“So to get at them, you have to get back here,” Detective Canavan says. I don’t miss the fact that his gray eyebrows have raised at the sight of all the mail bags, slumped haphazardly on the floor at our feet. The desk is hardly what you’d call the most secure area in the building. “And to get back here, you have to pass the security desk, which is manned twenty-four hours a day.”

“Right,” I say. “The security guards know who is allowed behind the desk and who isn’t. They’re not going to let someone go back here unless they work here. And usually there’s a worker behind the counter, anyway, who wouldn’t let anybody have access to the keys unless he or she was staff. And even then, we make them sign them out. The keys, I mean. But no one signed the elevator key out. It’s just…gone.”

“Yeah,” Detective Canavan says. “You said that. Listen, I got some real crimes—including a triple stabbing in an apartment over a deli on Broadway—that I need to investigate. But please, show me where this elusive key, which could prove that the young lady in question didn’t die accidentally, normally hangs.”

I flip through the hanging racks, thinking that I’m going to kill Cooper. I mean, I can’t believe he talked me into doing this. This guy doesn’t believe me. It’s bad enough he’s seen that poster of me from Sugar Rush. If there’s anything that can undermine a person’s credibility, it’s a life-sized poster of her in a pastel tiger print mini screaming into a microphone at the Mall of America.

And okay, my conviction that girls don’t elevator surf—particularly preppie, Ziggy-loving girls—may not be what anyone could call rock-solid proof. But what about the missing key? What about THAT?

Except that, as I flip to the rack that normally holds the elevator door key, I see something that makes my blood run cold.

Because there, in the exact place it’s supposed to go—the exact place it wasn’t, just moments ago—is the elevator door key.

8

Gonna get ’im

Gonna get ’im

Gonna get that boy

Wait and see me

You’ll wanna be me

When I get him

Gonna get ’im

Gonna get ’im

Gonna get that boy

“That Boy”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Rocket Pop
Cartwright Records

He says he’ll be here in five minutes, but he’s in the lobby in less than three.

He’s never been inside the building before, and looks strangely out of place in it…maybe because he isn’t tattooed or pierced like everyone else who passes by the desk.

Or maybe it’s just because he’s so much better-looking than everybody else, standing there with his bed-rumpled hair (although I know he’s been up for hours—he runs in the morning) and his banged-up leather jacket and jeans.

“Hey,” he says when he sees me.

“Hey.” I try to smile, but it’s impossible, so I settle for saying, instead, “Thanks for coming.”

“No problem,” he says, glancing over to the TV lounge, just outside the cafeteria door, where Rachel, who’d been joined by an ashen-faced Dr. Jessup, along with a half-dozen panicked residence hall staffers, are milling around, looking tight-faced and upset.

“Where’d the cops go?” he asks.

“They left,” I say, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. “There’s been a triple stabbing in an apartment over a deli on Broadway. There’s just that one left, guarding the elevator shaft until the coroner can get here to take her away. Since they decided her death was accidental, I guess they figured there was no reason to stay.”

I think this is a very diplomatic response, considering what I want to say about Detective Canavan and his cronies.

“But you think they’re wrong,” Cooper says. A statement, not a question.

“Someone took that key, Coop,” I say. “And put it back when no one was looking. I’m not making it up. I’m not insane.”

Although, the way my voice rises on the word insane, that claim may actually be debatable.

But Cooper’s not here to debate it.

“I know,” he says gently. “I believe you. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“I know,” I say, regretting my outburst. “And thanks. Well. Let’s go.”

Cooper looks hesitant. “Wait. Go where?”

“Roberta’s room,” I say. I hold up the master key I’ve swiped from the key box. “I think we should check her room first.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But we have to start somewhere.”

Cooper looks at the key, then back at me.

“I want you to know,” Cooper says, “that I think this is a bad idea.”

“I know,” I say. Because I do.

“So why are we doing it?”

I am about five seconds from bursting into tears. I’ve felt this way since Jessica first burst into my office with the news about another death, and my humiliation in front of Detective Canavan hasn’t helped the matter any.

But I struggle to keep the hysteria from my voice.

“Because this is happening in my building. It’s happening to my girls. And I want to be sure it’s happening the way these cops and everyone are saying it’s happening, and that it’s not…you know. What I’m thinking.”

“Heather,” he says. “Remember when ‘Sugar Rush’ first came out, and all that fan mail started arriving at the Cartwright Records offices, and you insisted on reading it all, and personally answering it?”

I bristle. I can’t help it.

“Hello,” I say. “I was fifteen.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Cooper says. “Because in fifteen years, you haven’t changed. You still feel personally responsible for every person with whom you come in contact—even people you’ve never met. Like the reason you were put on earth is to look out for everybody else on it.”

“That’s not true,” I say. “And it’s only been thirteen years.”

“Heather,” he says, ignoring me. “Sometimes kids do stupid things. And then other kids, because they are, in fact, just kids, imitate them. And they die. It happens. It doesn’t mean a crime has been committed.”