Beneath Her Skin, Gregg Olsen [ereader with android .txt] 📗

steps to the sidewalk in front of house number 23.

Taylor shrugged off the compliment. “That’s not why I did it. It was the truth. Mrs. Berkley and Katelyn were close. Close enough to make me wonder what it would be like if it was just me and Mom.”

“Instead of you, me, and Mom?”

“Right.”

“That’s a nice thought. Thanks for that.”

“Oh, come on. Like you haven’t wondered what it would be like as a singleton.”

Just then they noticed Teagan, loitering in the alleyway with his BB gun and a coffee can that he’d been using for target practice. Both girls thought it, but didn’t say it: Who buys coffee in a can anymore?

“Starla home?” Taylor asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “The little B is upstairs.”

“You mad at her?” Hayley asked.

Teagan lowered his BB gun. “Not really. Or maybe yes. She’s always telling me what to do. Even when I’m not mad at her, I have to get ready to be mad.”

He kicked the coffee can.

“Aren’t BB guns illegal?” Hayley asked.

“You going to tell on me?”

“No. I’m just asking.”

He shrugged. “I don’t care if they are. It’s fun to shoot stuff. One time I knocked a robin out of a tree. That was cool.”

“Actually, that’s not cool at all,” Hayley said.

“Whatever. I’m going inside. Come on and I’ll let you in.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Teagan knocked on Starla’s bedroom door and opened it before she had time to call out an answer. Brothers across the world routinely did that. Girls routinely got special treatment like that. No sister ever has to knock to get into her brother’s room, that is, if she’d ever want to actually go into the gross, stinkfest lair that is usually on the other side of such a barrier.

Starla was sitting on the floor in that god-awful beanbag chair texting and listening to music. The room smelled of strawberry incense, and whoever thought that torching strawberries was a good idea was completely devoid of any good sense or scents. The only thing worse was tea rose incense, which Taylor was convinced smelled like a burning grandmother. Starla had taken to burning incense to round out what she called her “spiritual” side.

“Hayley and Taylor are here,” Teagan announced.

“Oh, hi,” Starla said, not looking particularly happy to see them. She reached up through her cascade of golden hair and pulled out her earbuds. “What’s going on? You two look like crap.”

Teagan disappeared into his room next door, and Hayley and Taylor went inside.

“What’s up is that five minutes ago Mrs. Berkley just asked us if we knew who Katelyn was having sex with,” Hayley said.

Starla didn’t get up and the twins didn’t sit. “Oh, that must be why she’s been calling me,” she said.

“So spill the beanbag,” Hayley said. “Who was she sleeping with?”

“Sleeping with? A pillow is about it,” Starla said. “Probably a blanket.” If Starla had meant to be ironic just then, it fell flat.

“Honestly, you don’t know?” Taylor said.

Starla’s phone buzzed with a text, and, ignoring the two girls in her room, she went about the business of answering it. Without looking up, she said, “As far as I know she’d met that guy online but not in person. He stood her up.”

“Right,” Taylor said. “But how come her mom found a pregnancy test kit in her room?”

Starla looked up startled and then returned to her texting. “Beats me. I mean, maybe Katelyn was playing around more than we thought. Sometimes quiet girls are the wildest ones, right?” Turning, she specifically directed her gaze at Hayley. “How’s Colton doing?”

Hayley smartly refused to take the bait. “Look, we thought you liked Katelyn,” she said instead. “We thought that you’d want to know how she died. If she was pregnant, she might have felt there was no way out.”

“No way but a suicide,” Taylor said.

Starla shrugged slightly. “That seems dumb, but maybe.”

“Or maybe she didn’t want anyone to know because the guy that got her pregnant was someone older, someone she was protecting,” Hayley said, a little proud that she refrained from saying something snarky to Starla in retaliation for the crack about Colton.

“But I don’t know anything,” Starla said. “I’ve got ten thousand messages to answer.”

It was Starla’s way of dismissing them, and it worked. Taylor and Hayley turned to leave.

Teagan emerged from his room as they were heading out.

“You were right, Teagan,” Taylor said. “Your sister is a total B.”

“The biggest B in the history of Port Gamble,” Hayley added.

“No argument from me,” he said with an undisputed grin on his face. “I heard you asking about Katelyn. What’s up?”

“What’s up?” Taylor asked. “She’s dead, and we don’t think she killed herself. What do you know?”

Teagan watched as Hayley hesitated in front of the door.

“Me? Nothing,” he said. “She was depressed. I guess that’s something.”

Taylor pushed a little. Maybe the kid was more observant than his sister and actually knew something. “Did she have a boyfriend?”

He shook his head. “I think that’s why she was depressed. She didn’t have one.”

Later that evening, Hayley and Colton looked at the screen on Hayley’s computer. They’d opened up the files from the thumb drive, and with a few clicks went a little deeper, beyond the contents of the messages themselves to the source files. What they were seeing was baffling beyond belief. The IP address for all the messages sent to Katelyn came from the Larsens’ house. All of them.

Including the “meet me in Seattle” message.

“Jake,” Colton said. “That creep was stalking Katelyn.”

“Jake,” Hayley repeated. She avoided saying something stupid like the fact that she’d always had a “funny feeling” about Jake Damon, but she had. So had her sister. Beth too. One time the previous summer, Beth had complained that he drove by her house very slowly as she washed the car in the alley.

“Outside of Segway Guy, he’s the creepiest person in Port Gamble. I’m glad that Jake’s boning Starla’s mom. She deserves it,” Beth had said.

“That’s harsh, Beth. Even for you,” Hayley said.

Beth barely blinked. “That’s me, I guess. Harsh.”

As Colton scrolled