11. Chapter 11
Chapter 11
Dylan
I knew it. I knew Elise was secretly training—and doing a pretty awesome job of it based on what I’d seen.
Since I’d probably scared the daylights out of her, I came into the light slowly with both hands raised. The moment she recognized me, her fear morphed into a scowl.
“Are you stalking me?”
One of her hands rested on her heart while the other was braced against her leg, holding her exhausted body up.
“No. I drove by and saw your car parked here. I wanted to check to make sure you were okay, and boy, are you okay. I clocked your last two laps, and you were cruising.”
Her honey-colored ponytail bouncing behind her, Elise headed back toward the starting line. “Well, you see that I’m fine, so you can leave now.”
“Are you serious, after months of claiming you’re injured, I see you running like a stinking cheetah, and all you can say is ‘I’m fine, so leave?”
Elise spun and dug her pointer finger into my chest. “I was injured; you saw what happened. It took months of physical therapy before I could even jog.”
I raised both hands into the air. “I know, but when you got better, why didn’t you come back? We could have used you on the track team, and I know Coach Pete would love to have you run for him now. Why are you still hiding?”
Slowly, she dropped her hand. “I just don’t want to run for anyone else.”
Huh. I guess she had only ever run for her dad. What must that be like, having a father that supported you and loved what you loved instead of constantly beating you over the head with his expectations and the ways you disappointed him?
Again, Elise was standing at the line, ready to start another interval.
“Wait,” I called. I snatched up the sneakers I’d grabbed out of my car and rushed to pull off my Dock Martens—I hadn’t had a chance to change since the funeral.
Good thing I’d chosen khaki shorts over slacks. Even though it was nighttime, I still would’ve roasted in my pants.
I rushed to join Elise at the starting line.
“Any chance you’re going to keep that shirt on?” she asked.
“Nope.” I tossed my polo onto the waiting grass.
I sensed more than saw her eyes roll. “Alright, three…two…one.”
The two of us took off, and since I was fresh, I got a good lead. Heading into the back straightaway, Elise’s thumping footfalls stayed steadily close to my own. She wasn’t far behind.
I focused on keeping my breathing even. Jumping into a workout like this with zero warmup was always a terrible idea. Muscle stiffness setting in, I rolled my neck and shook out my hands. The thumping of another set of feet sounded directly behind me.
Pouring more speed into my angry legs wasn’t enough to stop Elise from pulling up beside me. Was she smiling? I hadn’t seen a full-on smile cross those full lips of hers since her dad’s disappearance. It was tempting to stop and soak up the moment, but Elise would gladly blow right by me.
Still, I had finally pulled a smile out of the mysterious coach’s daughter. Should I be offended that it made her that happy to kick my butt?
She eased in front of me and moved to hug the inside of the track, making it harder for me to pass her.
Whether it made her happy or not, butt kicking time was over.
Just like her dad had taught me, I settled my gaze on Elise’s back. She was my target. Gradually, I increased my pace. Like a torpedo zeroing in on an enemy ship.
The lyrics to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” popped into my mind.
Alright, maybe the girl hadn’t actually broken my heart, at least not yet, but she was smokin’ hot, and this was war.
Now I was the one to pull even with her. We ran shoulder to shoulder across the line and into the second lap.
Footsteps perfectly in sync, whenever one of us accelerated, so did the other. We blew through another half lap that way. Elise’s breathing was ragged, and mine was just as bad.
Never had another person challenged me like this. Every step, I wondered whether I would keep moving forward or faint.
A side-ache stabbed like a knife between my ribs. We were in sight of the finish line. I drove my clumsy legs forward.
Elise inched ahead of me. I fought to pull even, but the gap between us grew wider.
Fumes. That was all I had to draw on. I had nothing left.
Elise staggered across the finish line seconds ahead of me, then we both flopped onto the track like a couple of rag dolls.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sounds of chirping crickets, passing traffic and our two wheezing breaths. My stinging knees reminded me that I’d probably be sporting some gnarly track burn from the way I’d fallen. Not that it mattered.
