“So you’ve gotten him to help you try to figure out what’s going on?” Roman shot me a knowing smile. “Or is that just the excuse you’re using to spend time with him?”
“He’s not my type.”
“What’s wrong with big and blond?”
“Did you see his nose?”
Roman shook her head. “It was dark. Why? Something wrong with it?”
“It’s crooked. Like that actor’s? I can’t remember if he said how he broke it.”
“I thought things like that give you character,” she said.
Whit had character, but I wasn’t sure it had anything to do with his nose. Personality-wise, he seemed like a solid, dependable, serious guy. But physically, he was big, ponderous, and, though gentle, also clumsy. Sexy, he wasn’t.
“He reminds me of Lennie in Of Mice and Men,” I said. “I mean, not the dumb part; he’s actually really smart. But there’s something about him that just doesn’t work for me.”
As we started to eat, Tara Kraus and her posse entered the cafeteria. And there was Ashley. In all the drama of the night before—Whit being hit on the head, Roman showing up at the studio, the life-threatening e-mail from vengeance—I’d forgotten what I’d discovered in the cabinet in Dad’s studio.
“Be right back.” As I started across the lunchroom, Tara and a few others turned to look, but Ashley didn’t. Still, I could tell that she’d seen me out of the corner of her eye because her stride stiffened and she stared straight ahead.
In the middle of the cafeteria, surrounded by tables filled with chattering kids, Tara stopped to face me. If she’d been a porcupine, her bristles would have been in full bloom. The girls around her glowered, but Ashley seemed to shrink down behind them.
“Ashley,” I said.
“What do you want?” Tara’s nostrils flared. I wondered if she’d start snorting and pawing the floor next.
I ignored her and looked directly at Ashley. “Can we talk?”
An anxious scowl crossed my old friend’s face. “Why?”
“I have to ask you something…in private.”
“You don’t have to talk to her,” Tara said.
Ashley’s eyes darted at Tara, then back at me. She tilted her head at the windows, as if we should go over there.
“Want me to come?” Tara asked.
Ashley shook her head.
We walked toward the windows. Outside, orange and white koi glided gracefully through the dark water of the small pond the PTO had built in the center of the courtyard. Ashley bit the corner of her lip.
“I didn’t know you’d signed up with my dad’s agency,” I said.
She nodded and let her breath out in a way that made me think that wasn’t what she’d expected me to say.
“I guess I was surprised because we used to be friends and we still see each other almost every day at school,” I said.
She gave me a quick glance. “So I was supposed to tell you?”
In a way, she was right. It wasn’t mandatory for me to know.
There wasn’t a rule. It just felt strange. “Did anything ever happen?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did he get you any modeling jobs?”
Her brow dipped with consternation. “If I’d gotten modeling jobs, you think I’d still be working at Playland?”
She was right. “I’m sorry, that was a stupid question. But did he at least send you to some tryouts?”
“A few, but nothing ever came out of them.”
Her answer was enough to make me feel relieved. So at least as far as Ashley was concerned, it hadn’t been a scam. Dad had tried to get her some work.
Ashley crossed her arms tightly and glanced back at the lunch line, as if she was eager to go. “That’s all you wanted to know?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, okay, great. See ya.” She started back across the cafeteria.
As I watched her go, I thought about her last question. Was that all I wanted to know?
That’s when I realized I’d asked the wrong questions.
Chapter 29
I WAS IN the library last period when I got a text from Gabriel: C my txt last nite?
I’d totally forgotten. The previous night, his text had come just a moment before the e-mail threatening to kill me. No wonder I’d lost track. Now I texted back: Yes. Sorry. TTLY distracted.
Gabriel: C U After schl?
Once again the memory of the party came back. How frustrated he’d gotten when I hadn’t been willing to go somewhere alone with him. And how I’d felt bad about misleading him and had given him that kiss.
Roman and Whit had both warned me that he might be dangerous. But they’d never spent any real time with him. While he did seem narcissistic and lacking in empathy, he didn’t strike me as particularly threatening. Besides, it wasn’t like I could invite either of them along if I agreed to meet him.
And there was still a chance he might know something that would help me prove Dad’s innocence. So I texted: OK.
He wrote: PUUP?
No, I thought. I might not have believed he was dangerous, but I’d told myself not to take any chances with anyone, and that included getting in his car or going anywhere alone with him.
I wrote: Meet SMWHR?
He wrote: WHR?
It was nice out, so I suggested the park near the Sound. On a day like today, it would be filled with people.
We agreed to meet at the wooden gazebo on the rocks by the water’s edge. When I got there, Gabriel was sitting on a bench.
He gave me a friendly smile. “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Okay, I guess.” I sat down beside him. The sun warmed my face. Its rays glinted off the water. Sailboats rocked at their moorings. “I mean, not great. You heard the news about that girl this morning, right?”
Gabriel nodded. “Terrible.”
I was relieved to hear him say that. Maybe he wasn’t so self-absorbed after all. Maybe all that glancing at his reflection was just insecurity. You had to give people the benefit of the doubt. Especially when they were as gorgeous as Gabriel.
