Free The Secrets of Lily Graves by Sarah Strohmeyer

from evil.
    â€œThree streets away, Lil,” she said, her voice hoarse. “The same railroad track runs through our backyards. The killer could have been freight-hopping. Or maybe he’d been stalking her from the woods and just waiting for the moment when her parents were out of town to get her unaware.”
    â€œI know. I know. It’s freaky.”
    The knuckles of Sara’s right hand were white against the black steering wheel. “Do they have any idea who it might have been?”
    â€œI don’t think so.” In an attempt to calm her, Iadded softly, “According to the fax, there was no sign of forced entry, which means most likely it wasn’t a freight-hopper or some stalker, but that Erin probably knew her killer.”
    Matt.
I immediately shook this thought out of my head.
    â€œOr,” Sara added, “he’s a supersmart psychopathic serial killer like Israel Keyes, who lived in Alaska and traveled to the lower forty-eight states and rented cars under an assumed name so there’d be no connections to the victims he picked at random. God knows how many people he killed before he did himself in.”
    I had to resist the temptation to roll my eyes. Sara needed to curb her TV habits or it was going to warp her mind, if it hadn’t already.
    Sara hooked an abrupt right into someone’s driveway and scrutinized her driver’s side mirror.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” I asked, thinking maybe she needed a chance to pull it together.
    â€œI want this jerk behind me to pass. He’s been on my tail since Evergreen.”
    We both turned around to see a nondescript gray Ford sedan. It stopped, waited, and then pulled a U-ey, speeding off in the opposite direction with a screech of its tires, kicking up a cloud of dust.
    Sara and I exchanged glances. “You don’t think . . . ,” she said.
    â€œThat he was following you? Nah.”
    â€œThen why did he . . . ?”
    â€œMaybe he was lost. You’re just being paranoid.”
    â€œYeah, maybe.” Sara flicked on her turn signal and headed out to the road.
    We didn’t say another word until we got to school.
    Potsdam Regional High was built in the 1970s when three towns merged into one school district and bought up a bunch of farmland for a new, modern facility. The building itself was an eyesore, the brainchild of the open-concept system, when it was fashionable to teach in classrooms without walls. That lasted for all of five minutes before they rolled in paper-thin temporary partitions that were never replaced, so what was being taught one room over was crystal clear.
    My main gripe, however, was the lack of windows. The same professionals who decided it was a good idea to remove walls also thought the same applied to glass. Supposedly this was to keep students from being distracted. The result was that, unless you were in the cafeteria (windows galore) or in the atrium (skylights above), Potsdam Highseemed an awful lot like a high-security correctional facility.
    But that day there were other reasons to call it a prison.
    â€œAre they serious?” Sara asked as we approached the front entrance, where not one but four Potsdam police officers waited to greet us with wands and metal detectors.
    Annoyed students rummaged through their backpacks to remove laptops, iPads, phones, and anything else that might set off alarms.
    â€œWas there a bomb threat?” I asked a chinless patrolman, who scrutinized my outfit with a disapproving scowl.
    â€œDo you have any knives, guns, weapons of any sort?” he responded, ignoring my question as he pawed through my bag.
    â€œNot unless you count the pins in the voodoo doll.”
    He didn’t even crack a smile. “Step forward, please, and hold out your arms.”
    It was humiliating, being scanned in public. I don’t know why I considered it such an invasion of privacy, but I did, especially when he ran the wand