Free The Biker (Nightmare Hall) by Diane Hoh Page A

looked around. She smelled smoke. And … gasoline.
    Off to her left, across the road from campus and into the woods, a huge black cloud of smoke rose up from the trees. A fire? There had been a burning ban on for most of the spring .because of dry conditions, but recent rains had ended that edict.
    A boy jogging past her slowed and commented, “Looks like that smoke’s coming from the ravine. Accident, maybe. That dirt road that runs alongside the ravine is treacherous.”
    Echo didn’t know the woods on that side of the road that well, so she didn’t answer, and he went on his way.
    Accident? How awful. She hoped no one had been hurt. People said that ravine was very deep and rocky. It wouldn’t be a pleasant place to land if your car skidded off the road.
    Since there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about whatever had happened, she kept going.
    Aaron Pruitt’s room at the frat house was as neat as Echo would have expected. A dime would have bounced easily on his perfectly made bed. There were no clothes on the floor, only thick, pale gray carpeting. There were no books and notebooks piled high on every flat surface, as there were in Echo’s room and in almost every other dorm room she’d ever visited. Two heavy wooden bookcases lined one wall. Echo wouldn’t have been surprised to find the books arranged alphabetically. They weren’t, but they were orderly.
    Her eyes casually skimmed the titles. “Are all those books yours?”
    Pruitt’s hair was even neater than usual. He shook his head, and not one strand moved. “No. They were already here. Belong to the frat house. Except for a couple dozen I brought with me and the ones I’ve borrowed from the library.” He gestured toward a neat stack on a middle shelf. “Due Wednesday. Hope I don’t forget.”
    “You won’t,” Echo said flatly, glancing at those titles, too. One held her interest longer than the others. “You’re not the type.” And then realized how silly that was. The guy was practically a murderer. Why would he have any qualms about returning books late? She kept forgetting that he wasn’t the Pruitt she and everyone else had thought he was.
    You had darned well better keep that in mind, she warned. Forgetting it could be … Echo shivered. She didn’t want to think about it.
    The evening was every bit as miserable as she had thought it would be. The worst moment was when she walked with Pruitt into the rec center, which was far too crowded to suit Echo, and all heads turned in their direction. He seemed to delight in the attention. Shoulders back, a smug grin on his thin face, he imprisoned Echo’s hand in his and casually made his way to the front of the room, where he insisted they take seats in the second row.
    “We didn’t have to sit so far up front,” Echo, rigid with embarrassment, whispered as they sat down. “You just love all this attention, don’t you?”
    “Yes!” he whispered back. “You might as well learn to love it, too. I think we’re going to become an item.”
    Not if I can help it, Echo thought grimly. She could hardly wait for the movie to end. She had to find that motorcycle and disable it somehow, then take the police to wherever Pruitt had hidden it. And now, thanks to the library books in Pruitt’s room, she knew where to begin searching. He had to have taken those books out for a reason. Maybe he was just doing a report and needed them for research. But maybe not. It was worth a shot.
    But she certainly couldn’t begin hunting while Pruitt had a death grip on her hand.
    His hand was so cold, almost icy. Echo decided that was because Pruitt had no heart and without a heart, no warm, pulsating blood pumped through his veins. Ice water, she thought, tugging against his hand in vain, that’s ice water in there.
    The movie and the evening dragged on interminably. Once, Echo glanced over her shoulder in the darkened rec center and saw in the reflected light from the screen, Liam McCullough,