KITTY AND MIKA JOGGED INTO THE GYM. THE REST OF THE team was already on the court, running through warm-up drills. As Kitty dropped her towel on the bench, Coach Miles raced up to her.
“Have you heard from Theo?”
Kitty tensed. Theo should have been at the gym hours ago. “No.”
“I’ve called him a dozen times with no answer.” She pointed at Kitty, dead between the eyes. “When you see Baranski, tell him he’s fired.”
“Yes, Coach.” She could have pointed out that you can’t fire someone from a class they’re not getting graded in, but Coach Miles’s mood was the least of her problems at the moment. Where was Theo?
She walked to the edge of the court, volleyballs flying around her as both the Bishop DuMaine and St. Francis teams practiced their sets and kills, and scanned the bleachers. Maybe Theo was with Donté? Her boyfriend should have been easy to spot in the crowd, since he was taller than the majority of the population. But as she searched row by row, the hairs began to stand up on the back of her neck. No Theo. No Donté.
Where could they be?
“Kitty!”
Kitty spun around and all the warmth drained out of her body. In the front row, waving like lunatics, were her little sisters, Sophia and Lydia.
“Shit!” Kitty sprinted across the court in a blind panic. “What are you guys doing here? You have piano lessons today.”
Sophia smiled. “Miss Radovansky had to cancel our lessons.”
“Some kind of family emergency,” Lydia added.
“So now we get to see you play!”
“Isn’t that awesome?”
Family emergency. Yeah, right. She remembered the photo the killer had sent, of her sisters walking home from school. Somehow, he’d managed to get the twins to the tournament.
“Where’s Mom?” Kitty said quickly. She had to get them out of there. “She needs to take you home. Now.”
Lydia’s face dropped. “But we want to see you play.”
“It’s not fair,” Sophia said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Mom said we could stay.”
“We’re not kids anymore.”
“And you’re not the boss of us.”
“Enough!” Kitty shouted. “Where is Mom?”
Lydia and Sophia stared at her blankly. She’d never yelled at them before, never been anything but an upbeat and patient big sister, and the girls looked as if they were going to burst into tears right there on the gym floor.
“She’s . . . she’s not here,” Sophia sniffled.
“She’s having lunch with Aunt LuLu and Uncle Jer,” Lydia said.
“To talk about the fire.”
“And she’s not picking us up till two.”
“Dammit,” Kitty muttered under her breath. What was she going to do? It was too far for the twins to walk. She glanced around, looking for someone who could take them home. But how was she supposed to explain it?
“Wei!” Coach Miles barked. She tooted her whistle. “I need you. Now.”
Something in her voice made Kitty take notice. She turned and found her coach on the far side of the gym near the entrance to the locker rooms, gesturing to her frantically.
Now what?
“Okay.” She took each of her sisters by the hand and dragged them toward the main exit, where she plopped them down on a bench in the first row. Closer to the exit meant closer to safety. At least she hoped. “Sit here.”
“But I want to be higher up,” Sophia moaned.
“Yeah,” Lydia said. “These seats suck.”
“They’re the best seats in the house,” Kitty lied. She crouched down to eye level. “Because I can see you both through the whole game. Which will make me play better. Okay?”
That seemed to mollify the twins. They exchanged a look, then smiled. “Okay.”
Then Kitty threw her arms around her sisters and hugged them so tightly she could feel them gasping for breath. “I love you guys,” she said.
“Ew!” they groaned in unison.
With a tight smile, Kitty pulled herself away and jogged across the gym to Coach Miles. As soon as she got close enough to see the tense lines of her coach’s face, Kitty knew that something was wrong.
“Coach?”
“Come with me.” Coach grabbed Kitty roughly by the arm and hustled her down the corridor, past the entrance to the locker rooms, and outside into the courtyard. There she saw Donté, Theo, and Mika, surrounded by a half-dozen police officers. Kitty registered immediately that Sergeant Callahan was not one of them.
Donté and Theo had already been handcuffed, and a female officer was in the process of securing Mika while another Mirandized her.
“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?”
“Kitty!” Mika cried. Her voice trembled.
“Do you understand?” the officer repeated.
Mika’s voice caught in her throat. “Yes.”
“Can someone please tell me,” Coach Miles began, “what the hell is going on here?”
“This is a police matter, ma’am,” the lead officer said.
“We’re under arrest for Rex’s murder,” Donté said. “Peanut too. They said there’s DNA evidence linking us to the crime scene.”
