See Jane Run (17 page)

Why
am
I
protecting
him?

Riley went for the door and was on the top of the stairs when she heard the chatter downstairs.

“Does it really have to be this soon?” her mother was saying.

“It doesn't really have to be, but it's for the best. If you're worried about Riley, she'll adjust. Most teenagers get over it once they make some friends.”

Anger roiled in Riley's belly. How dare Deputy Hempstead talk so dismissively about her? How dare he talk about her at all?

Riley pulled on a fresh sweatshirt and yanked her hair into a ponytail. Her eyes and nose were red and puffy, but there wasn't enough makeup in the world to change that, and frankly, Riley didn't care.

Maybe
the
accident
wasn't so bad,
Riley told herself as she tried to breathe deeply.
The
news
was
always
blowing
things
out
of
proportion.
Even as she thought it, Riley knew it wasn't true. She bit her lip and speed-dialed Shelby's number. She heard the crackle of canned air on Shelby's end.

No ring.

No dial tone.

Nothing but dead air.

The new house may have had crappy cell service and a just-north-of-nowhere area code, but it did have one major plus: the giant heap of dirt that cushioned Riley's landing when she crossed her fingers, closed her eyes, and jumped out of her second-story window.

Before the jail break, her parents were pacing and murmuring things, and Gail and the deputy were studying something intently—probably a list of all the basic teenage amenities that he was planning on taking away from Riley “for her own safety.” Thinking of her parents' betrayal vaulted Riley forward once her feet hit the ground. She kept to the wrought-iron fencing lining the estates, her lungs burning, the cold slapping at the tears as they ran down her face.

JD was leaning against his car when Riley made it to the front gate. He was bathed in a yellow glow from the streetlight above, looking very much James Dean. The image called up memories of snuggling on the couch with her parents, and Riley stomped it away.

“She's at Crescent General and she's out of ICU,” JD said, opening the door for Riley.

She dove inside, aching as the seconds it took for JD to get in the car and continue his story seemed to stretch on for eons.

“And? Do they know anything? Is she OK?”

JD started up the engine and floored the gas pedal. Riley could hear the tires spin, kicking up dirt and gravel before they caught hold of the road. Finally she could breathe.

“So?”

JD cleared his throat. “She's stable.”

“Stable means not dead, right?”

“Hey.” JD awkwardly patted the top of her hand then put his back on the wheel. “Relax. She's going to be OK. It's going to take a while but she's going to be fine.”

Riley pressed herself back in her seat, her body sagging, aching muscles protesting against any motion at all. “I'm just so scared for her.”

“It's going to be OK,” JD said again.

Riley glanced over the console, examining JD's profile. The moonlight illuminated his strong forehead and nose, showing off the stern set of his jaw. Riley stiffened again.

“There's something you're not telling me.”

JD shrugged, not taking his eyes off the road. “I'm telling you everything I know.”

“Who gave you the information?”

“Ry, I'm not the one who's been lying to you.”

Riley crossed her arms in front of her chest, icy fingers of suspicion walking down her spinal column. “Who told you, JD?”

He blew out a sigh that was part exasperation, part exhaustion. “I dated Shelby's sister for a while, OK?”

“Which one? Tru?”

JD guided the car over a smooth turn. “Yeah.”

“She's, like, twenty!”

“Yeah, well, we dated when she was, like, seventeen.”

Riley gaped. “You were fourteen then! That's disgusting.”

“I was fifteen, almost sixteen.”

“You're older than me?”

“Eighteen two weeks ago.”

“Oh.” Riley sat back again. “Happy birthday.”

“Meaningful. Anyway, I called Tru and she told me about Shelby and the accident.”

“What about the accident?”

JD went back to that hard expression, staring directly out the front windshield, his hands gripping the steering wheel as if he wasn't driving on a straight, freshly paved road.

“It wasn't just a regular sedan kind of car that hit her, was it? It was the blue one. The one that Tim was driving?”

“Tim?” JD looked surprised.

Riley shook her head and looked imploringly at JD.

He swallowed hard, pausing for a beat. “The witnesses say the sedan was circling the school. It started to follow Shelby.”

Riley nodded, numbness creeping into her finger and toes.

“It sped up when she entered the crosswalk.”

Riley's stomach folded in on itself and she thought she was going to be sick again. “Sped up?”

