BREE STOOD AT THE FRONT DOOR AND STRETCHED HER UPPER body outside as far as she could, careful to keep her anklet within the perimeter of the house. Her mom and Olaf should have been back by now. What if Sergeant Callahan had refused to release her friends? What if the killer had somehow gotten to them first?
She imagined John’s lifeless body, beaten and blood-splattered, like the crime scene photos of Ronny. I will destroy everything you love. . . .
Bree squeezed her eyes shut, desperately trying to banish that thought from her mind. They were fine. She just needed to be patient.
The roar of a car engine broke Bree from her pity party. Her eyes flew open and she saw John sprinting up the walkway toward her.
“Bree!” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the lips.
Bree felt her face burn. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mom ease out of the SUV. John seemed to realize the situation at the same moment. He pulled back, blushing scarlet from chin to hairline, and faced Bree’s mom. “Mrs. Deringer, I’m sorry. Bree and I . . .”
“Have been humping like rabbits in my daughter’s bedroom? Yes, I know.”
Bree’s stomach dropped. “How?”
Her mom looked at her with pity. “Darling, it will be a cold day in hell before I fail to recognize Old Spice in any of its various forms. And unless you’d suddenly taken to dousing yourself in aftershave, the only explanation is that a boy had been in your room.”
“Oh.”
“Now,” her mom said, shushing them toward the open door. “If we could all go inside, there is, apparently, a great deal you have to discuss.”
Her hand held firmly in John’s, Bree led them through the foyer, down the hall, and through the formal dining room to the kitchen.
Ed the Head whistled as he examined the decor. “Sweet digs. Senator Deringer has excellent taste.”
“Thank you!” Bree’s mom cooed from behind them.
Bree and John took seats at the far end of the farmer’s table while everyone else filed in, Logan bringing up the rear. “Um . . .” Bree looked from Kitty to Olivia.
“It’s okay,” Kitty said. “Logan knows.”
“Can I get you kids something to drink?” Bree’s mom asked. She puttered around, aimlessly opening the refrigerator and the cabinets as if searching for something domestic to do. “Water? Soda? Cocktail?”
“Mom . . .”
“You know,” Ed said, his voice smarmy, “Bree never told us she had an older sister.”
“Seriously?” Bree said.
Her mom giggled. “You, twerp, are a charmer.”
Bree rolled her eyes. Damn, she really would flirt with anything with a pulse. “Okay, Mom. We’ve got business to discuss.”
“Fine.” Her mom sighed dramatically. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.”
Even after her mom’s incredible act of faith in busting her friends out of the pokey, Bree couldn’t stand the attention-seeking behavior.
“It was pretty awesome of her to come rescue us,” John said, as soon as Bree’s mom was out of earshot. “How did you pull that off?”
“I tried calling everyone after I got your text,” Bree said. “When no one picked up I figured it was serious and called in reinforcements.”
Kitty nodded. “All of our phones were off.”
“Except his,” Bree said with a nod to Ed. “But he didn’t pick up.”
Ed the Head folded his arms across his chest. “I turned off my ringer while I was trying to clean up your mess with Tammi Barnes.”
“Some good that did,” Olivia said.
Bree sucked in a breath. “What happened with Tammi?”
“I went to the mall to keep an eye on her like you asked, but she never showed up for work,” Ed said. “Then I drove over to her place, but she never came back. The supervisor at the halfway house must have called the police when she didn’t show up because a couple of squad cars rolled in just after sunset. I think technically she’d broken her parole.”
Bree gritted her teeth. “You were supposed to keep an eye on her.”
Ed threw his arms wide. “I tried my best! Maybe if you hadn’t blown it at therapy, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Logan turned to Kitty. “Who’s Tammi Barnes?”
“We’ve got two possible scenarios here,” Kitty said, barreling forward. “Either Tammi’s the killer, or our homicidal friend got to her just like the rest of them.”
“Who are the rest of them?” Logan asked Olivia.
Olivia slumped back in her chair. “Now what?”
“I don’t think you’ll like the answer to that one.” Bree walked to the kitchen and pulled four manila envelopes from a drawer. “I found these on the doorstep when I got home from group therapy.”
“Shit!” Kitty and Olivia said in unison.
Ed shook his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Bree passed out the envelopes labeled “Olivia,” “Kitty,” “John,” and “Ed.”
“What was in yours?” Kitty asked, fingering the flap on her own envelope.
Without a word, Bree pulled out a photo and held it up for them to see. It was a candid black-and-white shot, slightly grainy as if taken from a distance, of John shinnying up the rope ladder outside her bedroom.
She watched John’s face as he examined the photo. He didn’t freak out, just calmly processed the details. “That was from yesterday.”
“Yeah.”
Without hesitating, John broke the seal on his envelope and removed a similar black-and-white photo. Bree swallowed as she stared: it was of her, climbing out of the car at Dr. Walters’s clinic.
“There’s another note too,” Bree said, hoping her voice didn’t tremble as she read the killer’s threat out loud. “‘Each of you will lose something you love more than life itself. This started with you and it ends with you, so tune in for Sunday’s big finale. P.S. I’m not getting mad, I’m just getting even.’”
“Sunday?” Olivia said. “Why Sunday?”
“Oh God,” Kitty gasped.
“What?” John asked.
Kitty looked at Bree. “Sunday is the volleyball tournament at school. The one with all the college scouts.”
“A big finale,” John mused.
Olivia’s face was hard-set as she stared at her envelope. “I don’t want to open this.” Bree didn’t blame her. The idea that the killer was targeting John made her sick to her stomach.
“We’ll do it together,” Kitty said. “On three.”
“Fine,” Olivia said with a toss of her short curls. “You too, Ed.”
Ed snorted. “Unless he’s wiping out my bank account, there’s nothing in here that can scare me.”
Kitty counted down. “One. Two. Three.”
She and Olivia broke the seal on their envelopes at the same time while Ed shoved his, unopened, into his bag. Kitty’s hand began to tremble as she stared at her photo.
“What is it?” Bree asked. She reached under the table and laced her fingers with John’s.
“It’s . . .” Kitty paused, her voice catching. “It’s my sisters. Walking home from school.”
As with the other photos, this one looked as if it had been shot with a telephoto lens. It showed a set of identical twin girls, backpacks slung over their shoulders, walking arm in arm down the street. The photo had caught them in a moment of levity: both girls were laughing hysterically as if one of them had just cracked a joke. They looked so young—eleven, maybe twelve years old.
“I will destroy everything you love,” Ed said quietly.
“Well,” John said with a heavy exhale, “at least he knows what that is.”
Bree squeezed John’s hand fiercely. She couldn’t lose him. “We have to stop him before he hurts someone else.”
“I think . . .” Olivia began. The quiver in her voice made Bree look up immediately. She was trembling, and her face had gone deathly pale. “I think he already has.”
She stared at the piece of paper on the table that had come in her envelope. It was a printout of an email, sent to June Hayes. Olivia’s mom.
Dear Ms. Hayes,
I regret to inform you that due to unsatisfactory performance, you have been replaced in the production of The Lady’s Curse.
Sincerely,
Charles Beard
