Roswell Series: Before I Knew You: Fic 13: Fear (3/4)
Author: X_tremeroswellian
Email: faithboscorelli1@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Not mine. The dialogue and scenes that you don't recognize are mine, the rest belongs to Jason Katims, the WB, Melinda Metz...etc, etc, etc...Don't sue. The song "Fear" is by the goddess of music, Sarah McLachlan, and appears on her albums, "Fumbling Towards Ecstacy," and "Mirrorball." One comment~ when "Fear" was played during the Pilot of Roswell, at the end of the episode, it credited the version as being the one on "Mirrorball," which is inaccurate. The version played in the Pilot is actually from, "Fumbling Towards Ecstacy." "Mirrorball" is Sarah's live album.
Rating: R for violence, language and situations
Author's Note: This is the eigth story of my "Before I Knew You" series. I'd read the other seven first.
Spoilers: Pilot and for the rest of my series.
"...But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
Here in this lonely place
Tangled up in our embrace
There's nothing I'd like better
Than to fall
But I fear
I have nothing to give..."
Fear (Part Three)
Liz looked around her bedroom, picking up the pillows on her bed and tossing them into a pile on the floor. When she still couldn't find what she was looking for, she threw open the doors to her closet and began digging through the piles of clothes and shoes on the floor.
Where was it?
She tried to think back to the last place she'd had it, but her mind was so jumbled with thoughts she couldn't concentrate.
Max Evans thinks I'm beautiful. Maria isn't speaking to me. Max Evans is an alien. I have geometry homework due tomorrow morning that I haven't started. Max Evans saved my life. Kyle saw the silver handprint on my stomach...
Liz forced herself to close her eyes and take a deep breath. She knew she was lacking in the sleep department, and she really needed to rest if she was ever going to think clearly again. She threw back the blankets on her bed and crawled under the covers. She'd worry about her bookbag in the morning.
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Alex sat on his back porch, strumming his guitar, though his thoughts weren't really on the music tonight. He leaned his head back against the railing and stared up at the stars. He thought about his conversation with Maria earlier.
"Liz was shot, Alex," Maria told him.
He stared at her. "What?"
"I found blood on her order book after she went upstairs to her room last night. She didn't fall and spill ketchup on herself."
Of course, there was no possible way that Liz had been shot. Maria was definitely wrong about that. If Liz had been shot, she'd be in the hospital, not walking around school perfectly fine the very next day.
But there was a big difference between blood and ketchup.
So maybe, if she fell and broke a ketchup bottle on herself, she just got cut. That would explain the blood. But why would she lie about it?
Alex sighed and gazed up at the stars in the sky that seemed to make a V. Funny, he had never noticed that constellation before.
He shook his head and strummed his guitar again.
Liz had been acting kind of weird all day. She'd all but ignored him during third period history, and they always talked before class started. And Maria had mentioned that Liz had been late to homeroom, and that when she had come in, she'd sat next to Pam Troy. Something was definitely wrong.
Alex debated giving her a call and checking to see if she was okay. Maybe she's just depressed over something with Kyle, he thought. Then he looked at his watch. It was after 11. She was probably already sleeping, which was what he should be doing right now, too. He stood up and carried his guitar inside and headed to his room. He placed the guitar in its case and dropped onto his bed.
He'd talk to her tomorrow.
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Maria lay awake, staring at the ceiling with the glow-in-the-dark stars she'd put up there almost three years ago.
Why wouldn't Liz talk to her?
They never kept secrets from each other. They never even kept secrets from Alex...well, minus the usual strictly girls stuff, like PMS and bras. But those weren't really secrets, just stuff they didn't talk about around him because they didn't want to make him uncomfortable.
But now it was like Liz didn't trust her or Alex either one.
They'd been like sisters since the first grade. Maria trusted Liz more than she trusted her own mother. Not that she didn't love her mother, but some things you just can't talk to your parents about. Or, in her case, parent.
It made her angry. She told Liz everything about her life--from the most important things to the most minute of details.
And Liz had always done the same thing.
Now suddenly she wouldn't even tell Maria what time of day it was.
Maria sighed in frustration and turned to stare at the glowing red digits of her alarm clock. If it wasn't 1 in the morning, she'd call Alex and complain to him, but she had a feeling he was probably already unconscious.
She wished she was.
