Page 143 of Paranoid

Xander Vale was attending the University of Oregon and Harper’s GPA was hovering near, but not quite at, the admission standards. Maybe Cade was right and Xander wasn’t such a bad influence after all.

Or maybe you should just trust that your daughter is finally growing up, becoming that adult she’s so fond of mentioning.

It was odd, this feeling that both kids were doing exactly as she’d asked.

It was almost as if they were being too good, she thought, then kicked herself for being so suspicious. They’d done what she’d asked and Harper, if a little more serious than usual, seemed fine, her more studious and subdued attitude explained by the ordeal she’d been through.

After glancing at the clock, she warmed what was left of the lasagna in the oven, and after tossing together a quick salad, headed upstairs to check her e-mail. No responses today from any of the jobs she’d applied for and, of course, the e-mail from Mercedes.

“Give it up,” she muttered under her breath, then decided, her curiosity getting the better of her, to open and read it:

Rachel,

I would love to interview you for the last of the articles, give you a chance to tell your side of what happened the night that Luke Hollander died. I’m hoping to get perspectives from some of the other people who were there. I want to do an in-depth feature on who Luke really was, behind the mask of high school athlete (and heartbreaker), and so some insight on his life growing up would help, too. Your mother and father seem to be stonewalling me, but I hope you could add something and convince them to contribute. Please call me. Mercedes

Along with the e-mail were three attachments, all photographs. One was a family shot that Rachel remembered as being on a Christmas card they’d sent when Rachel was around eleven. She remembered the ugly red sweater that her mother had made her wear, while Luke was in green. At that point in time the family still had been pretty tight and looking at it brought back memories of happier days. The second shot was one of Luke’s senior pictures, one where he was staring straight into the camera, a mischievous smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and the third was of a stranger, a mug shot identified as being Bruce Hollander. “Oh, no,” she whispered. Mercy couldn’t drag her mother’s first marriage into these articles. “Shit.” She picked up the phone and dialed.

Mercy picked up on the second ring.

“You can’t write about Luke’s real dad—I mean, his biological father,” Rachel said as she stared at the picture on her computer monitor. She’d never seen a picture of Bruce Hollander before, but now she saw the resemblance to Luke and something else.

“I think I can,” Mercedes was saying. “You all keep trying to stop me by giving me nothing to go on and I’m scrambling here. But let me tell you, not only have we sold more papers this week than any other this year, but the online subscriptions have skyrocketed. This is the kind of story people love to read about,” she added, sounding pleased while Rachel’s stomach was turning.

“But it’s my family.”

“And it’s newsworthy.”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Maybe, but people love that retro stuff and get off on a bit of a mystery, a little bit of a scandal.”

“No matter whose life it harms.”

“Temporary,” Mercy said. “Until the next big story hits, and with the recent murders, you don’t have to worry too much. People will move on. A twenty-year-old mystery won’t hold the readers’ attention like the new ones.”

“Geez, Mercy, the new ones are people you know.”

Mercedes sighed. “I can’t help that. News is news.”

“What if it were your family?”

“I’d report it.”

“Sure.”

Rachel was still staring at the picture of Bruce Hollander. Something about him bothered her. The picture was obviously old, but she knew how to photoshop in a few wrinkles and less hair, make him more clean shaven....

Her heart nearly stopped.

She’d seen this guy.

Recently.

And she knew where.

She added a baseball cap to the picture and felt the muscles in the back of her neck contract. Yeah, this was the guy loitering around the offices of the Edgewater Edition, the man she’d seen watching her. A noise in her head started, like the sound of the ocean. Had he been the person she’d seen walking the dog on the street the night her door had been tagged? But why?

Because he thinks you killed his son.