Page 43 of Paranoid

“You comin’ tonight?” he’d asked.

“Shhh!”

“Oh, I get it, Mom doesn’t know, right?” He’d laughed.

“No—I, I can’t.” She’d shaken her head vigorously as she’d reached his sports car.

“Afraid?”

She hadn’t been able to admit it. “No.” Would he just shut up? She’d cast a worried look at the house.

But that hadn’t been Nate’s style. “Oh, come on. It’s gonna be awesome.” He’d glanced at the house where she and Luke resided, a fifties ranch home like all of the others on the street. “You’ll have a blast, I promise.”

Before she could argue, Luke had hurried out of the front door, his backpack slung over one shoulder, his blond hair tossed by the breeze as he’d loped down the cement walk.

Nate had leaned out the driver’s window as a squirrel began to scold from the gnarled branches of the pine. “Tell your mom you’re staying with a friend,” Nate had suggested. “Call Lila. She’ll cover for you!”

But she’d just come from Lila’s.

“I’m trying to talk Rach into coming tonight,” Nate had said to his friend as Luke opened the passenger door.

“Is that right?” Luke had paused outside the Beemer and leaned on its roof to study his half-sister’s face. “You really gonna do it?”

“I don’t know.” Rachel had squirmed.

“It’ll be fun.”

“If you say so.”

“Hey, I’ve even got an extra gun.” With a glance at the house to make sure their mother wasn’t peering through a window or walking out the front door, he’d unzipped his backpack and withdrawn a small black case. “Inside. Extra ammo included, no charge.” He’d tossed the case over the roof of the car and, panicked, she’d caught it.

“I don’t know. I’ve never—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Nate had started the engine, but he’d still been staring at her, his dark eyes twinkling with mischief. “Come on, Rach. You’ll like it. Have a blast. Get it?” he’d teased, his trademark smile slowly widening. “Promise. You’ll never forget it.”

Well, amen to that.

Truer words had never been spoken.

She remembered Nate reversing out of the driveway, the tires of his car squealing against the street just as the sound of the garage door grinding upward had reached her ears.

Mom!

Rachel’s heart had nearly stopped.

Frantically she’d hidden the gun case under the rhododendron flanking the pine just as Melinda came into view. In jeans and a sweater, Melinda had shaded her eyes with one hand. “About time you showed up, Rachel. I’ve been waiting.”

“Sorry. I . . . I lost track of time.”

“With Lila. Doesn’t surprise me,” her mother had said, and then catching sight of the blush climbing up Rachel’s neck, she’d added, “Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing.” Rachel had hurried into the garage and slid inside the passenger seat of her mother’s Camry. Craning her neck to look through the back window, she’d spied her mother staring thoughtfully down the street to the intersection where Nate’s car was disappearing around a corner.

Could she do it? Could she lie to her mother? Her dad—a cop? He was a detective, good at ferreting out fact from fiction. Her palms had begun to sweat as she’d turned around in her seat and peered through the bug-spattered windshield to her father’s workbench, stretched against the far bare wood wall.

She’d swallowed against her dry throat as she heard her mother’s footsteps on the gravel drive before the door groaned open and Melinda slid behind the steering wheel. A bemused smile on her face, she’d glanced at her daughter and started the Camry’s engine. “Do you have a crush on Nate?”

“What? A crush?” Rachel had blurted. “God, Mom, this isn’t nineteen sixty.”