Taylor picked up on the meat of what Starla had said. “Weirder, how?”

“I don’t even think the boyfriend she wanted to meet was real.”

“No?” Hayley asked, interested in that repeated disclosure.

Starla continued talking as she walked down the hallway, down the stairs. Teagan was hovering by the entrance to the kitchen.

“It is so sad,” she said. “But I think Katie just kind of lost it after she didn’t make cheer again this year. I wanted her to … I did everything I could. And when she didn’t make it, I had to distance myself from her a little—for obvious reasons.”

Obvious reasons? Like the fact that if you were a bigger biatch you’d have to sleep in a kennel at night? That kind of obvious reason? thought Hayley.

Before Starla opened the front door to shove the twins back out into the cold air, Hayley reached into her pocket and pulled out the WATCHING YOU note.

“I don’t think she made up her boyfriend,” she said.

Starla took the note and warily eyed Hayley, then Taylor.

“What’s this?” she said, taking the message.

“What do you think it is?” Taylor said, in a voice unable to mask her anger. “Your best friend—or rather, the girl who considered you her best friend—had someone in her life.”

Starla looked up from the paper and twisted the doorknob.

“I don’t know anything about this,” she said as the winter air blasted inside. “I’m sorry that we have to cut our visit so short. I have some chores to do before Mom and Jake come home.”

Taylor scoffed but said nothing. Chores? When did Starla go all Little House? Or when did she do anything but worship her face in the mirror?

AFTER DINNER, TAYLOR PUT UP a second LOST DOG posting on Craigslist, this time with a photo of Hedda taken by their mother on Christmas Day. The dog was curled up like a kielbasa in front of the crackling fireplace, looking cozy and reasonably alert—at least for Hedda. Hayley created a LOST DOG flyer using the same photo and, by the end of the day, Beth, Colton, and the girls had plastered it all over Port Gamble.

None of their friends thought that Hedda was a particularly goodlooking or smart dog, because, to be completely fair, she wasn’t. Beth, in particular, had been merciless in teasing Taylor and Hayley about the dog over the years.

“I saw a dog just like yours that used a skateboard to get around because it had no legs,” she said one time.

“She has legs, Beth,” Taylor said, a little defensively.

Another time …

“The Ugliest Dog in America is ramping up again. It’s time that disgusting Chinese Crested with the overbite is given the boot. I was thinking that Hedda has a shot at the title.”

“She’s not ugly, Beth.”

“I’m just saying,” Beth said.

As they stapled flyers to the kiosk by the General Store, Beth admitted something that surprised the others.

“I hope we find her. I really, really like that little dog.”

“I thought you hated her,” Colton said.

“Tells you how much you know about me, Colt. I’m more than what I say,” she said, before waving good-bye from the corner and heading home.

Taylor walked a few steps ahead of her sister and Colton, who always found a moment to linger alone together. She looked up at Katelyn’s bedroom as they passed the Berkley house. She wondered if Mr. Berkley was watching from the darkened room. She nodded in the direction of Jake, next door, who, despite the weather and the season, was barbecuing something that actually smelled pretty good.

For meat, anyway.

She wondered if they’d ever learn what really happened to Katelyn on that awful night.

Talk to us, Katie, she said to herself.

As the three of them walked to their side-by-side houses, no one called out to Hedda. There was no point in it. Hedda was half-deaf. There was a more disquieting reason too. The air was so cold that if the missing dog had been outside, she’d have frozen to death by then. The wind blew hard across the water. It was harsh and decisive. Port Gamble on a cold winter’s night was no place for a short-legged dog, ugly or not.

LATER THAT NIGHT, AS TAYLOR BURROWED under her blankets and drifted off to sleep, Katelyn remained on her mind.

And so did someone else. Someone she could not see as her eyes fluttered behind her shut eyelids.

Fingertips moved slowly across the keyboard, stopping and starting as if each keystroke were a separate word followed by a period. Stop. Start. In a way, it was almost like Morse code. Rat. Tat. Tat. It was as though whoever was writing the message used the depression of each key to shoot anger at a target far away in cyberspace.

Katelyn stared at the computer screen, her heart beating faster. She knew she was moving closer and closer to something a little dangerous. But danger was needed. Her life had become pathetic on every front. Her mom was drinking more often. Her dad was growing more distant. Starla, her best friend, could no longer see fit to even smile in her direction.

Not that she deserved a smile, but even so, one would have been welcomed.

A flurry of messages zipped across the screen in the chat window:

CULLANT: MEET ME @ SEATTLE CTR. BY THAT UGLY ASS FOUNTAIN. U KNOW THE 1.

KATIEBUG: I CLIMBED IN IT LAST MAY @ FOLK LIFE WHEN IT WZ REALLY HOT.

CULLANT: THAT’S LAME

KATIEBUG: I KNOW. MY PARENTS LYK THAT CRAP. FLUTES. LATVIAN DANCING. WHATEVER.

Finally this came across her computer screen:

CULLANT: ONLY A RENAISS FAIR WUD B WRSE. MEET ME. LET’S GET AWAY FRM EVRY1—ESP PARENTS. LET’S GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE.

She liked that he used the word parents, because part of her still held the possibility that he was some old freak messing with her. She’d watched Dateline and knew “To Catch a Predator” episodes never failed to showcase some beer-guzzling creep with a sackful of Four Lokos and a pocketful of roofies.

Katelyn hated to admit it, but it was the truth.

KATIEBUG: NO $$$.

CULLANT: GET SOME.

She hesitated only a moment.

KATIEBUG: WHERE?

And then the words that would motivate her to do the unthinkable:

CULLANT: FIGURE IT OUT, BABE.

chapter 27

THE WOOD-FIRED PIZZERIA in Poulsbo was one of those strange restaurants in that its appearance didn’t match its cuisine—like a sushi bar in a log cabin. The tiny building on Front Street was like a lot of the themed edifices there, a Norwegian-style facade with stucco and exposed beams. The Ryans didn’t care how the restaurant looked as long as the pizza was good, which, thankfully, it usually was.

The outing was supposed to help cheer everyone up. Hedda still had not returned, and Valerie in particular thought a change of scenery was in order. However, Hedda was just one item on the twins’ growing list of worries.

Hayley texted Taylor in the car on the way over.

HAYLEY: YOU BRING IT UP.

TAYLOR: CAN’T U?

Kevin, Valerie, and Hayley shared the spicy Portuguese sausage, the Linguica, while vegetarian flip-flopper Taylor ordered a small Herbivore. While they waited for the pizzas to bake, all melty and crispy in the woodfired oven, Kevin and Valerie talked about the events of the day over a couple of beers. Ordinarily the girls didn’t mind hearing such updates. Their mother was very discreet about the patients at the institution. She never mentioned a name or any specifics that anyone could use to positively identify who it was she was talking about. She dropped a few words, however, that usually ensured that the interest meter was going at full speed.

“A screamer today stabbed a student nurse with a plastic fork,” she said. “Other than that it was the same crazy, just a different day.”

Kevin set down his beer and surveyed the quiet restaurant. A couple two tables away sat side-by-side, a seating arrangement that was meant to be cozy but always looked like another party had stood them up.