That was possibly the best race I’d ever run, and I hadn’t even worn a racing bib.
Raising my head, I looked to where Elise lay panting. “That was epic,” I said.
She returned my grin, but didn’t bother moving. “Good race.”
Slowly, I eased into a sitting position. “Pete told me I’ve been doing really well, but obviously, I still have room for improvement. How fast were we going, anyway?”
Elise lifted the arm wearing her watch. “ I don’t know. I was so ticked at you for startling and then joining me that I forgot to start my timer.”
We both chuckled, then started hacking like a pair of chain smokers.
Elise stood and brushed the track pebbles from her shorts. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but you can be really annoying.”
“I prefer the terms high-spirited or passionate. At least that’s what my mom would tell teachers whenever they’d complain to her about me.”
“I bet she had to say that a lot.”
“Ha, you have no idea.”
Together, we staggered like drunks to our water bottles, actually to Elise’s water bottle since I hadn’t brought one. Luckily, she took pity on me and let me have a swig of hers as long as my lips didn’t touch the rim. Her insistence that my germs weren’t even allowed to get cozy with hers wasn’t a great sign, but hey, I liked a challenge.
I held her elbow and pulled her a little closer. Not enough to freak her out, but close enough to show I was interested.
“I have something I want to show you,” I said.
For the smallest second, she returned my gaze, her cheeks lifting in a shy smile. Bessey noticed our contact and leapt up and down between us to get in on the affection.
Elise broke away and scolded her for jumping on us. She grabbed her keys, and I scooped up my shirt from the ground.
“You going to put that on?”
“Nope, I still need to cool down after the torture you just put me through. Come on.” I headed in the direction of the parking lot. Would she follow?
She reminded me of a stray cat we’d sort of adopted back in Arizona. It had to be nearly starving to death to even consider coming into our yard to eat the food Mom had been putting out for days. It got used to coming every morning and night to eat what we left out on the back porch, and if we stayed super still, it would even sometimes come when we were there. But the second we acted even a little bit interested or moved too quickly, it would dart under the fence and wouldn’t come back for hours.
Footsteps clomped behind me.
Don’t act too eager.
Reaching my Subaru Outback, I pulled open the passenger door. The lot’s fluorescent lights lit Elise’s face with that one raised eyebrow. At least she wasn’t rolling her eyes at me.
“Trust me, you’re going to want to see what I have to show you, but we have to drive to get there.”
“I can’t just leave Bessey here. She would need to come too.”
“I know; I don’t mind dog hair. My grandma does, but she hardly ever rides in my car.”
“Alright,” she sighed. “Just let me grab my bag out of my car. I don’t want someone breaking in just to get to it, and it has my laptop.”
Bessey was already seated and chewing on a seatbelt by the time Elise returned with her bag. I reached to change the radio station as we drove out of the lot, then stopped.
“Why don’t you be the DJ?”
Elise turned to me with a wicked smile. I held back a wince as she reached for the dash display. After surfing stations, she finally landed on “The World I Know,” a classic Collective Soul song. Listening to the violins harmonize with the bass guitar, my stomach muscles unclenched, and I settled further back in the driver seat.
“What, no classical garbage this time?” I eased into traffic, then turned left at the light.
“Classical music is not garbage. I just happen to have a wide array of musical interests.”
“You mean you chose that style of music last time because you knew it would drive me bonkers?”
Elise turned to face the window, but not before I caught her smirk.
“I can’t believe you.” I jammed my wriggling finger beneath her ribs.
Laughing, she edged away. “Hey, you had it coming.”
“I did not.”
Elise folded her arms across her chest. “Trust me, you really did. Where are we going anyway?”
“Well, I went down to city hall and did a little digging.”
“So did I, and it got me in huge trouble,” she interrupted.
