THE BLACK STRAP OF THE ANKLE MONITOR FIT SNUGLY AROUND the base of Bree’s shin, just above the joint, and the attached GPS tracker looked like an old flip phone had been duct taped to her leg.
“The band is a conductive circuit,” the guard explained as he tightened the strap. “If you tamper with it in any way, the authorities will be alerted.”
“Can I get it wet and feed it after midnight?” Bree joked.
The guard glanced up, unamused. “The tracker is waterproof.”
“Oh.” Clearly not a fan of Gremlins. Or senses of humor.
“The GPS unit is calibrated for your parents’ house,” he continued. “If you move beyond the one-hundred-meter radius of the perimeter, the authorities will be alerted.”
Great. She’d be a prisoner in her own home. Still better than being stuck in juvie for another day.
Once the tracker was securely in place, the guard led Bree into the holding area, where a tall, expensively dressed woman was deep in conversation with another officer.
Bree didn’t recognize her mom at first. The sun-streaked hair and deep tan threw her off. And the conservative vest and pantsuit made it look as if her mom were a legal consultant on a twenty-four-hour news network rather than a dilettante homemaker who’d run away to the French Riviera.
But her personality hadn’t changed one bit. The sparkling voice, the easy manners—Bree’s mom possessed the singular talent of making everyone feel instantly comfortable, from CEOs to panhandlers. The trick, Bree had observed, was flirtation. Male or female, gay, straight, or other, anyone was fair game for her mom’s shameless flirting. And it almost always got her what she wanted.
“She’ll have to wear the anklet all the time?” her mom asked, eyes wide, voice plaintive.
“Yes, ma’am,” said the young officer.
“I can’t even take her out to dinner?” her mom pressed. “Or to the movies?”
The officer shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
She sighed in resignation, then turned and looked directly at her daughter.
Bree expected some kind of recognition, but after a few seconds, her mom glanced down at her wristwatch. “Any idea when my daughter will be ready?”
The guard eyed Bree. “Um . . .”
“Hey, Mom,” Bree said, hoping her voice sounded as unenthusiastic as she felt.
Her mom started, and slowly returned her gaze to Bree. She stared, confused, for a full ten seconds, before her face lit up.
“Darling!” Bree’s mother flew across the room and embraced her daughter, encircling her with the aromatic mix of Jean Patou and gin. “I’ve been so worried.”
So worried that it took you three full days to fly back from Europe?
“Let me look at you.” Her mom pulled away and gripped Bree’s head on either side of her face. “When did you cut off your hair? Is that a prison thing?”
Bree narrowed her eyes. “Six months ago.”
“Oh.” Her mom pursed her lips. “Well, no wonder I didn’t recognize you.”
Right, not the fact that you haven’t been home since Christmas.
“Mrs. Deringer,” the processing attendant said. “There are just a few forms you need to sign, accepting custody of your daughter.”
With a dramatic sigh, as if signing her name a half-dozen times was some kind of supreme sacrifice, Bree’s mom finished the paperwork, and then she and Bree were escorted from the building.
Neither of them said a word as they followed the guard across the courtyard. Bree wasn’t going to make things easy on her mom by opening the conversation, and Mrs. Deringer seemed content with the silence.
An enormous black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows was parked just outside the fence. It looked like the kind of car used by drug cartels. Or the CIA. As soon as the entry gate began to roll, the driver’s side door burst open and an equally enormous blond man emerged.
He looked like a Norse god: bronzed skin, flowing hair, and muscles practically ripping through the taut fabric of his black jacket. The skinny tie that encircled his neck resembled a piece of dental floss trying to contain a hot air balloon, and as he walked around the car, Bree was pretty sure she could feel the earth tremble with each mighty step.
Without a word, he whisked open the rear passenger door and offered a hand to Bree’s mom, which she accepted with a dainty coquettishness that made Bree’s stomach churn.
“Thank you, Olaf.”
Olaf?
He nodded, and without offering Bree the same courtesy, he closed the door in her face.
“Yeah,” Bree muttered, stomping around to the other side of the car. “Thanks, Olaf.”
As soon as Olaf eased the SUV away from the curb, her mom’s demeanor changed.
“Do you want to explain to me,” she began, “how you thought it was a good idea to confess to a murder?”
