Authors: Elaine Marie Alphin
She had finally left for work, reluctantly, hugging him at the garage doorway as if she couldn't bear to let him go. Something inside Cameron had surprised him by not wanting her to release him, either.
Now, as he strode along the sidewalk, he put his head down and walked faster. Cougar would want to get even with Pop, and with Hank Miller dead Cameron was afraid Cougar would look for Hank's son. What would the man do when he heard that Hank's son had turned out to be Neil Lacey?
He wished he could remember how long Cougar had known Pop. It was one of those things that seemed to have no beginning in his memory, like dreaming of sailing, or wondering what had happened to his mother. If Cougar hadn't met up with Pop until after Neil's murder, then he might believe Cameron really was Neil Lacey. Would he come after him then, or would he leave him alone?
But if Cougar had been with Pop when Neil was killed, then he'd know that Cameron was lying. How long would it take him to find the Laceys? Cameron wondered if he could get his father to go to the police and ask them for protection. But the police weren't on his side. If Cougar turned up and said that Cameron wasn't Neil after all, Detective Simmons would have his positive identification. He'd jerk Cameron out of the Lacey household so fast—
At least that would make Diana and Stevie happy,
Cameron thought bitterly.
"Need a lift?"
He'd been so absorbed in his thoughts, Cameron hadn't heard the car pull up beside him. He jumped back, and then recognized the sleek silver-gray and blue of the police car. Detective Simmons smiled thinly at him through the open passenger window.
"You shouldn't be out alone," he said. "You might disappear again."
Cameron wiped his palms on his jeans. "I told Mrs. Pierson where I was going," he stammered. "I just needed some time alone."
The detective nodded. "Time to think, hmm? Time to plan your next move?"
"No—"
"Better think fast," Simmons said, his voice hardening. "The labs are going to have proof that Neil Lacey is dead by the end of the week. They're moving fast."
Cameron shook his head wordlessly, backing away. This detective was just like Pop—the best thing to do was keep quiet.
"You think you're so clever," Simmons said, his voice thick with disgust. "Worming your way into their family—preying on their love of their son." He made his voice high and boyish. "'Oooh, Mama Bear, don't cry!'" Cameron flinched, and the detective went on, "I was in the hallway in the hospital—I heard you playing her like a master. She gave an interview about her little boy calling her Mama Bear—did you see it on television, or did you read about it? It was in the newspaper, and in more than one magazine."
Cameron flushed with shame and was sure the detective could see it in his face.
He knows about the clippings—he knows how I've done it.
Even worse was the thought that if the detective knew, the Laceys would find out. It would hurt them terribly, maybe even worse than losing Neil the first time. When they sent him to prison, Cameron would have to add that guilt to his guilt over the boys.
"Or did Neil tell you himself?" The detective's gaze bored into him, relentless. "What was it like, Cameron, knowing the boys? Making friends with them? Then watching him torture them? Did you like it, the way your father did?"
"No!" Cameron cried, his voice thin and high, horror making him forget caution. "No! I didn't—"
"Didn't what?" the detective interrupted. "No, you didn't make friends with them? No, you didn't watch?—Did you help your father, instead?"
"Stop it!" Cameron cried. He wanted to run, but he was too frightened. The detective would put on the siren—he'd chase him down—he'd arrest him. And then he'd tell the Laceys everything, and Cameron would see the love they felt for Neil turn into hatred for him.
"I've been working on my own time," Simmons told him. "I've found witnesses who remember Hank Miller's little boy from before Neil disappeared. How is that possible, do you think?"
"I don't know!" stammered Cameron helplessly. "I'll tell my father you stopped me today."
"You do that," the detective said. "Tell Neil Lacey's father—the man you're deceiving. I'll tell him I was keeping an eye on you, making sure that nothing else happened to you. After all, you've been through a lot."
"I'll tell him what you said," Cameron said, but his voice faltered. Arguing always made it worse in the end.
"Will you?" Detective Simmons smiled. "I'll be very surprised if you do."
