Page 37 of It Happened on the Lake

“You sick little fucks!” he roared as more raw eggs pelted him and his grip loosened.

Chase yelled, “Run!”

It was all the urging Rand needed. He wiggled away from the guy who was roaring his outrage.

“Oh no, you don’t! Come back here, you little shit!”

He lunged for Rand and tripped.

Rand ran, snagged the handlebars of his bike again, flew onto the seat. He hit the pedals. Hard. And took off. Not looking back. Adrenaline firing his blood, clearing his mind.

He sped crazily along the path, his heart pumping so hard he thought it might leap from his chest. Again, in his peripheral vision in the watery light, he caught sight of a shadow moving through the trees.

He didn’t slow.

Just kept riding as if his life depended upon it.

Because it did.

Skidding around corners, flying over rises, splashing through puddles, and bouncing over rocks and roots, he rode.

As freaked out as he was, he had a prick of conscience that told him he should go back and make sure Chase and Evan were okay.

He didn’t. He knew enough about the other boys to feel that they were safe.

Evan could talk his way out of anything, and Chase never stuck his neck out far enough that he was in danger of losing his head.

Except that if Chase’s dad ever found out . . . that would be bad. Then Chase would be a dead man. Tom Hunt was of the “spare the rod, spoil the child” mentality.

He saw the road through the trees. Blue light filtering through the branches. Right past the hairpin curve of the trail.

Pulse pounding through his brain, he hit the curve, put down one leg and skidded his bike around the tight corner, then headed to the berm, faster and faster where the trees gave way to pavement.

Fortunately, there wasn’t any traffic at the moment.

No headlights cut through the night.

At the berm, he lifted his handlebars and shifted his weight as he’d done a thousand times before.

His bike soared over the berm.

Then landed with a bone-jarring jolt against the cracked pavement of the street.

One more corner to Trail’s End, the street where he lived. Leaning hard, he again skid-turned, not far from the swim park where the lake glistened between the trees.

He was almost home!

But he heard the rumble of an engine behind him.

No!

Shit, shit, shit!

Hazarding a look over his shoulder, he saw the beams of headlights cutting through the drizzle.

A truck!

Probably the bald guy.

Sweating despite the cool night, he raced even faster on the pavement to the V where the road forked, one route heading upward and continuing around the hills overlooking the lake, the other, Trail’s End Road, leading downward to Fox Point where he and his dad lived.

Legs pumping, he veered downward and sent up a prayer that the truck behind him would keep driving on the main road, ever upward.

Nope!

He wasn’t that lucky.

The truck bounced down the narrow lane behind him, bearing down.

Jesus.

Faster! He stayed just outside of the headlight beams, using the sharp downward slope to increase his speed. His hair was flying, the wind harsh against his bruised face.

No way could he stop and turn into the A-frame without being caught, so he just kept riding, past the Hunts’ and Leonettis’ houses and beyond the rental house at the end of the street.

He didn’t stop there either but jumped the curb and hit the trail that led to nowhere, just more woods past a trickle of a waterfall from the cliffs above.

At the end of the path, he slid to a stop.

His heart was hammering, his panic growing, as he stashed the bike behind a huge fallen tree.

Breathing hard, he crawled to the edge of the root wad, peering between the exposed, broken roots and limbs to squint through the thickets.

From his hiding spot he was only able to catch a glimpse of the street in the distance.

He saw the vehicle.

Not the truck the old man had been driving.

Instead Rand watched a DeSoto station wagon pull into the driveway of the house at the end of the street.

Pink and gray, just like his mother wanted.

She commented about it each time it passed the house.

The family of five piled out, mom and dad and three blond girls wearing eye masks and carrying bags of candy.

Not the bald man who’d been chasing him.

Rand let out a long breath.

No sign of the guy in the massive two-toned pickup.

Maybe he’d lost Baldy.

Could he have gotten that lucky?

Or maybe the guy was dealing with Evan and Chase.

He waited a few more minutes, half expecting his attacker’s pickup to roll down the street, but the road remained quiet.

Slowly Rand began to breathe normally, and after what seemed a lifetime, he got onto his bike again, always on the lookout for his friends.

