OLIVIA STRODE OUT ONTO THE QUAD, SQUINTING INTO THE bright sunshine. The weather was warm, but she felt cold and clammy, and the skin on her neck puckered with goose pimples.
The fear was back.
She wanted to hide from it, to lock herself away from the killer who stalked DGM, but deep down, she knew that even if she ran forever, she’d never be safe from him.
Any sense of reprieve, any ideas that the killer had backed off since Bree turned herself in, had vanished in one awful moment. Two simple words glowing on the side of Kitty’s uncle’s warehouse as it burned to the ground. I’m back.
All of her panic and fear had been reignited in that instant. The killer wasn’t going to leave them alone, wasn’t content with Bree’s confession. He wanted more. He wanted to destroy them.
They’d fled from the scene of the fire just before the engines arrived. She had no idea what the fire investigators would find, but she hoped rather than believed that there would be some clue to the killer’s identity. He’d meticulously covered his tracks so far, and there was no reason to think he’d slip up now.
They only had one course of action: find him before he struck again.
Olivia took a deep breath, steeling herself for the epic song and dance she was about to perform, and plastered a fake smile on her face as she approached the lunch table where Amber and Jezebel sat. She desperately needed Amber to trust her, and to let her back into the bosomfold of her intimate secrets, if she was going to figure out what had happened to the missing Rolex.
She took a seat across from Jezebel, who was devouring a burrito the size of a log. Beside her, Amber nibbled on a piece of what looked like cardboard. The contrast between the two of them was mesmerizing.
“So where’s Peanut?” Olivia asked.
“Purging, I hope,” Amber said, breaking off a teeny bit of what may or may not have been a rice cracker and placing it daintily in her mouth. “I swear that girl has put on five pounds in the last week.”
“You didn’t tell her that, did you?” Olivia asked, horrified. Nothing would send Peanut down the path to full-blown anorexia faster than Amber telling her she looked fat.
“Of course I did,” Amber said with a toss of her hair. “That’s what friends do.”
Jezebel devoured the last morsel of bean-and-cheese burrito and nodded. “Friends know when to tell friends they have a problem.”
“We have a certain reputation to maintain,” Amber continued. She held her head high, like a queen at a coronation. “People look up to us, and we need to act like we deserve it.”
From the table behind them, a group of guys burst out laughing. Olivia turned to find Rex and his ’Maine Men posse mimicking Amber’s regal stance.
“You’re better off without Rex,” Olivia said, as she watched Amber’s mask of indifference falter.
Jezebel ferretted a Clif Bar out of her bag. “He was getting you into some shady shit.”
Shady shit? That sounded promising. “Really?” Olivia asked with wide-eyed innocence. “Like what?”
“Nothing,” Amber snapped.
Jezebel’s eyebrows shot up. “But what about the night—”
Amber elbowed Jezebel in the ribs. “I said, nothing.”
“Ow.” Jezebel rubbed her abdomen. “Fine. Nothing.”
Dammit. She was so close.
The conversation dropped and Olivia was just about to open with the non sequitur, “Doesn’t your dad own a Rolex?” when something on the other side of the quad caught her eye. John Baggott, standing near the science building, waving his arms over his head, trying to get her attention.
When he realized she’d seen him, John gestured for her to follow. Why would John want to talk to her?
Olivia paused, considering her options. John had been a suspect in the murders, and even Bree had questioned his innocence at one point. The killer had just announced that he was back: maybe it really was John? Maybe he was trying to lure her away from her friends in order to make her the next victim?
Then again, if anyone might have news of how Bree was doing, it would be John.
“Ladies’ room,” Olivia said, pushing herself up from the table. “Back in a sec.” It was worth the chance that John might know something about Bree.
He was waiting in the science building near an alcove in front of what Olivia thought was the physics lab.
He’s not going to kill you, Olivia said to herself as she approached the alcove. Still, she stood in the middle of the hallway, a good ten feet from John.
“You wanted to see me?” she said, copping her best bitchy attitude.
