to let me get so close to a place of
safety?  He’d cruelly let me believe I’d soon be in a well-lit restaurant,
only to take it away when I thought I was home free.  My ever-increasingly
volatile temper flared white-hot, burning away most of the fear I’d felt. 
I irrationally whirled to face whoever he may be, infuriated by the twisted way
he’d kept me rooted to the edge of the darkness, at the very last moment.

He was there now.  And when I
saw him my consciousness slipped, like the swirl of a kaleidoscope, and I saw
the revelation that was his face no more.

Dreams swirled through my head,
strange dreams which made no sense.  I dreamt of eyes, dark like
mine—identical.  They stared back at me with no reason, no purpose. 
I was lost in absolute blackness, with only those eyes to keep me
company.  My eyes, my own eyes.  *Stop it!  Stop watching me!*
my dream voice, with no real power, cried out.

I started awake.  Those eyes
hung over me.  I shut mine and screamed.  I screamed for my mother,
calling out for her again and again, until I actually could hear her voice.

“Maura!  Maura listen!” 
I felt someone shaking me by my shoulders, as I lay on the ground…it was cold
and hard.  “I’m here, open your eyes.”

I did as I was told, slowly. 
Now it was my mother’s eyes staring back at me.  Her long, dark hair was
swinging into my face, tickling.  “Mom!”  I reached up to find her
back, wrapped my arms around her warmness and pulled myself up to her. 
She hugged me back, pulling me close.

“It’s ok, Maura.  You’re ok,“
she soothed into my ear. 

My memory of the moments before
blackness started to come back to me.  I struggled to get to my feet,
pulling Caelyn with me, and somehow—in very awkward fashion—we managed it.

“Mom!  There was someone
following me…I think someone tried to attack me.”  I noted movement over
my mother’s shoulder.

“That was me.”  The same
resonant voice from before reverberated in my ears in the
close
space between the alley walls.  My mother didn’t seem alarmed.  In
fact she stepped aside, and my brain struggled to figure out why.

Until I saw him.  My mother
had been right, I did look like my father.  We had exactly the same
eyes.  His features were my own, with a bit of Caelyn’s thrown in to
soften them, including her full, heart-shaped lips.  I couldn’t look at
this man and not know who he was.