Thankfully his old man was working tonight, a cop on patrol, making certain there were no juveniles causing trouble, no pranksters.

And his mother was working at some church Halloween party, on the clean-up crew, so she’d be home late.

Rand swallowed hard. If his dad even guessed what his only son was up to, Rand would be dead meat.

He hid his bike behind the wood stacked at the side of the house and heard a growl from Sievers’s place.

He didn’t really mind the dog, had even managed to pet Duke a couple of times through the fence, but the owner was bat-shit crazy, one of those vigilantes who didn’t trust anyone, especially the government and cops.

Sievers’s whole house was booby-trapped, according to Chase.

Just last summer when Rand and Chase and Levi had been swimming but were taking a break and eating Fudgsicles on the deck, Old Man Sievers had been spreading gravel in his side yard.

Nodding toward the older guy, Chase had said, “I’ve seen him with sticks of dynamite.

He puts ’em in that shed of his, and it’s got a basement. That’s where he keeps kids hostage.”

“No way,” Rand had said, just as Duke started barking from the other side of the fence.

“Scout’s honor.” Chase wasn’t backing down. But he kept his voice low so the neighbor couldn’t hear him. “I saw him with chains and locks going in there.”

“You did not,” his younger brother, Levi, had argued while Sievers ordered his dog to quiet down.

Levi accused, “You’re a liar.”

“And you’re a snot-nosed little shit,” Chase said, tossing aside his Fudgsicle stick before tackling his younger brother. He wrestled Levi to the ground and forced him to say “Uncle,” before finally letting him up.

Tonight, after his initial warning growl, the dog was quiet.

Rand slipped inside and was about to hurry upstairs when he heard voices on the dock and headed to the kitchen. Peering through the window, he saw Chase near the back door. Evan, tossing his dark hair from his eyes, was just stepping onto the deck.

“You okay?” Chase asked as Rand walked onto the deck, closing the door behind him.

“Yeah. Fine.” Rand wasn’t sure he was okay at all, but he wasn’t going to admit to being scared shitless.

His friends were huddled near the boat slip. Their jacket collars were turned up against the mist, their faces barely visible in the gaseous light cast from the street lamp at the front of the house.

“He had you, though, didn’t he? That old chrome dome had you,” Chase said in low tones.

Evan, his cheeks still flushed, added, “We saw it all go down.”

“I know,” Rand agreed.

Chase was amped up. Agitated. His eyes wide. “I thought he was gonna kill you.”

“Me, too,” Rand said. “But he didn’t.”

“That’s cuz of me and Evan, we got him good! Did you see his face when that egg smacked into him?” Chase asked, laughing at the image. “Egg dripping down his nose. I thought he was gonna have a heart attack.”

“Or shit himself.” Evan let out a nervous chuckle.

Rand was nodding. “You saved my life.”

“Hell yeah, we did.” Chase clapped Evan on the back.

Rand nodded. “I owe you.”

Chase said, “I’ll remember that.”

“Do.”

“You know you’re lucky he didn’t recognize you,” Evan cut in, and his gaze slid across the lake to the island, his face suddenly sober. “Do you have any idea who that guy is?”

Rand felt a new dread. Hadn’t his attacker seemed faintly familiar? “No.”

Chase said, “Martin Alexander.”

Oh. No. “Craig’s dad?” Rand whispered, his stomach sinking.

“Yeah, and he’s a mean son of a bitch,” Evan put in. “Beats the crap out of Craig. I know. I’ve seen it. He’s got a thick black belt that he whips out of his pants whenever Craig messes up.”

“Which is a lot,” Chase added.

Rand couldn’t believe his bad luck. Craig Alexander was a year younger than he but already bigger and tougher, just like his old man.

Evan was saying, “I’m lucky he didn’t see me cuz he works for my grandma, at the house on the lake.”

“He knows you?”

“Yeah. Kinda. He’s living on the island now. With Craig. There’s like this apartment in the attic over the garage, and they moved in when Craig’s mom took off.”

