Deadly Cool

by Gemma Halliday

  It was a good plan. A solid plan. One that of course depended on Andi actually having some incriminating footage of the killer. But on the off chance that she was either (A) blowing smoke, or (B) trying her hand at some new sort of blackmail scheme, the plan was even simpler: tell her to go to Hades and hightail it home before Mom realized I was gone. (You’ll notice that both plans involved Mom never knowing I had snuck out. Very important to the success of either. And my future happiness.)

  By the time I reached Main Street, I was feeling confident. I slipped around the mausoleum-looking main building to the back of the school, where I passed a line of portables. While they were supposed to be temporary classrooms, anyone who had grown up in the California school system knew the trailers were the most permanent temporary structures around. I was pretty sure ours predated MTV. I skirted the pool, where the Wildcats practiced water polo, and made my way out to the football field beyond.

  Which was, predictably at this hour, deserted. I looked down at my cell—11:47. I was early. I shoved my hands into the front pocket of my hoodie and sat down on the metal bleachers to wait for Andi.

  I closed my eyes, listening to the quiet night. An owl hooted at the far edge of the field. Sprinklers in the quad went off. The hum of the freeway in the distance rumbled behind me.

  A loud beeping filled the air, making me jump so high I almost fell off the bleachers.

  My cell calling out from my pocket. I took a deep breath. Good thing I wasn’t jumpy tonight or anything.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket, fully expecting Andi’s number to light up my screen, telling me she was a no-show. (This was totally the last time I agreed to meet someone with mysterious info at midnight. Couldn’t anyone be mysterious at a reasonable hour?) However, instead of Andi’s number, it was Chase’s that came up. I flipped my phone open. He’d sent me a picture message.

  I scrolled down and read the text:

  got it! b4 n after. check whats missing.

  Beneath the text two pictures were attached. The first was half a frame of the bumper of Chase’s car with a corner of the street behind. I could make out a white truck and a silver sedan. I eagerly moved on to the second photo. I squinted down at the image. Again, Chase’s bumper was visible, this time from a different angle, lower, looking up at the dent. The background was slightly out of focus, but I could make out the same stretch of street as the first picture, the truck again parked at the curb. Only in this one the sedan was missing.

  I felt my pulse quicken. This was it! I checked the corner of the photos for a time stamp. I longed for a nice big computer monitor, but I held the phone up, squinting at the corner. The first one read 2:34. The second 3:17. The time fit perfectly. The sedan owner had to be our killer!

  I looked more carefully. Unfortunately, the pictures showed nothing of the owner, just the car itself. Nondescript, no vanity plates that I could make out, the only visible digits on the plate at all a 5, a 7, and a G. I was about to give it up as another dead end when something dangling from the rearview mirror of the car in picture number one caught my eye.

  I leaned over, squinting at the screen. It was fuzzy, tiny, and not the best-quality photo to begin with. But as I tilted my head and leaned back, it took shape. A heart. A shimmery purple heart dangling on a silver chain.

  I sucked in a breath.

  I knew that heart. I’d seen it before a dozen times. And I knew who it belonged to.

  Suddenly everything fit, all the random bits of information that had been floating around in my head falling into a perfect pattern. A perfectly sinister pattern, I realized with a shiver, as I now knew exactly who had killed Courtney. And Kaylee. And who had framed Josh to take the fall for everything.

  I switched screens and quickly pulled up Chase’s number, my hands shaking.

  “Hey,” he answered on the first ring. “You get the pics?”

  “Yes! And I know who it is.”

  “Yeah, the sedan.”

  “No, I know who owns it.”

  “Really?” he asked. I could feel him leaning forward, body as tense as mine was, rigid with tension. “Who?”

  I opened my mouth to tell him.

  But instead of a name, a strangled sort of sound came out.

  Probably because something had just been looped around my neck. And pulled tight.