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Liz looked around the band room. She didn't think she'd left her bag in here, but it was the last place she actually remembered having it. She sighed when she didn't see it, her frown deepening. She was so lost in thought trying to remember where she'd put her bag that she didn't hear the door open.
"Hey."
Liz turned around and swallowed hard as she saw who it was. "Oh, hey, Alex. Have you seen my bookbag anywhere?"
"No, I haven't," he said quietly, taking a few steps closer to her, fiddling with the straps on his own bookbag. "Can I talk to you for a second?"
She took a deep breath and forced her voice to remain calm. "Yeah, what's up?"
Alex hesitated. "Well, I'm your friend, and I'm Maria's friend, too...so if you lie to Maria, it's sort of like lying to me."
"Alex, what did Maria say to you?" Liz was almost afraid of his answer.
"Well, frankly, it's vague. I mean, everything needs to be put through the Maria-filter..." He chuckled nervously, and she smiled back, knowing Alex was struggling to make what he was saying sound normal. "But she said something about how she found blood on your order book. What's going on?"
Liz met his concerned eyes, but only for a second, unable to lie to him while looking him in the eyes. "Alex, Maria is a total drama queen. You know that. Nothing is going on."
He didn't look convinced. "Okay...well, look. All I care about is that you're okay. So you're--you are, right? You're okay?"
She felt an immense wave of guilt wash over her. She hated lying to him, but she didn't have a choice. Not when Max's life depended on it. "I'm okay," she said, forcing herself to smile.
"All right." Alex looked a bit relieved, not convinced, but relieved.
"Okay," she said.
He started for the door. "And whatever happened is...over now?"
"It is totally over."
Alex smiled. "Okay."
"Okay," she echoed.
Just as he reached the door to leave, it swung open, and the vice-principal stepped inside, along with one of Roswell's deputies. "There she is," Mr. Grindy said, nodding to Liz.
"Ms. Parker," the deputy said. "The sheriff needs to ask you some questions."
Liz felt her heart stop for a second, and then she nodded. "Okay." She walked over to the door, remaining as calm as she could, and only glancing at Alex out of the corner of her eye as she followed the deputy outside into the hallway.
Alex was right behind her. "Liz?" he said, his voice barely audible, and his eyes wide.
She gave him a brief smile and shrugged her shoulders. "Probably about what happened at the Cafe. No big deal. See you later, Alex." She forced herself to walk and not look back at him. But she knew he was staring after her.
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Liz sat nervously on the chair in Sheriff Valenti's office, staring out the window. She heard him come inside a moment later, carrying a file and closing the door behind him. He nodded at her. "Afternoon, Ms. Parker. Your father said it would be all right if I talked to you." He sat down at his desk, and pulled out a couple of black and white photographs. He laid them on his desk in front of her. "I'm sorry to have to show you these."
Liz leaned forward in her chair, and stared at the pictures. It was of a dead body. Her throat constricted for a second and she couldn't breathe. In the left hand corner of one of the photos was written November, 1959. She blinked in confusion. 1959? What did that have to do with her?
"This man was found dead, no apparent cause of death. Except that," he said, pointing to a mark on the man's chest. "What do you make of that mark?"
Ohmygod, she thought, her mind racing. It was a silver handprint...just like the one that Max had left on her stomach after he healed her...
It took her a second to realize that the sheriff was waiting for an answer. She steeled her nerves, hoping he couldn't see her trembling. "I have never seen anything like that before."
"Kyle said he saw a similar mark on your stomach." Sheriff Valenti leaned back in his chair and stared at her.
"He was wrong," she answered immediatly.
"I'm sure. Kyle's got a pretty wild imagination." He paused. "I'm gonna need to see for myself, Liz."
Liz stared back at him. "Come on, Sheriff. I mean, I told you that I spilled ketchup, and I...I said that like a thousand times." Her stomach was turning.
"Liz, please?"
She forced back the revulsion she felt as she stood up and slid her shirt up so he could look at her stomach. She held her breath as the sheriff stared at her bare skin. Then he looked up at her face. Liz glanced down and said a silent thanks that the handprint had faded away when it had...one day sooner and she wouldn't have been able to show him that there was no mark...
She slid her shirt back down and sat back down in the chair.
"The mark faded on the corpse, too. What do you know about a kid named Max Evans?" He watched her closely for her reaction.
Liz frowned. "Max Evans?"
"Mmmm, hmmm."