When Cameron said nothing, the detective's smile widened and he nodded his head slowly. "Look, I think the walls are closing in around you," Simmons said. He sounded like Pop, explaining why he had to do something he didn't want to. He reached toward his jacket, which had been flung across the passenger's seat, and Cameron nearly found himself extending his wrists for the handcuffs, already feeling the cool steel encircling them. Pop used handcuffs sometimes, though not too often on him. He used them on the boys in the end, when it was clear they were beyond hope.
Instead Simmons pulled a business card from his jacket pocket and held it out the window. "Here, take this. When the walls get too close, give me a call and tell me the truth about who you really are." Then his smile faded. "Go on, take it. But don't wait too long. After the labs prove you're Cameron Miller, I'll come arrest you whether you call or not. And there's nothing that lawyer will be able to do about it."
Silently Cameron took the business card, his hand damp and shaking. The detective gunned his motor and drove off.
Cameron watched the car for a few moments, then slipped the business card into his hip pocket without looking at it. He turned and stumbled back the way he'd come, on weak, trembling legs. He was supposed to meet Diana at the Burger Biggie in half an hour, and he could go straight there now. He'd be safe in the bright lights, with the plastic tables crowded with other teenagers around him, laughing and talking. But thinking about the smell of french fries and greasy burgers turned his stomach. Anyway, he'd wanted to be alone for a while.
He used to have more time alone than he knew what to do with. Then he'd hidden in dreams of sailing to blank out the emptiness. Now he was feeling almost smothered by the Laceys' attention, and he needed time to think, not to blank out. Something was nagging at the edge of his mind, but he couldn't quite bring it into focus—something wrong with what Neil's father had said about punishment, something that was important. But it dissolved into images of Pop when he got too close to it.
He turned down a deserted side street and walked on, staring at his feet again. Was there anything he could do about Detective Simmons? That business about having proof that Pop had a kid before Neil disappeared—that was bad. It had been crazy for him not to have thought of it. Just because he couldn't remember most of his past didn't mean that other people wouldn't remember seeing him. He should have thought…
Maybe he should just disappear again. But he wasn't even fifteen yet. How could he live? The thought of running away, ending up in a bus station, hungry, going home in the end with someone else like Pop—it was more than he could face. A couple of the boys had said that Pop had picked them up in the Knoxville bus station.
And Neil's father hadn't mentioned this new objection. Pop kept so alone, maybe people really hadn't seen Cameron before he started school. Maybe Simmons was lying, trying to trap him.
Cameron was beginning to feel better when he walked straight into a man. Before he could open his mouth to apologize, the man's hand shot out and grabbed a handful of his T-shirt and slammed him around into the windowless concrete wall of a warehouse.
"I've been waiting for you, Cameron," Cougar said, grinning that crazy mean grin. "As soon as they let me out I asked myself,
Now, what could have happened to Hanks little boy?
I figured he'd want me to look after you, don't you think?"
There seemed to be no air in the shadowy side street, only the weight of Cougar's fist pressing in on his chest.
"I gotta admit it," Cougar went on. "A town like Freeport—a family like the Laceys—I'm impressed. You're on to a good thing, kid. You're smart, like your pop."
Cameron drew in a great gasp of air and let it out in jerks. The man looked just as he remembered, with shifty, ink-black eyes and slicked-back black hair. But he had an edge on him that he hadn't had before, a hardening of the line of his jaw. He'd lost weight, too, and there was a puckered scar running down the left side of his face and neck that Cameron didn't remember.
"Smart," Cougar said, slapping Cameron's cheek so sharply his head rocked back against the rough concrete of the wall. "You should have gone to reform school for accessory, you know that? Instead here you are, rich family, welcomed home by grateful Mommy and Daddy." He laughed shortly. "Of course, they don't know you very well, do they? I wonder how grateful they'd be if they knew they had Hank Miller's little boy instead of their own."
The tension returned, and Cameron kept quiet, the way he had with Pop. Cougar laughed again.
"Question is, who'd be more grateful? Mommy and Daddy if I tell them who you really are? Grateful enough to pay, anyway? Or you?" His voice hardened, and he shook Cameron and forced him to meet his eyes. "How grateful would you be if I kept your little secret?"
"I don't have any money," Cameron whispered.
