Page 61 of Threat of Danger
As they walked around the bend, the farmhouse came into view.
“Do you know when your mom is coming home?” Pam asked. “And, please, do say hi to her for me when you see her later.”
“Homecoming ... not anytime soon. Two months, at least. Physical therapy takes forever.” Jess glanced at her friend. “Did you know she has something going with Principal Crane?”
Pam stopped dead in her tracks, her hands moving to her hips. Her eyes flared. “Shut the front door.”
“He visits her every day.”
“Ooh, that’s creepy.” Pam scrunched her nose. “He was our high school principal. It’s like ... incestuous.” She let out a horrified groan, and her eyes grew even wider. “What if he tells her all the shit we did? And then Rose will tell my mother!” She shuddered. “Is twenty-eight too old to be grounded?”
But then, before Jess could respond, Pam brightened. “Never mind. I know a secret about him.” A wicked smile bloomed on her face. “I can totally blackmail him into silence.”
She began running again, as if the thought of having dirt on the man filled her with energy.
Jess jogged next to her. “What secret?”
Pam hesitated. “It’s a semi-secret, technically. I mean some people know, but it’s not common knowledge.”
Jess bumped her with a hip. “Quit the teasing.”
Pam stopped to give the moment weight. She cleared her throat. “Principal Crane is a low-key member of the Taylorville Sasquatch Club.”
Jess gaped. “He’s a Versquatcher?”
She couldn’t have been more surprised if the man turned out to be a part-time pole dancer at the county’s only strip joint down by the state highway.Bad thought. Yuck. Think of something else. Quick!
“Are you sure?” she rushed to say. Then, when she thought about it for a moment, asked, “Why is it secret?”
“He doesn’t want the parents to think that he’s kooky.”
They began walking again.
Jess shook her head. “Maybe now that he’s retiring, he’ll come out of the sasquatch closet.”
Pam shrugged. “I don’t exactly advertise my membership at work either.”
“You’re only in the club for the cute guys.”
“Single guys,” Pam corrected in a tragic tone. “Looks are on the wish list.”
What about Derek? He’s single. And hot.Jess thought the words, but for some reason she couldn’t say them.
She scanned the farm and tried hard to come up with another excuse to avoid the house and, along with it, Derek. Because, while she needed to talk to him about that kiss—to make sure it didn’t happen again—shereallydidn’t want to. The day before, she’d gone into Burlington after lunch, visited her mother, talked with the doctors, then caught a couple of action thrillers to analyze the competition. The stunts had been good. She had to give credit where credit was due. She always tried to find tricks she could learn: a better angle during a jump for the cameras, whether a certain move was better performed slower or faster.
She had to keep her brain busy so she wouldn’t keep analyzing Derek’s kiss. Like what did he mean by it? What did it mean to him?
Probably nothing.
Women obsessed about looks and kisses and touches. Men didn’t. Derek wouldn’t, so Jess shouldn’t either. She didn’t even tell Pam. Which seriously broke the girlfriend code, but ... it wasn’t as if the kissing was going to repeated.
A kiss like that ... could simply not happen again. Jess was definitely going to tell Derek the next time she saw him. Which came sooner rather than later. Too soon, in fact, considering the circumstances.
Jess and Pam were turning down the long driveway when they spotted the ambulance that the house had blocked earlier. The vehicle passed them, without slowing, when they were halfway to the house, the driver hitting the siren as soon as he pulled out onto the road.
“You think someone burned themselves at the vats?” Pam gasped.
“I hope it’s not too bad,” Jess said as they began to run faster.