“It’s hard to believe,” he went on. “These girls signed with us, and now they’re turning up dead?”
“Just one,” I reminded him.
He slid his eyes at me, as if to ask if I really believed the other two girls hadn’t met the same fate.
“I know,” I admitted. “You have to think that whatever happened to her happened to the others. I’m just praying I’m wrong.”
“And maybe it’s still all some kind of incredibly weird coincidence,” he said. “Like maybe it has nothing to do with their being your dad’s clients. Maybe there’s something else that links those girls that no one’s even thought of yet. The problem is, nobody knows. And nobody’s going to know until they know, you know?”
I felt a slight and unexpected smile grow on my lips.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing. I completely agree. It’s just all those knows, you know?”
He shot me a self-deprecating grin and said sheepishly, “Welcome to my huge fifty-word vocabulary.”
I chuckled, once again glad he’d asked me to meet him. It was a relief to see his charming side.
A seagull landed on the rocks and cocked its head as it studied us with one eye.
“Take a walk?” Gabriel suggested.
“Sure.”
We started on a path along the shore. Ahead was a low brick structure—the bathhouse of the small beach club for town residents open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Now that the season was over, town workers were preparing it for the winter. From the cans and drop cloths piled near the entrance, it appeared that they were giving the inside a fresh coat of paint.
Gabriel craned his neck through the open front doorway. “What’s in there?”
“Lockers and changing rooms families rent over the summer.”
“I want to see.” He took my hand and led me inside. My hand in
his felt very natural, as if he needed my assurance while he explored this new place. But at the same time, like anyone else in my position, I was acutely aware of the possibilities. Would he try to kiss me next? Did I want him to?
We walked down a corridor bordered by freshly painted lockers, the smell of drying paint in our noses. Just as we passed the ladies’ room, I felt Gabriel’s hand tighten. He stopped and turned me toward him, pulling me close.
We were alone.
I felt his arms go around me.
I closed my eyes.
Chapter 30
HIS EMBRACE TIGHTENED.
Then tightened more.
Suddenly, I felt myself being lifted off my feet, my arms pinned at my sides. Alarm spreading, I opened my eyes and tried to squirm out of his grasp, but his grip was too tight and too close for me to get any leverage.
“Gabriel, stop! What are you doing?” I gasped when I realized he was dragging me into the ladies’ room. He swung the door closed behind us, then pushed me hard against the walls.
When my eyes focused, I was staring at a knife.
The blade was curved and sharp on one edge and serrated on the other. I stopped breathing and felt as if my heart was trying to crawl into my throat. Gabriel held the knife just below my neck.
“Don’t move; don’t yell,” he whispered.
I’m not sure I could have done either, even if he’d ordered me to. I was frozen with fear.
“Don’t do anything dumb, and you won’t get hurt,” he growled.
I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. My heart thumped so hard I could feel the pulse throbbing in my neck. Breathe, I told myself. If you stop breathing, you’ll faint. But I was beginning to feel sick and light-headed with fear. So it was Gabriel? He was the killer?
“I need money,” Gabriel said.
I heard him clearly, but was so surprised that I almost asked him to repeat it. Money? “I think I have thirty dollars.”
“No, stupid!” he snapped. “Real money. Fifty thousand.”
What? “I don’t—”
“Your father has it.”
My father? Fifty thousand dollars?
“He’s been avoiding me. Won’t go into the same room, won’t answer the phone. I made him so frickin’ much money, and now it’s like I don’t exist.”
I was trying to understand, but my brain was sluggish with fright. The knife looked new and sharp, and it was so close to my neck. “How?”
“How what?”
“Did you—”
“Make him so much money?” Gabriel finished the sentence. “I was the cheese in the mouse trap. Janet would talk the pigeons in, and then I would soften them up for the kill.”
Mice? Pigeons? Was it advisable to tell someone holding a knife to your throat that he was mixing metaphors?
“The kill?” I repeated.
“We didn’t kill anyone,” Gabriel growled. “That’s just what we called it. Janet got them to come to the hotel, but once they were there, it was my job to romance them, make them feel beautiful enough to think they could be models, make their mothers feel beautiful enough to think their daughters could do it. I was the closer, the charmer, the one who got the mothers to part with the money. Without me the whole thing wouldn’t have worked.”
“But Dad paid you, didn’t he?”
Gabriel snorted. “Nothing compared to what he kept for himself. And now I need more, and he’s got it, and you’re going to get him to give it to me.”
That’s when it dawned on me. I was being kidnapped? Held for ransom?
“He’s got till the end of the week, or I go to the police.”
It didn’t make sense. This person holding a knife on me was threatening to go to the police? Shouldn’t I have been the one who threatened to do that?
“You got it?” Gabriel lowered the knife, which was a huge relief.
“No, I don’t understand. The police have already questioned him. They know about the scam.”
Gabriel smirked. “They don’t know anything.”
“Then tell me.”
