Lurker by Stefan Petrucha Read Free Book Online Page A

over. If it was him, his plan didn’t work. If it wasn’t…”
    Mandy didn’t know how to finish that statement. She didn’t have to. As she was speaking, Laurel’s door burst open and her father shoved his head in the room. Drew, naturally, yelped and fanned her face, and Laurel opened her mouth to protest, but her father was already talking.
    â€œTurn on the news,” he said, stomping into the room, heading directly for the television. “They have a picture of the guy. You all need to see this, need to know what to look out for. Why is the screen frozen? Who is this? What’s wrong with this television set?”
    Laurel pulled the remote from her lap and hit a button, sending Ashton Kutcher’s face away and replacing him with an episode of Saturday Night Live . “What channel?” she asked.
    â€œTry four.”
    Laurel pressed a button. The three girls gathered on the bed for the best view of the screen. A grainy black-and-white picture hung frozen above the anchorman’s shoulder. Then it came to life, showing a hunched man in a black coat pulling someone across what looked like a parking lot. The angle was odd; it seemed to be shot from high up. The man was looking over his shoulder, giving the camera a blurry profile. The person with him yanked hard, trying to escape. He yanked back, and all of them gasped when Nicolette Bennington’s frightened face came into the frame.
    â€œWhere’s the volume?” Laurel’s father asked.
    Laurel hit a button.
    â€œAgain, police are looking for this man in connection with the abduction and murder of Nicolette Bennington.”
    â€œDamn,” Laurel’s dad said angrily. “That didn’t give you a good enough look. If you kids were paying attention and actually took this seriously instead of just watching your little heartthrobs telling fart jokes…”
    â€œDad! Breathe! We’ll download it off the Web.”
    Her father looked at her like she’d just slappedhim. Confusion and anger took turns scrunching his features. With no reply, he simply shook his head and walked out of the room.
    The best picture they could find, the one that showed the most of the man’s face, filled Laurel’s computer screen less than two minutes later. The image was black-and-white, taken by a security camera concealed in the eaves of the library. It showed the large, stooped man in a long black coat, his hand firmly grasping Nicki’s bicep. He looked feral, like an animal.
    â€œGod, Nicki must have been so scared,” Drew said.
    Yes, Mandy thought. She was scared herself, and she was only looking at a bad picture of the man. She wasn’t being held by him, dragged into the dark woods at the back of the library where he would…
    â€œHe’s like grandpa old,” Laurel said. “Total Crypt Keeper.”
    She had that right. From the side, the man’s nose was rounded like a beak over his thin lips. His chin seemed to point downward, but Mandy thought that might just be a trick of the shadows or maybe a beard that had lost definition in thephotograph. The eye she could see was surrounded by puffy flesh. His eyebrows rested on a pronounced ridge. His cheek sank into shadow just above his jaw. Mandy thought about the images of witches she’d seen in elementary school. He reminded her of those, only male, without the hat and broom, and very real.
    â€œGotta be a drifter,” Laurel announced. “They would have caught him already if he was local. You can’t hide a face like that.”
    Though disturbed by the image, Mandy found herself relieved. Nicki’s killer had not been one of them, had not been a friend or acquaintance— she’d never hang out with someone like that —and this knowledge was soothing in its own way. She felt safer.
    â€œAt least we know who to look out for,” Drew said. “God, he’s so creepy.”
    â€œYes, he