The world was watery and opaque with fog in a way that reminded Rachel of the jars of water in which she’d rinsed watercolor brushes when she was a girl.
The rain pounded, wearying. Rachel had slept in all day, too wiped out from being awake all night after finding Preacher’s address. She’d told Felix to go to his earlier and midday classes and she’d meet him on campus for her 4:15. Not to worry. The campus shuttle shelter was fifty feet from the inn. She could manage it. He’d insisted on staying for a while. Missed his two morning classes. But when Rachel still hadn’t left bed for so much as her ritual coffee, he’d reluctantly headed out for his midday class.
Rachel had a back-to-back 4:15 English Comp and a 5:30 Soc 101 class. She didn’t intend to stay for her 5:30 Soc; she wouldn’t have time. She’d meet Felix dutifully before the 4:15, and let him see she was OK. Then, after it, she’d come back to town. Her handgun class was at 5:30. What was more important: a class on sociology, or a class that could save her life?
Ahead on the corner, the shuttle was pulling out from the curb. Rachel ran, too late.
“Damn it,” she muttered.
Now she was going to be late. The next shuttle wasn’t due for twenty minutes. It would be quicker to hoof it up the steep hill to campus. She might meet Felix in time if she hightailed it.
As she hiked up the hill the box of ammunition rattled and the heavy handgun thwacked against her side.
The trek was perilous in the fog, the shoulder a spit of gravel the width of a bicycle tire. The few cars that drove past were unable to see her until right upon her. She kept pinned to the roadside brush.
She was halfway up, sweating and chugging breaths, when a car slowed beside her. She glanced at it as her hand rested on the zipper of her backpack. The car was an old job. Something her dad would like.
She could just make out enough through the fogged windows that the driver of the car was a man.
The car’s window lowered with a squeak.
“Would you like a ride up the hill?” the driver said.
“No,” Rachel huffed without giving him a second look, increasing her pace.
“This hill’s a killer.”
“I’m good.”
“Enjoy,” the driver said. The car accelerated out of sight. Rachel’s heart rattled. If that man had been Preacher, and he’d wanted to hurt me, he could have done it and no one would have seen it. And I’d never have had a chance to get my gun. The gun was as useless as a brick in her backpack.
She pulled her jacket collar up tighter to her neck. Not long ago she’d have trusted the stranger and hopped in without a thought, been on campus by now, in time to meet Felix and allay his own fears. No more.
She trudged up the hill as fast as she could.
Toward the top, her cell phone burbled in her jacket pocket; Felix’s text tone. She did not take her phone out in the rain. She was all of five minutes late and he’d be after her: WRU? U OK?
Rachel tramped across the muddy green, saw Felix on the steps of Dibden as he searched for her in the crowd of students hustling for the doors from the rain and fog.
She ran up the steps to him, against the flow of students exiting Dibden and put on a smile as she tapped his shoulder. She expected a smile in return, but did not get one. Felix’s face was strained with worry and agitation. It pained her to see it, but she did not know what to do to relieve it. If she let him in on everything she was feeling and planning, he would try to stop her, or, worse, try to solve it for her. One trait that attracted Rachel to Felix was he never interfered. Never tried to solve her problems for her. He trusted she could take care of herself. Now. Now, she sensed his wanting to help too much, save her. Make all her worries go away with a magic wand.
As many books as she’d read and movies she’d watched about depraved killers, she’d never read any serious, academic, scientific literature about men of Preacher’s nature. It had all been true crime books, pop culture and exploitative, she realized now. Her interests prurient, entertainment. Now, she sincerely wanted to know, needed to know, the real, latest science behind what made men like Preacher tick. What drove them to do what they did? She needed to know so she could prepare herself. Do background research before she went ahead with her plan.
Even now she doubted she could do it, see her plan out to the end. It chilled her. She doubted she was brave enough, or dumb enough, to do what she had in mind. Fear knotted in her gut and left her blood cold at just the thought of ever facing him. But she had to face him. She felt compelled to confront him, to know why he had been in the pet shop. She had gone over and over it. If he’d wanted to hurt her that day, or since, he could have. He would have. Wouldn’t he? She could not help but think he had another reason that day other than to hurt her, or even to frighten her. Part of her—the part that was brain-dead, obviously—sensed Preacher wanted to tell her something, in person. Did he want to apologize? It made her sick to think it. What he’d done was far beyond the reach of apology. An apology would cheapen his crime. Still, she wondered, what did he want? What did he have to tell her, or was she simply delusional because she was so exhausted and distraught? And why did she have such a fascination with depraved men like Preacher? Was her obsession a coincidence or born out of her being just upstairs while Preacher murdered her parents and raped her mother? Even if she had no conscious memory, she’d heard it all, what must have been savage screams of pain and fear. How terrified her mother must have been. For herself, and for her baby. Had she died believing her baby was Preacher’s next victim?
