In Your Dreams (In Your Dreams #1)

Chapter 17

The library's stifling, as if someone's cranked up the thermostat since we first walked in. "Is it hot in here all of a sudden?" I ask Kieran, who hasn't stopped gawking at Frank Dozier's younger self.

"It's a little warm," he agrees without looking at me.

I lean forward, elbows on the table and chin resting on my fists, joining him in this imaginary staring contest with Frank Dozier. "What do we do now?" I whisper. "I mean, he's here."

Kieran's gaze darts around the area we can see from where we're sitting, almost as if he expects Frank Dozier's lurking in the Titusville library, waiting to jump out and do...whatever...which leads me to ask, "Wait-isn't he supposed to be in jail?"

"Maybe he got paroled?" Kieran suggests, voice unsteady. "Time off for good behavior?"

I shrug, because this is all so weird anything's possible at this point. "Maybe. But at any rate, what are we supposed to do? And do you think Morgan Levert's hiding out here somewhere, too?" I glance around the library just as Kieran had a minute ago. Both Morgan and Frank might as well be in the room right now, I feel so trapped by them already, but Kieran shakes his head with confidence that Morgan, at least, isn't in our general vicinity. "As far as he knows, we're still in North Carolina."

"Well, apparently Frank Dozier knows you're in Illinois." I jab my finger into the table for emphasis. "It can't be some random coincidence he's working at a diner in the town your family happened to move to three months ago." Kieran doesn't say anything, and so I keep pressing. "What should we do? Tell your dad?"

"I don't know," he murmurs.

"We'll need to come up with some excuse for why we're not at the Diner," I say, piling on. "My mom's meeting us there like always. I can text her that we're coming to pick her up from somewhere else, but she'll ask why we didn't go to the Diner after school."

Kieran shifts his attention back to our nemesis on the computer screen, the man who until a few minutes ago was nothing more than some guy at the Diner who served us cheese fries and drinks five times a week. Kieran clasps my hand in both of his and his jaw sets, eyes glowing ice blue with an intensity I've never seen before. "I think we should go to the Diner anyway. Pretend today's a normal day."

My mouth drops open. "Okay-I think we just left normal in the rear-view mirror," I point out, but Kieran squeezes my hand, as if trying to transfer some of his confidence to me.

"He doesn't know that, though. He has no reason to think we wouldn't be there today. We've spent the last six weeks practically ignoring this guy. Now that you know who he is, don't you want to observe him a little, figure out what his deal is?"

"Not if his deal is that he wants to hurt you," I insist.

"Well, first of all, we have no idea if he wants to hurt me. Second, what can he do to me in a public place? Think about it-we're probably safer at the Diner right in front of him than we are anyplace else."

Kieran has a point. At the Diner, Frank could do little to nothing to us without raising suspicions.

"Okay," I say, giving in. "I guess I do kind of want to watch him a little bit now that we know who he is. But then we've got to come up with some kind of a plan for what we should do, okay?"

Nodding, Kieran stands up and I rise with him. He takes a second to lean down to the mouse and close out of our web search before we leave, Mrs. Bochine barely looking up from her computer as we pass by the front desk. Once we're out in the parking lot, the sky unleashes a downpour, forcing us to sprint to my car parked by the football field, the two of us shrieking and laughing the whole way in a much-needed break from the tension of the library. As I start the car and turn on the wipers, Kieran smoothes strands of wet hair behind my ears, the sensation of his fingertips grazing my skin stirring the ache in my stomach. I can't help but think how any other couple at this school with more than an hour of unsupervised time on their hands would be driving out to the Buckley plant right now, but here we are, heading straight into the path of a convict.