Deadly Cool (16 page)

Shiloh shook her head. “Give me a break—it was just a glimpse through the curtains.”

“Then how can you be sure it was him?”

“I recognized the hoodie he was wearing. It had an eagle on the back. A big purple one.”

I felt my stomach twist painfully. She was right. I’d seen Chase wear that very same hoodie.

“That’s Chase’s hoodie all right,” I conceded.

“I know. I gave it to him.”

I cocked my head. “
You
gave it to him?”

“For his birthday last year. We were dating.”

I did a cartoon-worthy double take. “Chase was dating
you
?!” I said. Then immediately felt guilty as her expression hardened. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m sure lots of guys want to date you. You’re very . . . uh . . . unique.”

Which, as I assessed her anew, was actually very true. Not only unique, but she also had a flair of the exotic about her. Something forbidden. And . . . if you stripped away all the affected makeup and funky clothes, Shiloh was actually kinda pretty. I gave her an up and down. Okay,
very
pretty. She was thin with long legs that looked great in a miniskirt (even if the miniskirt was covered in zippers and safety pins and the legs were encased in Wicked Witch of the West tights). And, unlike most model-thin girls, she actually had a chest. One which was shown off to advantage in the tight horse-head T-shirt.

She was a bad girl, Chase was a bad boy; they fit perfectly. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that their romantic paths had crossed at some point.

And it shouldn’t have mattered to me at all. And it didn’t. That little dip in my stomach had nothing to do with the fact that
this
was the kind of girl that was really Chase’s type. It was probably because I’d skipped breakfast. That’s it, I was just hungry.

“ . . . and then I—Hey, are you even listening?”

“Yes.” No. I realized that I’d totally spaced out on what she’d been saying.

“Uh-huh. Well, anyway, I was saying that I was working on the
Homepage
last year, and he was the editor, and you know how those late-night sessions go, right?”

“Right.” No, I didn’t. And for some reason that dip deepened at the thought. “Okay, let’s assume it was Chase you saw. Why would he want to kill Courtney?”

“How should I know? Maybe it was an accident. Maybe she caught him breaking into Josh’s house. Weren’t Josh’s parents away?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Perfect time to break in and grab some stuff.”

I shook my head. I had a hard time believing there was anything in Josh’s room that would appeal to Chase. On the other hand . . . what did I really know about Bad Boy except that, well, he was a bad boy? But just how bad was he?

“I don’t know,” I hedged. “That doesn’t really sound like Chase.”

Shiloh narrowed her eyes at me. “Yeah, well, I’ll bet I know him a whole lot better than you do.”

I bit my lip. “That may be true, but—”

“Chase is a jerk,” Shiloh jumped in before I could finish. “A two-faced, coldhearted, reptilian creep.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I take it things didn’t end on a friendly note between you?”

“He dumped me via Twitter.”

“Ouch.”

“No kidding. One day everything’s great, the next I’m being tweet dumped for no reason. No explanation. Nothing. What a jerk,” she said, taking another long drag.

I’ll admit, it was a pretty callous way of ending a relationship. On the other hand, Shiloh seemed just pissed enough about it to want a little revenge. And accusing someone of murder is a heck of a way to get back at him.

“You sure your personal feelings aren’t clouding your judgment a little here?”

Shiloh shot me a look, then shrugged. “I’ll admit, he’s not my favorite person. But I know what I saw. Which is why you cannot tell anyone it was me that told you this. If Chase knew that it was me who saw him with Courtney, can you imagine how pissed he’d be?”

Uh-oh.

“Um, about that . . .” I trailed off.

Shiloh narrowed her eyes at me. “What?”

“Chase was kinda the one who traced your IP address.”

“What?! Christ, what part of ‘come alone’ don’t you understand?”

“Sorry! How was I supposed to know he was the one you didn’t want to know? I mean, you had to know he was going to read the tip you sent in to the paper.”

