The Watcher (3 page)

“Okay,
abandonment
then.”

At that exact moment, Heather’s boyfriend Jesse came along. He was with Dean, who slid onto the seat beside Fiona.

Jesse hesitated. I wondered how much he’d heard.

“Girl talk?” he asked.

“No,” I said, welcoming a change of topic. “Have a seat.”

Heather tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear and grinned at Jesse. They were a blend of opposites. With his shoulder-length dark hair and leather jacket, he looked like a biker, while she was soft and feminine, verging on preppy.

Around Dean, Fiona’s smile brightened and her laughter grew louder and more frequent. I couldn’t help but think she was compensating for being two inches taller than him, but he ate it up. At least Heather played it a bit cooler with Jesse, so I wouldn’t have to be sick.

“Hey, we’re going hiking on Saturday—Fiona and I,” Heather said. “We’ve been going all summer. Wanna come?”

“Yeah, we discovered this great trail,” Fiona chimed in.

Hiking in the
woods
? Were they kidding me? I could barely stand eating outside on a busy patio.

I hesitated. “You going, Jesse?”

“Nope. Gotta work.”

“Come on,” Heather insisted. “The weather’s supposed to be great.”

Maybe I was being silly. It was time to live my life like a normal person again. “Okay,” I said slowly. Surely a hike would be fine. I wouldn’t be alone.

Jesse motioned to someone behind me. “Hey, Mike. Why don’t you join us?”

“Hi, Jesse,” said a rich, deep voice. It had just a hint of an accent.

I checked over my shoulder to see who was speaking and froze.
Mike?
It was the guy from the mall!

Fiona and Jesse moved over to make room for him at the table, and he ended up sitting across from me. Not knowing what to say, I studied the remains of my salad. If I recognized him, surely he must recognize me, too.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Michael Fontaine.”

This
was the new guy? Up close, he was even more attractive, and when his eyes widened for that fraction of a second after meeting mine, I actually thought I saw starlight.
Could he be any more gorgeous?

“I’m Mia…short for Maria,” I offered. My palms began to sweat.

“Hello, Mia short for Maria.” His lips curved into a hint of a smile, but his gaze scorched right through me.

“H-hello.” I wanted to say something to him about the day before, but didn’t know how to start. Demanding to know what he’d been doing in the woods didn’t seem the best opening. “W-Where’d you come from?”

He raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “The lunch line?”

“Actually,” I said, “I meant your accent.”

“We moved here from England when I was ten.”

He didn’t ask about me. In the background, I could hear Fiona laughing too loudly at something Dean said. The fact that I was having a totally awkward moment made her laughter even more irritating.

“You seem really familiar,” I blurted. “Have we met?”

He paled. “I don’t think so.”

Now what? Obviously he didn’t recognize me, and I couldn’t trust myself to speak without sounding stupid.
Mia short for Maria
and
have we met?
God, I am so useless!

One of the guys on the playing field shouted “Look out!” as a football hit the wall over my head. It landed on the concrete beside me. Michael got up and tossed the ball back to him.

“Careful,” he said.

“Thanks,” the guy shouted.

Michael folded his long legs back under our table and took a bite of his cheeseburger.

“Wasn’t it you?” I sputtered, wondering why I was going down
that
road again.
What am I thinking?

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “What?”

Not wanting to draw anyone else’s attention to what I was about to say, I lowered my voice. “Weren’t you in the park yesterday morning?”

He let out his breath and smiled down at his plate
.
“
That
was you?”

So it
was
him. Sitting across from me, he didn’t seem too
dangerous, unless you could kill someone with good looks. In which case he was
lethal
. “Whatever happened to…” I realized I couldn’t accurately describe what I’d seen, and there was a look in his eye that I couldn’t quite place. “Whatever happened to the weird dog?”

His smile never wavered. “Didn’t see any dogs.” It made me wonder if I’d noticed anything in his look at all.

“So you didn’t see
anything
?” I asked, trying not to show my desperation. I had hoped for a witness, someone to tell me I wasn’t crazy, that what I saw was real. But if it
was
, then what?

“Some girl screaming in the park.”

