And to make matters worse, even though Tristen didn’t have feelings for me, even though I was afraid he really might harbor a monster inside, I turned around one more time, unable to keep my eyes off him. Unable to stop wishing that the gorgeous, talented, complicated, potentially murderous guy who was shouldering his battered messenger bag then sauntering out of the cafeteria like he owned the whole school really was my boyfriend.
Chapter 34
Jill
“TRISTEN, WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” I asked, pulling my robe around myself, not because my pajamas were revealing but because they were so ugly. “It’s almost midnight!”
“I know.” Tristen pushed past me into the foyer. “I need to show you what I’ve discovered.”
“Can’t this wait until morning?”
“No.” He walked into the living room and switched on a lamp. I saw then that his brown eyes were bright with excitement. I also noticed what he held in his hand.
The list. Which I hadn’t seen since that night in the garage.
“My mom . . . ,” I said, eyes fixed on the paper. “You shouldn’t even be here, and if she sees that . . . I told you, she hasn’t mentioned the list since that night she broke down. I don’t know how she’d react.”
“She’s sedated, right?” Tristen guessed, taking a seat on the couch and smoothing the list on the coffee table. “And we’ll be quiet.”
He was right: my mother was sleeping soundly. Still . . .
“Come sit down.” He patted the cushion next to him. “I need to show you. Then I’ll be gone. I promise.”
“Okay,” I agreed, stepping around the table to join him. By the light of the single lamp I could barely make out the words on the paper, but the bloodstains looked like fingerprints marked in dark ink. I looked away.
“Jill, look,” Tristen directed, edging closer, shoving the list under my nose, so that I was crowded both by the strange things I was feeling in the present and a recent, horrific past. It got a little hard to breathe. Dad . . . Tristen . . . Two powerful presences, hemming me in . . .
Tristen was so excited that he didn’t seem to notice how I was squirming. “At first I thought your father was irrational,” he said. “I could see that he was systematically manipulating salts but with nothing recognizable.” He jabbed a finger at one of Dad’s notes. Dad’s familiar handwriting next to those terrible stains . . . “Still, there’s a clear pattern. And when I started thinking about patterns, I thought of codes.”
I forced myself to ignore the blood and follow Tristen’s finger as he traced down the list. “CaCl2 plus R . . .” Calcium chloride plus . . . what? Yes, clearly Dad had been marking something in code, adding another layer of secrecy to his hidden life. “Do you think we can crack it?” I asked, not sure if I wanted the answer to be yes or no.
Did I really want to know the truth about my father when the few facts that had been pieced together were so damning? What if there was more ugly reality hidden, encrypted, on that sheet of paper?
“I’ve already done it,” Tristen informed me, ending my inner debate. “It was a very unsophisticated code—no offense to your father.” We both turned to the list again, Tristen edging even closer, so we were practically collapsed on each other on the sagging cushions. “See?” he said, pointing. “He simply divided the alphabet in half and transposed ‘A’ for ‘M’ and vice versa. Very simple. A halfhearted attempt at subterfuge at best.”
“But why even try?”
Tristen was too focused on his goals to worry about the mysteries that interested me. “Who knows?” he asked. “The point is, when you match this list to Dr. Jekyll’s notes, it’s very clear that your father was working from the basic formulas and systematically tainting salts—seemingly with materials that would have been common in a pharmacy or laboratory in the nineteenth century.”
“It seems like you’ve thought everything through,” I said, pushing his hand away. The list . . . the blood was too close to my face. “But are you sure you’re right? How do you know about the historical part?”
“The Internet,” he said. “We may live in a rural backwater, but I can still access cyberspace.”
“Still . . .”
“I’m right, Jill,” he said firmly. “This is about my life—and death. I am positive I’m correct.”
I looked down at the “last, bloody list.”
“It’s about my father, too,” I muttered, more to myself than Tristen. “And me.”
Tristen got quiet then and placed the paper on the coffee table, turning to face me. “Jill,” he said softly, “I haven’t forgotten that this list raises even more questions about your father.” He seemed pained as he added, “Believe me, I’ve thought long and hard about what role this document might have played in his last moments. But you must forgive my excitement for myself. I promise, if I manage to save myself, I’ll devote my energy to winning the contest—and helping you solve your father’s mysteries, too, if that is what you want. I promise. Just let me do this first.”
I stared into Tristen Hyde’s brown eyes, just inches from my own. He wasn’t violent. Right then, I couldn’t believe it. He was warm. Kind. Gentle. He would help me. If only he felt more . . . felt what I did at that moment . . .
And then, as we sat face-to-face, it was almost like my wish came true, because I saw something change in Tristen’s eyes. Not the frightening change that I’d seen when he’d gotten angry with Todd. This was the change I’d seen in the lab on that same night.
I thought I’d seen a new kind of warmth in his eyes back in the classroom and maybe again
