See Jane Run (18 page)

“What time is it?”

“It's six a.m.”

Riley blinked and sat up, every muscle in her body aching. She blinked, the room—and her wake-up call—coming into focus.

“Mrs. Webber?”

She smiled thinly. “I came back in last night and you had fallen asleep. I didn't want to wake you. I think Shelby liked that you were here.”

Shelby.

Riley jumped to her feet, the blanket Mrs. Webber must have pulled over her pooling on the ground. “Shelby?” Riley leaned over her friend's bed, her heart breaking all over again as she saw Shelby in the light now, the cuts and bruises looking more menacing, more devastating. “Did she—did she wake up?”

Mrs. Webber put a hand on Riley's shoulder. “No, honey, not yet.”

Riley sucked in a sob.

“Why don't you and your friend go home now? You need to get ready for school. And please thank your parents for letting you stay here with Shelby last night. I tried to call but I must have the number to the old house. It kept saying it was disconnected.”

Riley nodded, unable to speak. She kissed Shelby's hand and silently wished for her to wake up then hugged Mrs. Webber and stepped out into the hall. It was bustling and busy now, nurses race-walking past her, pushing carts and wheeling around IV bags.

Riley's mind raced. She'd have to get home. She pulled out her cell phone and her stomach dropped as the missed call register filled up her entire screen:

MISSED CALL: DAD CELL

MISSED CALL: HOME

MISSED CALL: DAD CELL

MISSED CALL: DAD CELL

It went on like that, until the very bottom of the screen. Back to back calls, just a few minutes apart.

“Let me guess: your boyfriend wants to know where you were last night?”

Riley's head snapped up. “JD! What are you doing here? Did you come back?”

He yawned and Riley noticed his rumpled hair, last night's clothes wrinkled.

“You stayed here last night too?”

“What did you think? That I was going to dump you here and then just leave you?”

Riley's surprise obviously amused JD, because a bright smile cracked across his face.

“I don't know—I guess.”

JD just shook his head, his tone softening. “So how is she? Any change?”

Riley swallowed and saw Shelby's broken body in her mind's eye. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to get that image out of her head. “Bad. No change.”

“Do you want to stay here? I could go by your house and pick up some clothes for you or something.”

Riley thought of JD driving up to her house, her parents, Gail, Hempstead, and whatever SWAT team he had hired pulling out their guns and throwing JD to the ground. “No, no, you'd better not.”

She pulled her phone from her pocket and wiggled it, showing off the screen full of missed calls and messages. “I think I need to get home.”

“I'm going to get a drink of water. Call and let them know we're on our way.”

JD disappeared down the hall and Riley stared at her phone. She had never been frightened to call her parents ever before, but suddenly, she was paralyzed—and angry. If she went home, she'd be boxed up, stamped with a new name, and sent to God-knows-where. She'd never know when—or if—Shelby woke up.

“So, they call out the National Guard?”

Riley's stomach dropped. “What?”

JD strolled up behind her and glanced down at her phone. “Your parents.”

“Of course they didn't call out the National Guard. They wouldn't do that. They're just regular. We're just regular people. Why”—Riley worried her bottom lip and dropped her voice to a low whisper—“why would you say that?”

JD looked around suspiciously then lowered his voice too. “Because I thought it'd be funny. Note to self: National Guard joke? Epic fail.”

Relief—cold and sticky—crashed over Riley, and her heart started to thump at a normal pace again. “Right.” She forced a laugh that was both too long and too loud. “Right. National Guard. That was funny.”

JD's smile was quizzical. “OK…so, home?”

“Uh, no, actually.” Riley held up her phone again as though it were definitive proof. “I called my parents. They're fine, you know, because I checked in. They just want me to help Shelby out.”

JD shifted his weight. “OK, so are you going to stay here?”

Mrs. Webber poked her head around the corner. “Riley, why don't you and JD go out for a little bit? Maybe grab some sandwiches?”

