Nine years ago, a hit-and-run driver killed Casey's mother. Casey swears revenge if she ever finds out the driver's identity. Every year Casey receives an anonymous envelope full of money. Is it blood money--from her mother's killer? Nine years ago, a hit-and-run driver killed Casey's mother. Casey swears revenge if she ever finds out the driver's identity. Every year Casey receives an anonymous envelope full of money. Is it blood money--from her mother's killer? Deadly Drive By David Patneaude Albert Whitman & Company Copyright © 2005 David Patneaude All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8075-0845-9 Contents 1. New Girl on the Island, 2. Potential to Spare, 3. The Anniversary, 4. Shorts on Fire, 5. Blood Money, 6. Bright Lights, Big Tryout, 7. Stranger in Town, 8. Creeps, 9. Grit, 10. Duel on the Track, 11. Sink or Swim, 12. The Butterfly, 13. Our Girls, 14. The Message, 15. Sharing the Weight, 16. Bad Guy, 17. Collision Course, 18. So Ready for the Nightingales, 19. All-or-Nothin' Time, CHAPTER 1 New Girl on the Island The first thing I noticed when I got home from school was the moving truck across the street. Just the truck, no new neighbors. Yet. Sorting through the mail, I hurried inside and upstairs to my bedroom. Through my window I saw moving guys coming out of the house. I changed into an old T-shirt and shorts and my broken-in Nikes, grabbed my basketball, and headed back down. Was the population of fourteen-year-old girls on my block really going to double? I had to find out. I'd watch for the new kid while I practiced hoops. And maybe concentrating on two things at once would get my mind off what I'd been thinking about since my alarm had gone off that morning. It was May fifteenth, the beginning of mysterious-envelope season. Would another puzzling package arrive in the next few days, the way one had for as long as I could remember? I started my routine: stretching, ball-handling and flexibility drills, bouncing passes off the garage door. As usual, I thought about working on my right hand, but barely spent any time at it. I took shots, layups first, then out, out, out, to my raggedy three-point line and beyond. I had to build up my wrist strength. I was tall for an eighth-grader, but not for a basketball player. Not yet, anyway. If I was going to play in high school and college, I needed an outside shot. And I wanted to play in high school and college. I wanted to be the best girl basketball player ever to grow up in Island County, the best in the whole state. I wanted to be as good as my mom. Across the street the movers were wrestling a refrigerator down the truck's ramp. A silver-colored car now sat, unoccupied, in the driveway. I kept working. The sun had broken out, and for spring in the little Whidbey Island town of Langley, Washington, it was warm. Now the guys lurched from the truck with a white-and-pink dresser. A girl's dresser. I didn't see a girl, but a thin black woman paced the yard, giving directions. She saw me looking and waved. I waved back. She smiled, friendly. I returned to my routine. The woman went into the house and returned with cans of pop, and the movers took a break. I kept working. I went to the free throw line for my hundred. I started off slow — six of ten — then made five in a row. The next six went through so cleanly that they just kissed the garage door and caromed back, like I had one of those automatic return machines. I thought I couldn't miss, but the next one clanged off the rim. Seventeen of twenty-two. "I was wondering when you'd miss." I turned, expecting to see the woman. Instead, a girl stood at the edge of my driveway. She smiled the woman's smile. She was the woman's color but a shade lighter. "I miss all the time," I said. The ball rolled to her. She scooped it up and underhanded it to me. "Nice ball." "It was a present — for my fourteenth birthday." "A little birdie — actually, the real estate lady — told me you were fourteen." "That same birdie told my dad that you — or your sister, maybe — are fourteen, too." "As of last September," she said. "And I don't have a sister." "My birthday's in March," I said. "Final Four month." "I'm gonna play in it someday." I don't know why I said that. I really hoped to play in the Final Four when I got to college, but why was I saying it out loud to this stranger? "You, too?" "I'm Casey," I said. "Casey Wilde." I twist-swirled the ball onto my first finger and tapped it to keep it spinning. The girl's smile stayed, but her wide brown eyes narrowed. "My birthday's September twenty-first." "Huh," I said, lobbing back the ball. She caught it on her finger and swiped at it. In no time it was a blur. "That's a clue," she said, "for my name." "Really?" I wasn't good at puzzles. But maybe the twenty-first was related to the alphabet, like those codes you use when you're a kid playing spy. Maybe her name had something to do with the twenty-first letter. I counted. "Your na