Almost.
“Caw! Caw!”
I froze. No. Tell me Sam didn’t just . . .
“Caw!”
I crossed to the window, drawing back the black sheet that served as a makeshift curtain. I blinked against the sudden onslaught of light in Midnight Room, looking down. Just below, on the outside of the gate, stood Sam, jumping up and down flapping her arms.
“Caw!”
I opened the window.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
“Making a bird call to get your attention.”
“That is the worst bird sound ever. ‘Caw?’ What bird actually says that?”
She shook her head, flapping even more violently. “He’s here!” she said.
“He?”
“Chase! He just pulled up and . . .” She spun around. “Oh, eff.” And with that she ducked behind a begonia bush.
Uh-oh. Not good.
I briefly contemplated jumping out the window but since (A) I was one story off the ground with no helpful tree next to the house, and (B) it was screened in, that thought was short-lived. Instead, I shoved the binder back on the shelf and quickly scanned the room for somewhere to hide. In the closet? I pulled open the doors. And was greeted by a pile of dirty clothes at least as tall as I was. Ew.
I spun around. Okay, how about the desk? I ducked down onto my hands and knees, but could only fit my butt underneath it, my head still sticking out in the open.
Which left just one more place. Under the bed. God only knew what sort of science experiments lived under a teenaged guy’s bed. I paused, trying to think of an alternative.
Then I heard it. A voice on the other side of the door mumbling something, and Chase’s voice in response.
“I sent in the paperwork yesterday.”
More mumbling.
“I just have the entrance essay left.”
His voice was louder this time. In a second, he’d be at the door.
I lifted up his black fuzzy blanket and contemplated the dark abyss beneath. It was now or never. I took a deep breath, prayed I wouldn’t touch anything too gross or, worse yet, living, and crawled on my belly under the bed. My right foot ran into the wall and my left touched something soft and squishy. I stifled a groan. I could detect the mingling scents of pizza and the gym at school. I bit my lip, wondering if maybe the closet wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
Only, I didn’t get the chance to act on my second-guessing as the door opened and a pair of black boots entered the room. I was pretty sure they were connected to Chase’s body, but from my vantage point, they were just shoes.
I watched them cross from the door to the desk and heard the sound of something being deposited on its surface. A backpack fell to the ground, sending a shower of dust bunnies rushing toward me. I held my breath, willing myself not to sneeze. I heard a few more sounds—a couple of clicks, a bumping sound, a tapping. Honestly he could have been playing the drums or constructing a model Mona Lisa, I had no idea.
Then the feet were on the move again. They went from the desk, back across the room to the closet doors, pulling them open. I gave myself a little mental pat on the back that I hadn’t chosen that as my hiding place after all.
I watched the feet shift and heard the sound of clothing rustling.
Then watched as a black T-shirt hit the ground.
I held my breath. Could it be that I was witnessing Chase undressing?
Okay, I guess I was listening more than witnessing, but it still felt a little wrong.
And a little exciting at the same time.
Bad Hartley. God, I was not interested in seeing Chase naked. I didn’t care what sort of six-pack he had hiding under his black T-shirts, even though I was pretty sure it was tight and hot by the way said shirts clung to him.
Oh God. I did want to see him undress.
So badly, in fact, that as a belt fell to the floor, I couldn’t help scooting ever so slightly forward, lifting the corner of the Star Wars sheet dangling in my face, and peeking around it.
I looked up . . .
. . . and saw that my ears had not deceived me. Chase was, in fact, naked from the waist up.
And he did, in fact, have a six-pack. A really, really nice one. For someone who did his best to avoid any pinprick of sunlight in his room, I had no idea how he got such a nice, even tan. But he did. Warm, honey colored. Except right at the waistband of his jeans where it faded to a pale, smooth color just before his pants gobbled up the rest of my view.
I bit my lip, loath to admit the kind of thoughts that were instantly running through my head. Like, if Josh had a six-pack like that, the chances of my still being a virgin were significantly lower.
I watched as Chase leaned down and undid the laces on his boots, kicking them off to the side. A minute later, he stripped off his socks, too, sending them into the same pile.
And then he did the unthinkable. His hands went to the buttons on his jeans.
Oh, no.
Please, no. Not the pants . . .
Okay, this was bad. I was officially a peeping Tom. Or a peeping Hartley. Or whatever you wanted to call me. But I could not take my eyes off his fingers, slowly undoing the top button of his jeans, giving me my very own private peep show, while I lay with something soft and squicky at my right toe and large dust bunnies tickling my nose.
The button popped open, and I prayed Chase was wearing a pair of really big, baggy boxers.
No such luck. My eyes were glued, as if watching a car wreck, as he slid the zipper down a scant inch.
No boxer waistband.
No tighty-whitey waistband.
Chase was going commando.
“Stop!” I yelled. I covered my eyes with one hand as I crawled out from under the bed.
“Holy . . . !” Chase jumped back a full foot, knocking into his desk and sending a stack of photos falling to the floor.
