Dangerous Boy

DANGEROUS
BOY

An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For Super Agent Zoe,
for being made of awesome.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

H
e stares straight at me with that intense smile of his, and my heart lodges in my throat. “Your time is nearly up, Harper.”

But it’s not. It can’t be. I scramble to my feet and lunge past him, tearing through the doorway and into the hallway. I race down the stairs so fast I trip over my own feet, grabbing at the banister to save myself. But as I yank myself to a stop, my body swings around and my shoulder slams into the wall. Tears, instant, well in my eyes as my breath disappears.

I turn back to the stairs and rush down the last few, to the first landing, but he’s on me, grabbing my hair and yanking me back. I elbow him hard in the gut, and he grunts, releasing me as he stumbles down a few steps and doubles over. “You bitch,” he grinds out.

He’s blocking the stairs. When he stands again, anger blazing in his eyes, I whirl around and run back up the steps. I hit the top step, skidding on an area rug, barely saving myself.

I cross the empty bedroom, putting my foot through the windowsill just as he darkens the doorway. My dress rides up as I duck under the windowpane.

I’m only halfway out when he grabs my ankle, yanking hard. I scream and pull away, desperate. I lean back and kick violently, and my toe catches him on the chin. He curses and lets me go, and I fall onto the roof.

My heart, already scrambling, turns into a thunderous roar as I skid on a leaf, tumbling down the slope of the rainslickened, moss-covered rooftop. There’s no way to stop myself. I grab at anything in sight as I roll toward the edge, catching myself on an attic vent near the gutters, but it’s not enough to stop my body’s movement. My legs swing out over the edge and dangle toward the ground as rain slides past me, pours over the edge of the rotten soffits. The darkened clouds make it hard to see anything but the light blazing from his bedroom window.

I blink, trying to see through the raindrops, searching the roofline for his shadow.

“You’re gonna regret that,” he says, spitting the words as he steps into view, looming high above me. I must have split his lip, because blood trickles down his chin, making him look all the more sinister. He’s on the roof above me, stepping slowly down toward the gutter. The muscles in my left arm tremble as my grip slides, until I’m hanging on with scarcely more than a fingertip.

I wonder if this is how my mom felt before she died. If she hung on desperately, hoping someone would come in time to
save her. If she knew, as her fingers slid, that she was about to die.

I glance over my shoulder. There are no shrubs here, just too-long grass at least a dozen feet below. He takes another step toward me as the lightning flashes, and then my fingers slip, and I’m falling.

I land, hard, on the dampened, muddy earth below, the wind slamming from my lungs. I lie there, my mouth open like a fish gasping for air, the rain blinding me.

I’m alive.

I’m really alive.

When I finally regain my breath, I wipe my eyes free of the rain and look up at the roof, expecting to see him staring down at me.

But he’s not there. I blink, searching the darkness for his face, but he’s gone. I climb to my feet, still cradling my arm and gasping for air as I tear across the lawn and into the dark shadows of the woods, right when the door to the house slams open.

I’m not far into the tree line before I realize I’m no match for him. He’s crashing through the brush with the speed of a raging bull. My foot slips in the mud and I go down, slamming to the ground just as I hear his strange laughter behind me.

My fingers touch something soft, hidden in the fallen leaves.

Heart hammering out of control, I push the leaves aside, and a scream dies in my throat. I cover my mouth with my hands and stare, gagging.

Two glassy, lifeless eyes stare back at me, deeply sunken, emotionless. His face is pale, waxy.

Dead.

It’s his uncle, half-buried in the dampened earth under a big cedar tree.

He killed his uncle.

This whole time, he wasn’t away on business, he was dead and rotting. The horror building in my chest, threatening to suffocate me, nearly makes me break down in sobs, but I can’t. There’s no time.

I climb to my feet, nausea swelling as I take off again, desperate, frantic for a savior, a safety net, something.

Anything.

The rain drips down my face, into my eyes, making it hard to see where I’m going. I leap over a tree root, the panic overwhelming me. My shoulder is numb now, completely devoid of pain.

He’s getting closer with every second. He curses as a tree branch snaps, and I realize he’s closing in on me. I push faster, my feet slipping as the rain deafens the sound of my muddy footsteps.

I’ll never make it to the road, to another house. He lives so far away from anything. I have to hide or outsmart him or…

Or he’ll kill me.

Lightning cracks across the sky, for the first time in many minutes, and then the thunder rumbles, slow and quiet at first, and then building until it drowns out everything else. I force my screaming muscles to move faster and faster as I careen through the trees like a bat out of hell.

Too late, I realize what I’ve done. Ahead and below, the Green River rages. There’s a cliff. It must be two hundred feet tall, towering over the valley.

A beautiful vantage point for him to catch up, corner me.

He steps out of the tree line just a half-dozen feet away from me, smiling, his hair plastered to his face and his eyes dark. Tears swim in my vision, mingling with the raindrops sliding down my skin. It can’t be this way.

It can’t end like this.

One month earlier…

I
stare out the windshield of the Jeep, watching two Holstein calves grazing in the field beyond the barbwire fence. One of them has a spot that looks like Mickey Mouse, and I can’t stop gawking at it.

“Earth to Harper,” comes the voice beside me.

I twist around and meet the dark brown eyes of Logan, my almost-boyfriend. We’ve been dating a few weeks now, but I’m not sure if we’re exclusive. I’m afraid to ask because it seems too good to be true. Girls like me don’t get boys like him. “Sorry, I was spacing out.”

He fake pouts and I giggle, but the laughter dies in my throat when he leans toward me, his dark brown hair sliding onto his forehead. My eyes slip closed as our lips meet and his fingers tangle in my hair.

I lose all sense of time until someone—not Logan—clears
their throat and I jerk away.

“Ew,” says a familiar voice. I turn and see my cousin Adam standing beside my door, smirking. I want to reach out and knock his ballcap off his head, like I used to when we were kids. When he wore caps every day, because he’s always hated his more-red-than-brown hair.

I twist around and look through the back window of the Jeep, realizing Allie is standing there on the sidewalk, waiting.

“Oh, shut up,” I say, but I’m grinning now, even as heat rises to my cheeks. Logan and I share a look—a look that tells me he’s not at all embarrassed, which somehow makes me feel better—and then we unbuckle our seatbelts and slide out of the Jeep. I join Adam and his girlfriend—my best friend—Allie, who looks so unbelievably pleased I can’t believe it doesn’t hurt to smile so wide. Allie’s been trying to hook me up with half the guys in a twenty-mile radius. She can’t believe I’m dating the one guy she’d never met before our first date. Logan joins me on the sidewalk, playfully knocking shoulders with me.

“
Moo
,” comes a familiar voice behind me.

The four of us turn to see Bick walking across the drive with that lazy, crooked smile of his, hands shoved deep into an old Carhartt jacket. Technically his name is Victor, but everyone calls him Bick. Partly because it rhymes with Vick, but mostly because he’s the only guy at Enumclaw High School who can grow a full-fledged beard, and once Adam realized Bic was a razor, the name stuck.

“Moo yourself,” I say, even though it probably doesn’t make sense.

“Jealous of my mad skills, DQ?” he asks, his grin widening.

“You know it,” I say. “Cattle calls are just so
impossible
to master.”

“DQ?” Logan asks, interlacing his fingers with mine casually; warm butterflies swirl in my stomach. I wish we were alone right now.

“Dairy Queen,” Allie supplies.

“Technically it’s Dairy Princess,” I mutter, even though I know resistance is futile.