It was then that she became aware of other sounds-a door shutting in the distance, footsteps in the hall. Slow and deliberate, the footsteps were coming this way. You're in danger, Joan shouted through the phone wires. Bonnie dropped the phone, heard it crash at her feet. You're in danger, Joan cried again from the floor. You're in danger.

"And you're an idiot," Bonnie said angrily, not sure if she was addressing Joan or herself, her heart pounding, her head spinning. "You're making yourself crazy, that's what you're doing."

The footsteps drew closer, hovering just outside the staff room door. Bonnie held her breath, unable to move. It's just the custodian, she told herself, come to lock up. Maybe he'd noticed her car was still in the parking lot and was checking up on her, making sure she was all right.

Was it just a coincidence that her car had failed to start?

Or had someone tampered with it?

"Oh G.o.d," Bonnie said out loud. Much too loud, she realized, as the staff room door pushed open. "No!" Bonnie screamed as a man appeared in the doorway.

The man jumped three feet in the air. "Jesus Christ," he gasped, spinning around, head jerking warily over his shoulder, as if afraid someone was behind him. "What's the matter? What's going on?"

"Mr. Freeman?" Bonnie asked, steadying herself long enough to allow his features to sink into her conscious mind.

"Mrs. Wheeler," he acknowledged, as if he should have known. "What's the matter? Why did you scream?"

"You scared me," Bonnie admitted, after a pause. "I didn't know who it was."

"Who'd you think it was, for Pete's sake? The bogeyman?"

"Maybe." Bonnie collapsed into the chair behind her. Josh Freeman stared at her with puzzled eyes.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm feeling a little dizzy."

Josh moved directly to the water cooler, poured her a cup of water, brought it to her side. "Have some of this."

Bonnie took the paper cup from his hand, brought it to her lips, finished the contents in one gulp. "Thank you." He had a kind face, she thought, surprised, as she'd been at Joan's funeral, by the wondrous clarity of his eyes.

"Feel better?"

"Hopefully. Sorry if I frightened you."

"No harm done," he said.

"I didn't realize you were still here."

"I guess we're the last ones."

"My car won't start. I was just about to call a cab."

He hesitated. "Do you live far from here?"

"No. Just over on Winter Street. A couple of miles."

Another hesitation. "I could give you a lift."

"Really?"

"Is the idea so shocking?"

"It's just that you've been avoiding me for some time now," Bonnie said.

"I guess I have," he admitted. "Have the police made any arrests yet?"

Bonnie shook her head, trying not to appear too startled by his abrupt change in thought.

"Why don't we talk on the way home?" he suggested.

Bonnie nodded, rising unsteadily to her feet and following him out of the staff room into the long hallway. So, they were finally going to talk, and on his initiative, no less. She couldn't have planned it any better herself, she thought, a sudden twinge poking her in the ribs, like a finger. Maybe it had been planned, the twinge warned her. Only not by her. Maybe Josh Freeman had deliberately tampered with her car. Was it just a coincidence that he was here waiting for her just when her car wouldn't start?

Except why would he do that? Bonnie wondered impatiently, forcing herself to keep up with his pace. Why would he tamper with her car? Unless he'd had something to do with Joan's death, unless he was the danger Joan had been trying to warn her against. But what kind of danger could Josh Freeman possibly be to her? And why should she have reason to fear him?

If anything were to happen to her, she realized as they neared the end of the corridor, no one would know where she was. No one would know where she had disappeared. No one had seen her with Josh Freeman. No one had seen them leaving the school together. No one would know who was responsible should anything happen to her. She should run from his side immediately, scream for the police. At the very least, she should return to the staff room and call for a taxi. Common sense dictated that she go nowhere with this man.

"Coming?" he asked, opening the door to the outside, waiting for her to catch up.

Bonnie took a deep breath, then followed him outside.

20.

"So, what made you want to be a teacher?" he asked unexpectedly as he turned his car onto Wellesley Street.

Bonnie was pressed against the pa.s.senger door of the small foreign car, her right hand gripping the door handle, in case she had to make a sudden, unscheduled exit. "It's just something I always wanted to do," she answered, trying to be rea.s.sured by his awkward attempt at conversation. "From the time I was a little girl, I just always knew I wanted to teach. I'd get all my dolls together and arrange them in rows, teach them to read and write." What was she jabbering about? Was she afraid that if she stopped talking, he might pounce? "Of course, I was a better teacher back then," she said.

"Something tells me that you're a very good teacher right now."

She forced a smile. "I like to think I am. Of course you can't reach everybody."