He shook his head. “Just tell him he’s got till the end of the week. He’ll know what I’m talking about.” He stepped back, slid the knife into his pocket, and gazed at me. “Too bad it had to go this way. You and I could have had a nice thing together.”
I thought of pinching myself to make sure this wasn’t a dream. This guy pulls a knife on me and then talks about what a cute couple we might have been? Was one of us in serious need of a reality check? But I held my tongue. He still had that knife.
“Get out of here,” he said.
I started to back out of the ladies’ room. As Gabriel watched, a nasty curl appeared on his lips. “Oh, wait, there’s something I always meant to tell you. You know all those photographs of famous people your dad has hanging on his walls? They’re stock shots he bought on eBay.”
“But they’re autographed to him.”
Gabriel chuckled. “Not autographed to him, autographed by him. They’re fakes. Now go. And remember, one word to anyone, and your dad is toast.”
I backed through the door, not taking my eyes off him until I was in the hallway, where I could turn and run. Outside the bathhouse, I started to walk quickly, wondering if I should go to the police anyway. What if Gabriel was bluffing? Hoping I’d believe him and not get the police involved?
But what if he wasn’t bluffing?
Was it possible that Dad had been up to even worse than what I already knew?
Chapter 31
I GOT HOME in time to find a handful of photographers shooting pictures of a Soundview Police Department wrecker towing Dad’s Ferrari out of the driveway. I hurried to the front door. Dad was sitting in the kitchen with a bowl of peanuts, a bottle of tequila, and a shot glass. Dark stubble lined his jaw, his hair was disheveled, his shirt hung out.
“You know what they’re doing?” I tilted my head in the direction of the driveway.
He nodded slowly, almost hopelessly.
I sat down at the table with him. “Dad, brace yourself.” When I told him what had just happened with Gabriel, Dad’s bloodshot eyes widened with fury. He placed his hands on the table and lurched up unsteadily. The chair he’d been sitting on clattered backward and banged into the kitchen counter. He staggered a step or two toward the kitchen door and shoved his hand into his pocket as if to take out his car keys, then stopped and cursed loudly, as if he’d just remembered that his car was no longer there. In frustration, he spun around and kicked the chair across the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” Mom gasped, appearing in the doorway.
“When I get my hands on that punk, I’ll …” Dad grumbled and staggered again, turning his head this way and that, as if uncertain which direction to go.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asked.
Dad and I looked at each other with, I was convinced, the same thought—was this something we wanted her to know about? Unfortunately, we were a little too obvious about it.
“You’re not going to tell me?” Mom’s voice was filled with helpless disappointment.
Dad nodded at me, as if giving his approval. I told her what had happened.
By the time I’d finished, Mom was reaching for the phone. “We have to call the police.”
“Don’t,” Dad said.
She stared at him. “Why not?”
Dad took a deep breath, picked up the chair, and sat down, letting out a trembling, almost defeated sigh. “Just…don’t.”
“But we’re talking about someone who threatened our daughter with a knife,” Mom said, taking the phone off the hook.
Dad glanced at me and then said, “You can’t call them, Ruth. You know why.”
From the way Mom reacted, I wasn’t sure she did. But she must have figured it out pretty fast. Looking shaken, she slowly replaced the phone on the hook.
At the table, Dad knocked back the rest of the tequila in his glass, his shoulders stooped with defeat. The kitchen became quiet and filled with
a heavy sense of gloom.
“Is someone going to tell me why Mom can’t call the police?” I asked.
Mom looked at Dad, then at me. “Oh, darling, I really don’t think you need to—”
“I—” Dad began, and Mom instantly quieted. He rubbed his hand across his forehead and stared at the table. “I don’t…want the police to know…because …” He leaned forward and pressed his face into his hands. For a moment I wondered if he was going to break down.
Mom stared at me, her eyes filling with tears, then turned to him. “You don’t have to tell her.”
He lowered his hands and stared at the table. “Some of the things you’ve heard…are true, Shels.”
A tremor ran through me. “You…had something to do with the missing girls?”
“No, not that, but…I…took advantage.”
For a moment the words didn’t compute…then they did. Mom turned and looked out the window so I couldn’t see her face.
“What about…the ones who are missing?” I asked.
Dad nodded.
I stood there stunned. Numb. Thinking back to what the girl on TV said about Dad wanting to meet her alone. My own father…I thought.
Mom hurried out of the kitchen. Her footsteps raced up the stairs, and a door slammed.
Dad hadn’t moved. He was still staring at the table. “They said…they were all over eighteen.”
Again it took a moment for me to understand. Over eighteen? Oh God, so that, according to the law, meant they were legal? But the way he’d just said that—
“You’re…not sure?”
He didn’t answer.
“Did you hurt them?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Are you sure?”
Dad winced. “You doubt me?”
I stared at him in disbelief, feeling frustration and incredulity mutate into anger. “Do I doubt you? If I do, can you blame me? Every day, you reveal something new and swear that that’s the end of it. And then the next day, there’s always something else and it’s always worse. What’s next, Dad? What horrible thing will we find out tomorrow?”
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