  Very tight.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I DROPPED MY PHONE, BARELY COGNIZANT OF THE CLATTER it made, my hands immediately going to my neck. I clawed at the strap, feeling its rough edges dig into my skin. I tried to suck in air, but it was a no-go. The strap was tight enough to cut off my windpipe, crushing against my throat. Instinctually, I thrashed right, then left, my body fighting all on its own against the lack of oxygen. Unfortunately, whoever was holding the strap behind me was wicked strong and thrashed right along with me, never letting the line go slack enough for me to take a breath.

  I felt my vision blurring. My lungs were on fire, and the world was getting smaller and smaller, my vision narrowing in on all sides, like a movie slowly fading to black. My limbs felt heavy, my head heavy. My eyelids so heavy they were threatening to close. I was on borrowed time.

  I summoned up all the strength I had left and, fighting against every instinct, let my limbs go slack. Which had exactly the effect I’d hoped. My attacker let up on the reins, the fabric around my neck loosening just a fraction of an inch. That was all I needed.

  I jerked forward, then sharply back, my head connecting with my attacker’s face.

  I heard a soft grunt. Then, “My nose!”

  My attacker let go of the strap, and I quickly slipped a hand between it and my bruised neck and slid it over my head. I took one quick step forward, preparing to bolt as fast as I could.

  But one step was as far as I got.

  I might have stunned my attacker with that head butt, but the recovery was quick. Before I could make my break, I felt an explosion behind my right ear, pain like a white light hammering through my head.

  I stumbled forward, my knees hitting the ground, my hands going out to break my fall. I felt skin scraping off my palms as the world rushed up to meet me. Something warm and wet trickled down the side of my face.

  “Hartley? You still there?” I heard Chase call from my phone somewhere in the bushes to my right.

  But that was the last thing I heard. Just as I reached out to find my cell, pain exploded again. I only had a second to register it before everything went black.

  I blinked my eyes. Ouch. That hurt. I stopped blinking, instead slowly letting my fogged brain come awake. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out, but it felt like a year, every muscle in my body tight and rusty like the Tin Man left out in the rain. I tried the moving thing again, slowly opening my eyes. I had no idea where I was. Somewhere dark. That smelled like mold, something metallic, and sweat. I wrinkled my nose against the offending combo. Ouch. That hurt, too.

  If you don’t count naturally falling asleep, I had only been unconscious once before. It was when I was ten and had needed a stubborn baby tooth pulled to make room for its overeager adult counterpart. I’d been put under anesthesia, told to count backward from ten and think relaxing thoughts. I’d gotten to three before the world had gone suddenly and completely black. Waking up again after the procedure had been totally disorienting. Like struggling out of a deep sleep, but not even really sure you weren’t still dreaming. Like trying to lift yourself out from under a cloudy blanket.

  This was kind of like that . . . but with a headache that seemed to extend all the way to the ends of my hair. My head throbbed like someone was playing hip-hop at top volume inside it, and my mouth was dry like I’d been sucking on Sour Patch Kids all night. I moved my tongue around, licking my lips.

  Or, more accurately, tried to lick them. Turns out something was stuck over my mouth. If I had to guess, I’d say from the rubbery taste that it was duct tape. Alarm bells clanged in my head as I remembered my last few minutes; the struggle and the fact that
I had lost. I wiggled my hands and feet, a bad feeling brewing in my stomach. Yep. They were duct taped as well.

  Not good.

  I forced myself to blink through the darkness for a glimpse of my attacker, even though each movement of my eyelids felt like an effort of monumental proportions.

  Finally objects started to come into view in the shadows. A bassoon. A music stand. A pair of drums in the corner.

  The band room.

  I had a moment of absolute squick when I saw the woodwind cabinet behind which my boyfr—ex-boyfriend— had bopped the chastity queen, but it was overshadowed by the fact that I was bound and gagged. It was never a good sign to find yourself like that.

  And an even worse sign?

  The door to the band room was slowly opening, a shadow entering. I squinted through the dark to make it out just as the overhead fluorescents switched on, flooding the room with light.