“Oh crap,” Rand said. He knew that Evan and Harper lived at the gatehouse, a cottage near the bridge to the island. But not all the time. Sometimes they spent weeks or months living on the island in that massive house with their grandmother.

“Don’t worry,” Evan told him. “He didn’t see me. Or Chase. Just you. And even then it was pretty dark.” He glanced across the lake. “Look, I gotta go. I have to ride all the way around the lake and make sure that Harper tells my folks that she saw me leave to go trick or treating.”

So now Evan’s sister was being dragged into it. Rand didn’t want to think about her having to lie for them.

“Later.” Evan ran back around the house to the front yard where he’d ditched his bike.

“Rich kid,” Chase said under his breath.

Chase had always envied Harper and Evan and their family’s wealth. It didn’t matter that they were all friends. Even though Chase, Evan, and Rand were close—even “blood brothers”—there was a divide between them that was wider than Lake Twilight when it came to social status.

Not that Rand gave it much thought. He liked Evan for the most part.

Then there was Harper.

But Rand didn’t want to think about her at all. It was too confusing.

Chase looked across the creek to his house, where jack-o’-lanterns had been placed around the perimeter of the dock, their distorted faces reflecting eerily in the lapping water below.

“I’d better get home and wait for my dumb-ass brother.

He’s out trick or treating or whatever, and when he gets back, I need to be there.

He’s my alibi, y’know? Mom and Dad think we’re out together.

And I want to make sure he says I was with him the whole time. ”

“ We were with him,” Rand reminded him as he felt a bat swoop close, then skim over the water.

“Right.”

“Will he?”

“Yeah. Levi’s a dick, but he’ll do it.”

Chase was already heading home. “I’ll catch you tomorrow,” he yelled over his shoulder as he took a running leap across the creek, splashing as he landed near, but not quite on, the far shore. He always thought he could jump the creek but never quite made it.

Rand waited until Chase disappeared into his house before going into his own home.

Inside, he stripped off his wet clothes and surveyed the damage to his face in the mirror over the sink.

Not too bad. The cut over his eye had stopped bleeding, and his face was scraped and maybe a little bruised, but it would heal.

His arm hurt, and he saw that the skin had been scratched, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

In his bedroom, he changed into a pair of pajama bottoms he’d left on the floor this morning, then grabbed a T-shirt from his dresser, a hand-me-down from an uncle.

He kept a stash of Necco Wafers, Hershey bars, candy cigarettes, and Pixy Stix, whatever he could buy at the five-and-dime with his extra lunch money, but tonight he was too keyed up to think about snacking and slammed the drawer shut.

What if Craig Alexander’s dad had recognized him?

Would he call the cops?

Tell Rand’s father?

And how did Evan know the guy hadn’t figured out who he was?

Regret ate at him. He never should have gone out on his bike with Chase.

He slid into bed but wasn’t able to sleep.

Still tossing and turning, he heard his mom come home, her light footsteps downstairs. He feigned sleep as she climbed the stairs to check on him, then returned to the main floor.

The phone rang, and she answered.

Rand froze. This was it! Martin Alexander was calling to tell her what Rand and his friends had done. He rolled out of bed quietly and crept partially down the stairs, listening.

But his mother kept her voice low, and he could only hear part of the conversation.

“. . . I know . . . Yes . . . I’ll try . . . but you know how he is . . .” Rand was certain the bald guy was ratting him out.

Or was he?

Why was Mom so calm?

“. . . I’ve really got to go . . . I will . . . I promise . . . oh, me, too. You know I do.”

Click.

But she didn’t come up the stairs. She spent some time in the bathroom and went to bed.

Later, his father came home. Still wide awake, Rand braced himself.

Expected to hear his father’s heavy footsteps on the stairs.

Even if Martin Alexander hadn’t recognized any of them, what if he had gone to the station and made a police report?

What if he’d given a description of Rand or his bike?

His throat went dry, and he listened, barely breathing as his old man opened the refrigerator, rattled around in the kitchen, and, from the sounds of it, cracked open a beer.

After what seemed like an eternity Gerald Watkins finally turned off the lights.

Only then did Rand relax.

Only then did exhaustion take over anxiety.

Only then did sleep finally find him.