BREE LAY ON HER SIDE. JOHN’S ARM WAS DRAPED AROUND her bare stomach, pulling her tightly to him as he spooned behind her. Never in her life had she felt so protected and loved.
She sighed deeply, snuggling back into his arms.
“You okay?” he asked.
Bree laughed. “That’s like the millionth time you’ve asked me in the last hour.”
“I know, it’s just . . .” He stroked her arm with his fingertips and her skin prickled with excitement. “You’ve got a lot going on.”
Bree burst out laughing. She couldn’t help it. It was the understatement of the century.
John rolled his eyes. “Why is this funny?”
“Sorry,” she said, through her heaves. “But you have to appreciate the humor.” She rolled over onto her back and counted on her fingers. “I’m under house arrest, suspected of murder, I’m in bed with my best friend, and someone might have tried to run me off the road yesterday morning. ‘A lot going on’ is an understatement.”
John tensed. “Someone tried to run you off the road?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Bree said, instantly regretting she’d let that nugget slip. She didn’t want John any more involved than he already was.
“Don’t downplay this,” he scolded.
“‘Don’t downplay this,’” Bree mocked.
John glared at her for a moment, then a smile spread across his face and he pounced on her, kissing her full on the mouth. They tumbled over each other across the bedsheets, Bree’s legs wrapped tightly around John’s torso. Then she flipped him over and straddled him. “I win,” she said.
John reached up and slid his hands down either side of her body. “No,” he said softly. “I win.”
She bent down to kiss him, when a cell phone dinged. “Who’s texting you?” she said, arching an eyebrow. “Your other girlfriend?”
“You don’t know the half of it.” John shifted Bree off him. “Amber Stevens has decided I’m her new conquest.”
“I’m sorry. I must have heard you wrong.” This was worse than a hundred screaming girls throwing themselves at John onstage. “Did you say Amber Stevens covets your bod?”
“It gets better,” he added, groping around on the floor for his jeans. “I’m supposed to play along.”
Now it was Bree’s turn to be serious. “Excuse me?”
“I know, I know. Olivia asked me to. Something about Amber being with Ronny the night he died.”
Bree gasped. “She told you that?” Olivia wasn’t supposed to break the code. Damn, had everyone lost their minds?
John sat straight up, jeans in hand, and thrust his free hand forward. “I, John Baggott, do solemnly swear, no secrets—ever—shall leave this square.”
Bree couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “They swore you in?”
“Yeah,” John said. “Well, Olivia did. Oh!” He smacked himself in the forehead with his palm. “I’m an idiot. I almost forgot. She wanted me to give you a message.”
Finally! She’d had zero news from DGM about what was going on. Had the police followed their link and investigated Christopher? Did they have proof that he was the killer?
John pulled a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Bree. She opened it hungrily, expecting some news of the police investigation and Christopher Beeman’s imminent arrest, but what she read on the page sucked the breath right out of her.
CB committed suicide last year. Killer burned down the warehouse. Be careful.
Bree felt as if she’d been punched in the chest. Her lungs froze up, and a flash of blackness momentarily blinded her. Christopher Beeman was dead?
The words swam on the page, and Bree had to brace herself against the pillows. Everything around her faded to nothingness at the realization that her old friend had killed himself. And somehow, she knew it was partly her fault.
The guilt was paralyzing, as were the implications for DGM. If Christopher had been dead for a year, then all this time the taunting, the threatening, the framing them for murder—it had been someone else entirely. She shook her head, trying to grasp the concept. Christopher Beeman was innocent.
“Yeah, it’s Amber,” John said, reading through his text. “She’s asking me to dinner tonight. Told her I have band practice.” He looked up at Bree, smiling sheepishly. “You know I’m not into her, right?”
“Right,” Bree forced herself to say.
“Bree, are you okay?”
She swallowed. “Yeah, just . . . the note from Olivia. It’s not what I was hoping to hear.”
“Oh.” He pulled his jeans on and whisked his shirt off the floor. “I think she’s expecting a response.”
A response? How about “We are so screwed!” or “What the fuck do we do now?” That was pretty much all her brain could process at the moment.
Instead, Bree crumpled up the note and tossed it into the garbage bin. “Tell her I don’t know what to do next.” It was the truth, plain and simple. “And I’m praying to God that they do.”
Kitty had been apprehensive about offering up her house for the next DGM meeting, especially after what had happened at the warehouse, but she didn’t have much of a choice. They had to continue to meet, to share the information, if any, they’d managed to dig up, and to try and piece the puzzle together before it was too late. She figured the best option would be to move all future meetings around, never hitting the same location twice so the killer wouldn’t have a chance to set a trap for them.
But the moment Kitty arrived home from the gym, she regretted her decision. Parked in front of her house was a police cruiser.