“Do not undo that zipper!” I commanded, my hand still over my eyes. (Mostly. Was it bad that I was peeking a little?)
“God, Hartley,” Chase muttered. I was glad to hear the sound of a zipper being quickly pulled up, and I uncovered my eyes just as Chase redid his top button, looking self-conscious for the first time since I’d met him. “What are you doing?” he yelled. A vein I hadn’t noticed before bulged in the side of his neck.
“Um . . . hiding.”
“From?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“So you wouldn’t know I broke into your bedroom to look for evidence.”
Why my brain chose now to start spewing truth, I had no idea. I just wished it would stop soon. And here I’d thought I’d gotten to be a much better liar in the past few days, too.
“Evidence of what?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me.
“That you killed Courtney and Kaylee.”
His eyes went wide with surprise, then narrow again. Really narrow. He crossed his arms over his naked chest. (Which, by the way, made his biceps bulge in a very distracting way.) “You have got to be kidding me.”
At that moment, I kinda wished I was.
“Everything okay in there?” I heard from the other side of the door.
“Yeah, Dad. Fine,” Chase called. Though the way he was glaring at me through tiny slits of eyes didn’t really seem all that fine to me. Apparently he took as liberal use of the word as I did.
“Uh . . . sorry?” I said, though it came out more as a question.
“Sorry? Sorry! God, Hartley, what could possibly have made you think I was the killer?”
I squatted my shoulders. “Someone saw you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Saw me what?”
“Going into Josh’s house right after Courtney did.”
“They were mistaken.”
I shook my head. “No, she was very sure.”
“She?” he asked, glomming onto the word. “This wouldn’t be Deep Blogger, would it? Shiloh?”
I bit my lip. Then very carefully shook my head in t
he negative. “No.”
“For the love of . . . Hartley, I broke up with her.” I guess I wasn’t quite as good a liar as I hoped. “She’s pissed at me,” he continued.
“I said it wasn’t her.”
He gave me a “get real” look.
“Okay, fine. Maybe it was her.”
“And maybe she told you I killed Courtney out of some sick sense of revenge. Maybe she set up this whole Deep Blogger thing to get back at me.”
“She said you broke up with her on Twitter.”
Chase ran a hand through his hair. “There was more to it than that. Our relationship was complicated, okay? And, honestly, I couldn’t stand another confrontation with her. So, yeah, I ended it. Which is why she’s making this stuff up about me now.”
“I don’t know. She seemed really scared of you.”
“She’s in drama club. She was acting scared.”
“It didn’t feel like acting to me. And I know her acting skills. Her snake wasn’t that good.”
Chase gave me a look. “Snake?”
But before I could explain, he shook his head. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. I can tell you for a fact that it wasn’t me she was scared of.”
“She saw your eagle hoodie.”
Chase went to the closet, pulled it open, and grabbed the offending object of clothing. “This one? There are probably dozens of other people at school who have this. It’s not exactly one of a kind, you know.”
I bit my lip. Good point. I hadn’t thought of that.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“That I’m not a killer? Yeah, pretty sure.”
“Sorry.” And this time I wholeheartedly meant it. Especially the way the anger had kinda fizzled from his eyes and been replaced with something a whole lot worse. Hurt.
I sucked.
“I’m really, really sorry,” I said again. The irony of how very like Josh I sounded at the moment was not lost on me.
Chase opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a sound erupted from outside.
“Caw! Caw, Hartley, caw!”
Chase narrowed his eyes again. “Sam?”
I nodded. Then crossed to the window again and called down to Sam. “You can quit squawking. He caught me.”
“He’s not murdering you or anything, is he?”
I glanced at Chase. I couldn’t promise the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. . . .
“No, I’m fine.”
“Oh. Okay, in that case, I’ll bring the car around.”
“Sam thinks I’m a killer, too?” Chase asked as I pulled my head back from the window.
I nodded. Slowly.
“Great.”
“Look, I’m so sor—” I started, but he didn’t let me finish.
“Whatever. Just get out of here.”
I opened my mouth to say more, but realized that beyond sorry I didn’t really know what to say. So I nodded, and then slunk out of his room with my proverbial tail between my legs. His dad looked up briefly as I made my way through the house and out the front door, but he was too engrossed in the game to care about exactly where I’d come from.
I closed the front door behind me just as Sam pulled up with a burger-scented cough.
“Was it my bird call that gave it away?”
I shook my head, relaying the striptease that had busted my cover as I got in.
“Dude,” she said, when I was done.
“I know.”
Sam shook her head at me. “I totally would have let him finish.”
“Trust me, I was tempted.”
“So, I guess he’s not our killer?”
I shrugged. “He says not.”
“And you believe him?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Mostly.”
“Okay, if the killer isn’t Shiloh and it’s not Andi and it’s not Chase, then who is it?”
That was the million-dollar question.
EIGHTEEN
RALEY WAS, AS USUAL, PARKED IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE when I got home. I didn’t bother with the witty banter. In fact I didn’t even give him a second look. He was scenery as far as I was concerned. About as interesting as the azalea shrubs along the sidewalk. I’m not sure he regarded me with the same detached lack of interest, his eyes burning into the back of my head as I unlocked the front door, but at least he didn’t get out and chase me down. Thank God for small favors.