Riley's stomach rumbled. She realized that since the few bites of half-solid spaghetti she had the previous night, she hadn't eaten. “Are you sure? We could just grab something at the cafeteria.”

“I'm sure. It's not healthy to stay cooped up in here.” She looked over her shoulder, her eyes traveling toward Shelby's room.

“Sure, Mrs. Webber.”

JD leaned against the far wall in the elevator as they coasted downward. He looked Riley up and down. Her cheeks burned. “What?”

He shrugged. “I'm just surprised you don't have a problem with elevators.”

Riley tried to look nonchalant. It wasn't that she didn't have a problem with elevators—it was that she had learned to control it. She remembered her mother's hand closing over hers.

“Come on, Riley. You and me, together.”

Riley
stared
down
at
the
threshold
where
the
industrial
gray
carpet
met
the
silver
thread
of
the
elevator
doors' track. Her mother gave her arm a little tug and looked down at Riley—four or five years old then—her eyes soft and encouraging. Riley sucked in a deep breath and willed her right foot forward. She stared down at her glossy Mary Jane shoe on the floor of the elevator. And then the doors started to close. Panic rose and exploded across her chest, each finger of fear reaching out to pinch the air in her lungs. Her head throbbed and her eyes watered and her mother seemed so, so far away. Riley's hand was still in hers but the door was cutting through them, shoving Riley into a square metal coffin, tearing her mother away from her. Locking her away. She could feel the walls coming closer, could feel the cool metal brushing against her shoulders.

“No!”

Riley snapped out of the memory—the daymare—and offered JD a tight-lipped smile. She laced her fingers and gripped her hands tightly, watching the lighted numbers on the elevator door click on and off until they reached the ground floor. Only then was Riley able to breathe.

“OK,” JD said when they stepped out of the elevator. “Where to?”

Riley opened her mouth and then closed it quickly. She squinted through the glass double doors of the hospital. Heat pricked at the back of her neck.

Deputy Hempstead was cutting a direct line to the front desk, something pinched between his forefinger and thumb.

Riley's heart dropped into her shoes when the light caught it. He was carrying her sophomore picture, now jabbing at it as he barked at the woman at the desk.

Riley's hand clamped around JD's. She gave him a hard yank back, the pair disappearing down a hall.

JD paled. “Was that the guy from the train station? Ry, what the hell is going on?”

“Something bad, JD.”

“Then we need to call the police. And I should take you home, right now.”

Riley just wagged her head, unable to answer.

“You didn't call your parents, did you? Look, Riley, usually I'm all for ditching out and everything, but this guy has been following you for a week. And from a different town. He could be dangerous. Do your parents know?”

Riley bit hard on her lip. “They don't care about me. They want me to move smack dab in the middle of my junior year. What kind of parents would do that?”

“Riley—”

“JD, if I go back home—or to the police—something bad is going to happen.”

“You just said something bad
is
happening.”

“I won't be here anymore. We'll have to leave.”

JD frowned. “What do you mean, leave?”

“I can't really explain right now. Look, I get it if you don't want to be a part of this. Just do me a favor and don't tell anyone you saw me.” She spun on her heel and speed-walked halfway down a hall before she felt JD's hand on her arm.

“Where are you going to go?”

She hadn't thought past avoiding a new life and a new identity. “I'm not sure yet.”

“All right. Stay here.” He guided her into a shadowed doorway at the end of the hall. “I'll go get the car and pull up at this exit. Just make sure no one sees you.”

It seemed like hours passed while Riley waited for JD. When his car screeched up, she was finally able to breathe. JD barely waited for Riley to belt herself in before sinking his foot on the gas and glancing at her.

“I'm not even going to ask, Ry. You have to tell me what's going on.”

“You're not going to believe it.”

JD worked the muscle in his jaw. “Try me.”

“I just don't want to get you in trouble.”

JD's nostrils flared. “You probably should have told me that back in the bus bathroom.”

Riley sucked on her teeth. “I'm not Riley Spencer.”

“Who are you—007?”