“Really? The lady I talked to was super nice. She told me everything she could and helped me figure out where to go to find the rest.”
“You’re kidding.” Elise stuffed her bag onto the floor and glared at the windshield. “When I went there, the person at the desk told me to wait, and next thing I know, Detective Jerkface comes out and yells at me. He actually threatened to lock me up if I didn’t stop ‘snooping.”’
“Yikes, I’m sorry. Maybe he’d told the people at the desk to keep an eye out for you. If he’s willing to lock you up, maybe this is a bad idea. I don’t want to get you into more trouble.”
I pulled the car to the side of the road, then flipped on my blinker to make a U-turn.
Long fingers draped over mine. “Don’t. Dylan, my dad was murdered. I’m not going to sit around and wait for some idiot detective to solve the crime while his murderer is walking around free. My dad wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t want anyone else to get hurt by the same person when we could do something to stop them.”
She’d said “we.” And she was touching me.
I tried to draw a full breath and focus. Hopefully, she didn’t feel my pulse pounding through my fingers the same way I sensed her steady heartbeat. With the streetlight’s orange beam lighting her wisps of blonde hair like some kind of halo, her crystal blue eyes fixed on mine, the air in the car suddenly seemed thin. No, not thin, almost non-existent.
There had been other girls I’d liked since coming to Rancho Invitado. Some had even liked me back, but none of them got my heart thumping like Elise did. Her unique combo of killer good looks, brains and speed was just my jam. No other song sounded quite the same.
Turning my focus to the cars rushing by helped me remember my argument. “Your dad also wouldn’t want you chasing after a murderer by yourself. There’s safety in numbers. Haven’t you noticed that in every horror movie, the time when people actually start getting hurt is when they split up?”
Elise drew back her hand. “You’re saying we should include a bunch of people?”
I shrugged. “That wouldn’t be a horrible idea, but considering how hard it is to get you to even tell me anything, how about we compromise, and you just include me? Let’s figure this out together.”
Except for the roar of traffic, the car was completely silent.
This girl had serious trust issues.
“Here, let me show you what I uncovered, and then maybe you’ll see that I can be helpful.”
A few streets later, we turned into an empty parking lot. Elise narrowed her eyes at the dark building in front of us while Bessey licked at my elbow.
“Edge Nursery,” she read from the flower bordered sign above the entrance. Her eyes narrowed. “You think gardening had something to do with my dad’s death?”
“Not exactly. I found out from the city who owned the strip mall from that address we went to. When I talked to them, they said the people who signed for the lease on the space stopped paying rent in March of last year, even though their contract ran through February of this year. They tried to call the two guys who’d signed for the space to get payment, but both their phones weren’t in service. The home addresses they’d given were fake and belonged to someone else, and the names they’d given turned out to be fake too.”
“Okay, so what does that have to do with why we’re here?”
Somewhere near the back of the store, a light flickered on then off. A few seconds later, a woman with a perky ponytail and fluffy bangs wearing a skin-tight tank top and extremely short shorts walked out of the sliding glass doors.
“Tara?” Elise whispered.
“Bingo. I dug into her and her husband’s histories and found that he had a very short stint as a comedian under the name ‘Nick Flowers,’ which was one of the two names the strip mall space was rented under.”
Hurrying to her jeep, Tara gave my Outback a longer glance than I liked before hopping inside. Both Elise and I slid lower in our seats.
“His stage name was Nick Flowers, really?”
“Yep, I found an old video of his act on YouTube, lots of gardening related jokes. Let’s just say there’s a reason his career as a comedian didn’t take off.”
“It could just be a coincidence. There could be another Nick Flowers.”
Tara gave my car another uncomfortably, long look, then started her jeep and peeled out of the lot.
“There may be another Nick Flowers,” I said, slowly rising. “But no-one gives me the creeps the way that chick does. I’m telling you, she’s up to her eyeballs in something shady.”