“He hit her once…” JD's voice trailed off and Riley's heartbeat sped up. “She fell; she hit the road.” He cleared his throat. “And then he backed over her.”

Riley felt the bile burning at the back of her throat. Her vision was suddenly blurry, and the windshield, the dashboard in front of her—everything—disappeared behind her tears.

“They said he was gearing up to do it again, but he must have realized he'd be penned in if he went that direction. He turned around and sped off.”

Riley folded over, pressing her head between her knees. “Oh God.”

“It was all really quick.”

Riley popped back up. “But there were witnesses. And it takes time to put a car in reverse. Why didn't someone help her? Why didn't someone stop him?”

The night broke, and a smatter of rain hit the hood of the car. The drops on the windshield cast a mottled shadow over JD's face when Riley turned to look at him.

“I don't know, Riley.”

Panic tightened her chest.

Her fault.

“Someone must have gotten a license plate, right? Or someone filmed it or took a picture?”

JD shook his head. “There wasn't a license plate on the car. And apparently it was the one time people were too stunned to pull out their phones. Other than the one shot that was on the news, there aren't any pictures of the car. And none of the driver.”

Riley cried silently the rest of the way to the hospital. When JD pulled into a spot and dropped the car into park, she couldn't cry anymore.

They rode the elevator to the sixth floor, silent the whole time. Riley absently wondered if her parents knew she was missing, or if Hempstead and Gail the super sleuth had yet realized they'd been outsmarted by a seventeen-year-old girl.

They
should
have
been
protecting
Shelby,
Riley thought grimly. Although if it wasn't for her, her best friend wouldn't have needed protecting. Riley tried to swallow down the thought.

The doors opened on the sixth floor, and Shelby's whole family was crowded there. Worry and lack of sleep had carved deep grooves in Mrs. Webber's face. She bobbed one of the twins on her hip, gripping him with one hand, using the other to blot out the tears that seemed to leak from her eyes.

“Oh, Riley,” Mrs. Webber said, handing off the toddler to another one of Shelby's siblings. “I'm so glad you're here.”

She gathered Riley into a tight hug, pulling Riley against her chest until she was crushed against Mrs. Webber's T-shirt, smelling the comforting Webber house smells of crayons, tomato sauce, and cleaning products. The woman's body shuddered against Riley's, and Riley linked her hands over Mrs. Webber's back.

“I'm so sorry,” Riley whispered.

Mrs. Webber broke the hug and stepped back, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. “Oh, I'm so sorry.” Her eyes went to JD, standing quietly behind Riley. “I don't believe I know your friend.”

Riley introduced them without making eye contact. “Is Shelby going to be OK? Can I see her?”

“Tru's in there now and Lily and George.”

Riley thought of George Webber, a big looming brute of a man who wore a salt-and-pepper beard and called his daughter “my Shelby.” A sob lodged in Riley's throat.

“I can wait.”

“She's not family,” Shelby's oldest sister said.

Mrs. Webber reached out and squeezed Riley's hand. “Yes, she is, Sara.”

Sara's dark eyes seemed to focus on Riley and then narrow accusingly. Blood pulsed in Riley's temples, and she took a few stumbling steps backward, sure that Sara knew that the blue sedan—and this hospital—was meant for Riley and not Shelby.

“We'll just have a seat,” JD said, threading his arm through Riley's and pulling her into one of the hospital's hard waiting room chairs.

“She's going to be OK,” JD repeated, this time murmuring it into Riley's hair. His closeness—or maybe their distance from Shelby's family—seemed to break Riley's trance, and she suddenly dropped her face in her hands.

“I can't believe this. It's supposed to be me.”

“No, Riley, it's not. It shouldn't have been anyone.”

Riley heaved a sob. “But it's my fault.”

“No, it's the guy in the blue sedan's fault.” He rambled on. “So what were you doing before I picked you up?”

Riley knew it was JD's attempt at getting her mind off Shelby; it was something that her mother did when Riley had a panic attack: try to veer her off the subject of her panic.

Riley swallowed. “Um, I was—I was
not
packing my clothes.”

“Well, that's good, considering you just moved into that house.”

Riley nodded. “I know, but the FBI—”

JD's eyebrows went up and Riley stopped. What did people who were being forced to disappear say to their friends?
I
was
getting
my
things
together
because
I'm going to be Greta VonSomething from Poughkeepsie, New York?