"Um...I don't really know him...all that well."
"Was he one of the kids at the Crashdown that day?"
"No," she said without hesitation, shaking her head.
"I see."
"Can I go home now, Sheriff?" she asked, her voice sounding a lot calmer than she felt.
"Just one more thing." He pulled something out of his desk drawer and set it on top of his desk. "Somebody turned in this bookbag. It is yours, isn't it?"
Her gaze drifted to the bookbag, and she nodded slowly. There was no sense in denying it. That bookbag had her waitress uniform in it, and the uniform had her name tag on it. If she lied, it would make him even more suspicous. "It's mine."
Sheriff Valenti studied her.
"I can have it back now, can't I?" Liz asked, meeting his eyes, her own eyes cold.
"Of course. It is yours." He motioned for her to take it.
She picked it up and slid her arms through the straps. "Good afternoon, Sheriff." She turned and walked out of his office, out of the police station and into the parking lot before she let out the breath she'd been holding. Then she quickly slid the back pack off her arms and pulled the zipper open with shaking hands. Everything was there: her books, folders and calculator. The only thing missing was her waitress uniform.
Her waitress uniform that had a bullet hole right in the middle of it.
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"Liz, what's wrong?" Max asked as he followed her down the hallway out of wrestling practice.
She didn't answer him. She kept walking, and he kept following, until she pushed open the doors to the empty art room and all but flung her bookbag off her back. Her actions were angry, but it wasn't really anger propelling her forward as she turned to face him. She was shaken up, frightened.
"I need to know the truth, Max. I need to know everything. Or I'll--I'm just gonna go to Valenti, and I'm gonna tell him everything I know." Her words sounded threatening, but they both knew she was lying.
"Okay," he said softly.
She was almost surprised by his response. "Okay," she repeated. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded up piece of paper, unfolded it and looked at whatever she'd written. "Okay. All right. Here we go. Where did you come from?"
"I don't know," Max answered honestly. "When the ship crashed, I wasn't born yet."
"So there was a crash?"
"All I know is it wasn't a weather balloon that fell that night."
She stared at him, the doubt obvious in her voice as she spoke. "The ship crashed in 1947. You're 16."
"We were in some kind of incubation pods."
"We?" she repeated.
"Isabel and Michael are also...uh..."
Liz swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay, well, that, answers, um, that question. Um, what powers...do you have?"
"We can connect with people, as uh, you know..." He smiled, looking a bit embarrassed. "We can manipulate molecular structures, and we can..."
"Wait," she interupted. "What does that mean?"
Max started to say something, but closed his mouth and moved over to a clay statue and put his hands over it. His hands glowed as he moved them over the clay, and the clay went back to looking like a large lumpy potato. He shifted it back to what it had looked like as Liz watched in amazement, her eyes wide.
"That's, uh...that's how I healed you," he said softly.
"Max, who else knows this?"
"No one," he answered immediatly.
"What about your parents?" she asked. How could they have possibly kept this a secret for all these years without a single person finding out? How could Max and Isabel's and Michael's parents not know?
"We don't tell anyone. We sorta think our lives depend on it."
It dawned on her then exactly how much danger Max was in. "So when you healed me, you risked all of this getting out, didn't you?" she asked softly.
"Yeah."
Liz shook her head, not understanding. Why would he risk his own life, the lives of his sister and best friend to save hers? "Why?"
Max gazed at her. "It was you."
She stared back at him, unable to breath for a second. She bit her lip, and then she remembered what else she had to tell him. "Um, Max, Valenti showed me this photo of a corpse. A murder victim. It had the same silver handprint on its chest." She moved closer to him.
Max stared down at her, shaking his head. "But that can't be."
"The photo was marked 1959."
"That's impossible!"
She saw the devistation in his eyes, but she knew she had to tell him the rest of it, warn him of the danger he was now in because of her. "Kyle saw the handprint on my stomach and Valenti found my waitress uniform with the bullet hole in it. He just asked me if you were in the cafe the day of the shooting. Max, he suspects you."
Max turned to leave.
"Max!"
"I have to to go!" he called over his shoulder as she ran out the door.
She raced after him. "Max, wait! Go where? Where are you going?" She ran out into the hallway. "Max, wait! Max!"
Before she could follow him any farther, a group of students dressed for the crash festival that evening nearly trampled her over and she lost sight of him.
