Just Past Midnight. Amanda Stevens

away.

      Dani’s fingers dug into his shirt. “What did you mean by that?”

      When Nathan merely smiled, something snapped inside Dani and she hit him. Smacked him right in the face and then hard across his chest. He wasn’t much taller than she, and almost as skinny. Her blows made him stumble back, and he threw up an arm to ward her off.

      But Dani couldn’t seem to stop. It was as if someone else had taken control of her body. Someone who’d been suppressing her rage for years. Ever since her parents had brought home a son…

      “Tell me! Tell me!”

      Dani kept right on hitting him until she heard her mother cry out and her father say in a shocked voice, “Danielle! That’s enough!”

      Canton stood at the bottom of the stairs taking it all in. He said nothing, but his dark gaze glittered with an emotion Dani couldn’t define.

      The anger drained out of her so quickly she almost collapsed. She would have, if Nathan hadn’t grabbed her wrists to hold her up.

      “I’ve been waiting years to see that look on Mother’s face,” he whispered, and then he released her and turned away.

      CHAPTER THREE

      FOUR WEEKS LATER, Greg Melcher sat at the back of the Allentown High School auditorium and watched Danielle Williams deliver the valedictory address at her graduation. She managed to hit just the right notes of melancholy and anticipation as she talked about leaving the past behind in order to embrace the future.

      It was the usual inane garbage that would be delivered at countless graduation ceremonies in countless little burgs all over Texas on that hot Sunday afternoon.

      But this speech was different because, in spite of Dani’s hesitant, emotional delivery, Melcher thought he could detect the barest hint of triumph in her tremulous voice. She was going to embrace the future, all right. She was going to embrace the hell out of it once she received the Belmont Award.

      That little girl thinks she got away with murder. Now she’s going to take that scholarship money, get herself a fancy degree, and maybe even a rich husband if she plays her cards right.

      God help that poor SOB, whoever he turns out to be, Melcher thought grimly.

      But even as he sat there resenting Dani Williams’s future, he couldn’t help admiring her nerve. The girl was fearless. It wasn’t every seventeen-year-old who could execute a triple murder so flawlessly and leave nothing more than a whisper of suspicion behind. But those doubts were still lingering, if the subdued applause she received after her speech was any indication.

      She returned to her seat on the stage, pressed her knees together and clasped her hands in her lap. There she sat, the very epitome of youth and hope and innocence. And she was good-looking to boot. Not drop-dead gorgeous the way Melcher preferred, but he had to admit there was something special about her. She had presence, with all that dark, glossy hair and those violet-colored eyes. And such poise!

      Melcher didn’t know how she managed to keep her cool so well, but even when another classmate got up to deliver a moving tribute to Paul Ryann, she merely blinked away the tears instead of conspicuously dabbing at her eyes. The girl’s performance was nothing short of brilliant.

      Yes, a part of Melcher couldn’t help admiring her even as he plotted her downfall. Because, after all, ambition was something he understood. He didn’t have a fancy degree from a school like Drury, but, by God, he was a damn good reporter with an uncanny instinct for looking under just the right rock. He might have started his career at a two-bit weekly in East Texas, but he sure as hell didn’t plan to end it that way.

      Melcher had been waiting five years to catch some big-city editor’s eye. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio—those markets were respectable and a hell of a lot better than what he had now, but he ultimately had his eye on the big time. The show, as he liked to call it. More than anything in the world, he wanted to be an investigative reporter for the New York Times. Then, after he wrote a few books, won a Pulitzer or two, he’d make the move to television where the real money was.

      But…he was getting a little ahead of himself.

      It was hard not to dream, though. Hard not to imagine the headlines: Valedictorian Kills Rival.

      A story like that could easily go national if Melcher worked it just right. Murdering cadets. Cheerleader moms hiring hit men. The public loved that kind of stuff. They couldn’t get enough of it, and this story had it all. Passion, jealousy, resentment. An honors student—a girl who’d never gotten so much as a day of detention in her life—caving to the pressures and competition that now faced high school seniors all across the country. Hell, the afternoon talk shows would eat that up with a spoon. And with a little luck, Melcher might even get a book and movie deal out of it.

      He was still daydreaming, still smiling to himself when Dani walked across the stage to receive the Belmont Award. Her big moment at hand, she played it just right. Humble, grateful, sad. She didn’t drop her guard even for an instant, but she didn’t fool Melcher. He could see right through her. Beneath that sweet, wistful facade was a cold-blooded killer. A black widow in the making. A woman who seduced…and then murdered to get what she wanted.

      Melcher could just see those headlines now.

      And as he watched Danielle Williams accept the award, he began to hate her a little. Not because she’d killed an innocent boy and his family out of greed, but because she represented all that had remained elusive in his own life.

      It was time someone brought that little girl down a peg or two. And Melcher was just the guy to do it.

      DANI AND HER PARENTS celebrated quietly after the ceremony. She hadn’t been invited to any of the after parties nor had she participated in any of the pregraduation events.

      After Paul’s death, when word had gotten out that she was a suspect, her classmates, including friends she’d gone to school with her whole life, had shunned her. Dani supposed she couldn’t blame them. If the police were right and the fire had been deliberately set, then the community had a murderer somewhere in its midst. Someone they knew had killed not one person, but three.

      Dani understood that fear—she felt it, too. But the past two months had been lonelier than she ever could have imagined. It certainly wasn’t the way she would have chosen to end her high school years.

      And to make matters worse, Nathan had left home. Just up and disappeared in the middle of the night without a word or a note to anyone. They didn’t have a clue where he’d gone off to, and Dani knew her parents, especially her mother, lived in a constant state of terror that she would get a phone call from a stranger some night informing her that her son was dead.

      In the meantime, the investigation had finally wound down, even though an arrest had yet to be made. Dani knew that the police had checked into the Ryanns’ background and connections in Baton Rouge, but whether anything suspicious had turned up, she had no idea.

      She did know, however, that Canton still considered her a suspect. In the ensuing weeks since that first interrogation, he had come into the store several times where Dani worked. He never said anything, just stared at her for long moments before turning to walk out.

      And one night when she was up late studying, she’d glanced out the window to see a police car parked down the road from her house. She’d known instinctively it was Canton.

      In her more charitable moments, Dani could appreciate that he was just doing his job, but sometimes it seemed as if he was deliberately stalking her just to unnerve her. And it worked. His relentless pursuit left her shaken and edgy and more than a little afraid. There was something almost obsessive about his behavior, and Dani wondered now how she’d ever found him attractive.

      Her mother’s conduct during the past two months had been unsettling, as well. Whether it was Nathan’s disappearance, the suspicions cast upon her daughter, or a combination of both, Rena Williams had become even more withdrawn and had begun to suffer anxiety