But as soon as I walked in the door, I realized I could have used a bigger one.
“Hartley, where have you been?” Mom grabbed me around the middle, doing her boa constrictor imitation again.
“Um, out?” I managed with my last breath.
She released me and did a quick assessment of my person for blunt force trauma. Finding none, her expression did a quick change, concern instantly replaced with anger. Lots of anger.
“Damn it, Hartley, there’s a killer out there!”
“Whoa. Did you just swear, Mom?”
She ignored me, shaking her head. “You can’t just go ‘out.’ It’s not safe.”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving the house this morning?”
“I never tell you when I leave the house.”
“I was worried sick!”
“I had my cell with me.” I pulled it out and looked at the screen. Eighteen missed calls. Oops. “Oh. I guess I had it on silent. Sorry.”
“I almost called the police, Hartley!”
“The police are already sitting outside our house.”
“You are not,” Mom continued, completely ignoring my logic, “to leave this house again without my permission. No going ‘out.’ No disappearing without notice.”
“I didn’t disappear—”
“No going anywhere without a parent present. Do I make myself clear?”
Crystal.
“Great. Some guy goes on a killing spree and I’m the one under house arrest.”
Mom glared at me. “I’m serious, Hartley.”
So was I, but I didn’t think now was the time to point that out. Instead, I nodded, doing my best to look like I might actually comply.
Don’t get me wrong—most of the time I have no major beef with Mom. Sure, she’s soy crazy and a little neurotic, but she’s doing her best with the single-mom thing and, honestly, as parents go, could be a whole lot worse. So my act of rebellion at the moment had nothing to do with some deeply rooted need to buck parental authority and everything to do with the fact that (A) a killer was on the loose, and (B) he was systematically ruining my life.
Fleetingly I wondered if that was the killer’s real motive—to crush Hartley’s social life one small step at a time—but even I wasn’t self-absorbed enough to really believe it. Instead, I had to nod at Mom and listen to her say how “totally serious” she was about a hundred more times while she served me a faux BLT (bulgar, lettuce, and tomato), before she finally let me escape to my room.
I opened the door, flipped on the light . . .
And screamed.
Sitting in the middle of my bed, looking like death warmed over, was Josh. He jumped up at the sound of my screech.
Apparently, so did Mom.
“Hartley? Are you okay?” Mom called. I could hear her taking the stairs two at a time.
“Fine! Sorry I . . . stepped on a staple. Ouch.”
“Oh.” The elephant thumping up the stairs stopped. “Okay. You need a Band-Aid or something?”
“Nope. I’m fine. Thanks.” I quickly shut the door behind me.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed at Josh.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, giving me a sheepish grin. “I just . . . I’ve run out of places to go.”
While my heart rate had slowed from crack addict levels, it was still hovering in the fifty Red Bulls region. I took a couple deep breaths to slow it down while I got a good look at Josh. It had been only three days since I’d last seen him, but the difference was noticeable. Being on the run was a hard lif
e. He had dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t been able to rest, knowing the entire San José police force was after him. He had a fine sprinkling of stubble along his jaw that seemed completely at odds with his boy-next-door looks, and his clothes were wrinkled and kinda gray. And they didn’t smell too hot either.
“Where have you been hiding out?” I asked, sitting on the bed. Though not too close. (Did I mention the stench?)
“Here and there. I slept in the park last night.”
Like a homeless person? As much as I hated him for everything that had happened in the last week, I suddenly felt ridiculous for thinking my life was being ruined. At least I had a warm bed and endless home-cooked soy meals.
“You hungry?” I asked. “We have . . . soy?”
He gave me a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’ll pass. But thanks.”
“Sure.”
Silence hit us then. Thick. Heavy. Pregnant with all the stuff that I’d yelled at him the other night. All the stuff that he’d done behind my back before that.
“So . . .” he finally said, “are you close to finding him yet?”
“Him?”
“The killer?”
I bit my lip. I hated to tell him that for all our investigating, Sam and I weren’t really all that much closer than we had been to begin with. Sure, we’d muddied the waters plenty, but actually catching the killer? Not so much.
“Kinda,” I said instead.
“Really?” His eyes lit up, bright and hopeful in stark contrast to his disheveled appearance. I fought down another wave of sympathy. He was cheating, lying scum. I was not going to feel sympathetic toward him. No matter how pathetic and alone he was now.
“We’ve got a few suspects,” I hedged.
“Who?”
I bit my lip again. “I’d rather not say until we narrow things down a little more.” I half expected my nose to grow to Pinocchio lengths with that statement.
Luckily, Josh was nowhere near as good as Chase at seeing through my half-truths. Instead, he said, “That’s good news. Really good news.”
There was a pause again.
“I really appreciate this, Hartley,” he said, his voice low and thick with emotion. “You’re all I have left. Look, Hart, I—”
Deadly Cool Page 15