It was a lame attempt at humor, and it died in the stolid air between them.

“I'm Jane Elizabeth O'Leary. That guy, the guy from Granite Cay? His name is Gavin Hempstead. He's a deputy U.S. Marshal.”

JD seemed to push the car a little faster. “So you—were you kidnapped?”

“No.” Riley shook her head and smiled at the thought—how much easier it would have been if that were the case. She'd never have to tell anyone; she could stay in her house, continue to be Riley Spencer. She cleared her throat and thought about how much to tell JD. But one look at his profile, one thought back to the way he showed up to take her to Shelby, and Riley started talking.

“My parents and I are part of the Witness Protection Program. I didn't even know until—” She tried to think back to that moment when her parents sat her down. It could have been two minutes or two months ago—her mind was in such a hazy fog. “I just found out.”

“Are you serious?”

The phrase
serious
as
a
heart
attack
flopped in Riley's mind, but she stamped it down. Things were much more serious now. “Yeah. I didn't know—when I was looking up the birth certificate, trying to find information on the O'Leary family? I didn't know that was me—us.”

“So then, do you normally have U.S. Marshals following you?”

There was a hard edge in JD's tone, and it struck Riley. “Are you mad at me? I didn't know—”

JD blew out a long sigh then was silent for a beat. “No, Riley, I'm not. I'm just”—he raked a hand through his dark hair—“I just didn't expect this—any of this.”

She sank back against the bucket seat. “I didn't mean for any of this to happen.”

“So, what happens now?”

Riley leaned her forehead against the cool window glass. “I have no idea. I think”—her throat was tight—“I think we have to disappear. Change our names again. My family and me, I mean.”

“So that's what you meant by leave.”

A sob choked in Riley's throat and she nodded.

“Do you have time for that bite?” What he didn't say hung in the air between them:
before
they
take
you
away.

Riley rested her hand on her belly. “My stomach is in knots. I don't think I'll ever be able to eat again.”

“OK, how about I eat and you hold down the other end of the booth?”

Riley tried to smile. “Sure.”

They were silent on the drive, but Riley couldn't stop the voices in her head. What was she planning on doing? She couldn't run away from her parents. They had no choice: they were going to take Riley away.

Then came an inching, niggling thought: what if Tim was telling the truth?

Riley shook her head. She couldn't—wouldn't—believe a stranger over her own parents.

But her parents had lied to her for fourteen years.

JD clicked his blinker on right before turning onto a cracked driveway.

Riley glanced out the windshield and wrinkled her nose. “You want to eat here?”

It was a perfectly square restaurant, once painted a cheery tropical pink. The pink had faded and peeled and hung like bits of dead skin off the building, making its boring façade look less neglected and more zombie-homicidal. The neon “BU” of a once functioning
Burgers
sign twitched underneath lacy, fresh-looking curtains.

“Are you sure?”

JD skipped the regular parking lot and zipped around toward the back of the building, stopping the car just behind a fetid dumpster. Riley grimaced.

“You really know how to woo a lady.”

JD chuckled. “Who says ‘woo'?”

“Who parks their car five feet from a dumpster?”

“Someone who doesn't want his car spotted. The least I can do is give you a half hour of freedom.”

Riley considered that and then nodded. “Good thinking.”

JD pulled the door open and grinned. “After you.”

Despite its faded, forgotten appearance, the restaurant was clean and cute inside: mismatched chairs surrounded light blue Formica tables, each dressed with a fake flower pushed into a milk bottle. It smelled homey—like butter and pancake batter—and Riley's stomach seemed to spring to attention, announcing that she wasn't nauseous; she was
starving.

A redheaded woman who could have been Riley's grandmother pushed out from behind a swinging double door and grinned at them. She was big all around; she took up most of the doorway she was standing in. Her demure, faded pink uniform pulled against her chest and hung longer in the front than it did in the back. She matched the ensemble with thick white tube socks and a pair of gaudy black and purple Sketchers—the kind that was supposed to give your butt a lift. Riley smiled at the ground.