  I blinked, trying to ignore the flash of pain that slammed through my head as my pupils dilated. Instead, I focused on the image of my attacker, in the flesh, clearly illuminated in the doorway.

  I took a very small comfort in the fact that I had been right about the sedan owner as she grinned at me, showing what $5,000 of orthodontia had paid for.

  “Well, good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Caitlyn Calvin said, sarcasm dripping from her voice almost as sickeningly sweet as the purple heart-shaped beads that hung from the ends of her braided hair. “I was wondering when you’d wake up.”

  “Hmph frphm bemphr.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, taking a step forward.

  “HMPH FRPHM BEMPHR!”

  She reached a hand out and, in one swift movement, ripped the tape off my mouth.

  “Holy hell!” I yelled, feeling at least three layers of skin go with the tape. I bit down hard to stop the stinging.

  “Watch your language,” Caitlyn chided, making a tsking sound through her teeth.

  “Interesting advice coming from a killer,” I countered.

  She narrowed her eyes at me for a second. Then she smiled. A big, scary, sick smile. It was the single creepiest thing I had ever seen outside of a horror movie. How I could have missed the evil lurking just below the surface of her perkatude, I didn’t know.

  “Killer is such an ugly word,” she said, scrunching up her ski-jump nose (which, I was happy to see, was swelling as we spoke).

  “Killing people is ugly work.”

  “I prefer to think of it as exacting justice. I’m striking down the unworthy.”

  “Unworthy of what?”

  “Life. Those who are immoral must be punished. And it’s my duty to do so.”

  ’Kay, I’d always known there was something slightly off about the Color Guard girls, but I’d never realized just how positively unhinged this chick was until now. I wondered if Courtney had known . . .

  “How was killing your best friend your duty?” I asked. Not that I was really interested in the inner workings of Crazy Chick’s mind, but generally when a killer knocks someone over the head, ties her up, and begins to confess, it doesn’t bode well for the health of the tie-ee. You don’t have to be a CSI devotee to know that most criminals don’t confess when they expect the other person to live through the ordeal.

  All things considered, the longer I could keep Caitlyn talking, the better chance I had of coming up with a brilliant plan to get away.

  Okay, brain, no time like the present to get brillianting.

  Caitlyn twirled one braid in her hands, looking every bit the adorable model student. “Courtney was president of the Chastity Club,” she explained. “We all looked up to her as our moral compass to guide us thorough the tempting waters of high school.”

  I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. “She was sleeping with my boyfriend.”

  “I know!” Caitlyn shouted. “It was disgusting. She was making a mockery of everything we stood for.”

  “So you killed her?”

  Caitlyn paused for a moment, then nodded very slowly, a sparkle hitting her eyes that made me wonder if she hadn’t enjoyed it.

  “I had to, don’t you see? If word got out that Courtney Cline was sleeping with someone out of wedlock, no one would take the chastity pledge seriously anymore. Who knows what kind of chaos that would cause?”

  Teenagers having sex. Imagine that.

  I decided that open sarcasm probably wasn’t the best tactic. Instead, I said, “But she was your best friend.”

  “Was. I could never be friends with a hypocrite.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “As soon as Kaylee and I heard the rumors about her and Josh, we decided to stage an intervention. What she was doing with Josh had to be stopped.”

  “So you tricked her into meeting you at Josh’s house?”

  She nodded. “We wanted to confront her at the scene of her crimes. Well, one scene of her crimes,” she said, looking around the band room and wrinkling her nose.

  My feelings exactly.

  “Anyway, when we were all out on the field for Color Guard practice, Kaylee played lookout while I slipped Josh’s phone from his bag and sent the text. Ten minutes later Courtney was begging me for a ride to Josh’s place. She fed me some line about needing to see his trig notes, but we knew why she really wanted to see him. We followed her in, and that’s when we confronted her about her wicked ways.”

  “What happened?”

