OLIVIA LEANED AGAINST THE WALL, PRESSING THE SMALL OF her back against the smooth, hard surface. She stared at the check in her hands. Ten thousand dollars. For the first time in a week, a weight had been lifted. Ever since her mom had announced that she’d quit her bartending job, Olivia had been keeping the panic at bay. What were they going to do for rent? What if they got evicted? Would they end up homeless? In a shelter? If nothing else, Fitzgerald offered her a reprieve from the nagging fear of poverty, at least until Olivia turned eighteen. And then who knows? Maybe she’d be able to bank on his name. The daughter of the world’s foremost stage director? It had worked for Rebecca Hall.
She shook her head. No. If she was going to succeed as an actress, it needed to be on her own terms.
Olivia turned to go back into her mom’s room, when she heard someone yelling at the end of the hall.
“What do you mean she disappeared? Wasn’t anyone on duty?” A pause, presumably while someone answered, then the woman’s voice again, growing more and more hysterical by the second. “Sixteen-year-old girls don’t just disappear in the middle of the night! Where’s the security guard?”
A petite woman with dark wavy hair stormed out of a room at the end of the hall, two doctors and a nurse trailing after her. “Mrs. Mejia,” one of the doctors twittered. “Are you sure your husband didn’t take your daughter home?”
Olivia sucked in a breath. Mrs. Mejia?
“Of course not,” Margot’s mom said. She blew past Olivia without looking at her, then stopped at the nurses’ station by the elevator, where two guards were scrambling around a computer screen. “I demand to see the security footage from last night.”
“It appears to be missing, ma’am,” one of the guards said.
“Missing?” Mrs. Mejia roared.
She pulled a phone from her bag and quickly dialed. “Central Station? This is Racquel Mejia. My daughter has been kidnapped by a boy claiming to be her boyfriend. I want an APB put out on Logan Blaine immediately.”
Olivia stood frozen in the hallway. Margot and Logan were missing. Could Sergeant Callahan have gotten to them? Had he gotten to everyone? His big finale? Olivia felt a creeping sensation race down her spine like a mass of spiders set loose on her skin. Was she the only one left?
Her hands trembled as she fished her cell phone out of the pocket of her skinny jeans. She tried Margot’s number first. No surprise when the call went straight to voice mail. Kitty’s phone rang at least, but it too went to voice mail.
She’s playing in the tournament, Olivia told herself, trying to control the panic. That’s why she’s not picking up.
She said a silent prayer as she dialed Bree.
“How’s your mom?” Bree asked the moment she answered.
Olivia let out a sigh of relief. At least the killer hadn’t gotten to her. “Have you heard from Margot?”
“No,” Bree said. “Why?”
Olivia dropped her voice. “All hell has broken loose at the hospital. Margot and Logan are missing.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I wish,” Olivia said. “I tried Margot’s phone but it goes straight to voice mail.”
“We have a major problem,” Bree said. “The other DGM has been arrested for the murder of Rex Cavanaugh.”
“What?” Olivia felt her chest seize up. “All of them?”
“All of them.”
“Oh God . . .” Peanut would be absolutely freaking out.
“Sergeant Callahan must have done all of this. It’s the only explanation.”
Olivia swallowed. “Now what do we do?”
“John and Ed the Head are on their way to school.”
“I’ll meet them there.”
“Okay,” Bree said. “And, Olivia?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
Olivia had just shoved her phone back into her pocket when it vibrated. A text. She whipped it out again and saw that it was from Margot’s phone. Oh, thank God! she thought. They’re okay.
But as soon as she saw the message, Olivia’s stomach dropped. It was a photo of Margot and Logan, bound and gagged in what looked like an industrial basement. Margot’s eyes were pleading, Logan’s defiant and angry. And there was a caption below the photo.
Where it all began. Come alone or they die.
Tears welled up in Olivia’s eyes. Donté, Mika, Theo, and Peanut had been arrested, and now Sergeant Callahan had Margot and Logan, and would use them to lure the rest of the girls to the school, where he’d exact his ultimate revenge.
Part of Olivia wanted to flee, to grab her mom and Fitzgerald’s check and take off running. They could change their names, find a new home, and start over.
Olivia wiped heavy tears from her cheeks. No, she couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t going to abandon her friends when they needed her most.
It was time to end this, once and for all.
She hurried down the hall to her mom’s room. She’d just leave a note, and with any luck, by the time her mom woke up the nightmare of the last month would be over.
She rounded the doorway into the room and found her mom awake. “Mom!” she cried.
Olivia’s mom smiled. She sat upright in the mechanized bed, with her cell phone in her hand. “Oh, Livvie, I’m so sorry.”
