Heartstopper Read Free Page B

did find out some key facts: she’d run away from home at fourteen and had been living on the streets ever since. She’d met some guy; he’d gotten her hooked on drugs, and the drugs had, in turn, gotten her hooked on hooking. After a while, the guy split, and she was on her own again. She’d spent much of the last year moving from place to place, occasionally waking up in a strange hospital room or holding cell. One place was pretty much the same as the next, she said.
    I wonder if that’s how she felt when she woke up here, in the underground room of this forgotten, old house.
    Did I neglect to mention this room is underground? Shame on me—it’s what makes the place so special, the “pièce de résistance,” if you will.
    I said before that, for the most part, houses in Florida don’t have basements. That’s because they’re built on what is essentially quicksand, and you could wake up one morning to find yourself up to your eyeballs in muck. Entire homes have been swallowed up, and I’m not just talking about the older, less substantial ones. There’s a brand-new subdivision going up not far from here, built almost entirely—and ill-advisedly, in my humble opinion, not that anybody has asked for my opinion—on landfill, andone day, one of the houses just up and disappeared. The builders didn’t have to look very far to find it, of course. They were standing on top of it. Serves them right. You can only go so far challenging nature.
    If I were going to build a house today, I’d hire the guy who designed this one. True, it’s seen better days, but whoever constructed it was a genius. He created a whole warren of little rooms underneath the main floor, rooms he probably used for storage.
    I have something quite different in mind.
    Candy didn’t think much of the place when she realized it wasn’t the kind of holding cell she was used to. Once I finally showed myself, and the seriousness of her predicament became clear, she tried all the tricks in her arsenal, said if sex was the goal, there was no way she was doing anything with me on that dirty old cot. She’d do whatever perverted things I wanted, only not here. The idea of sex with this person was so repugnant I was tempted to kill her on the spot, but the game was far from over. I still had some surprises up my sleeve.
    Ultimately I killed her with a single bullet to the head. Then I dumped her body in a swamp a few miles away. If anybody finds it, and I doubt they will—it’s been four months after all—there’ll be nothing left to link her to me, no way of determining exactly when she died, at what precise moment her heart stopped beating. Even had she been found immediately, all in one piece, I know enough about DNA, courtesy of all those surgically enhanced forensic experts on TV, to ensure I’ve left no clues.
    Just as Candy left no mourners.
    But this girl, this heartstopper with the big blue eyes and large, natural breasts, will be different.
    Not only will a lot of people be out looking for her—they may even be looking for her now—she’ll be more of a challenge all around. Candy was a trifle dim-witted tobe much fun. This girl is stronger, both mentally and physically, so I’ll have to up my game, as they say—move quicker, think faster, strike harder.
    She’s looking this way again, as if she knows I’m here, as if she can hear the scribbling of my pen. So I’ll sign off for now, go grab something to eat. I’ll come back later, initiate phase two of my plan.
    Maybe I’ll keep the girl alive till morning. Maybe not. Risk management after all. It doesn’t pay to get too cocky.
    Stay tuned, as they say. I’ll be back.

TWO
    O kay, everybody. Get out your journals.”
    Sandy Crosbie leaned back against the front of her desk at the head of the twelfth-grade classroom and watched her twenty-three students—it should have been twenty-five, but both Peter Arlington and Liana Martin were absent—reluctantly separate their