John leaned against the door jamb of the physics lab and smirked. “Wow, nice Mean Girls impression. Are you trying to make fetch happen, too?”
Olivia was too good an actress to break character. “What do you want?”
“Okay, fine. All business.” He pushed himself off the wall and held up his hands in surrender. “I come in peace. With a message from Bree.”
Olivia felt the excitement bubbling up inside her, and tried desperately not to let it show on her face. She needed to warn Bree that the killer was back. If he’d gone after them in the warehouse, who knew what else he was capable of?
But could she trust John? Was it worth the risk?
“I can’t think of any reason,” she said, trying to sound glib, “why Bree Deringer would want to talk to me.”
“Come off it, Olivia,” John said. “I know you’re a member of DGM.”
Olivia froze. How could he know she was a member? Only the killer knew that.
John seemed to read her mind. “I saw the way you reacted when Bree turned herself in, plus I found the photo of the four of you from freshman year. So just give up the act. This shit is serious.”
First Ed the Head, now John Baggott. Part of her was freaked out that so many people were now privy to their carefully guarded secret. Still, Bree trusted John. Maybe she needed to as well.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s Bree’s message?”
“She told me to tell you, ‘He’s not done with us.’”
Olivia’s eyes grew wide. How did Bree know? Had he gone after her, too? “Is that all she said?”
John nodded. “She was being hauled away by a Swedish bodybuilder named Olaf.”
Olivia tilted her head to the side. “Juvie has Swedish bodybuilders?” Maybe her impression had been all wrong.
John laughed. “No. She was released yesterday. She’s under house arrest.”
“Oh my God!” Olivia cried. This was so amazing! House arrest probably didn’t mean she was entirely free from suspicion, but at least she wasn’t in jail anymore. Olivia threw her arms around John’s neck. “This is the best news ever!”
“What are you doing?” a voice boomed.
Olivia let her arms fall from around John’s neck and turned to find Amber teetering down the hall on her platform sandals, fists balled up at her sides.
John glanced at Olivia. “Um, nothing?”
Amber pulled up short, huffing and puffing from the exertion, and tried to look uninterested, as if she hadn’t followed Olivia but just happened upon her and John while out for a stroll in the science building. “Hi, John. How are you?”
“Fiiine,” John said slowly, drawing out the vowel.
Amber stood smiling at him, eyebrows raised in anticipation, as if she was waiting for him to say something else.
“And, um, how are you?”
She giggled. “I’m good! Even gooder now that I’ve seen you.” She paused, aware that what had just come out of her mouth hadn’t made sense. “I mean, better now. I mean . . .” She shimmied up to him and grasped his hand. “I mean, hi.”
Wow. Amber had gone completely Cutesy McFlirtypants over John. The last time Olivia had seen Amber this desperate to snag a boy had been the freshman year homecoming dance, where she’d latched on to Rex and wouldn’t let go until they’d swapped spit and officially been labeled an item. It wasn’t the most attractive way to land a boyfriend, but she definitely scored points for persistence.
“Sorry, Amber.” John finally managed to pry her fingers off his wrist. “I need to go.”
She moved closer to John, backing him up into the alcove. “Where?”
John swallowed. “Anywhere but here?”
John and Amber as boyfriend and girlfriend. What a strange . . .
Olivia froze. John and Amber. This was an opportunity Olivia would never have. Maybe if John just pretended to be interested, he could succeed where Olivia had failed, and find out exactly what happened between Amber and Ronny the night he was murdered? It was worth a shot.
“You two are so cute together,” Olivia said.
“Aren’t we?” Amber asked, glancing over her shoulder at Olivia.
Behind her, John mouthed, “What the fuck?”
“Totally,” Olivia said.
Amber beamed at John, while Olivia shot him a hard, pointed look. “Trust me,” she mouthed. “For Bree.”
A wave of confusion passed over John’s face, followed by a look of concentration as he glanced back and forth between Amber and Olivia. He sighed, then smiled down at Amber. “Can I walk you to drama class?”
