Beneath Her Skin by Gregg Olsen (ebook reader for manga txt) 📗

Katelyn’s dad opened the door wider and motioned for Taylor to come inside. “Cold out there,” he said. “Let’s look for it. I don’t know if I’ve seen it.”

He shut the door behind them.

“You’d know it if you had,” Taylor said, with a slight indication in her voice that the scarf might be memorable for the wrong reasons. “My aunt is nice, but the stuff she makes us…”

Harper smiled faintly. “I understand.”

Taylor looked beyond the foyer. The Christmas tree was still up, lights twinkling and casting a strangely cheery glow into the living room of what had to be the most pitiful place in Port Gamble. Through the kitchen doorway, she could see a mountain of dishes piled up everywhere. No sign of that obnoxious grandmother, which was good. Katelyn’s father led her to the hall tree a few steps inside the door, reached over to the top hook, and fished out the scarf, pushing aside a silver and black trench coat. Taylor knew the garment instantly. She hadn’t seen it in a while. It was a Burberry knockoff that Katelyn had bought on eBay. She remembered how Katelyn was showing off her purchase by her locker at Kingston High. She was beaming, but not overly so. After all, it was a knockoff, but a pretty good one.

“Oh, Katie,” Starla Larsen had said as she passed by the show-and-tell scene. “Another one of your auction winnings? It is so cute. I love the slimming silhouette on you.”

“Thanks, Starla,” Katelyn said, obviously unaware that her friend had dissed her.

With an LED-bright smile, no less.

Taylor remembered how she had felt when she observed that encounter. Starla was being cruel, needlessly so, and Katelyn just kind of stood there and let her be. Why didn’t she tell her to F-off or something along those lines? Katelyn had it in her to push back. But not then. It was as if Katelyn were some kind of abused child, seeking the approval of a parent who never loved her—trying, but failing, then doing it all over again.

As the memory spun back into her consciousness, Taylor noticed a slip of paper protruding from a pocket of the faux Burberry trench.

She looked over at Katelyn’s dad and gently touched her throat with her fingertips. “Mr. Berkley, I’ve got something stuck in my throat. Can I have a glass of water, please?”

“Of course,” he said, turning in the direction of the cluttered kitchen.

Taylor lingered a half a second and grabbed the paper. It had been wadded, smoothed out and carefully folded. She didn’t know why, but her heart started to beat faster as she unfolded it. Her eyes widened.

In typed, block letters it said:

I’M WATCHING YOU & LIKE WHAT I SEE

DON’T LET ME DOWN

“Coming?” Harper called from the kitchen sink.

Without a second of hesitation, Taylor shoved the paper into the pocket of her jacket and secured it decisively with the pull of a zipper.

“No need,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m good. Thanks for the scarf. Take care, Mr. Berkley.”

Taylor didn’t wait for a response. She wanted to get out of there, right then. She twisted the doorknob and hurried outside into the slushy afternoon, her hand touching the pocket holding the note. Some younger kids were throwing wet snowballs in the field next to what had been old stables—before horses ceded their role to automobiles in Port Gamble. The kids’ laughter was wholly at odds with what Taylor was feeling right then.

Fear.

The note was like a heartbeat in her pocket, pulsing, and urging her to get home. Its discovery was huge. It told Taylor that whoever had been talking to Katelyn online, had been close enough to her to give her a written, real message.

It wasn’t a long walk to number 19 by any means, but Taylor made it there in record time. She called hello to her father typing in his office and ran upstairs to her sister’s bedroom. Hayley barely looked up. She was immersed in the forensics book she got for Christmas.

“Taylor,” she said, her eyes transfixed to the contents of the page, “did you know forensic science was first used to solve a crime that occurred in 44 BC?”

Taylor knew better than to cut her sister off. Hayley liked to share her little factoids. And there was no sign of Colton, which was kind of a relief. Despite the bombshell in her pocket, a little slack was in order.

“Not since CSI went on the air?” she pondered, sure her sister didn’t hear her.

“You know, when Caesar was stabbed to death by Roman senators, a doctor named Antistius looked at the body and determined who the guilty senators were. Nobody’s sure how, but he did it.”

“Fascinating,” Taylor said, pulling out the slip of paper.

“Yeah, that’s how forensic science got its name. The doctor, medical examiner, or whatever he was, presented his findings in the Roman forum. Forensics is Latin for ‘belonging to the forum.’”

Satisfied that she’d imparted some amazing information, Hayley finally looked up from the book.

“Gotcha. I’ll remember that for Jeopardy,” Taylor said, “but for now let’s deal with something a little more current.” She pushed the note to Hayley.

“What is this?”

“Read it.”

Hayley unfolded the paper and read, her face growing grim and excited at the same time. “Where did you get this?”

“From Katelyn’s trench coat.”

“I liked that coat. She looked great in it.”

“She did look fab. Anyway, you know what the note means—at least, what I think it means?”

Hayley nodded. “Yeah, it means that the person playing games with Katelyn was close by. Close enough to give it to her.”

“It could have been mailed,” Taylor said.

Hayley got up and held the paper toward the window. “It wasn’t mailed,” she concluded, indicating a rectangular smudge of glue. “It was taped to something.”

“Her door?”

Hayley didn’t think so. “No, then anybody could have found it.”

“Like her mom and dad,” Taylor said.

Hayley handed over the paper. “Yeah, them. Maybe it was taped