“Yeah, which is why I sent it
anonymously
. Geez.” Shiloh crushed her cigarette butt under the toe of her Docs and immediately dug into the side pocket of her sweater to pull out another one. Her hands shook as she lit it. “Great! This is just great,” she said, the cancer stick bobbing up and down between her lips as she began to pace. “What am I going to do now? He knows I saw!”

“Look, he doesn’t know anything except that you’re Deep Blogger. I’ll just tell him that you didn’t really get a good look at the guy.”

She spun on me, eyes narrowed. “You better, Hartley Featherstone, or I’m gonna hunt you down and beat you senseless.”

Scary thing? I totally believed her.

“Right. Cool. No problem. Hey, you can totally count on me. Okay, well, I’m gonna just go now,” I said, slowly backing away.

“I know where you live, Hartley!” she yelled after me. “This is all your fault!”

Why did everyone think that stumbling on dead bodies was somehow my fault? Like I wanted to stumble on them. Like this was my idea of a good time. Trust me, between wearing braces for the entirety of my high school experience and finding one more dead body, I’d totally take the metal mouth torture.

Only, as long as the killer was still out there, the fates seemed intent on making my life suck like a black hole.

As soon as I got back on campus, I texted Sam.

where r u?

Thirty seconds later a response buzzed my phone to life.

cftria. y?

need 2 tlk. brt.

Five minutes later, I hit the cafeteria. It was packed with hungry students, the melded noise of dozens of conversations bouncing off the poorly insulated walls, the smell of spaghetti, mystery meatballs, and extrastrength disinfectant permeating the air.

I spied Sam sitting at a table near the middle of the room with Kyle and Erin Carter and Jessica Hanson, both still wearing their mourning armbands. I made a beeline for them, grabbing my best friend by the arm as soon as I could reach her.

“Hey, we need to talk. Pronto.”

“Whoa, chill,” she said, as I jostled her box of organic grape juice, spilling purple stuff on the table.

“I’m serious. This is, like, life and death.”

Poor word choice. Jessica raised an eyebrow at me, then sent a look to Erin.

“Uh, we were just leaving anyway,” Jessica said, gathering her tray of pizza sticks and spaghetti. She elbowed Erin, who did the same, moving to a spot a few tables away next to some guys from the track team. And, I noticed, skirting the long way around the table to avoid getting too close to me in the process.

I rolled my eyes.

But I had bigger fish to fry. Sam and I had possibly been in cahoots with a killer.

“We’re possibly in cahoots with a killer,” I said to Sam as soon as Jessica and Erin were out of earshot.

Kyle wrinkled his forehead up. “What’s a cahoots?”

“Hart, what are you talking about?” Sam asked, wiping at the juice spill with a paper napkin.

I quickly filled them in on my meeting with Shiloh and her revelation that the killer had been wearing Chase’s eagle hoodie.

“Did she say for sure that it was Chase in the hoodie?” Kyle asked when I was done.

“No,” I hedged. “She said she never saw the guy’s face.”

“So, isn’t it possible it was someone else?” Sam asked.

I shrugged. “Possible, I guess, but hecka coincidental, isn’t it? I mean, he just happens to be there at the time of the murder, and the killer just happens to be wearing his clothes? Then Chase just happens to offer to help us catch the killer, instead completely throwing us off the real trail.”

“Has he?” Kyle asked.

“Has he what?”

“Thrown you off the trail? I mean, it kinda sounds like he’s been helping you.”

“Right. Which is exactly what he’d
want
us to think if he was the killer.”

“She has a point,” Sam said. “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know. But, I tell you what we don’t do.”

“What’s that?”

“Tell Chase what Shiloh saw.”

As if on cue, the doors to the cafeteria opened and I spied our newest suspect pushing through.

He walked up to the lunch counter, grabbed a tray, and threw a slice of lukewarm pizza and a Coke on it.

Not exactly nefarious, but I guess even killers had to eat lunch.

“Let’s go confront him,” Kyle said, standing up.

I grabbed his arm. “Are you kidding? Sit down.”

His butt thumped back onto the chair with a thud.

