"He's still behind us," Chloe moaned.

"Maybe I'll get in the right lane and he'll pa.s.s me and annoy someone else," Emma said, turning on her right turn signal and pulling into the right lane.

A moment later, the car pulled behind them, blanketing their car in the bright white glow of its headlights again.

"What a weirdo!" Chloe said, looking back at the car.

"Maybe they're turning. Let's get back in the left lane," Emma said turning on her left turn signal and merging deftly back into the left lane.

Chloe watched as seconds later the car pulled into the left lane behind them, "Okay. That's definitely weird. Do you think they're following us?"

Emma glanced over at Chloe, obviously frightened. "Are you serious? That's really creepy! What do we do?"

Chloe looked back at the car again and then looked over at Emma, "I don't know, but I don't want to stop."

"Do you think its Kate?" Emma asked.

Chloe felt shock run down her spine. She thought Kate was a little insanely jealous about Jake, but would Kate go as far as following her home, trying to scare her and Emma? She thought back to the mini-golf course that day and the feeling that someone had been watching her and Jake.

"It definitely could be," Chloe started, "Wow, she's really insane if it is her. Or, do you think it's the killer?"

"I don't know," Emma said, voice rising in panic. "But if it's Kate, I'll kill her."

"Okay, breathe. This is definitely weird, but we need to stay calm," Chloe was trying to think rationally.

"Stay calm?" Emma said, turning right down a street toward Chloe's house.

"Don't go to my house!" Chloe said loudly, causing Emma to jump.

"Where do I go?" Emma asked.

"Turn left here," Chloe said, pointing at a street that was rapidly approaching.

"Okay," Emma said, turning the wheel sharply in order to make the turn.

"Just go straight for a second," Chloe ordered, "Let me try and think."

"Okay," Emma said, concentrating on her driving.

Chloe looked back and the car was definitely still following them. She tried to make out any details of the car or its driver, but nothing could be seen over the bright glare of the car's headlights. It looked like the car was a dark blue or black, but Chloe couldn't be sure, as much as she tried to get a good look at it around the glare of the lights.

"Chloe..." Emma said, suddenly, anxiety and panic thick in her voice.

"Hold on," Chloe said, still trying to get a better look at the car behind them. She had almost been able to glimpse a license plate, "Can you turn left again, Emma?"

"That's the problem, Chloe! We're heading toward a dead end!" Emma was panicking.

"What?" Chloe said, turning back to the road.

True to Emma's word the road stretched on for a few blocks, littered with dead end signs and in the immediate distance Chloe could see the road dead end at a cliff, that lead right into the ocean. They were heading straight for it.

Chapter 14: The Take Charge Girl.

"What do we do?" Emma asked again, in full panic mode.

"I don't know!" Chloe said, equally scared.

The car was rapidly approaching the end of the road and the cliff beyond. The car behind them was still following them, almost pushing them forward despite themselves.

"I have an idea," Chloe said as they approached the cliff, "It might be dangerous, but I don't know what else to do."

"Okay," Emma said, "I'm definitely open to ideas."

"You need to stop and reverse, right now!" Chloe yelled.

"What?" Emma asked, even as she slammed hard on the breaks.

The car behind them careened into them, the bright headlights suddenly extinguished with a loud shattering crash as the two cars collided with each other.

The airbags in Emma's car exploded. Chloe's head was cushioned from hitting the dashboard, but she felt a cloud of dust fly into her eyes as her face hit the airbag, her seat belt restraining her from flying out of her seat completely from the impact.

It felt as if minutes had pa.s.sed when Chloe sat up, rubbing her eyes, and looking around the car, blearily. She couldn't make her eyes focus completely. They hurt from the dust that had flown in her face. Her whole body ached from the force of trying to resist the impact.

Chloe looked over at Emma, "Are you okay?"

Emma sat up, dazed. "What happened?"

"You need to pull forward and then reverse," Chloe said.

"I can't reverse," Emma said, voice oddly calm, as if she was in shock. "Should we call the police and report an accident?"

"Are you crazy? The maniac in the car behind us might already be running up to the car with a shotgun. We need to get out of here now!" Chloe yelled. "Snap out of it!"

Emma immediately put the car in drive, pulling forward in a large jerk as the two cars separated from where they had impacted one another.

"Reverse!" Chloe yelled.

Emma shifted gears and pulled the car in reverse, yelling, "Call the police!"

Chloe reached for her purse, which had fallen under the seat when the two cars collided. The contents of her purse had spilled out all over the floor. Chloe felt around blindly in the darkness for the metallic square that was her phone and finally wrapped her fingers around it.

Emma continued racing down the street backwards, maniacally. Chloe glanced quickly toward the damaged car they had left behind and felt a sense of relief. The car wasn't moving.

Chloe dialed 911 and waited for an operator to answer.

"Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?" A female voice said a moment later.