Liz sighed and stared down the corridor.
Now what?
Email: faithboscorelli1@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Not mine. The dialogue and scenes that you don't recognize are mine, the rest belongs to Jason Katims, the WB, Melinda Metz...etc, etc, etc...Don't sue. The song "Fear" is by the goddess of music, Sarah McLachlan, and appears on her albums, "Fumbling Towards Ecstacy," and "Mirrorball." One comment~ when "Fear" was played during the Pilot of Roswell, at the end of the episode, it credited the version as being the one on "Mirrorball," which is inaccurate. The version played in the Pilot is actually from, "Fumbling Towards Ecstacy." "Mirrorball" is Sarah's live album.
Rating: R for violence, language and situations
Author's Note: This is the eigth story of my "Before I Knew You" series. I'd read the other seven first.
Spoilers: Pilot and for the rest of my series.
"...But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
Here in this lonely place
Tangled up in our embrace
There's nothing I'd like better
Than to fall
But I fear
I have nothing to give..."
Fear (Part Three)
Liz looked around her bedroom, picking up the pillows on her bed and tossing them into a pile on the floor. When she still couldn't find what she was looking for, she threw open the doors to her closet and began digging through the piles of clothes and shoes on the floor.
Where was it?
She tried to think back to the last place she'd had it, but her mind was so jumbled with thoughts she couldn't concentrate.
Max Evans thinks I'm beautiful. Maria isn't speaking to me. Max Evans is an alien. I have geometry homework due tomorrow morning that I haven't started. Max Evans saved my life. Kyle saw the silver handprint on my stomach...
Liz forced herself to close her eyes and take a deep breath. She knew she was lacking in the sleep department, and she really needed to rest if she was ever going to think clearly again. She threw back the blankets on her bed and crawled under the covers. She'd worry about her bookbag in the morning.
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Alex sat on his back porch, strumming his guitar, though his thoughts weren't really on the music tonight. He leaned his head back against the railing and stared up at the stars. He thought about his conversation with Maria earlier.
"Liz was shot, Alex," Maria told him.
He stared at her. "What?"
"I found blood on her order book after she went upstairs to her room last night. She didn't fall and spill ketchup on herself."
Of course, there was no possible way that Liz had been shot. Maria was definitely wrong about that. If Liz had been shot, she'd be in the hospital, not walking around school perfectly fine the very next day.
But there was a big difference between blood and ketchup.
So maybe, if she fell and broke a ketchup bottle on herself, she just got cut. That would explain the blood. But why would she lie about it?
Alex sighed and gazed up at the stars in the sky that seemed to make a V. Funny, he had never noticed that constellation before.
He shook his head and strummed his guitar again.
Liz had been acting kind of weird all day. She'd all but ignored him during third period history, and they always talked before class started. And Maria had mentioned that Liz had been late to homeroom, and that when she had come in, she'd sat next to Pam Troy. Something was definitely wrong.
Alex debated giving her a call and checking to see if she was okay. Maybe she's just depressed over something with Kyle, he thought. Then he looked at his watch. It was after 11. She was probably already sleeping, which was what he should be doing right now, too. He stood up and carried his guitar inside and headed to his room. He placed the guitar in its case and dropped onto his bed.
He'd talk to her tomorrow.
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Maria lay awake, staring at the ceiling with the glow-in-the-dark stars she'd put up there almost three years ago.
Why wouldn't Liz talk to her?
They never kept secrets from each other. They never even kept secrets from Alex...well, minus the usual strictly girls stuff, like PMS and bras. But those weren't really secrets, just stuff they didn't talk about around him because they didn't want to make him uncomfortable.
But now it was like Liz didn't trust her or Alex either one.
They'd been like sisters since the first grade. Maria trusted Liz more than she trusted her own mother. Not that she didn't love her mother, but some things you just can't talk to your parents about. Or, in her case, parent.
It made her angry. She told Liz everything about her life--from the most important things to the most minute of details.
And Liz had always done the same thing.
Now suddenly she wouldn't even tell Maria what time of day it was.
Maria sighed in frustration and turned to stare at the glowing red digits of her alarm clock. If it wasn't 1 in the morning, she'd call Alex and complain to him, but she had a feeling he was probably already unconscious.
She wished she was.
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Liz looked around the band room. She didn't think she'd left her bag in here, but it was the last place she actually remembered having it. She sighed when she didn't see it, her frown deepening. She was so lost in thought trying to remember where she'd put her bag that she didn't hear the door open.
