Shifting the Night Away (29 page)

“So, how did you like the movie?” His voice was coy; his eyes made it clear he wasn’t
just
talking about the movie.

“There was a movie?” I answered, smiling at him. “It was good. You have good taste.”

“Thank you.”

We paused on the sidewalk to kiss, his lips gentle and delicate on mine. He pulled back before the PDA became too much, and wrapped his arm around my waist.

“This wasn’t bad for a first date. To be honest, I don’t date much,” he confessed.

“Why is that?” I couldn’t help my curiosity, especially when it came to him.

“I guess I just hadn’t met the right girl yet.”

I had to admit that his words—cheesy though they were—made my heart melt. I snuck glances at him the whole drive home, wondering if I’d see a sign of those yellow eyes again, but he looked normal. Everything seemed normal. He even stepped out of the car and walked over to my side to open the passenger side door.

“Next time,” he said, as he escorted me to the dorms, “let’s have dinner. That way we’ll be able to have a real conversation.”

“I’d like that,” I said, kissing him goodnight.

I couldn’t help it—there was a wide, soft smile plastered across my face as I opened the door to my room and almost glided inside. Riker had more than lived up to my expectations;
finally,
I was getting the dates that I’d wanted when I first activated my online dating profile. In fact, I didn’t see any reason to keep the profile open any more—a few pixels on a screen couldn’t compare to the real, live thing right in front of me.

“Thank god you’re okay.” Nora rose from the couch, her face pale as she rushed towards me and threw her arms around me. “I was worried sick when you didn’t answer your phone,” she murmured into my shoulder.

Confused, I laughed a little. “I was on my date, remember? I turned my phone off at the movie. The little dancing popcorns told me to.”

Stepping back, Nora looked at me with grave eyes. She hadn’t even broken a smile at my stupid joke, a sure sign something was up.

“When I found out what happened, I was so worried about you. I wasn’t sure if maybe he’d done… something.”

“Nora, what are you talking about?”

She led me over to the couch, and we sat down side by side. “It’s about Danny Killum, that guy that was stalking you.”

“He didn’t come here, did he?” A chill went through me at the thought. “Riker said he was going to take care of him, but I guess he didn’t get around to it.”

“That’s the thing, Mara. I think he did. The word spread today—Danny has gone missing. When his roommate came home, the room was torn to pieces and there was even a dent in the wall. They think something happened to him. Something
bad.
”

I swallowed. “Was there blood?”

She shook her head. “No. But his bed had been ripped apart. Mara, what if Riker did it? And what if… what if he
killed
Danny?”

“Nora.” My voice came out harsher than I’d intended. “Don’t let your imagination run away from you. We have no proof that anything happened to Danny, or that Riker even had something to do with him disappearing. The guy is an asshole. I’m sure he’s made lots of enemies.”

“Still,” Nora said, her brow furrowed in concern, “I want you to be careful around him. You said it yourself when you met him, he’s a bad boy. There’s no telling if that means leather jackets and tattoos or something worse. He could be
violent,
Mara. He picked Danny up off his feet and choked him right in front of you. We have no idea what he might do when nobody is around.”

I played off her concerns as paranoia and resolved that I would speak to Riker about Danny the next time I saw him, but deep inside I was worried. Was the bad boy persona I saw just a front, or was there something sinister lurking in Riker’s past?

And did it have something to do with the way his eyes glowed yellow whenever he was upset?

Chapter Sixteen

Sting like a Bee

I deliberated the whole next day about what I should do.

On the one hand, if I confronted Riker, how could I know if he told me the truth? If he
had
hurt Danny, then he sure put on quite an act in front of me.
I’d like to think I could tell if he was a murderer,
I thought to myself, but it wasn’t like I’d met many murderers to find out if I had a radar for them. I snorted at the thought; wondering if the guy I liked was a psychopath was enough to make me feel crazy.

“You look like you need a margarita,” Nora said, taking her head out of her study books long enough to notice me pacing back and forth in the living room.

“It’s not even two o’clock,” I pointed out to her, but I couldn’t stop a longing sigh at the thought of one.

“Girls’ night waits for no man. Come on, we can make them virgin.”

I snorted. “If only it were that easy for us.” My drama-free days as a young girl seemed nostalgic next to my current worries.

“C’mon, you don’t mean that. Sluts have more fun.” She winked at me to show she was joking; my blonde bombshell roommate was nothing if not a sex-positive kind of girl. Some of her infectious free spiritedness had rubbed off on me in the past few years, but I still couldn’t help the uptight part of me from wondering if starting a relationship with a one-night stand was where I’d gone all wrong.
Maybe if you hadn’t slept with him,
the snide little prude in me whispered,
you wouldn’t be in this predicament.

Internally, I flipped her off. Being angry at my own subconscious was a sure sign I was losing it. I took the frozen lime slushy from Nora gratefully, and we sat down on the couch to talk it out, as we had many times over the years.

“I just don’t know if I should confront him about it or not. I mean, what if we’re wrong and he had nothing to do with it? For all we know Danny tore his own bed to pieces. Or… something.”

“And what are the chances of that? He promised you he would ‘take care of it,’ Mara. If that doesn’t make him a suspect, I don’t know what does.”

I sipped at the frozen drink in my hands, going slowly to avoid a brain freeze. Part of me wished it had tequila in it, but the rest was glad nothing could cloud my judgment.

