© 2011 by Gregg Olsen
All rights reserved.
About the Author
Throughout his career, GREGG OLSEN has demonstrated an ability to create a detailed narrative that offers readers fascinating insights into the lives of people (real or imagined) caught in extraordinary circumstances. A New York Times and USA Today bestselling and awardwinning author, Olsen has written six novels and eight nonfiction books with sales of more than one million copies. He has also contributed a critically acclaimed short story to a collection edited by Lee Child. Envy is his first young adult novel.
Olsen has been interviewed on the History Channel, Learning Channel, Discovery Channel, Good Morning America, The Early Show, The Today Show, FOX News, CNN, Anderson Cooper 360, MSNBC, Entertainment Tonight, 48 Hours, Oxygen’s Snapped, Court TV’s Crier Live, Inside Edition, Extra, Access Hollywood, and A&E’s Biography.
In 2010 alone, Olsen was featured on Dateline NBC, NPR, William Shatner’s Aftermath, and two episodes of the Discovery Channel’s Deadly Women series. He has been spotlighted in Redbook, USA Today, People, Salon magazine, Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, and the New York Post.
Olsen, a Seattle native and father of twin daughters, lives in Olalla, Washington, with his wife, a couple of chickens, and two dogs: Milo (an obedience-school-dropout cocker spaniel) and Suri (a mini dachshund with a huge need to be in charge).
For Rebecca, who is neither Vicky nor Cristina,
but her own amazing person. —G.O.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
SOME OF THIS STORY is completely true. And some of it isn’t. Like truth, evil comes in all sorts of flavors. Some bitter. Some deceptively sweet. Sometimes it comes with a heavy price. While most people don’t invite evil into their lives, the dirty little secret is that an invitation isn’t necessary. Locked doors don’t matter. Neither do fancy security systems. Evil is kind of amazing when you think about it. She knows how to get inside.
—Gregg Olsen
chapter 1
WATER GUSHED OUT OF THE CORRODED FAUCET into the chipped, porcelain tub, pooling at the bottom with a few tangled strands of long, brown hair. The water was easily 120 degrees—so hot that Katelyn Berkley could hardly stand to dip her painted green toenails into it. The scalding water instantly turned her pale skin mottled shades of crimson. Perched on the edge of the tub with her right leg dangling in the water, Katelyn smiled. It was a hurt that felt good.
At fifteen, Katelyn knew something about hurt.
Promises had been made … and broken. Things change. People let you down—even those closest to you. Promises, she realized, were very, very hard to keep.
As a blast of icy air blew in from her open bedroom window, the silver razor blade next to the half-empty bottle of Tea Tree shampoo glinted, beckoning her. Katelyn fantasized about taking control of the situation—of her pitiful excuse for a life—the only way she could.
She looked in the full-length mirror across the room. The glass was starting to fog as the steam billowed from the tub’s rippling surface, but she could see that her eyes were red. There wasn’t enough Smashbox on earth to cover the splotches that came with her tears.
“Merry Christmas, loser,” she said.
She pulled inside of herself, into that place where there was only a little relief.
The bathtub was nearly full. Steaming. Just waiting.
Katelyn had no idea that, not far away, someone else was doing the exact same thing—just waiting for the right time to make a move.
As fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, Katelyn took off the rest of her clothes, threw them on the floor, and plunged herself into the tub.
DOWNSTAIRS, HER MOTHER, SANDRA, stood in the kitchen and poked at the congealing remains of a prime rib roast. She yanked at her blue sweater as she pulled it tighter on her shoulders and fumed. She was cold and mad. Mad and cold. She searched her kitchen counters for the espresso maker.
Where is it?
Sandra had a bottle of Bacardi spiced rum at the ready and a small pitcher of eggnog that she wanted to foam. It would be the last time she took a drink for the rest of the year. The promise was a feeble one, like many of Sandra’s. There was only a week left until the New Year. All night Sandra had been watching the bottle’s amber liquid drop like the thermometer outside the frost-etched window—single paned because the Berkleys’ was a historic home and could not be altered.
Last drink. Promise. Where is that machine?
Her parents, Nancy and Paul, had finally left after their holiday visit, and Sandra needed the calming effect of the alcohol. They always dropped a bomb at every social occasion, and the one they had offered up earlier that evening was a doozy, even by their standards. They’d rescinded their promise to fund Katelyn’s college expenses, a promise made when their granddaughter was born. That night at dinner, Nancy had let it slip that they were no longer in the position to do so.
“Sandra, my kitchen counters were Corian, for goodness sake. I deserved granite. And, well, one thing led to another. A $10,000 remodel, you know, kind of ballooned into that $100,000 new wing. I really do love it. I know you will too.”
Katelyn, suddenly in need of better grades, stellar athleticism, or richer parents, had left the table in tears and mouthed to her mother behind her grandmother’s back, “I hate her.”
“Me too, Katie,” Sandra had said.
“What?” Nancy asked.
“Just telling Katelyn I love her too.”
Sandra had acted as though everything was fine, the way that moms sometimes do. But inside she seethed. Her husband, Harper, had left just after dinner to check on a faulty freezer at the Timberline restaurant they owned next door.
Every single day, even on Christmas, Harper has to find a reason to go to work.
“Katelyn?” she called up the narrow wooden staircase that led to the second-floor bedrooms. “Have you seen the espresso machine?”
There was no answer.
Sandra returned to her outdated, worn-out kitchen and downed two fingers of spiced rum from a Disneyland shot glass. She screwed on the bottle cap, pretending she hadn’t had a drink. After all, it was almost like medicine.
To steady my nerves. Yes, that’s it.
Katelyn had been taking the espresso machine upstairs to make Americanos the week before Christmas. Sandra had scolded her for that.
“It isn’t sanitary, Katie. We don’t bring food upstairs.”
Katelyn had rolled her eyes at her mother. “Only a restaurant owner would call milk and sugar ‘food,’ Mom.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Yeah. I get it,” Katelyn said, feeling it unnecessary to point out that she’d been forced to have a food worker’s permit since she was nine and could recite safe temperatures for meat, poultry, milk, and vegetables in her sleep.
The lights flickered and the breakers in the kitchen popped.
Another reason to hate this old house, even if it does have an extra upstairs bathroom.