The blood rushed to my cheeks as I realized how insane I must have sounded. Not only was I asking about a dog he hadn’t seen, but I’d just let him know that the first time he saw me, I’d been screaming like a crazy person. No wonder he stared at me. Maybe I
was
seeing things and I actually
was
crazy.

No.
I was sure there was a dog,
or something
. But it wasn’t the time to make my point. “What about at the mall? What were you doing there?”

“The mall?”

“Yeah, what were you doing there?”

“Um…” Swallowing another bite, he furrowed his brow as though he were seriously concerned about my mental health. “Shopping. You?”

“Shopping,” I said. Here I was thinking this guy was some kind of stalker when it was obvious he didn’t recognize me.

He turned his attention to his French fries and ate one. I followed by eating a forkful of salad. Heather and Jesse were telling a story about someone in their drama class, but Michael wasn’t listening. With his elbows propped on the table and his hands clasped, he took in his surroundings, sizing everything up. He seemed so observant; how could he not have seen that dog? Had it run away before he got there?

Michael’s shoulders stiffened and he inclined his head like he was listening. Even though we had just met, there was something oddly familiar about him doing that, and not from the day before, either. It tugged at my memory like a headache. Had I seen him somewhere else too?

He stood abruptly. “Excuse me,” he said.

“Where are you going?” Jesse asked. “We’ve got another half hour.”

“I have to be somewhere,” he said. He picked up his tray and left.

Once he was gone, Fiona leaned across the table. “That’s the new guy, isn’t it?” she asked. “He’s really hot!”

“Hey,” Dean said. “Should I be jealous?”

Fiona giggled, stroking his arm. “Of course not.”

“How do you know him, Jess?” Heather asked.

“I used to go to Sealth too, remember?”

Heather fed Jesse a french fry. “So, dish. What’s he like?”

“Decent. He parties a lot, doesn’t take himself too seriously, used to ride a Triumph Daytona.”

That last point made Jesse’s face light up but left us girls unimpressed.

“It’s a motorcycle,” he explained.

“I heard something about an accident,” I said. In spite of myself, I was curious, remembering what Elaine had been gossiping about.

“Yeah, last year.” Jesse leaned across the table and checked to make sure we were listening before he continued. “Really bad, too. Totaled his bike.”

“I heard that his heart stopped beating, but they revived him,” Fiona added, twisting a lock of her hair and smiling at Dean. “He spent almost three weeks in a coma.”

“Who told you that?” I asked her.

“Overheard Jen in the bathroom,” she said. “Her cousin goes to Sealth. It’s big news there.”

“He’s lucky to be alive,” Heather said. She directed her next comment at Jesse. “I don’t know how you can ride that bike of yours.”

“Do you want to hear this or not?” he asked her, frowning.

“I know, I know,” Heather muttered, scrunching her napkin into a ball. The fact that Jesse rode a motorcycle was a constant worry for her. It was the only thing they argued about.

“He got in that accident on the night of Brad Morelli’s party,” Jesse continued. “Remember that night? Huge storm—roads were terrible. Apparently, a tree fell over right in front of him.” He reached for Heather’s hand, and she let him hold it. “I’d never ride on a night like that, not after a party.”

“A
tree fell over
? Doesn’t that sound—I don’t know,” I said, not sure why the details of Michael’s accident bothered me so much. “I mean, don’t you think there’s something
odd
about him? Why is he here? Why didn’t he stay at Sealth?”

I wanted to tell Heather that he was the guy from the mall but something held me back. I didn’t want to have to explain it with everyone there, especially when it was probably a coincidence. The mall and the park weren’t that far apart.
He has the right to go shopping like everyone else.

Heather’s eyes widened, and a deep voice behind me said, “We moved.”

I practically jumped as I spun around. There was no doubt Michael had heard me. It was as if the gods had all conspired for me to say or do the wrong thing around this guy. I wasn’t even the gossiping type. What had come over me?

“Oh, hey, Mike,” Jesse said, his face opening into an easy smile. If he was nervous about being caught, he covered well. “Speak of the devil.”

Michael gave him a nod and motioned to where he’d been sitting. “Forgot my keys.”

