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

sitting one row behind her and off to her right. He was out of the infirmary already. Couldn’t have been too badly injured, after all. Now if only Lily D’Agostino got that lucky.
    Liam saw her staring at him and nodded curtly.
    Echo’s head whipped around to the front. She didn’t want him wondering why she was staring at him. He might start thinking, even asking questions. That would not be good.
    Pruitt insisted on taking her to Vinnie’s pizza restaurant after the movie. Echo tried to plead fatigue, but he dismissed her objections by reminding her that she had little choice. “I’m not ready to call it a night,” he told her coldly, “and since you’re with me, you’re not ready to call it a night, either.”
    Visions of Lily D’Agostino trying to outrun the bike danced before Echo’s eyes.
    She went to Vinnie’s with him.
    In the restaurant, they sat with a group of Pruitt’s frat brothers and their dates, including Deejay, Ruthanne, and Marilyn. No one at the table seemed to pay that much attention when Pruitt drew up two chairs and pushed them into the center of the group. The girls from the whirlpool room told Echo “hi” and then returned to their conversation. Only Ruthanne shot Echo an inquiring look, which Echo ignored.
    While they waited for their pizza, Echo told herself it was only her imagination making her think that Liam McCullough, sitting at a table opposite theirs, was staring at her. He didn’t know anything, couldn’t know anything. So why would he be staring at her?
    “Quit looking over there,” Pruitt hissed in her ear. He squeezed her hand painfully. Echo winced. “It’s rude to stare at other guys when you have a date.” He glared in Liam’s direction. “I see he’s recovered. Too bad.”
    “I suppose you were hoping he’d died,” Echo whispered. “He looks very much alive to me.”
    “You wouldn’t want me to think he was competition, would you?” he murmured as their pizza arrived and the clamor for the best slices drowned out his words. “I have my ways of dealing with competition, Echo. You wouldn’t want to see McCullough back in the infirmary, would you? Or worse?”
    Echo felt her knees begin to tremble under the table. “Competition?” she said lightly. “Don’t be silly. I don’t even know the guy. Anyway, he hates me.”
    “Good. Keep it that way. Now eat up, before it’s all gone.”
    Echo didn’t touch the pizza. Her stomach was churning with impatience, and the atmosphere at the table did nothing to stimulate her appetite. Ruthanne kept bringing up the subject of the biker.
    And then Marilyn said, “Did you hear about those two kids who went off Lookout Point?”
    In the act of reaching for her glass of water, Echo’s hand stopped in midair, as if someone had just rapped her knuckles with a ruler. “What two kids?”
    Marilyn, satisfaction in her eyes because she was now the center of attention, answered, “Polk Malone and Nancy Becker. That disgusting biker pushed them off a cliff. A jogger running up there saw him racing down the hill a second or two after the crash.”
    Echo was too stunned to speak. “Oh no,” she breathed. She deliberately avoided Pruitt’s eyes, but she heard him draw in his breath sharply.
    “Nancy?” he said. “Nancy Becker was in Polk Malone’s car?”
    “Oh, sorry, Pruitt,” Deejay said then. “I forgot. You knew her, didn’t you?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “When?” Echo said. “When did it happen?”
    “Late this afternoon. The car smashed into that ravine beside Rockridge Road. I heard they were both killed instantly. And there isn’t anything left of the car but ashes.”
    Echo felt sick and dizzy. The smoke … the sirens … that had been a car burning. A car with two people in it. Two dead people. And one of them had been someone Pruitt knew!
    “That guy get the biker’s license plate?” Pruitt asked Marilyn. “The guy who saw the biker, I mean.”
    “How should I know? And,” she added