Tears erupted afresh from Olivia’s eyes as she threw herself into her mom’s arms. Her chest heaved with body-racking sobs and the croaking moans that accompanied them sounded unnatural and beastlike as they filled the silence of the room. She realized in a moment that she hadn’t allowed herself to cry since she’d found her mom splayed out on their living room couch. Now, the weight of her sorrow combined with the joy of relief came crashing down on her at once.
“There, there,” her mom said, running her hand over Olivia’s short curls. “It’s okay, baby girl. It’s going to be okay.”
“Why would you leave me?” Olivia managed through the tears. “Why would you leave me all alone?”
Her mom was amazingly calm, the crippling depression of the other night evaporated. “I thought you’d be better off without me.”
Olivia pulled away. “I’d never be better off without my mom.”
Her mom swept a stray curl from Olivia’s forehead, then wiped the tears from both of her cheeks. “I know. But in that moment . . .”
In that moment her mom had believed it. Olivia knew that reality all too well. It was one of the greatest trials she’d struggled with through her mom’s bipolar episodes. No matter what she said, no matter how rational or passionate or upset Olivia got, she knew she couldn’t combat the perceived reality in her mom’s head. All she could do was wait until the episode passed and hope her mom didn’t do anything to harm herself in the meantime.
A tactic that had worked . . . right up until it didn’t.
Olivia wasn’t sure how long she lay there with her head on her mom’s shoulder before she realized there was some kind of music playing in the room. It was tinny and weak, but Olivia recognized the sound right away. It was Bangers and Mosh from the finale of Twelfth Precinct.
She sat up and looked at her mom’s phone. There was a video playing on the screen.
“Where did you get that?” Olivia asked.
“I know we weren’t supposed to film it,” her mom said sheepishly. “But I figured since my daughter was the star of the show, I was entitled.”
Olivia stared in silence. Her mom had zoomed in on her and Logan as they executed part of the final dance number together, then separated to opposite sides of the stage. The camera stayed on Olivia, now doing some cutesy pantomime with Donté. Oh my God! This was exactly what Olivia had been looking for. Peanut and the new DGM had erased the original, which meant Olivia was looking at the only video footage of that night. Possibly the only proof of what had happened to Margot.
“Don’t be mad, Livvie,” her mom said, misinterpreting her silence. “I only filmed a few scenes.”
“Which ones?” Olivia asked anxiously.
“Your scene with Amber at the end of act one. The monologue in act two. The duel with Sir Andrew. Finale and bows. That’s it, I swear!”
The music crescendoed, then applause roared from the tiny speakers on her mom’s phone. Olivia turned back and saw the lights on the stage go out. That was the final tableau, where she and Logan embraced, with all the characters in their respective pairings. When the lights came back up, everyone broke their poses and moved into a straight line at the back of the stage to begin the curtain calls.
Her mom had zoomed out as far as the camera would go, then panned from left to right across the stage as the minor characters took their bows. The camera lingered for a moment on Olivia, dead center between Logan and Amber, then continued to pan. When the camera reached the far end of the stage, Olivia held her breath. Just beyond that curtain stood Margot’s prompter’s stand. Had she already been attacked at this point? Or was she still sitting there, clapping along with the band, enjoying a successful opening night? She strained her eyes as the shaky video reached the end of the cast line, desperate to see something, anything, that would help to put a face on their anonymous stalker. No such luck.
The picture went haywire, sideways then black, though the sound continued.
“Sorry,” her mom said. “Mr. Cunningham got up to go backstage and I tried to hide the camera. It comes back in a minute.”
“Oh.”
Sure enough, her mom had retrieved the camera from her lap, following Mr. Cunningham’s pinstripe jacket as he edged out of the row to the side aisle near the stage door.
That’s when she saw it.
Just a split second, a blurred image of someone hurrying up the aisle past Mr. Cunningham as the camera zipped away, back to the stage. But there was something familiar about the fuzzy profile.
Olivia grabbed the phone out of her mom’s hand and paused the video.
“What are you doing?” her mom asked. “Your curtain call is next!”
But Olivia didn’t care about her curtain call. She didn’t care about the standing ovation, or about Amber’s upcoming hissy fit. All she wanted to see was that blurry figure in the aisle. She walked the video back frame by frame, then paused.
“What is it?” her mom asked. She sounded alarmed. “Livvie, are you okay? What’s wrong?”
Even though the image was dark and out of focus, Olivia knew right away who had been in the theater that night. Someone who couldn’t have been there. Shouldn’t have been there.
She was staring at Ed the Head.