"My friend and I were being chased by someone in a car and we hit them and they're stopped off of Matisse Canyon, right near the dead end by the cliff. They were trying to run us off the road," Chloe felt herself talking without thinking, panic making her almost incoherent in her thoughts.

"Where are you now?" the female voice said.

"We're driving backwards down the street, trying to get away," Chloe said, noting that they had gained considerable distance from the car.

"You need to stop and wait for the patrolman to arrive," the voice said.

"We can't stop!" Chloe yelled. "That person was trying to kill us. We don't want to give them a second chance!"

"It is illegal to leave the scene of an accident," the woman on the other end of the phone said, sounding almost bored.

"We don't want to get killed! We'll meet any and all officers who come at..." Chloe stopped, unsure of the area.

Emma, chimed in, as she finally hit the nearest cross street, "Elm and 4th street. We'll wait there!"

Chloe repeated that and gave the operator her cell phone number and name. Emma had turned around, driving forward now, and proceeded relatively calmly down a few streets until she stopped at an intersection.

Emma put the car in park, letting the car idle. Chloe looked over at Emma and Emma stared back at her. They had just survived a horrific experience together and Chloe knew they were both in shock.

"My dad's going to kill me," Emma said, giggling nervously.

"He'll understand," Chloe said, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

"Yeah, he'll love me telling him that I almost drove it off a cliff!" Emma said, her laughter becoming hysterical.

"You have to tell him that there was a crazy psychopath after us!" Chloe said, laughing just as hard.

They both laughed uncontrollably for a few minutes.

"It's okay. It's okay," Chloe said, laughter fading, as she tried to calm herself down. "It's just the shock. We're in shock. We're all right. We survived. We're okay."

"I know," Emma said trying to catch her breath, "But I've never been so scared in my entire life."

Bright lights pulled up behind them. Chloe froze, her eyes locked with Emma's in a petrified stare. Then Chloe noticed the flashing red and blue lights accompanying the bright headlights and she felt herself relax. It was just the police. They were safe.

There was a knock on Emma's window. Emma lowered the window and a policeman holding a bright flashlight shone it into the car, "Chloe?"

Chloe woke up, back aching the next morning. She had decided not to go to school that day, for the first time in two weeks. She was tired of all the crazy things that were happening to her and it had everything to do with someone or multiple someones at that school. Chloe needed a day off to think about things. She was even considering going home to Chicago. After all, she couldn't follow her dream if she was dead. She could always come back to California, she reasoned. Chloe pushed that thought away. She wasn't going to let anyone make her leave. She had come to California to follow her dreams and n.o.body should be able to dictate that part of her life, except her.

Chloe ran a hand through her hair and stretched out on her bed, feeling the muscles in her back protest with aching. She needed a long, hot shower. Chloe got up and walked into the bathroom, peeling off her clothes and tossing them on the floor. n.o.body was home. Jake's mom, Jeanette, had gone to work and Jake was at school.

Jake had offered to stay home with her, but Chloe wanted him to go. She had voiced her suspicions about Kate to him, but she had also told him that she couldn't be sure. It wasn't fair to completely a.s.sume that Kate had been the psycho behind the wheel of the other car. What had happened to her and Emma the night before had almost been attempted murder and jealousy over a boyfriend was at least a few steps beneath that. At first, Jake had been furious, but Chloe had made him promise not to confront Kate. Unless Chloe could be sure, she didn't want to accuse her. It would just make that whole situation worse. And, she couldn't be sure - all she knew was the car was a dark color. Jake said that Kate's car was silver. Still. Maybe she had been driving a rental or borrowed a parent's car. Chloe wasn't ruling Kate out and Jake couldn't remember what her parents drove. It was all a jumble now. Chloe had been too panicked about getting away to get much else about the car that had chased them. She wished she could remember the whole thing more clearly, but then again, she was glad for the fading memory too.

Chloe let the hot water cascade down her body. The bathroom was rapidly becoming foggy with steam. Chloe felt relaxation ease into her muscles as the hot water pelted them.

Chloe washed and conditioned her hair leisurely, just enjoying the hot water surrounding her. She was going to read a book today and do nothing. She didn't want to think any more about the accident or the murders.

After the police had come to talk to them, another car had radioed to their patrol car that there was no other car at the scene of the accident they had described. The car had fled, but it had left proof behind of an accident. There was shattered gla.s.s and plastic from the headlights and debris all over the road where the two cars had collided.

The police took Emma's car in for evidence. They promised to return it to her as soon as they were done with it, but Emma hadn't been happy about that. Chloe just hoped that the police would find paint or some other evidence pointing to what color or type of car had tried to run them down.

