The Darkness Within by Taylor Henderson Page B

before coming in to be polite. I rounded the corner with the plate full of cheese and crackers as she was locking the door behind herself.
    “Hey,” I said, smiling and extending the plate toward her.
    “Yes, I'm starving,” she groaned before taking a few crackers in her hand. She never ate the cheese, but I was okay with eating the cheese by itself so it worked out.
    “I figured that was part of the reason you came over.”
    She smirked, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair. The pink stripe was fading into a bleached line in. “Mom hasn't gone grocery shopping yet. It's like she's trying to starve me.” Adrianna frowned before stuffing two crackers in her mouth.
    I laughed and stared down at her toothpick thin legs. “It's working.”
    “ So funny.” She feigned laughter while chewing her crackers, looking anything but amused at my joke. “Come on.” I followed her up the stairs and back into my room where she pulled out my desk chair and plopped down in front of the computer. I set the plate on my desk and kneeled next to her. “Let's get to work. I've always wanted to be a spy.” She winked at me.
    I rolled my eyes and watched as she got to work, signing into my computer and pulling up an Internet page.
    “Where should we start?”
    Adrianna began typing instantly. “Let’s start by searching his name.” She pulled up Google and typed in David. “What’s his last name?”
    I furrowed my brows, trying to remember if he’d even mentioned his last name. If I couldn't remember it then this whole search was going to end before it even began. I thought back to the day David moved in. He had introduced himself as David Greer. “Greer,” I answered.
    Adrianna’s fingers danced over the keyboard as she typed it in and then clicked search. After a few seconds, a bunch of different links loaded. We clicked on each one, not finding any that led to information about our David Greer. Once we had gotten to the bottom of the second page, Adrianna said we should try searching something else.
    “What next?” I asked, shifting positions to get more comfortable.
    “We’ll check social media sites. If David has a teenage daughter then she’ll be on Facebook. Maybe even David has one.” Adrianna searched Facebook for Gwen Greer and David Greer, but none of the results were correct. I didn't know what Gwen looked like now, but I knew she was blonde and from Ohio, which cancelled out every girl who came up in the people search on Facebook. After spending over a half an hour just searching for their names and pairing it with Ohio, we still hadn't found anything. “What else do you know about them?” Adrianna asked, munching on another cracker.
    I bit my lip, trying to think. Absolutely nothing came to mind. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my Chapstick , rolling it onto my lips and pocketing it again before saying, “Nothing that will help us stalk him online.”
    Adrianna pouted. “No social security or passport identification numbers?”
    I rolled my eyes at her question, and she laughed. Then she slid back from my chair and said, “Hey, at least we tried.”
    “Yeah, but we didn't find anything,” I pointed out.
    Adrianna shrugged, pulling the sunglasses from her hair and setting them on my desk. She began twisting her hair up into a high bun. “We don't have enough information.”
    “I know,” I responded, pacing my room again. “We need more information,” I said slowly, as I came to a stop in front of my window. I stared at the curtains that were concealing my view of David’s house. “I need to go back to his house, but this time when he’s not there.”
    Adrianna leveled me with a look. “You can't be serious.”
    I nodded, already thinking of ways to get inside and find out what David was hiding. “Dead serious.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
Chapter Ten
     
    Breaking and Entering
     
    The wind whistled through my open window, tickling my skin and sending chills down my spine.