Bad news from Dad

M ore footsteps, closer this time.

Forget about the keys! Reva told herself. You’re close to the police station. Run back inside and get help!

Her heart pounding, Reva began to run.

A shadow rose up from between two parked cars.

Reva screamed and spun back in the opposite direction.

“Reva!” a voice cried. “Stop! It’s me!”

Reva tried to stop and slid on the ice. She caught herself and whirled around.

A figure came running toward her, into the glow of a streetlight.

Grace Morton.

Reva’s fear turned to fury. “Grace!” she shouted. “What are you doing here?”

“Sssh!” Gasping for breath, Grace scurried along the icy sidewalk. The wind had whipped her wispy brown hair into a tangled mess. Her nose was bright red and her teeth chattered. “Don’t shout, you might—”

“Why did you sneak up on me like that?” Reva cried. “You scared me to death!”

“Not so loud!” Grace urged, grabbing hold of Reva’s arm. “I wasn’t sneaking up on you.”

“You could have fooled me!” Reva snapped.

“It wasn’t me!” Grace glanced around in a panic. “It must have been Rory!”

“What? Rory is out here?”

“Yes. He’s after me. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Grace cried. “He’s out of control! He says he’s going to kill me—and you, too! He’s going to kill you for hiding me!”

Reva felt a flash of terror. Her heart thundering, she hurried back to the spot where she’d dropped her keys.

“What are you doing?” Grace demanded. “Your car is over there!”

“I dropped the keys!” Reva cried. “Don’t just stand there, Grace. Help me find them!”

Grace hurried over and began scuffing at the snow along with Reva. “Hurry!” she urged, practically whimpering with fear. “He’s crazy! Crazy! We have to hurry!”

Gasping in panic, Reva scraped in the snow with the side of her shoe. Something jingled. “I found them!” she cried.

She bent over to pick them up.

“He’s coming! Hurry, Reva!” Grace exclaimed.

Reva snatched up the keys and dashed toward her car, afraid to look back. Afraid to see Rory bearing down on them.

At the car, Reva fumbled with the keys, trying to find the right one.

Grace whimpered again.

Should we run into the station? Reva wondered. No. Let’s just get away from here!

She finally found the key and jammed it into the lock. She yanked open the door and threw herself inside, scrabbling frantically to get the key into the ignition.

Grace pounded on the passenger window.

Reva turned the key and hit the power-lock button.

Grace tumbled into the seat. “I saw him!” she cried, her teeth chattering. “Get us out of here! Hurry!”

Reva gunned the engine, put the car in gear, and stomped on the accelerator.

The car shot forward, then stopped as the tires whined and spun on the ice.

Grace cowered in her seat.

Reva gritted her teeth and put the car in reverse. She rocked it back, then forward again.

Finally, the tires caught.

Reva floored the gas pedal and the car leaped forward with a roar. The speedometer shot up to sixty as the car hurtled down the street. Reva let up on the gas.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Grace kept urging.

“I have to slow down or we’ll spin out of control!” Reva glanced in the rearview mirror. The street was empty. No cars. No one running after them on foot. “Besides, there’s nobody behind us. We made it, Grace!”

Grace hunched down in the seat, shivering. “We’ll never make it,” she muttered. “Not for good, anyway. Rory will always be after me.”

Reva turned off of Division Street. “This is crazy,” she declared. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. I panicked. We should have run into the police station. I should turn around. Go back. So you can get them to arrest Rory.”

“No!” Grace bolted up in the seat. “Don’t do that! Please, Reva! Rory will kill me if he finds out I went to the police! He’ll kill us both!”

“According to you, he’s going to do that anyway.” Reva shuddered and flipped the heater on high. “Did he really say he’d kill me, too?”

Grace nodded. “And if he finds out I told the police, he’ll just go into hiding. Trust me. He’s very sneaky. They’ll never find him. And just when we think it’s safe, he’ll show up and get us!”

Reva shuddered again. Would she have to look over her shoulder the rest of her life just because she’d been nice enough to invite Grace home for the holidays?

Remind me never to do anything that nice again, she told herself. It’s definitely not worth it.

“What happened, anyway?” she asked as she turned another corner, heading into North Hills. “Did Rory come to the house?”

“He called,” Grace told her. “He said he was close. Real close. I didn’t believe him at first. But a few minutes later, I heard the dogs barking like mad. When I looked out the window, I saw him!”

“Inside the grounds? Where was the guard?” Reva demanded.

“Rory wasn’t inside the grounds, he was outside the gate.” Grace held her raw, cold hands in front of the heating vent. “I didn’t see the guard. Maybe he was trying to quiet the dogs or something.”

“Rory would never make it past the dogs or the guard,” Reva told her. “You should have stayed in the house.”

“Maybe, but I panicked,” Grace admitted. “I couldn’t help it, I just had to get out. I ran out the back way and kept running until I got downtown.”

Too bad you stopped there, Reva thought. You should have kept running—right out of my life.

“I’m sorry,” Grace murmured. “I know I’m causing you a lot of trouble, Reva.”

Reva rolled her eyes. Then why don’t you just pack up and go home? she thought.

Reva sighed. “It’s not just you,” she told Grace. “Daniel made this awful phone call to me. That’s why I was down at the police station. He actually told me I deserved what Traci got. Can you believe it? All because of that stupid joke I pulled.”

Grace shook her head. “That’s awful. I guess you hurt his feelings.”

Reva sniffed. “Oh, please! I mean, I didn’t ask him to come! Daniel is a loser, that’s all. I’m glad I met Grant.”

“I bet Liza isn’t glad,” Grace murmured.

Reva snorted. “If she can’t hold onto her boyfriend, that’s her problem. Besides,” she added, “I really need Grant, with everything that’s going on.”

“You mean Traci’s death?” Grace asked. “That was so terrible.”

Reva nodded. “And it really messed up the scarf show. The first one is tomorrow, you know, and we never really got a chance to rehearse. I’ll have to hire a new model first thing in the morning. I just hope she doesn’t fall on her face.”

“I’m sure everything will go okay,” Grace assured her.

“It better,” Reva declared. “The scarf show is really important to me. I can’t let anything ruin it.”

As Reva pulled to a stop in front of her house, Grace sat up, tense again.

Reva glanced around warily. She hadn’t seen a car following them, but that didn’t mean anything. Rory might have come a different way.

Still, everything seemed quiet. “If Rory were here, the dogs would be barking,” she told Grace. “Come on. Let’s get inside.”

As they left the car and dashed up the front steps, the door swung open.

Reva’s father stood there, a grim expression on his face.

“Daddy!” Reva cried. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“I have some news, Reva,” Mr. Dalby told her, his voice as grim as his expression. “Some very bad news.”

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20