The officers had interrogated both her and Emma. Chloe had voiced her opinions about the possibility of it being Kate that had run them down and then she had volunteered that it could also have been the murderer that had killed Lora Kelly and Elizabeth Hill. She finally admitted to them that she was also being threatened. To Chloe's surprise, they seemed reluctant to believe her. She thought she'd start a panic, but when she told them what had happened to her, they noted it down, but their att.i.tudes toward it seemed flippant. Chloe saw the two detectives talking to her glance between one another with raised eyebrows and amus.e.m.e.nt more than once. She knew she couldn't produce any proof. She had lost the last letter from her locker and she had thrown away the threatening yearbook page. She still had her gutted Teddy Bear, which they had told her she was welcome to bring in, but she didn't really want to lose Teddy to an evidence bag that would only just sit on a shelf. They thought she was another hysterical teenager, shocked and overreacting to the two murders at the high school.

Still, they were taking the accident seriously. They didn't seem as certain as Emma and Chloe were that someone had been following them. They had posed the theory that it was possible that someone was just on the same route as they had been, driving home, and they had overreacted and backed into them. Policemen were going to be dispatched to that area the next day to check into the neighbors whereabouts on the street that night and find out if anyone had expected any visitors.

Chloe and Emma tried to explain and re-explain that the car behind them had followed them from the mall, but the police wanted to keep the possibilities open. Chloe just hoped that they at least followed up on her Kate theory, if nothing else. Chloe and Emma were both disgusted with the police by the time they left the police station. Emma had to call her dad to come and pick her up and Chloe had called Jake. n.o.body had been happy to get a call from the police station at eleven o'clock at night.

Chloe shut the water off and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a fluffy orange towel around her. The house was already warming up, with the warm, sunny, California day. She walked into her room and pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and a comfortable baby doll T-shirt. She had the whole day in front of her.

Chloe tried to read for a while, picking up at least three different books, all from different genres. None of them was able to hold her attention for very long. She finally got up and walked out to the kitchen, thinking that she'd make herself some breakfast and watch some soap operas and trashy talk shows on television to pa.s.s the afternoon.

She looked in the refrigerator. Eggs were unappealing. She opened the freezer and pulled out the frozen waffles. She put them in the toaster and walked into the living room to flip on the television while they cooked.

It was almost eleven o'clock according to the wall clock above the television. Chloe turned on the television and found herself watching a newscaster discussing the recent murders. Chloe sat down on the couch and felt herself drawn into the story, as if by seeing it on television it would give her some insight into real life.

The newscaster was a woman in her early forties, dressed in a business suit, unemotionally talking, "There are two girls dead. The murderer is still out there. Police are telling parents at PV High School to keep an eye on their children. There is no known motive for the killing, although the two girls killed were friends. Police Chief Burgo had a statement."

The police chief appeared, standing at a podium. He was giving a conference at the same police station Chloe had been to the night before. He looked like he was in his late fifties and balding, but held his ground like a younger man among the crowd of reporters that were eagerly reporting the story.

As he spoke, the crowd grew silent, "The community has been rocked by the untimely deaths of these two young girls. The police force is doing everything it can to investigate the murders and bring their killer to justice. We currently have no known witnesses to either of the crimes. If anyone saw anything or if anyone has any information please contact the police department."

Chloe turned off the television. There was still nothing new on the murders. She walked back into the kitchen, grabbing her waffles out of the toaster and putting them on a plate. She grabbed syrup out of the fridge and doused her waffles with it, before taking her plate to the empty kitchen table.

Chloe ate in silence, mind going over the past two weeks she had spent in California. Was the killer now after her? It seemed to be so. Two people were dead. Chloe felt scared. The police didn't want to believe her. Chloe didn't know what to believe. Was it just Kate being a jealous girlfriend and had some of the other incidents been random pranks or did she really have something to be scared of? Chloe didn't know, but she knew that she was running out of time to figure things out. The incident with the car the night before had been an attempt at murder. Chloe was positive that she and not Emma had been the target.

Chloe ate one waffle and then started on the other, thinking. It had all started with Lora Kelly. Something had happened to drive the killer crazy and it had to do with Lora. The problem was that Chloe had only just met Lora Kelly on the night of the party. She hadn't even talked to her for more than a few minutes. Her only recollection of Lora was a feeling of power, popularity, money, and egotism, but nothing concrete about the girl herself except for what she had been told by other people like Jake, Grey, Kate, and Emma.

If the killings had started with Lora, getting to know her was the key. Chloe felt an idea form in her brain. Jake had dated Lora for at least a year. She wondered if he had any mementos of that year. There had to be photos and maybe notes or gifts. Maybe there was something that would give her a clue as to why Lora might have been killed.

Chloe finished eating her waffle quickly and rinsed off her plate, throwing it haphazardly in the dishwasher.

Chloe walked down the hallway toward Jake's room, feeling a little guilty about invading his privacy. She walked forward anyway. This was a matter of life and death. Chloe couldn't worry about wrong and right. Her life was in danger.