Chase frowned. “Hey, you come up with something interesting and I’ll print that.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you saying my articles aren’t interesting?”
“I’m saying I can’t print nothing. You have to give me something worth reading. And the longer you wait, the better the chance someone else is going to beat you to it.”
I opened my mouth, shut it, opened it again, realized I didn’t have a scathing response, and cursed the way my brain short-circuited at all the wrong times.
“Fine. You’ll get your story. And it will be interesting!”
I spun on my heels and slammed the door shut after me, stalking through the hallways toward the back exit. It took me until I had stomped all the way to the Los Gatos Creek trail before I could finally admit to myself that Chase was right. I didn’t have anything interesting. Something I seriously hoped my interview with Sydney would change.
The creek trail snaked behind the football field, down toward a row of condos below. According to Google Earth, Sydney’s house was situated just over a mile from the school, the third one down from Vasona Lake on the right.
By the time her back fence came into view, the mid-afternoon sun had created a fine layer of sweat along the back of my neck. I stepped off the trail, carefully setting my backpack down in the grass, and tried to peek over the fence. Tried, because the fence was at least six feet tall and I top out at about 5' 2". Even on tippy-toe, I couldn’t see a thing.
“Sydney?” I called, doing something between a stage whisper and an indoor voice.
No one answered.
“It’s Hartley?” I called again.
I put my ear to the wooden fence, listening for a reply.
Nothing.
I squinted between the slats, but someone had done a crack job of installing this thing. I could only make out the tiniest sliver of the backyard beyond-just enough to see the blue waters of a pool and a pair of deck chairs.
I looked around for something to give me a boost. On the ground was a collection of rocks, but none looked big enough to stand on. On the other side of the trail sat a large oak tree, but I’d given up climbing trees about ten years ago. I called out to Sydney one more time.
“Hey? Sydney? It’s me. Hartley.”
No answer.
I looked across the trail again. Fine. Tree it was.
I quickly crossed to it, narrowly missing a biker clad in bright yellow spandex. The tree was thick, tall, and definitely sturdy enough to hold all one hundred pounds of me. The only problem was the lowest branch was a good four feet off the ground. I grabbed on to it and pulled my feet up onto the trunk, but they immediately slipped back down, causing my palms to scrape against the branch and depositing me on my butt on the ground.
Ouch.
I picked myself up, trying not to be embarrassed as another biker went by. (Seriously, he was in neon spandex. I wasn’t the one who had anything to be embarrassed about.) This time I was able to scramble my legs high enough to lock them around the branch above me. I hung there a moment, like a pig on a spit, before I gathered enough strength to pull my torso up and around to the top side of the branch.
I gave myself a two count to catch my breath, then carefully stuck my foot in the fork of the branches and moved a little bit higher. Once I was high enough that I was starting to get a little dizzy, I scooched out onto a limb that was overhanging the trail.
Sydney’s backyard was still a ways away, but from here I could see over the fence. I craned my neck to get my target in view.
What I’d seen through the sliver had been accurate. There was a large pool taking up most of the backyard with a couple of loungers set beside it. I saw a pink beach towel laid out on one, with a glass of iced tea sitting on a table next to it. Signs that someone had been in the yard recently.
I turned my attention to the swimming pool…
And then I saw it.
There, floating in the center of the sparkling blue pool, was Sydney Sanders.
Facedown.
Chapter Three
THE FIRST THING I DID WAS RUN. OKAY, ACTUALLY, THE FIRST first thing I did was scream, lose my balance, flail my arms in the air like some kind of uncoordinated bird, then slide down the side of the tree and land on my butt.
Then I ran.
I raced down the pathway as fast as I could, blind panic spurring me on until I reached the bridge where the bike trail connected with the main road and logic started to seep into my brain.
I grabbed my cell and dialed 911, trying my best to keep my voice from shaking out of control as I described what I had seen at Sydney’s place. The dispatcher talked to me in annoyingly calm tones (hadn’t she heard the dead body part!?) until a police cruiser pulled up to the side of the road and motioned me inside.
I then told my same shaky story to the uniformed officer as he drove me around the block, circling to the front of Teakwood Court, where Sydney’s house squatted in the center of the cul-de-sac. It was a one-story, stucco building painted in a gray-blue with bright white trim. A picket fence enclosed the yard, and a couple of orange trees overburdened with fruit flanked the front doors.
Already I could see two more cop cars parked at the curb. A wooden gate sat just to the right of the house, leading to the backyard beyond. Another uniformed officer stood sentinel beside it, arms crossed over his chest, eyes scanning the street for anyone daring to mess up his crime scene.
Which was not a good sign.
During the short wait for the police to arrive and the short ride around the block in the cop car, I’d been trying to convince myself I’d overreacted. I mean, it was possible that Sydney was just playing dead-holding her breath underwater for fun. Maybe she was fine and right now freaking out about the cops intruding on her lazy enjoying-my-suspension-to-the-fullest afternoon.
A big guy with thinning red hair and lots of freckles stepped through the gate from the backyard. He was a little thick around the middle, like he was committed to keeping up the donut-eating-cop stereotype, and wore plain beige khakis and a plaid button-down shirt. Lines creased his face at the corners of his eyes and mouth, which were both currently set in grim lines.
I slumped down in my seat to avoid his gaze. Unfortunately, I knew him all too well.
I’d met Detective Raley when Chase and I had been pursuing that first case together. He’d been in charge of the investigation, and at the time, he’d been the thorn in my side. And, honestly, likely vice versa. But as soon as the killer had been caught, we’d formed a sort of truce. Mostly because we didn’t have anything to do with each other anymore.
Until now.
Raley spoke briefly to the cop guarding the back gate, then they both turned toward our police cruiser. Even from across the front lawn, I could see Raley’s thick eyebrows lift.
I did a little one finger wave.
Not surprisingly, he didn’t wave back.
He mumbled a couple more words to the uniformed cop, gesturing at the yard behind him, then stomped across Mr. Sanders’s perfectly mowed lawn toward the police cruiser. I held my breath as he yanked the door open.
“Hartley,” he said. Not a question, not a greeting, just a flat monotone statement of fact.
“Detective Raley,” I said, trying to kick the shakiness out of my voice and match his non-greeting.
“They tell me you found the body.”
I bit my lip. Body. The word choice confirmed that Sydney had not been just lounging in her pool in the unlikely facedown position but was, in fact, dead. A weird range of emotions swam inside my belly. I hadn’t been close enough to Sydney to actually call her a friend, but we’d been going to the same high school for two years, so she wasn’t really a stranger, either. And as unnerving as finding a stranger dead might have been, finding a girl your own age from your own school that you’d actually DMed with just last night dead hit way too close to home.