The 9th Girl Read Online Free PDF

keep one’s family out and excluded. Either way, she didn’t like it.
    She pressed her ear to the door and held her breath, hoping to hear him moving around or snoring. Silence.
    She knocked tentatively. “Kyle?”
    Nothing.
    Her instincts began to stir the pot of motherly emotions. He had been withdrawn lately, too quiet. He had gone to a New Year’s Eve pizza party two blocks away and had come home too early and in a bad mood.
    She knocked a little harder, spoke a little louder. “Kyle? Are you awake?”
    No response.
    Now her heart was beginning to beat faster. Recent stories of teen suicides rose in her mind. She berated herself for working too much, not being with the boys 24/7. She cursed their father for his neglect. All in a span of three seconds. She rattled the doorknob again and raised her voice. “Kyle Hatcher, open this door. Now!”
    She let anger rise to the surface. It was easier to deal with than the fear that her son might have done something to harm himself. She began to think about kicking in the fucking door.
    Kyle called back in a groggy voice. “I’m sleeping!”
    Nikki let out a breath of relief. “If you were sleeping, you wouldn’t have answered me.”
    “I’d be sleeping if you weren’t pounding on the door.”
    “Open the door.”
    “I’m not dressed.”
    “Then put some pants on and open the door.”
    “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
    “Kyle, open the door, or I’ll kick it in. I mean it. And guess whose allowance will pay for the repairs?”
    She could hear him stirring then, muttering curse words.
    “No swearing!” she snapped.
    “You do it!”
    “Not when I think you can hear me.”
    “You’re such a hypocrite.”
    “I’m an adult. Double Standard is my middle name. Open the door.”
    The door opened a foot and the profile of her firstborn filled the space, blocking her view of the room behind him. She had to look up at him, which seemed completely wrong. He was only five feet seven, which made him small for fifteen, but he was still taller than she was. In plaid pajama bottoms, a T-shirt, and tousled blond hair, he was still more of her little boy than he was the man he was too quickly trying to grow into, but he was on his way.
    “Are you okay?” she asked. “Marysue said you came home early last night.”
    “I’m fine,” he muttered.
    “What happened to the party?”
    “It was boring.”
    He had yet to make eye contact with her. Suspicion rose inside her.
    “Look at me,” she said.
    He looked at her sideways with his right eye.
    “Turn and face me,” she ordered. “Now.”
    Frowning hard, he turned and squinted down at her, his left eye swollen, an unmistakable knuckle abrasion skidding across the crest of the cheekbone beneath it.
    The bottom dropped out of Nikki’s stomach. “What happened to you?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Kyle—”
    “I tripped and fell.”
    “Into a fist?”
    She advanced and he yielded, stepping backward into his room. Nikki followed him in. She didn’t look around to see if he had been trying to hide anything. If Kyle wanted something hidden, it was already done. The Library of Congress should have been as organized as her son’s bedroom. Anything hidden was well hidden. It would have taken a team of crime scene investigators to dismantle the place in order to find it.
    “Sit down,” she said.
    He sat on the edge of his bed, frowning, squirming, trying to twist away from his mother’s hands, the same way he had done when he was five. Nikki grabbed hold of his chin with one hand, and he winced as her thumb pressed into a fresh bruise.
    “Ouch!”
    “Be still!”
    She snapped on the nightstand lamp with her other hand and zeroed her critical gaze in on his face.
    “What happened?” she asked again.
    “Nothing!”
    “Kyle! Goddammit, I know what it looks like when someone has been punched in the face! What happened to you? The last I knew you were going to a party. Just a few friends at the McEvoys’, you told