The Watcher in the Wall by Owen Laukkanen Read Free Book Online Page A

some homework to catch up on. I prevailed on him to help me out instead.”
    “I bet you did.”
    Windermere hunkered down in front of Adrian Miller’s laptop, her own desktop beside it, the file Nenad had opened with the list of usernames. “Check this out,” she told Stevens. “Ambriel98, that username Ashley Frey was using, it’s religious. It’s the name of an angel. There’s like eight other usernames that match the same profile.”
    “What?” Stevens said. “Angels? Carla, I get that you’re trying to help this poor girl, but this is some mighty weak—”
    “Yeah,” Windermere said. “See, that’s what I thought, too. But then I did some poking around.”
    She brought up the list of usernames: Muriel94, Penemue96, Seraphiel97. Opened the Death Wish forum and brought up the first profile, Muriel94.
Sixteen-year-old with a death wish, Orlando, Florida.
An old username, opened three years ago last January. Real name: Ashley Frey.
    “It’s not just angels, partner,” Windermere told Stevens. “These are Ashley Frey’s accounts. All of them.”
    Stevens was quiet for a long moment. Windermere could hear a coffeemaker in the background. “I was going to drag the kids down to the river today, get some fresh air,” he said. “Guess I’ll give them a reprieve.”
    •   •   •
    Stevens showed up at CID about an hour later, eyes bleary and shirt rumpled, his thinning hair mussed. He handed coffees to Windermere and Nenad, looked over the tech’s shoulder at the laptop screen. The Death Wish forum.
    “‘Muriel94,’” he read aloud. “‘Enter password.’ What the heck is this girl doing with all these accounts? Why make more than one?”
    “The hell if I know,” Windermere told him. “But I figure maybe these other accounts could give us a way to track this girl down.”
    Stevens nodded. “You sure we don’t need a warrant for this?”
    Nenad glanced at him. “I mean, technically,” he said. “But considering this is more of a humanitarian mission, we can probably get away with it.”
    Stevens looked at Windermere. Studied her for some sign, some reason why she’d taken up this crusade, of all the misery in the world. “Sure,” he said. “Just don’t let the SAC hear about this. I’m still kind of on Bureau probation around here, you know?” He leaned forward. “How are we doing, anyway?”
    “Doing just fine.” Nenad typed something into the password box and sat back with a flourish. “I’m in.”
    < 19 >
    It was bound to happen. One night, Sarah misjudged. Screwed up her timing. One night, Earl came home first.
    Gruber was lying in bed, waiting, as usual. Heard a vehicle approaching, the pitch of the engine sounding a little off. The lights swept across the bedroom wall, the tires kicked up the gravel, too bright, too fast, all of it wrong. The screen door slammed open, no pretense of secrecy. The footsteps in the hall were too heavy—boots, not the heels she kept under the bed by the bottle.
    Earl was home, and he was drunk. Gruber could hear him through the double-wide’s thin walls. Heard glass breaking in the kitchen, heard the TV switch on, the shopping channel, then sports, too loud. Heard Earl swear at his mother, heard another glass break. Then the boots were coming down the hall.
    Gruber pulled the covers up, pretended to be asleep. Hid his eyes as Earl shoved open the door, waited without breathing as Earl looked him over. Heard the chuff of Earl’s breath, a muttered insult. Gruber could feel it coming in the worst possible way. Like when a kid told you he was going to fight you after school and all you could do was watch the clock tick toward the last bell.
    Then Earl was at his bedside, shaking him, rough, rousing him awake. Cuffing him by the collar and dragging him to the floor, that awful, cheap-liquor breath in his face, demanding answers to somequestion Gruber didn’t even know he’d been asked. He rolled away, fought to get free, caught a