“Just the two a you?”

JD nodded and the woman opened up her arms. “I'm Rose. I'll be your waitress. Sit wherever you like.”

Rose followed them to a corner table and laid down two enormous laminated menus then filled up two glasses with water and ice. Riley looked down at the menu, her stomach growling.

“Wow, this is a huge menu.”

“Not really,” Rose said, shifting her weight. “We're not serving any of this right now.” She jabbed a finger, pulling it down the entire left side of the menu. “Or this. We've got bacon, no sausage,
huevos
, no
rancheros
.” She laughed at her own joke, her apron jumping on her chest.

“How about burgers?” Riley asked.

“Oh yeah,” Rose said. “We got those. Wouldn't have lit the sign if we didn't.” She pointed her pencil toward the half-illuminated BU sign.

“Cheeseburger?” Riley asked. “Fries, Coke?”

Rose wrote it down, nodding at each word. “Check, check, and check.” She turned her enormous boobs toward JD. “And for you?”

JD handed up his menu. “Same. But can you add bacon to mine?”

Rose narrowed her eyes playfully. “We got bacon. No sausage.”

Riley leaned forward, feeling more comfortable. “Oh, and do you have cheddar cheese? Or just American?”

The smile fell from Rose's lips. “We got square cheese.”

Riley raised her eyebrows and handed off her menu. “Good enough for me.”

Rose disappeared through the double doors yelling “two cheesers!” to no one in particular while Riley pulled her tablet out of her purse.

JD's leaned in. “What are you looking up?”

Riley rested her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand. “You said you found Tim, Jane's brother.”

“Your brother.”

She looked up. “What did you say?”

“If you're Jane, then…”

“Not necessarily. Didn't you say you found some webpage? Where he was looking for…” Riley swallowed hard. “Where he posted stuff?”

“Yeah.” JD slid the tablet to him and began searching.

Rose busted back through the double doors, Coke glasses in each hand. “So, what brings you two out today?”

“Uhhh.” Riley and JD both started.

Rose tapped her finger against her lips and smiled. “Oh, I see.”

Heat shot up Riley's spine, smacking the back of her head. “You do?”

“I'm no idiot.” Rose's eyes cut from Riley to JD. “Young lovers, sneaking off.”

Riley's heart pounded when Rose pointed to her.

“Your parents don't know you're out together, do they?”

“Yes, that's what we're doing. You won't say anything, will you?” JD said, his eyes going from nervous to sweet and imploring in one of Riley's thudding heartbeats.

“Oh, of course not. Who am I going to tell? It's just me and Mr. Tastee Freeze in here today. You all enjoy yourselves, and if you really love each other, that's what matters. Love conquers all, you know? That's what they say.” She looked off. “Least that's what I think.”

There was a ding from inside the kitchen and Rose jumped to attention. “Burgers are ready!”

JD watched Rose's back as she walked away. “Well, she's cheery.”

Riley offered a tight-lipped smile and leaned toward JD.

“Have you found it?”

He frowned. “That's weird. I could have sworn it was on this site.” He turned the tablet toward her. “It's not there anymore.”

JD slid her tablet toward the wall, and Rose set down two enormous plates overflowing with double-fried fries and burgers with patties as big as Riley's head. The scent wafted up to Riley's nostrils and she couldn't remember ever being this hungry. She decimated every inch of burger and every single fry in what seemed like sixty seconds. JD pulled a fry through his puddle of ketchup and grinned.

“You eat like that around your boyfriend?”

She wiped the grease from her hands on her napkin and eyed JD. He had driven her out of town, accompanying her on this weird, unplanned hideout mission; he was skipping school; he was taking her safety into consideration.

Riley shifted her weight. “I need to tell you something.”

JD sat up straighter, his eyes going saucer-wide. “Really? Something else? What are you—an alien? A Russian spy? A sister wife?”

She wrinkled her nose but smiled. “A sister wife?”