"Hey."
Liz turned around and swallowed hard as she saw who it was. "Oh, hey, Alex. Have you seen my bookbag anywhere?"
"No, I haven't," he said quietly, taking a few steps closer to her, fiddling with the straps on his own bookbag. "Can I talk to you for a second?"
She took a deep breath and forced her voice to remain calm. "Yeah, what's up?"
Alex hesitated. "Well, I'm your friend, and I'm Maria's friend, too...so if you lie to Maria, it's sort of like lying to me."
"Alex, what did Maria say to you?" Liz was almost afraid of his answer.
"Well, frankly, it's vague. I mean, everything needs to be put through the Maria-filter..." He chuckled nervously, and she smiled back, knowing Alex was struggling to make what he was saying sound normal. "But she said something about how she found blood on your order book. What's going on?"
Liz met his concerned eyes, but only for a second, unable to lie to him while looking him in the eyes. "Alex, Maria is a total drama queen. You know that. Nothing is going on."
He didn't look convinced. "Okay...well, look. All I care about is that you're okay. So you're--you are, right? You're okay?"
She felt an immense wave of guilt wash over her. She hated lying to him, but she didn't have a choice. Not when Max's life depended on it. "I'm okay," she said, forcing herself to smile.
"All right." Alex looked a bit relieved, not convinced, but relieved.
"Okay," she said.
He started for the door. "And whatever happened is...over now?"
"It is totally over."
Alex smiled. "Okay."
"Okay," she echoed.
Just as he reached the door to leave, it swung open, and the vice-principal stepped inside, along with one of Roswell's deputies. "There she is," Mr. Grindy said, nodding to Liz.
"Ms. Parker," the deputy said. "The sheriff needs to ask you some questions."
Liz felt her heart stop for a second, and then she nodded. "Okay." She walked over to the door, remaining as calm as she could, and only glancing at Alex out of the corner of her eye as she followed the deputy outside into the hallway.
Alex was right behind her. "Liz?" he said, his voice barely audible, and his eyes wide.
She gave him a brief smile and shrugged her shoulders. "Probably about what happened at the Cafe. No big deal. See you later, Alex." She forced herself to walk and not look back at him. But she knew he was staring after her.
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Liz sat nervously on the chair in Sheriff Valenti's office, staring out the window. She heard him come inside a moment later, carrying a file and closing the door behind him. He nodded at her. "Afternoon, Ms. Parker. Your father said it would be all right if I talked to you." He sat down at his desk, and pulled out a couple of black and white photographs. He laid them on his desk in front of her. "I'm sorry to have to show you these."
Liz leaned forward in her chair, and stared at the pictures. It was of a dead body. Her throat constricted for a second and she couldn't breathe. In the left hand corner of one of the photos was written November, 1959. She blinked in confusion. 1959? What did that have to do with her?
"This man was found dead, no apparent cause of death. Except that," he said, pointing to a mark on the man's chest. "What do you make of that mark?"
Ohmygod, she thought, her mind racing. It was a silver handprint...just like the one that Max had left on her stomach after he healed her...
It took her a second to realize that the sheriff was waiting for an answer. She steeled her nerves, hoping he couldn't see her trembling. "I have never seen anything like that before."
"Kyle said he saw a similar mark on your stomach." Sheriff Valenti leaned back in his chair and stared at her.
"He was wrong," she answered immediatly.
"I'm sure. Kyle's got a pretty wild imagination." He paused. "I'm gonna need to see for myself, Liz."
Liz stared back at him. "Come on, Sheriff. I mean, I told you that I spilled ketchup, and I...I said that like a thousand times." Her stomach was turning.
"Liz, please?"
She forced back the revulsion she felt as she stood up and slid her shirt up so he could look at her stomach. She held her breath as the sheriff stared at her bare skin. Then he looked up at her face. Liz glanced down and said a silent thanks that the handprint had faded away when it had...one day sooner and she wouldn't have been able to show him that there was no mark...
She slid her shirt back down and sat back down in the chair.
"The mark faded on the corpse, too. What do you know about a kid named Max Evans?" He watched her closely for her reaction.
Liz frowned. "Max Evans?"
"Mmmm, hmmm."
"Um...I don't really know him...all that well."
"Was he one of the kids at the Crashdown that day?"
