Defending Everly (Mountain Mercenaries #5)(10)

Ball wasn’t surprised by Everly’s sudden appearance. He’d heard her enter a few seconds earlier.

“Yeah. But there’s something missing,” he said.

“What?”

“A computer.” He turned to look at Everly.

“She’s not allowed to use it in her room, much to her annoyance. Me-Maw and Pop let her have one, but she had to use it in the living room, with them there. They didn’t want her up all night talking to her friends or whatnot.”

“Hmmm.”

“What are you thinking?” Everly asked.

“Nothing yet,” Ball said. “I just have a feeling that while your grandparents’ hearts were in the right place, and that was a smart idea, maybe they weren’t as careful as they’d thought when it came to the computer. Who’s that?” he asked, using his chin to indicate the poster.

Everly looked at the poster of the young man and said, “Sean Berdy. Why do you think they weren’t careful?”

Walking over to the poster, Ball slowly lifted the bottom edge that wasn’t tacked to the wall and looked behind it.

“Ball? Are you going to answer me?”

“Who’s Sean Berdy?” he asked, ignoring her question for now.

Everly sighed. “He’s a deaf actor. He was in the movie The Sandlot 2 forever ago, and lately he was in the TV show Switched at Birth . . . which has been credited with increasing awareness of deaf culture. Elise loves that show, and is pretty much in love with Sean too.”

Ball lifted the poster higher until Everly could see the back.

Gasping softly, Everly went to his side. She took the poster from his hand and tilted her head to better read what Elise had written on the back.

Elise Berdy had been written over and over, and there were hearts doodled everywhere. “Wow,” Everly breathed.

“I’d have to agree with your assessment that she was in love with Sean,” Ball said with a chuckle.

Everly didn’t respond, but lifted the poster even higher. Above the hearts and the name Elise had doodled were lines and lines of extremely tiny writing. She squinted as she read them.

Ball frowned as he leaned closer and read over her shoulder.

Me-Maw is so mean! She won’t take me to Hollywood to meet Sean. I know if he saw me, he’d totally fall in love with me. I’m not too young. We’d be perfect together. I hate it here. I hate Me-Maw, I hate my sister, I hate my mom. I hate everyone!

I woke up today and the flowers outside on the porch had bloomed overnight. They’re so pretty.

I got to talk to Ev today, and as happy as I am for her, I’m sad for me. I hate LA and can’t wait to get the hell out.

I got an A on my creative writing paper. I rock!

I wish I was dead.

Carrie’s a bitch! She told Rick that I was a virgin and they all laughed at me. Some friend she is.

The notes were clearly some sort of diary. The words were obviously written at different times, as they were in different colors and scrawled haphazardly on the back of the poster. Sometimes horizontally, sometimes diagonally, other times upside down.

“Don’t freak,” Ball said softly, wanting to put his hand on Everly’s suddenly stiff shoulders to comfort her—but also wanting to put distance between them for his own self-preservation.

“Don’t freak?” she echoed. “How can I not? She said she wished she was dead! Said she hated me.”

“She’s a teenager,” Ball said. “Her hormones are all out of whack, and she literally feels every emotion ten times as strongly as we do. This looks like her way of venting.”

He watched as Everly took a deep breath. “You’re right.” Then she dropped the poster and turned to him. “How’d you know to look behind it?”

Ball shrugged. “Every other poster in the room has thumbtacks neatly in each corner. This one only has them in the top corners to hold it to the wall. It’s also a lot more ragged than the others . . . as if it’s been handled repeatedly.”

Everly turned her eyes back to the poster and examined it for a moment. Then she nodded.

“I’m going to need to take pictures of what she wrote and send them to the others, so they can help figure out who the people are she’s mentioned, look into their backgrounds,” Ball said gently.

Everly sighed. “I know. I don’t like it, but I know.”

“And it’s good that she didn’t have a computer in her room, probably did keep her from staying up half the night, talking to her friends . . . but what about her phone? I know you said the detective has tried to track it with no luck, and that they’re waiting for the records to come back. She probably used it to message people. Did your grandparents inspect her phone, or the computer each time after she used it? Check to see who she was talking to and on what sites?”

Everly shook her head. “I doubt it. They’re awesome and pretty hip, but I don’t think they’d know how to do that.”

“That’s where we’ll start. We’ll go over this”—he motioned to the poster—“to see who her friends were that she talked to the most, and look into that computer. Tomorrow, I’ll go to her school and interview her teachers and friends, as well as check out the surveillance cameras. You can check in with the detective and see if he’s gotten anything back, and maybe even have him pressure them to hurry it up.”