“Two murders,” Bree corrected, smiling sweetly as she pulled the seat belt across her body. “And I didn’t confess to them.”
Her mom rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” She pressed a button on the door and a minibar slid out from between the passenger seats. Crystal decanters of fluid, clear and dark brown, tinkled and sloshed with the movement of the car, but Bree’s mom poured a cocktail from a shaker into a martini glass without spillage. “Wretched place,” she said, dropping two olives into the glass. “I’ll have to burn this outfit when we get home.”
Bree jabbed the tongue of the seat belt into the buckle. It refused to click into place, merely sliding out with each attempt. “Sorry to be so much trouble,” Bree said coldly, as she searched for an alternate buckle. “You’re welcome to go back to Nice or Cannes or wherever the hell you’ve been living.”
“Villefranche-sur-Mer,” her mother said wistfully. “Didn’t you read the postcards I sent?”
Not before dumping them in the trash. “Go back,” Bree said through clenched teeth. She tossed the seat belt away, annoyed by her futile attempts to get it secured. “I don’t need you.”
Bree’s mom laughed. “Of course you don’t need me. I raised you so that you wouldn’t need anyone.”
The word “raised” might have been a stretch, considering how little her mother had been around, especially since Henry Jr. went off to college.
“But at the moment,” her mom continued, “someone has to be here to keep an eye on you. Apparently, parental custody means that either your father or I have to supervise your house arrest. And since the senator has oh-so-important policy to not be making in Sacramento, the job fell to me.”
“Really feeling the love, Mom.”
Her mom arched an expertly crafted brow. “Oh, like you’re so excited to spend the next few weeks holed up in the house with Olaf and me?”
Bree blinked. “Olaf?”
“Of course!” her mom cried, as if surprised by her daughter’s lack of vision. “I can’t be without my Olaf. Who’ll drive the car? Keep the press at bay? Administer my daily rub—”
Before her mom could finish the word, the Escalade swung violently to the left. The back of the car whipped around, slamming Bree into the window. Olaf revved the engine; the tires screeched in protest, filling the backseat with the acrid smell of burning rubber, and the SUV spun in the other direction.
Bree screamed, gripping the door handle for dear life as her body, unrestrained by the defective belt, was torn from her seat by the force of the maneuver. As the SUV fishtailed, she saw the cab of a bright yellow moving truck blow by, so close she could see the driver—baseball cap, dark aviators, and all.
The truck careened on; horns blared from a half-dozen directions, and the SUV bounced fiercely as Olaf drove directly over the island in the middle of the roadway. Bree’s head smacked the ceiling, her mom let out a muffled yelp, then suddenly the engine noise returned to normal and the instant of chaos was over.
Beside her, Bree’s mom gasped. “Oh my God.”
Bree massaged the sore spot on the top of her head. “It’s okay,” she panted, trying to catch her breath. “I’m not hurt.”
“Look at that!” Her mom held her martini glass out for Bree to see. “I didn’t spill a drop.” Then she lifted the glass to her lips and drained what remained of the cocktail.
I’m so glad you have your priorities straight. “What the hell happened?”
“Truck run red light,” Olaf said, his vowels open and round, hinting at Scandinavian roots.
“Shouldn’t we go back?” Bree asked. “Call the police? File a report? That guy could be dangerous.”
That guy could be a killer.
Bree knew she was being paranoid, but after what Christopher Beeman had put her and the rest of the girls through over the last month, she felt justified in her suspicions. She glanced down at the faulty buckle. Was it just a coincidence that her seat belt didn’t work and a truck almost ran them off the road? It would be the perfect way to kill someone and make it look like an accident.
She crouched down in her seat and examined the buckle. Even in the moving car, she could clearly see scratches around the base of the red release button, as if someone had tried to pry it off with a screwdriver.
Bree’s blood ran cold. The seat belt had been tampered with.
“No one hurt.” He sounded completely unfazed by the near-death experience. “Olaf employ evasive maneuvers.”
“Olaf was in the French Foreign Legion,” her mother said proudly as she lifted the cocktail shaker from the center console.
Bree eyed the behemoth in the driver’s seat and dropped her voice. “Aren’t they, like, mercenaries?”
Her mom wiggled her shoulders and slowly raised the martini glass to her lips. “I’d pay him to fight in my army any day.”
For the second time in as many hours, Bree fought the urge to puke in her lap.