“What if we’re wrong?” I asked. “What if Shiloh was mistaken? Or lying!” Though, even as I said it, I had to count that theory as a long shot. Even if Shiloh did hold some wounded ex-girlfriend grudge against Chase, the look in her eyes when she’d talked about seeing the killer had been pure fear. No doubt about it, she’d been afraid of Chase.

Still, it was possible she’d been mistaken. . . .

Sam shrugged. “Okay, so what if he’s innocent? We confront him, he denies it, we’re good to go.”

“Wrong. If he’s innocent, we’ve just totally pissed him off and there goes his help catching the killer.”

“But what if we’re right?” she countered.

“If we’re right, we’ve just accused him of being a killer. That kinda puts us on his short list of future killees.”

Sam scrunched up her nose. “Good point. It’s a lose-lose.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said, grabbing her by the sleeve again and tugging her toward the back door.

“Dude. This is a fifty-dollar shirt. You stretch it out, you buy a new one.”

I let go of her sleeve. “Sorry.” But I ducked my head, the three of us scuttling toward the back of the cafeteria. We hit the door just as Chase paid for his food and turned around to scan the room for a seat. For half a second I could swear his eyes were searching for
me
, but I shook it off, quickly pushing outside.

No sooner had we stepped outside into the sunshine than my cell chirped to life. I looked down at the readout. A text from Chase:

where r u?

I bit my lip. So he had been looking for me.

busy. why?

did u talk to Shiloh?

Despite the fact that I wasn’t 110 percent sure I believed Shiloh had actually seen Chase in Josh’s house, I had promised to keep Shiloh’s observations confidential. Besides, it was better to be safe than sorry.

ya. no help. she didn’t c bg.

A second later he texted back:

bg?

bad guy
, I clarified.

A few seconds later my cell chirped again.

cute.

I really wished he’d stop calling me that. Especially if he was a killer.

so shiloh was no help?

no. not a reliable witness.

At least, it was safer for her if he thought that. Me? I had a sinking feeling she was a very reliable witness.

bummer.

I was just about to text back, when Chris Fret came running through the quad, heading toward the front of the main building.

“Dude,” he called when he spotted us. “Did you guys hear?”

“Hear what?” Kyle asked.

“There’s a news van parked out front again,” he said. He started dancing backward. “Word is, they’re interviewing students for the news tonight.”

“Not again,” I mumbled.

“We’re gonna go see if we can be those jerks in the background waving to Mom.” Chris grinned, looking like it was his life’s dream to be a jerk.

We followed him around to the front of the quad, pausing as we hit the lawn. Sure enough, a KTVU news van was parked outside again, a satellite on its roof, cables leading across the lawn to the camera guy. Next to him stood the intern, and a couple of feet away was Diane Dancy. She held a microphone in one hand and fluffed her hair with the other. Beside her, Caitlyn was checking her lip gloss in a compact and carefully posing so the sunlight hit her highlights at just the right angle.

A small group of people had gathered behind them, other aspiring jerks sticking their tongues out at the camera and yelling things like “Go, Wildcats!”

“Check one, two, three,” the intern said into Diane’s microphone.

The guy under the camera gave him a thumbs-up, and the intern nodded at Diane.

She shook her hair out one more time, then looked straight in the camera as the intern counted her down. “We’re on in five, four, three, two . . .” Then he trailed off, pointing at the reporter.

“This is Diane Dancy reporting live in front of Herbert Hoover High School in San José where a second innocent student has been found brutally murdered this week. The body of young, vivacious Kaylee Clark was discovered last night on the deserted football field, viciously bludgeoned to death.”

I shivered as I remembered the scene. Despite the warm sunshine hitting me, goose bumps broke out on my arms.

“Like the first victim,” the reporter went on, “Kaylee was a member of the very popular Color Guard on campus.”

The use of the adverb “very” was a bit of a stretch, but it was clear Diane was a woman who used modifiers to squeeze every last drop of drama from a situation.

Though, to be honest, this one was an easy squeeze.

“I have beside me one of their fellow students, Caitlyn Calvin. Caitlyn, how has this tragedy affected you?”