“Oh.” Jesse grabbed them off the seat and tossed them at Michael. “Here.”

Michael caught them in mid-air. “Thanks,” he said to Jesse, then turned to me. The muscles of his jaw pulsed beneath his skin. “You don’t know anything about me.”

My face heated like I’d been running a marathon. It was all I could do not to cry, but I refused to let my feelings show. Being called out was embarrassing enough. Tears would only cause a scene.

“What was
that
all about?” Heather asked after he left.

Jesse shrugged. “Never seen him act that way before.”

She turned to me. “Just forget about him, Mia.”

Forget about him?
If only I could

Chapter Four

The trailhead didn’t seem like much at first—nothing to be frightened of, anyway. Its wooden sign had long since become overgrown by blackberry bushes, obscuring the name, and two giant cedars shrouded a wooden staircase that snaked its way up the hill. At the top of the stairs, the trail opened onto a wide dirt path shaded from the morning sun by a canopy of trees. Their roots, gnarled and knobby, gripped the earth like talons.

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the forest, I followed my friends, winding and zig-zagging along a trail that narrowed as the forest thickened. While my friends moved with ease, loose rocks nestled between the roots easily threw me off balance. I had to concentrate on my footing, using their steps as a guide.

Shade loomed everywhere and the threat of shadows lurked behind every tree, but Heather and Fiona didn’t seem to notice.

“Did you manage to change your appointment, Fi?” Heather asked. “So we can run the booth at the team and club fair?”

“No,” Fiona said. “There’s no getting out of it.”

“What’s that?” I said, checking the bushes around us for movement, for sounds.

“It’s new,” Heather said. “All the clubs and sports teams have booths.” She pulled her hair back into an elastic band. “It’s to let everyone know what’s available, kind of a job fair. Fiona and I were going to work it together, but she can’t make it.”

“Wish I could,” Fiona said. “I hate going to the dentist.”

The air cooled and a strange tickle ran down my spine.

“Did it just get colder?” I asked.

“The sea air’s damp. It can seem cold,” Heather said. “Or did you forget that in Denver?”

A shudder crawled along my skin. Droplets of sweat chilled on my brow. What was going on?

“Can you help out with the booth, Mia?” Heather said. “Hand out flyers?”

Looking around, I checked for moving branches in case a wind had brought the cold air, but the trees were perfectly still.

“Mia?”

“Uhh…yeah,” I said. I hadn’t answered her question. “Sure. I’ll help.”

Fiona’s long legs carried her steps ahead of us. She slowed down to let Heather pass, so she could talk to me. “Did you meet any interesting guys in Denver?”

“What?”

“Guys. In Denver,” she repeated slowly, as though I were dense. Her fair skin, also unaffected by the chill, glowed pink with exertion.
Was I imagining things?

I stifled a shiver. “Nope. No guys.” Maybe it was nothing.

“That’s too bad.”

Fiona made it sound tragic. Did she think I was pathetic or something? I tried to shrug it off, digging my hands in my pockets to warm them. “I was with Bill a lot,” I said. Bill, my brother, was in his third year at Berkeley. He had come back to work for Dad over the summer, and if it weren’t for him my summer would have completely sucked.

“How ’bout his friends?” Fiona grinned at me suggestively.

“Eww. No.
Not
computer geeks.” I grimaced.

“You’re never gonna get a boyfriend with that attitude,” said Fiona. “You gotta be open to it.”

I wanted to retaliate and say
Does being open mean I have to throw myself at guys the way you do?
But I held my tongue. It wasn’t worth fighting over. Besides, after my encounter with Michael in the cafeteria last week, he wouldn’t even look at me. So much for being “open.” It was pointless.

As we continued along the path, the chill subsided. Fiona steered the conversation to the topic of Dean. I resigned myself to listen, all the while staying alert to any more strange sensations. There were none. I must have been freaking out over nothing.

***

The Peak, as they called it, had an unobstructed view of Puget Sound that was worth the climb. Below us, the mid-day sun glinted off the water surrounded by giant evergreens lining the cove. Dozens of boats cruised the harbor and a cool breeze blew in from the ocean, but it was nowhere near the same chill as before.