Chapter Thirteen

Part 3

The first thing I noticed was that my mother did not, in fact, have the place surrounded quite yet. There was no one out back and Danielle was running along a plowed pathway that seemed to lead back toward the school.

I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins as I turned on the speed. I heard shouts back at the barn, and then a gun went off, but I couldn’t go back. I had to catch Danielle, the dealer, the person who was peddling drugs to a school full of kids. I just prayed that no one at the barn had been hurt.

My arms and legs pumped as I accelerated and started to gain on her. The 400 meters had been my event in high school and almost no one could catch me on the track. I closed the distance between us and could hear her labored breathing. Three feet, two feet, one . . . .

I launched myself into the air and tackled her into a snowbank.

“Kim!”

My mother’s voice was far off, but not too far. Danielle rolled over and I pinned her forearms down with my knees. She looked up at me, her eyes defiant as my mother caught up to us. I expected her to confess or beg for forgiveness or cry or something, but she didn’t. She just glared at me for a moment, then turned her head away. Somewhere deep, deep inside I was impressed by her fortitude. She was caught and she knew it, but she wasn’t going to cower or cave. She was an entirely different person from the one I had thought I knew.

“I guess you win,” she said.

“Damn straight I do.”

“Kim! Are you all right?” my mother asked, falling to her knees beside us.

“I’m fine,” I replied, standing up so my mother could drag Danielle to her feet and cuff her. “Did you get the other guy?”

“I took him down no problem,” my mother said.

Danielle didn’t struggle as my mother pulled her arms back and held them with one hand while she fished a pair of handcuffs from her pocket with the other. It all seemed so surreal, standing in the middle of the snow-covered rural setting, watching a girl I’d thought was perfectly amiable and cool being cuffed.

“What about the gunshot?” I asked, suddenly recalling.

“Eh. He hit the barn,” my mother said with a laugh as she secured the cuffs on Danielle’s wrists. “A seriously bad shot.”

Then she looked at me and even in the dark I could tell her eyes were beaming with pride. “Good job, Kim,” she said. “Really good job.”

I grinned and then my mother hauled Danielle off, reading her her rights as they stumbled back toward the stable.

All at once I felt completely exhausted. Like I could lie down right there and hibernate in the snow for the rest of the winter. Everything that had happened in the past half-hour pressed down upon me. Danielle’s inimical posturing, the fight, the fall, the run, the gunplay, the fear and guilt and confusion. As I trudged back to the stable I felt like I’d pass out with each step. I couldn’t wait to get home and back to my own bed.

The double door to the front of the building now yawned open and was already strung with yellow police tape. Dozens of cops bustled around, marking evidence and making notes. I saw Tad duck under the tape to take a look inside. A few shadowy figures were making their way back toward the school—Danielle, Tag and the slimy guy, each flanked by two officers. I leaned into the stable wall and sighed. How was I ever going to make it all the way back?

And then Jon appeared. He crouched under the crime-scene tape and exited the front door of the stable, looking around. The blood had been cleaned from his face and he actually looked relaxed. Freed. Happy that it was all over.

But how would he feel about me? The girl who had dragged him into this whole mess and imperiled his life?

His eyes finally fell on me and there was a long tense moment. And then he smiled.

Sweet relief!

As he walked over to me, my heart was slamming around in my chest. What would he say? What would I say? He didn’t even know my real name. Technically I was as much of a mystery to him as Danielle was to me.

“So,” Jon said, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket.

“So,” I replied.

“Who are you?” he asked, leaning against the wall, just inches from me.

I let out an awkward laugh. “I’m Kim Stratford . . . sprinter, karate champ, snowboarder . . . freshman at Stanford University—“

Here he made an impressed little frown.

“ . . . and police deputy,” I finished.

Jon nodded slowly as if taking this all in. “You thought I was a drug dealer, didn’t you?” he asked.

I felt as if someone had doused me in cold water. Oh, God. He was never going to speak to me again.

“You were a suspect . . . yeah,” I said. “But I swear I never really thought it was you.”

Jon narrowed his eyes. “Even though—what did you say to me before in my room—I fit the archetypal profile of a user?”

“That was just the frustration talking,” I said desperately. “Don’t be mad. I didn’t formulate the list of suspects, I just investigated them.”

“Well, you weren’t wrong. I was a user,” Jon said. “I’ve been clean for two years and five months.”

I swallowed hard. “What made you quit?”

Jon cleared his throat and looked away, off toward the dim lights of the school. “Car accident,” he said. “One of my friends was paralyzed from the waist down. I wasn’t driving, but the guy who was was high.”

“My best friend died last year,” I told him, the words tumbling unbidden from my mouth. “We had our prom on a yacht, and she did cocaine with this popular kid she had a crush on. She got all strung out and jumped off the boat and drowned.”

Jon looked me in the eye, sending a shiver through me. “I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t there to help her. I told her I didn’t want to hang out with those people, so she went off alone . . . .”

“You couldn’t have done anything. People make their own choices,” Jon said.

“I know,” I said. And I did. Somewhere. My mother, my grief counselors, my teachers and my friends all had told me this. But I still felt guilty. I couldn’t help it. I probably always would.

But at that moment I felt kind of light. Lighter than I had since the day it happened. I hadn’t told a single soul about Corinne since the day I left Connecticut for California.

“I’m sorry, too,” I said. “About your friend.”

Jon nodded and we stood there in silence for a moment. I had a hundred emotions whirling through my chest: sorrow over Corinne, the relief of being able to talk about her out loud, the confusion and betrayal over Danielle, and the hope that Jon wouldn’t hate me for all eternity.

I hazarded a glance at him and he was watching me closely.

“What?” I said.

“I knew you were following me!” he exclaimed, standing up straight and pulling his hands out of his pockets.

I laughed, the atmosphere lightened. “I had to! It was my job!”

Then, out of nowhere, he reached out, grabbed the belt loops on my jeans with two fingers, and pulled me to him. My hands pressed into his chest and my heart stopped beating. Jon smiled down at me.

“I didn’t really mind,” he said.

And then, he kissed me like I’ve never been kissed before. His lips were so soft but his kiss was firm and confident. It was sweet. It was sensual. Everyone who had bothered to touch their lips to mine before that moment was instantly forgotten.

This was the real deal.