"You sound like you have someone particular in mind."

Bonnie thought of Haze, of her frustrating encounter with his grandparents. No wonder he was so angry all the time, she thought.

"How did it go tonight?" Josh asked, as if able to read her thoughts. "Were you very busy?"

"Pretty much," she answered. "What about you?"

"Full house," he said, an engaging smile appearing unexpectedly on his face. She'd never seen him smile before, she realized. He looked nice when he smiled. "A far cry from the school I used to teach at," he was saying.

"In New York," she stated. Were they actually making small talk? Was he really confiding in her something about himself?

He nodded, the wavy half smile vanishing into a thin straight line, like the line on a heart monitor after the patient has died.

"What made you come to Boston?" she asked.

"I needed a change," he said. "Boston seemed as good a place as any."

"Do you like it here?"

"Very much."

"And your family?" She suddenly recalled that his wife had been killed in some kind of horrible accident. At least that was the rumor, she remembered, a feeling of dread seeping into her veins like an intravenous drip. Maybe it hadn't been an accident at all. Maybe he'd murdered his wife, just like he'd murdered Joan, just like he was about to murder her. Maybe all this small talk was simply a way of relaxing her before the kill.

"I'm alone" was all he said.

"It must be hard to start over in a new city when you don't know anyone," she ventured, her voice quiet, strained. It was hard to carry on two conversations at once, even if one conversation was all inside her head.

"I didn't expect it to be easy."

"Have you made any friends?"

"Some."

"Did you consider Joan a friend?" She'd meant the question to sound casual, but her voice stuck on Joan's name, underlining it and dislodging it from the rest of the sentence, sending it bouncing off the car windows.

"Yes, I did," he said, eyes resolutely on the road ahead.

"Were you having an affair?" Bonnie asked, throwing caution to the proverbial wind. What the h.e.l.l, she reasoned. If he'd killed Joan, if he was planning to kill her, she might as well die knowing something.

"No," he said, after a pause. "We weren't having an affair."

"Would you tell me if you were?"

"Probably not," he said, the wavy little half smile temporarily reappearing.

"What exactly was your relationship?" Bonnie asked, knowing she'd asked the question before, wondering if, once again, he'd tell her it was none of her business.

"We were friends," he said instead. "Kindred souls, you might say."

"In what way?"

He thought for several long seconds. "We shared an inner emptiness, if you will," he said finally, a trifle self-consciously. "We'd both known great tragedy. It drew us together, gave us some common ground."

Bonnie phrased her next statement carefully. "I understand that your wife died in an accident-"

"A car accident, yes," Josh said quickly. "She and my son."

"Your son?"

"He was two years old."

"My G.o.d. I'm so sorry."

Josh nodded, gripped the steering wheel tighter, his knuckles growing white with the strain. "It was winter. The roads were bad. Her car hit some black ice and skidded into oncoming traffic. It wasn't anyone's fault. It's a miracle really that more people weren't killed."

"That's so awful."

"Yes, it was." There was a long pause. "So, you see, I understood something of the grief Joan carried around inside her all the time. I knew what it was like to lose a child. I knew what she was going through."

"When you were together, what did you talk about?" Bonnie asked.

"What do friends talk about?" he mused. "I don't know. Whatever was uppermost in our minds at the time, I guess. The real estate business, teaching, her kids, her mother...."

"Her mother?"

"That surprises you?"

"What did she tell you about her mother?"

"Not much. That she had a drinking problem, that she was in a nursing home."

"You knew Joan's mother was in a nursing home?"

"Was it a secret?"

"Have you ever visited her?"

"No. Why would I?"

Bonnie stared out the front window, consciously trying to slow things down. The conversation was moving too rapidly, was in danger of getting away from her. She needed time to digest everything he had told her, time to organize her thoughts. He was giving her too much information too fast. Why, she wondered, when he'd been so unwilling to talk to her before?

"What about Sam?" she asked.

"Sam? What about him?"

Hadn't she just asked that? "I understand he's in your art cla.s.s."

Josh Freeman nodded. "He is."

"Is he a good student?"

"Very good. He's quiet, works hard, keeps mostly to himself."

"Has he talked to you at all since Joan was killed?"

"No. I tried to approach him once, but he made it pretty clear he wasn't interested."

Bonnie's eyes traveled across the dark road, expecting to see the familiar side streets-DeBenedetto Drive, Forest Lane. Instead she saw Ash Street and Still Meadow Road. "Where are you going?" she asked, bracing herself in her seat.

"What?"