"No," she said without hesitation, shaking her head.
"I see."
"Can I go home now, Sheriff?" she asked, her voice sounding a lot calmer than she felt.
"Just one more thing." He pulled something out of his desk drawer and set it on top of his desk. "Somebody turned in this bookbag. It is yours, isn't it?"
Her gaze drifted to the bookbag, and she nodded slowly. There was no sense in denying it. That bookbag had her waitress uniform in it, and the uniform had her name tag on it. If she lied, it would make him even more suspicous. "It's mine."
Sheriff Valenti studied her.
"I can have it back now, can't I?" Liz asked, meeting his eyes, her own eyes cold.
"Of course. It is yours." He motioned for her to take it.
She picked it up and slid her arms through the straps. "Good afternoon, Sheriff." She turned and walked out of his office, out of the police station and into the parking lot before she let out the breath she'd been holding. Then she quickly slid the back pack off her arms and pulled the zipper open with shaking hands. Everything was there: her books, folders and calculator. The only thing missing was her waitress uniform.
Her waitress uniform that had a bullet hole right in the middle of it.
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"Liz, what's wrong?" Max asked as he followed her down the hallway out of wrestling practice.
She didn't answer him. She kept walking, and he kept following, until she pushed open the doors to the empty art room and all but flung her bookbag off her back. Her actions were angry, but it wasn't really anger propelling her forward as she turned to face him. She was shaken up, frightened.
"I need to know the truth, Max. I need to know everything. Or I'll--I'm just gonna go to Valenti, and I'm gonna tell him everything I know." Her words sounded threatening, but they both knew she was lying.
"Okay," he said softly.
She was almost surprised by his response. "Okay," she repeated. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded up piece of paper, unfolded it and looked at whatever she'd written. "Okay. All right. Here we go. Where did you come from?"
"I don't know," Max answered honestly. "When the ship crashed, I wasn't born yet."
"So there was a crash?"
"All I know is it wasn't a weather balloon that fell that night."
She stared at him, the doubt obvious in her voice as she spoke. "The ship crashed in 1947. You're 16."
"We were in some kind of incubation pods."
"We?" she repeated.
"Isabel and Michael are also...uh..."
Liz swallowed hard and nodded. "Okay, well, that, answers, um, that question. Um, what powers...do you have?"
"We can connect with people, as uh, you know..." He smiled, looking a bit embarrassed. "We can manipulate molecular structures, and we can..."
"Wait," she interupted. "What does that mean?"
Max started to say something, but closed his mouth and moved over to a clay statue and put his hands over it. His hands glowed as he moved them over the clay, and the clay went back to looking like a large lumpy potato. He shifted it back to what it had looked like as Liz watched in amazement, her eyes wide.
"That's, uh...that's how I healed you," he said softly.
"Max, who else knows this?"
"No one," he answered immediatly.
"What about your parents?" she asked. How could they have possibly kept this a secret for all these years without a single person finding out? How could Max and Isabel's and Michael's parents not know?
"We don't tell anyone. We sorta think our lives depend on it."
It dawned on her then exactly how much danger Max was in. "So when you healed me, you risked all of this getting out, didn't you?" she asked softly.
"Yeah."
Liz shook her head, not understanding. Why would he risk his own life, the lives of his sister and best friend to save hers? "Why?"
Max gazed at her. "It was you."
She stared back at him, unable to breath for a second. She bit her lip, and then she remembered what else she had to tell him. "Um, Max, Valenti showed me this photo of a corpse. A murder victim. It had the same silver handprint on its chest." She moved closer to him.
Max stared down at her, shaking his head. "But that can't be."
"The photo was marked 1959."
"That's impossible!"
She saw the devistation in his eyes, but she knew she had to tell him the rest of it, warn him of the danger he was now in because of her. "Kyle saw the handprint on my stomach and Valenti found my waitress uniform with the bullet hole in it. He just asked me if you were in the cafe the day of the shooting. Max, he suspects you."
Max turned to leave.
"Max!"
"I have to to go!" he called over his shoulder as she ran out the door.
She raced after him. "Max, wait! Go where? Where are you going?" She ran out into the hallway. "Max, wait! Max!"
Before she could follow him any farther, a group of students dressed for the crash festival that evening nearly trampled her over and she lost sight of him.
Liz sighed and stared down the corridor.
Now what?