“Every time I see him, the reasonable part of me floats away,” I admitted, hating that it was true. “Rational thought just stops existing. He looks at me, and…” I trailed off, blushing.

“You’re not the first girl to fall for a handsome face and rock hard abs. There are worse things in the world to admit it. And of
course
your judgment would be clouded. You care for him.”

I swallowed heavily, but hearing Nora say it aloud confirmed that it was true. “I do care about him. I’m not in love with him, but I feel like I could be. One day. And that scares me.”

Nora seemed to weigh my options in her head for a moment. My roommate had a bubbly, outgoing, and flirty personality, but she was also one of the wisest young women I knew. I trusted her judgment, especially when mine had left me.

“From where I’m sitting, I think you have to confront him. He has to understand that after threatening to do something to the guy, he’s going to look red-handed when Danny disappears mysteriously. And besides, wouldn’t you rather find out now? Before you fall in love with him.”

She had a point. Even though it made my stomach queasy just thinking about confronting Riker, it would be a mistake not to if later, it turned out our suspicions were right.

“I just hate that I’m going to have to see him again in class.” Sighing, I chewed on my lower lip in thought. “Why do boys always have to be so complicated?”

“This,” Nora said, punctuating her thoughts with a wave of her hand, “is why I only tousle with guys who live miles and an ocean away from me. There’s no drama when you know you’re leaving them behind.” She squeezed my shoulder sympathetically. “It’s not your fault this one followed you home.”

I laughed a little at the thought of Riker as a stray cat shadowing me to my doorstep. “Everything would’ve been a lot easier if that one-night stand had stayed as just one night.”

***

It was only an hour later that I wound up in the same hallway in front of the same office door I’d stood in front of just a couple of days ago with similar intentions. This time, though, I wasn’t hoping to cut things off with Riker; I just wanted some reassurance that he wasn’t the kind of monster who attacked a college student in revenge.

I was just about to knock on the door when I heard voices inside the office. Freezing, I stood there with my hand up in a fist, unsure what to do.

“If you would just do what you’re—” The voice drifted in and out of my hearing range, but it was definitely a masculine voice, and whoever he was, he sounded angry. I didn’t think it was Riker, though.

Seconds later I heard Riker’s voice, confirming that he already had a visitor.

“I’m not going to do whatever you want. You’re going to have to live with the fact that my life is here now.”

I heard that loud and clear; whatever was going on, it was none of my business, so I slid a few feet away from the door and stood there guiltily. For a moment I considered turning around and going back home, but I knew that if I chickened out now I would never work up the courage to ask Riker about Danny’s disappearance.
 

From this distance I could no longer make out words, but I could still hear the two voices rising and falling in disagreement. I fidgeted with my phone and tried to pretend like I wasn’t curious enough to want to eavesdrop on them.

Thankfully for me, the argument seemed to lose steam, and minutes later the door opened. I expected Riker to come out, but instead it was the other guy, the one who must’ve been in there with him.

His back was to me, so I took a moment to study him. He was tall, his shoulders broad and square, his skin a medium brown that suggested mixed heritage. As he turned, I glanced at his face, but I didn’t recognize him from class or anywhere else.

Closing the door, he turned and looked straight at me. “Sorry if you were waiting out here for long.”

“It’s no trouble.” I smiled tightly, all too aware of the fact that I’d overheard part of his argument with Riker. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just go in now.”

I stepped past him, reaching out to take the doorknob, but before I could slip inside the office, he pulled me back with a hand on my shoulder.

“Wait a minute.” Leaning forward, he stared straight at me, his brown eyes intimidating in their intensity. He took a deep breath, and for a moment I could swear he was
sniffing
me. “How do you know Riker?”

“He’s my teacher’s assistant.” I frowned at his rudeness. “How do
you
know him?”

“We’re brothers.”

The word—‘brothers’—threw me for a loop. They didn’t
look
related, though I knew better than to say something like that. “Well, it’s nice to meet you…” I trailed off, realizing he hadn’t said his name.

“Jonathan. And I don’t think you and my brother are
just
colleagues. Am I right?”

Stepping back, I kept silent, but I knew the expression on my face would give me away. I’d never been any good at poker. “How is this your business?”

“Because.” He stepped towards me, forcing me to crane my head up to look at his eyes—which, strangely enough, seemed to be swirling with flecks of yellow. “You shouldn’t get too attached to Riker. He won’t be here for very much longer. He’s coming home. And if you get in the way of that, you’ll regret it. I guarantee it. Understand?”

I didn’t like being threatened by so many men in one week. “No, I don’t understand. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll speak to Riker.”

I tried to slip past him, but Jonathan’s hand snaked out to hold me back. His grasp wasn’t tight, but when I tried to pull my arm away it was like handcuffs around me.

“You don’t want to mess with my family. Trust me on that one.”

With those words, he let me go and walked away. I stared after him, confused and afraid. From this angle I could see the strip of skin between his collar and his hairline.

There was a tattoo there, black and unmistakable. I’d seen it once before: on Riker’s hip bone. That prowling panther was an exact clone to the one he had tattooed on his skin.

***

Before I could even fully process what I’d just been told—and what I’d seen—Riker stepped out of the office and into the hallway. He looked surprised to see me there; in the distance, I could still hear Jonathan’s footsteps fading away.