Riley just shook her head. “It's nothing. Do you think we can see Shelby now?” She was out of her seat and moving toward the door when she came face to face with Tru.

Tru was Shelby's older sister and everything Shelby was not: tall, lanky, and oozing confidence. Her eyes flicked over Riley then went directly to JD.

“You came!” The waft of cold air that shot by Riley as Tru did sent goose bumps all over Riley's body. Tru threw her arms around JD's neck and hugged him close. Riley watched as JD's hands flailed for a half second before wrapping around Tru. She buried her head in his neck and JD drove his fingers through her long blond hair. Something stabbed at Riley. A tiny lick of anger started low in her belly.

Was she jealous?

Mrs. Webber poked her head in. “Ry, you can come see Shelby now.”

Riley licked her lips and tried to breathe deeply as her hand turned on the knob to Shelby's hospital room. She opened the door, hit immediately with the smell of antiseptic and hospital-clean, her eyes adjusting to the dim light in the room.

“Shelby?” she whispered.

Her feet were planted just inside the doorway, and she jumped when Shelby's door snapped closed. Riley felt unable to move her feet forward. She felt smothered by the sterility of the room, like she had no right to be there, no right to grieve for her friend.

“Shel?” she asked again, this time taking a step, moving herself forward enough to peek around the curtain half-drawn around Shelby's bed.

Riley's heart dropped.

She shoved the curtain aside and raced to Shelby's bedside, trying to find some semblance of her best friend under the tubes and bandages and measures and beeps of the hospital equipment.

Shelby's face was almost completely covered in a thick layer of gauze. Its edges were tinged with rust-colored blood, dried against her skin. What wasn't covered was bulbous and ruined, scratches, bruises, and cuts made glossy by some kind of ointment. A ventilator tube was taped to her mouth and something else to her chest; tubes were held to Shelby's arm by thick needles. One was an IV; the other seemed to be feeding her blood. The blankets were tucked tightly around her torso, her one leg protruding, encased in an enormous cast, propped up by some kind of sling.

Riley felt the tears prick behind her eyes. Shelby's toes poked out of the cast, the ladybug pedicure that Riley had given her during their last sleepover badly chipped.

“I'm so sorry, Shelby,” Riley said softly, her hand finding Shelby's among the bandages and tubes. “This is all my fault.”

Riley gave Shelby's hand a gentle squeeze, trying not to focus on how limp and lifeless it seemed. “I never thought—if I had listened to you, none of this would've ever happened. You wouldn't be here.” A tear rolled off the end of Riley's nose. “And now they want me to move.”

The machine that monitored Shelby's heart beat along steadily, neither Riley's touch nor words making any difference.

“They're trying to make me leave,” Riley continued, squeezing Shelby's hand again delicately, “but I'm not going to. I can't. Not with you like this.” Riley sniffled, hoping to find her best friend somewhere underneath all this damage. “We're going to catch the guy who did this to you, Shelby, I promise you that. But you have to promise me something too. You have to promise to get better.” Riley's voice cracked, but she went on. “Promise me. We're supposed to go to college together and share a dorm room.”

In the back of her mind, Riley saw her parents sitting on either side of her, Deputy Hempstead explaining Riley's “new life.”

“I'm not leaving you,” Riley swore. “No matter what happens. But you can't leave me either. You just can't. You're my best friend, Shelby. Please, please wake up. I need you. I need you and I'm so, so sorry. I hope you can hear me.”

She sat down in the chair next to Shelby's bed and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them tightly. “I'm staying here with you, Shelby, because you're going to be OK. It's kind of like one of our normal sleepovers, right?” She forced herself to smile. “Except this time you get the bed.”

Riley rested her cheek on her knees, the steady beep of Shelby's heart lulling her to sleep, until the blaze of her cell phone cut through the relative calm of the room. She checked the readout: Dad's Cell. Her heart thudded as she sent the call to voicemail.

“I'm not going to disappear with them,” Riley said, standing up and looking over Shelby again. “I'm not Jane Elizabeth. I'm Riley Spencer, and I'm not going anywhere.”

Riley pulled the chair up against Shelby's bed and curled up in it, holding Shelby's hand until she fell asleep.

• • •

“Riley, Riley.” Someone was jiggling her shoulder, and a flood of sunlight was stinging her eyes.