She panicked as she pulled the car into the drive. Had the police found her fingerprints in the warehouse? Had they traced the fire to her? Had they figured out her involvement with DGM? Should she throw the car in reverse and get out of there before anyone knew she’d gotten home?
In the midst of her fight-or-flight decision, the side door flew open and Sophia and Lydia tumbled out of the house.
“You’re home!” Sophia cried, racing up to the car. “There’s a cop in our living room.”
“Isn’t that awesome?” Lydia said, her hands clasped together.
Kitty opened the door and climbed out of the car, trying to act as calm and uninterested as possible. “Why are the police here?”
“The fire at Uncle Jer’s warehouse,” Lydia said. Her eyes were wide with excitement. “They’re questioning Mom about it.”
“Why would they question Mom?” Her mom worked part time at her brother-in-law’s warehouse, helping out with the accounting, but her mom wasn’t even there last night. How could she have any information the police would need?
“Do you think they’ll arrest Mom?” Sophia asked with a disturbing amount of glee.
“Of course not,” Kitty snapped.
“But then we could be fugitives,” she continued. “On the run from the law.”
“And we’d have to change our names,” Lydia said, instantly entranced with the new role-playing game.
“And cut our hair.”
“And move to New Mexico.”
Normally, Kitty loved her sisters’ flights of imagination, but this fantasy hit a little too close to home. “Go inside,” she said, grabbing her duffel bag from the backseat. “And leave Mom alone.”
But instead of scampering into the house, the girls dashed past Kitty down the driveway. “We’re going to Yolanda’s to tell her the news,” Lydia called out.
Great.
Part of Kitty wanted to join her sisters, to be anywhere else in the world rather than in her house with a member of Menlo Park’s finest. But her best course of action was to play it cool, so she shouldered her bag and strolled leisurely into the house.
“Mom?” she said, her voice calm but with a hint of concern. “I saw Sophia and Lydia out front. Is everything okay?”
“Hello, Kitty,” said a familiar voice as she rounded the corner into the living room. Kitty felt her hands go clammy. Sergeant Callahan was standing before the fireplace, notebook in hand. “Nice to see you again.”
Nice to see me again? Sergeant Callahan had only spoken with her once before, when the police executed a mass interrogation of students after Ronny DeStefano’s murder. He must have interviewed dozens of students that day. Why did he remember her?
“Um, yeah,” she mumbled. “You too.”
“I’m just asking your mom some routine questions about the fire at your uncle’s warehouse last night.”
“Oh,” Kitty said. She glanced at her mom, who sat perfectly still on the sofa, her back straight as a rod, her hands neatly folded in her lap.
He smiled broadly. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
His face might have been disarmingly cheerful, but his sharp eyes were locked on to Kitty’s. Was he fishing? Or was he actually suspicious of her?
She fought the urge to look away. “No, I don’t.”
His smile deepened. “I didn’t think you would have anything to share with me.”
Something in the tone, the forced lightness and the choice of words, put Kitty immediately on alert. “I’ve got some classmates coming over,” she said, turning to her mother. She desperately wanted to get out of that room. “To work on a school project. Is that okay?”
“Of course,” her mom said with a faint smile. “Dinner will be at seven. Let me know if they’re going to join us.”
“I won’t keep you long, Mrs. Wei.”
Sergeant Callahan remained silent until Kitty entered her room at the end of the hall. Not that she had any intention of staying there. She closed her door loud enough that the police officer would think she was safely out of earshot, then as silently as she could, Kitty slipped through the bathroom that joined her room to her sisters’ and crept to the door and listened. It was crucial that she find out what Sergeant Callahan knew.
“And you have no idea who might have had a grudge against your brother-in-law or his business?”
“He designs and imports custom furniture,” Kitty’s mom said, a hint of derision in her voice. “Not methamphetamines.”
“Disgruntled customer?” Sergeant Callahan prodded. “Former employee?”
“Nothing I can think of.”
Sergeant Callahan paused, and Kitty could picture him scribbling in his ever-present notebook. “Anything I should know about the company’s finances?” he asked at last.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Were you in debt? Was your brother-in-law in danger of losing the business?”
“Absolutely not,” Mrs. Wei snapped.
“I’ll need to see the company files,” he continued. “I’m sure you keep a backup somewhere?”
“Yes.” Kitty heard the sofa creak as her mom shifted in her seat. “At the warehouse.”
“How convenient.”
Kitty gritted her teeth. She didn’t like the sarcasm she heard in Sergeant Callahan’s voice.
“Are you implying that my brother-in-law set this fire on purpose?” Mrs. Wei asked, cutting to the chase.
“I’m not implying anything,” Sergeant Callahan said drily. “But he carried rather hefty insurance on his business, and the arson investigator found traces of a known accelerant at the scene.”
“Which means?”
“Which means the fire was no accident.” Kitty heard the door open. “Good day, Mrs. Wei.”