  Caitlyn shook her head. “Instead of denying it or being repentant, she flaunted it. How everyone thought she was so chaste and here she was sneaking around with Josh. She was actually proud of the fact that she had the whole school fooled.”

  Me included.

  “And then,” Caitlyn went on, “she told us it wasn’t the first time. She’d done this before! With boys from other schools!”

  “Slut!” I couldn’t help it; it just slipped out.

  “I know, right?” Caitlyn agreed. “Kaylee and I told her she had to stop. Now! She had to repent, to make amends, to make sure no one at Herbert Hoover High ever found out about the secret immoral life she’d been leading.”

  “And did she?” I asked, even though the fact that she was dead in my ex-boyfriend’s closet kinda answered that one for me. But I needed more time. My eyes scanned the room for something sharp enough to cut my bonds. Bassoon, snare drum, majorette baton. Why was everything here so round and child safe?

  “No,” Caitlyn answered me. “She did not. You know what she did?”

  I shook my head. “What?”

  “She laughed. She laughed at us! Us! Called us prudes. Said we were ridiculous for actually believing that chastity crap. She said she was only doing it to look good on her college app.”

  “I bet that pissed you off,” I said, my eyes still scanning the room.

  “Yes. Yes, it did. I realized then that Courtney had to be stopped before she destroyed everything we stood for.”

  “So you killed her.” I spied a metal music stand in the corner, tipped over on its side, the feet sticking up. One of them was a little jagged, like it had seen better days. It looked perfect for sawing through a length of duct tape. If I could just get close enough, I might be able to slide my wrist across its edge. I slowly wriggled backward, eyes on Caitlyn as she spoke.

  “I didn’t want to kill her. I tried to reason with her. But she wouldn’t listen. Don’t you see? It was the only way to stop her. She wasn’t going to do it on her own.”

  “What about Kaylee? Did she agree it was the only way to stop Courtney?”

  Caitlyn shrugged. “She thought we should just scare Courtney, that we were just there to put her back on the path to virtue. But I knew better. After Courtney confessed, I knew she was evil and would never change her ways.”

  “So you strangled her?”

  Caitlyn nodded. “It was so easy, really. Courtney had her iPod in her pocket. Kaylee held her down while I grabbed the earbuds and wrapped the wire around her neck. And squeezed.”

  “Until she stopped breathing
.” I felt my stomach lurch, imagining Courtney’s last moments. My eyes flickered to the fabric strap of Caitlyn’s backpack, hanging on her shoulder now, and my imagination didn’t have to work too hard, having experienced the same thing just moments (hours? I still wasn’t sure how long I’d been tied up in here.) ago. It was not pleasant. Not the way I would wish anyone to spend her last moment on earth, even someone like Courtney Cline.

  She nodded. “She struggled a little at first, but it didn’t take long before she was still. It was actually a lot easier than I thought. You’d be amazed how fragile life really is.”

  I hoped I didn’t get the opportunity to learn firsthand.

  “And Kaylee went along with it?”

  “Courtney was dead before she even knew what happened. At that point, she had no choice. She had to go along with it. We stuffed her in the closet and left. I figured Josh would find her later, and everyone would think he did it.” She paused. “Dumb luck that you broke in.”

  “That’s me. Miss Dumb Luck.”

  She ignored me, plowing ahead. “Anyway, it worked out okay. The police thought Josh had killed her and had taken off. Everyone did.” She paused, narrowing her eyes at me. “Except you.”

  Uh-oh. “Sorry?” I squeaked out.

  “You just had to butt in. Had to start stirring up doubt, dragging Courtney’s character through the mud.”

  I refrained from pointing out that she had gotten it pretty muddy on her own. Instead, I did my best to deflect the topic of conversation away from my bound and defenseless self.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, scooching backward again. Just a few more inches and I’d be in range of the jagged music stand. “If Kaylee was in on it with you, why kill her?”

  For the first time Caitlyn looked almost remorseful. “I didn’t want to. Kaylee was good. She was the real deal, a chaste virgin who lived the creed.”