Karen Rose - Have You Seen Her?

"Nothing." Jenna dug in her purse, looking for the keys to her classroom. "I just didn't get much sleep last night and Blackman hit me with a guilt trip this morning about Rudy Lutz's grade."

"That's what I wanted to discuss," Casey said with an emphatic nod.

Jenna pulled the bag of dog biscuits from her purse and handed them to Casey. "What, Rudy Lutz's grade? I didn't know you had the pleasure of his highness's presence in your class this year. Anyway, I don't want to talk about that in the middle of the hallway. Where are my keys?"

Casey pursed her lips. "Not Rudy. I wanted to talk about why you couldn't sleep last night."

"I don't want to talk about that, either. Especially not here. Go away, Casey." She shoved her hand in her purse again and muttered a curse when something sharp poked her finger. She brought out a metal nail file and put it in Casey's outstretched palm. "Don't tell me I left my keys in Blackman's office. I don't want to go back there. Dammit to hell."

"Really, Jen. I've been thinking about Adam and… you know."

Jenna glanced up, totally annoyed. "What part of not here don't you understand?" she snarled.

Casey lowered her voice to a whisper. "Listen, Jen, you shouldn't even try to remember how things were between you and Adam. I don't even think you have rational memories of how he was before, so I'll remember for you. You were perfectly satisfied. You told me so."

Jenna went still. "I did?"

Casey's curls bobbed in a hard nod. "You did. I swear it." She grinned. "It was the night we were trying to discover the best recipe for Long Island Iced Tea. You gave all kinds of juicy details."

Jenna dropped her eyes to her purse, suddenly feeling worse even though she hadn't believed it possible. She remembered the night of the Long Island Iced Tea marathon. She remembered the juicy details and that she truly had been satisfied. That was the problem. What she'd felt just holding Steven Thatcher's hand had nothing to do with satisfaction.

It was greed. Pure, unadulterated craving. Throw-common-sense-to-the-wind desire. It was as different from any previous experience as… As Haagen-Dazs Rocky Road to store-brand vanilla. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. Adam deserved a hell of a lot more than being store-brand vanilla. She felt like a dirty traitor even letting the comparison form in her mind. Her hand closed on her keys and she breathed a sigh of relief. "Here they are," she said thickly. "Casey, don't you have someplace to be?"

"Of course. I probably have thirty-two panting tenth graders looking for the dirty parts in the Lady Chatterley's Lover I left on my desk." She smirked. "They'll be surprised when they find out it's only the cover of Lady Chatterley on a copy of The Iliad ." Her brows snapped together. "What?"

Jenna's body had gone still with dread. When she put her key to the lock, the door creaked open. It was already unlocked. With her fingertips she gave it a tiny push. "Holy shit," Casey swore on a shocked hiss. "Jenna!" Jenna was speechless. Her beautiful classroom was a shambles. Vandalized. A disaster area. She found her voice. "Call Blackman. Let's see what he says about his golden boy now."

Monday, October 3, 9:30 A.M.

The red-eye from Seattle had been uneventful. Neil landed in Newark at six in the morning where he'd reset his watch to Eastern time, grabbed a three-dollar bagel and a two-dollar cup of coffee. Then he'd changed planes and landed in Raleigh two hours later and five bucks poorer.

"Would you like a smoking or nonsmoking room, sir?" the man behind the motel counter asked politely and Neil wanted to scream "Smoking!" but didn't.

"Nonsmoking," he made himself say. He'd quit ten years ago, but there didn't pass a day that didn't have him fighting the craving. Especially stressful days, which was pretty much every day of his life. He signed the ledger and took the key.

The room was nondescript and mostly clean. He dropped his overnight bag on the bed, then pulled out an envelope. He drew out four photos and laid them on the dresser, edge to edge.

Four young girls. He didn't need to look at the neatly typed labels on the back of each photograph to remember their names. Laura Resnick. Trudy Valentine. Emily Barry. Gina Capetti. All sixteen years old. All cheerleaders. All brunettes.

All dead.

He studied each photo, seeing the girls as they'd been before meeting William Parker. Beautiful, vibrant smiles. Eyes shining with anticipation over their bright futures.

He didn't need to look at the "after" photos. He still saw their faces every time he closed his eyes. But he looked anyway, their eyes wide-open, blank, staring upward. Their heads shaved bald.

The photos blurred before his eyes, the smug smile and cold eyes of William Parker materializing in his mind, uninvited. The fatigue was catching up with him. He'd lie down for a little while, get over the jet lag. Then he'd find William Parker. It was time to honor his promise.

Monday, October 3, 12:15 P.M.

"Jenna, what is this word?"

Jenna tossed the putty knife to the lab table where some creative individual had superglued all of her glassware to the tabletop. She walked over to where Casey stood looking up at the spray-painted Periodic Table with a quizzical expression. Jenna looked up, squinted, and tilted her head.

"I don't know. But here"-Jenna pointed to the chart- "some Einstein connected the Fe in Iron, the U in Uranium, and the C in Cadmium. They missed the K , so I'd only give them partial credit."

"But you'd have to give them an A for coming up with a new swearword," Lucas said, sweeping up piles of broken glass. " Feuc . It sounds old-Englishy, like it could have come out of Beowulf ."

Casey reached up and yanked one comer of the ruined ten-foot-wide Periodic Table from the wall. "So tell me again why Blackman didn't call the cops?"

"Because there's no indication of who did this," Jenna said, mimicking Blackman's nasal tone. She sighed. "At least there wasn't a threatening note this time."

Casey and Lucas stopped what they were doing. " What threatening note ?" they said together.

Jenna bit her lip. "I didn't mean to say that. Must be the cleaning fluid making me dizzy."

Lucas dropped the broom, walked over, and grabbed her chin. "What threatening note, Jen?"

Jenna winced. "The one that was on my car windshield on Friday afternoon."

"Was there text included, or did they just make all those comic-strip cursing characters, like ampersands and asterisks?"' Casey asked, tongue in cheek.

Jenna sighed again. "It said, 'Put him back on the team or you'll rue the day you were born.'"

Lucas squeezed her chin. "What else?"

She rolled her eyes. " 'You bitch,'" she added. "They misspelled 'rue.' That's it, I swear. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry. Steven gave it to the police and they took it in for prints, but Officer Pullman called me this morning and told me they didn't get a single print."

"Who's Officer Pullman?" Casey said.

"He took the report," Jenna said.

Lucas's eyebrows had shot to the top of his forehead. "Who's Steven?"

Jenna closed her eyes, feeling her cheeks heat. "He's Brad Thatcher's father."

"He's Rocky Road," Casey added slyly. "Yum. yum."

Lucas frowned at Casey. "Yum, yum?"

"Hey, I just call ' em like I see 'em," Casey said. "He looked pretty good to me on CNN."

"Hmm," Lucas mused. "So you're on a first-name basis with a parent. Interesting."

Jenna opened one eye. "Is it illegal?" She almost hoped it was, so she could have a decent excuse for canceling dinner on Tuesday night, which by turns she'd been dreading and anticipating with a furor that scared her.