Cougar shook him hard. "You learned to lie from your pop, too, didn't you? He was a great liar, setting me up like that. And you lied for him. So don't lie to me now, Cameron Miller. The Laceys have money—do you give it to me, or do I blow your story and get it from Mommy and Daddy?"
"Please—"
Cougar slammed him against the wall again, and the coarse texture of the concrete scraped his back through the thin cotton of his T-shirt. "Empty your pockets."
Cameron fumbled in his jeans, remembering what he'd read in the newspaper about how Cougar had been abused as a kid. Somewhere inside of the man there had to be something he could reach—Cougar was just like him. He had to be.
Cameron's hand closed around the ten-dollar bill his father had given him for his allowance, and he held out the money. "It's all I've got," he said. "Really."
Cougar snatched it, frowning. "Then get more, boy. You hear me? A couple days—I'll meet you here Thursday, and you have some real money for me, or something I can sell easy, like jewelry nobody's blown the whistle on yet, right? You show me how grateful you are for me keeping my mouth shut, or I'll find out how grateful Mommy and Daddy can be."
Cameron stumbled backward as the man's fist opened and released his shirt. "I know what happened to you," he made himself say. "I know what your own pop did to you, like Pop did to me. But it's over now, Cougar—"
"Don't call me that!" the man screamed. His black eyes widened and flicked rapidly from side to side, looking up and down the street. A muscle in his cheek twitched.
He looks afraid,
Cameron thought.
Then Cougar shoved him hard in the chest. "And you don't know nothing, boy. Just forget I ever had a pop, got it? You and me—we're nothing alike. You, you're a mouse in a trap. Me, I'm the cat that's going to get you."
Then he got himself under control, and his lips stretched into that crazy mean grin. "But we're partners now, aren't we? Cat and mouse partners. So I'll make you a deal. You don't call me Cougar, I don't call you Cameron. I'm Bill Scott, okay? Deal, Neil?"
He waved two fingers in a snappy salute and walked down the narrow street, laughing at his rhyme. "Thursday!" he called over his shoulder.
Cameron straightened his T-shirt with nerveless fingers and rubbed his stinging cheek. In the newspaper the lawyer had said that Cougar needed therapy. If he'd gotten any in prison, it certainly hadn't changed him. Cougar was just the same. Cameron leaned against the cool concrete wall, wanting to blank out the meeting, but afraid to. What would Cougar—Scott—do?
Maybe it would be better to tell the Laceys right now, or call Simmons and tell him his hunch was right after all. Then he realized that it wouldn't do any good to go to the police and admit he wasn't Neil. The cops would just arrest him. Who cared if a man who'd been falsely convicted threatened the serial murderer's lying son who'd helped put him behind bars?
But Cougar wanted a payback for the time he'd spent in prison. He thought the Laceys were rich. Even if Simmons took Cameron away, Cougar might decide to take enough from the Laceys to make up for the lost blackmail opportunity, and Cameron couldn't let him loose on the family who'd taken him in. Somehow he had to get hold of enough money to pay off Cougar for good.
The asphalt blurred before his eyes, and he blinked at hot tears. Cougar was wrong. The two of them
were
just alike. Did that mean he'd grow up to be like Cougar, hurting kids because he had been hurt? If that was true, why bother?
"What are you doing here?"
Cameron looked up at Diana from where he sat cross-legged on the rough redwood planks at the edge of the dock on Tuesday morning. "Waiting for you," he said, squinting into the sun, "to go sailing."
She sighed exaggeratedly and sat down behind him, propping herself against the dock railing. He had to pivot around to face her, scratching the crossed sides of his legs slightly on the splintery edges of the boards.
"That's not what I mean," she said. "Look—you're not my brother Neil. I don't know who you are, but I want to know what you're doing here. What do you want from my family?"
This time the question didn't surprise him. He remembered how she'd made the suggestion on Thursday night, and how her mother had slapped her. Friday night, she'd been nice to him about the books. And she'd been polite over the weekend, too. But she hadn't been too pleased about having to pay for his burger at lunch the day before, though he'd been too shaken from meeting Cougar to spare much thought for her. Now her expression was remote. Diana looked almost exactly the way her father had looked the day he faced down the doctor at the hospital.