Rachel wondered now if she was doing exactly as Preacher had hoped, letting him consume her thoughts? Until a few days ago, Felix had been the person other than herself she’d thought of most. He’d been the most important person in her world, the one with whom she’d been most honest. She’d become remote, and deceitful by way of omission. She’d bought a gun without his knowing, was carrying it in her backpack, had been researching Preacher and her parents’ murders, making plans, all while pretending she’d been going about her day as she always did. She’d become someone else.
She could not continue the deception. Did not want to continue it. It was not fair to Felix. It was not fair to her, or to them, as a couple. It was not right.
There was only one true way to overcome fear and take away the hold it had on you. That was to face it. To face him. That was Rachel’s plan—to confront the man who’d murdered her parents and ask him: Why?
She’d borrow a friend’s car, take the gun with her, she’d follow him from his home, and take him by surprise in public. And—
“Why are you soaking wet?” Felix said. He did not lean to wrap her in his arms as he always did. “I texted you.”
“I missed the shuttle,” she said. “I didn’t want to take my phone out in the rain.”
“You hiked up the hill? Alone? You could have—”
“I wasn’t alone. Two other girls missed the shuttle. The damn thing was early. Again. You know how that driver is. Never waits a second.”
“Tell the truth.”
“I am,” she said.
“You’re not.”
“So I’m a liar?”
“Come on. Don’t be like that. Are you depressed about all this business, sleeping all day? Or pissed off? I don’t blame you. I am. It’s messed up. I’d be freaked out. I am freaked out. But mostly by you. How you’re acting because of it.”
“I’m not acting like anything.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m not.”
“You suck so bad at lying.”
“OK. I’m freaked. Maybe depressed. Hurt. Pissed. OK. It messed me up. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.” He hugged her but for the first time since she’d met him two months ago, his hug did not melt away her worries. Eight weeks. That’s how long she’d known Felix. How well did she even know him? She’d never even met his parents, or his childhood friends. Stop thinking like that, she told herself.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” she said, “to have someone watching you, someone who’s done what he’s done. Who could do it to you. You’re a guy. If someone were watching you, you wouldn’t have to worry. You’re six foot three.”
“And all of a hundred and ninety pounds soaking wet.”
“That’s eighty pounds and a foot more than me. You don’t get it. Most any guy that tried to hurt you, you could defend yourself. If even a regular guy, five foot eight and a hundred and fifty pounds tries to hurt me, I’m going to be hurt.”
“Not if you stick by me. Like we planned. Stick close. For now. That was the agreement. Go to class. Meet after class, and hang out with your boyfriend even more than usual, so you’re not alone. That’s not so bad, spending more time with your boyfriend, is it?”
“We can’t be around each other twenty-four seven. You have your work-study and class schedule. I have mine. They don’t match.”
“Hang with your friends. And. Screw work-study. We’ll explain to them—”
“No. I don’t want people knowing. I don’t want a pity party, or OMG that’s like so creepy from girlfriends who can’t relate. No one can relate. And it’s no one else’s business.”
“So we lie,” Felix said. “Tell work-study there’s something else going on and we can’t work for a while. No biggie. They won’t care. When this is over, we’ll just work more hours.”
“And when will this be over, exactly?” Rachel said.
Felix shook his head. “I don’t know. But you can at least be where you say you’re going to be when you say you’re going to be there,” he said. “Every time you make me wait or don’t text back right away, my stomach drops. I think the worst.” He was right. It was reasonable to have her at least show up when she said she would.
The streams of students filing in and out of the building had dwindled to a few loners pushing through the rain to make it to their next class.
Rachel and Felix stood alone on the steps.
“I gotta get to class,” Rachel said. “So do you.”
“Meet me here after, OK? Before all this crap, we met after every class anyway. Now this happens and you seem to want to spend less time with me. I don’t get it.”
Rachel did not get it either. She wanted to spend time with Felix. Of course she did. So why wasn’t she? Why was she retreating? “Sure,” she said, “I’ll meet here after class.” She turned to go inside.
Felix reached for her to give her another hug, his fingers grabbing at her backpack. The ammunition rattled and the revolver shifted.
“What’s in your pack?” he said.
“Nothing. My tablet.”
He took hold of the straps and lifted the backpack. She pulled it back to her.
“It feels like a rock,” he said.
“It is, it’s a rock for my dad, a hunk of quartz I found a while back. You know he’s into geology. Finally going to give it to him. I gotta go.” She left Felix standing there and pushed through the doors of the building.
Inside, she climbed the stairs to a window that overlooked the steps and watched her boyfriend who stood with his back to her. He stared out at the rain and fog, his hands jammed in his coat pockets, then looked up toward the sky though there was no sky to see in the fog; Rachel could barely make him out in the mist.
He hunched his shoulders and stepped into the murk.