Kitty’s heart thundered in her chest. DNA evidence? She flashed back to the day Rex was killed and the conversation she’d overheard between Sergeant Callahan and the medical examiner. What had the doctor said? Several hair samples had been found on the body?
Sergeant Callahan had planted that DNA evidence on Rex’s body. That’s how he framed them. If he wasn’t the killer, then he was definitely the accomplice.
“We’ll notify your parents once we reach the station,” the officer said. He nodded to his colleagues. “Let’s head out.”
Coach Miles dashed in front of them, blocking the exit. “You can’t just arrest my team manager and one of my star players.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I can. Now will you please stand aside?”
“Where is Sergeant Callahan?” Kitty asked. “I thought he was in charge of the investigation.”
The lead officer sighed impatiently. “Day off.” He took Donté by the shoulder and led him toward the exit.
Kitty ran to his side, pacing him as they hurried across the lawn. “I’ll find out who did this,” she cried. “We’ll fix it.”
The officer guided Donté’s head into the backseat of the squad car. “Kitty, don’t,” Donté said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m not letting you take the fall for this.”
The officer slammed the door, and then they were gone.
Coach Miles threw her clipboard to the ground. “What is going on at this school?”
You have no idea. But Kitty didn’t have time to explain anything to her coach. Without a word, she sprinted back to the locker room. She needed to call Bree.
Bree listened, speechless, as Kitty rapidly told her about the arrests of the other DGM members.
“What are we going to do?” Kitty asked. Even over the phone, Bree could sense her hopelessness.
“John’s leaving now,” Bree said calmly. “Ed should be there already and Olivia will be on her way. Just keep your eyes open, and don’t be afraid to scream bloody murder if you see anything suspicious, okay?” Ed had been right. This was a horrible plan.
“Okay.”
“We’ll figure this out,” Bree said, not entirely sure it was the truth. “We’ll clear their names. Somehow.”
“Thanks, Bree.”
Bree tossed her phone on the bed and stared at it as John rubbed her back. “You catch all that?”
“So much for our plan,” John said.
“It wasn’t really much of a plan to begin with.” Bree turned and slipped her hand into John’s, holding it tightly. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I know. But I have to.” He patted the phone in his pocket. “Ed already texted. Asked me to meet him in the courtyard behind the gym.”
“The whole point of us showing up en masse was to overwhelm him.” Bree shook her head. “How are you and Ed and Olivia supposed to manage that alone?”
John leaned in closer. “You’ll find I’m full of surprises.”
“Didn’t Luke Skywalker get his hand cut off like two minutes after uttering that line?”
John pursed his lips. “Huh. Yeah, not my best quote.” He stood up and grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair. “I’m going to check in every fifteen minutes.” Then he smirked. “If you stop hearing from me, it means I’m dead.”
Bree shot to her feet. “That is not funny.”
“I’m sorry.” He walked back and planted his hands on her hips. “But I’m scared, and this is how I deal.”
Bree nodded. She was scared too, even though she was the one trapped at home and out of danger. But her heart ached for John, and the idea that he was taking her place and putting himself in danger made her want to cry.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know.”
Ed parked his car across the street from the Bishop DuMaine gym and stared at the exterior. So here’s where it’s all going to end.
He’d managed to keep Sergeant Callahan out of the mix, to keep his connection to Christopher Beeman hidden, and now it all came back to Bishop DuMaine, a place Ed both loved and hated. There was something kind of delicious about the irony.
With a heavy sigh, he reached to the passenger seat and unzipped his backpack, then pulled a plain manila envelope from its depths. He opened it carefully, lovingly, barely gripping the sides of the photo as he slid it onto his lap.
It had been taken two days ago. Or maybe three. It was kind of hard to tell, considering how little changed in Margot’s hospital room while she was still unconscious. She was sound asleep, not yet awoken from her coma, her brown eyes closed, her face serene. This was what mattered most to him. This was what someone had tried to take away.
He gazed at Margot, taking in every detail. The photographer had stood inside the room, just to the left of the doorway, angling the camera to capture the length of the hospital bed as well as most of the get-well tokens that littered the far corner. Even though the photo was black-and-white, Ed had been in Margot’s hospital room enough times to picture the vivid colors: pinks and yellows of floral bouquets, beige and white teddy bears, cards of bright orange polka dots and swaths of rainbows, the reflective surface of the Mylar balloon.
Ed paused, his eyes darting back to the balloon. Suddenly, his fingers crumpled the cherished photo, viciously mangling it into a ball, which he dropped onto the seat as if it was too hot to touch.
Then without another thought, he bolted from his car and sprinted toward the gym.
