Page 13 of Paranoid

“Yeah, I know.” Rachel had felt the pellet gun’s weight in her backpack.

“You don’t have to play the game. Just . . . I need you tonight. I don’t want to go alone.” Lila had been biting her lower lip, worrying it, as if afraid Rachel would deny her.

“Fine. Okay, I’ll come,” Rachel had said as the scent of the river reached her nostrils.

And it had been the biggest mistake of her life.

Now, the aging waterfront complex seemed to grow larger and more sinister as she ran closer to the site that had

been sold and resold but due to zoning restrictions and legal difficulties had never been developed. Now that was supposed to finally change, as evidenced by the bold SOLD banner taped over the faded FOR SALE sign where Lila Ryder’s picture and phone number had faded. Odd, that she’d ended up with the listing, Rachel thought, that she had been integral in selling the very spot where her life, well, all their lives, had changed forever. But she’d done it. As Rachel understood it, in the last year a consortium of investors had filed for permits to develop the cannery pier into office space, restaurants, and shops, with condominiums going up at the water’s edge. Good. It was time for the old monster of a building to die. Maybe with its passing the pain and guilt would finally fade away. Maybe that was all part of Lila’s plan.

“Bring on the wrecking ball,” she said as she slowed and jogged in place while staring at the building in which Luke had died.

Her back teeth gnashed as she gazed at the looming, dilapidated structure. Revulsion crawled up the back of her throat, as it always did when she thought back to that night. Still, she forced herself to run this path every damned day, until she could see the weathered walls of the Sea View cannery with its now illegible, rusted sign dangling near the sagging barn door. This was her penance. Personally imposed. For taking the life of her brother.

Sadness and guilt tightened her throat.

“Come on,” she whispered to the dog as she stared at the dilapidated building one last second.

Reno knew the drill and was already turning off the asphalt path to head along a dirt trail when she spied the man dressed in black, standing on the path behind her. Not moving. As if he, too, had stopped to view the cannery.

She told herself it was nothing, lots of people used the path, but she took off, putting her jog into high gear again. They raced through an empty lot where weeds collected dew and the dirt path was slick from the recent rain. The sun was just cresting the mountains to the east, soft light spangling the water, the landscape coming into clearer focus, the streetlights starting to fade away as she reached the edge of town again, then cut through two back alleys to the main street.

The man in black didn’t follow.

Of course.

She turned a final corner and slowed to a walk, smiling as she saw the familiar neon sign. Tucked between an insurance office and a pizza parlor in an old hotel that had been converted into storefronts was her favorite coffee shop. The lighted sign, a large glowing coffee cup with a wisp of white steam curling over the rim, sat high over the awning and a sign that read: THE DAILY GRIND.

A beacon to the locals looking for an early morning cup of joe.

“Be right back,” she said to the dog as she always did when she snapped Reno’s leash to the leg of a bench. She caught the lifted eyebrows and shared glances from a few men who were seated outside and already sipping from their cups.

Tough.

It wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to stares cast her way or whispered asides. Once, several years earlier, she’d just slid under the awning of the barbershop where she was shepherding Dylan to get his hair trimmed when she’d gotten an earful from two women who had been coming out of a store in the same strip mall.

“She’s the one . . . remember, I told you about her?”

Rachel had glanced over her shoulder and found the taller of the women actually pointing at her.

“Hey!” Rachel had said, but the woman was undeterred. In her midfifties, her expression hard, she had walked to the driver’s side of an ancient and dented station wagon.

“She killed her brother down at that crappy old cannery, the one just west of town?”

“Her?” The younger woman, round and squinting behind red glasses, had looked straight at Rachel.

“Yep. Literally got away with murder, if you ask me. Claimed it was an accident. Other kids who were there, playing some kind of sick game, they backed her up. And her old man, he was a cop at the time. A detective. He’s the one who found her.” Unlocking the car, she had clucked her tongue. “A damned shame.” Her friend had slid inside the interior of the old Chevy, but the driver had remained beside the open door, glaring at Rachel over the sun-bleached roof and silently daring her to start something.

“How can she live with herself?” her friend had asked and pulled the passenger door shut.

“Lord knows.”

“Mom?” Dylan had said, tugging her arm.

Rather than make a scene in front of her son, Rachel had shepherded him into the shop, where the barber was waiting. But she’d been furious and had watched through the wide window as the car had pulled out of the parking spot and slowly moved down the street. Even now, five or so years later, she felt the back of her neck heat at the memory.

She hadn’t known either woman.