Ed the Head nodded. “Check the date and time.”
Olivia’s eyes zipped to the top of the form. “October seventh, nine thirty pm.”
“Exactly,” Ed said. “And Margot was attacked at approximately nine fifty according to the police report. There’s no way I could’ve made it forty miles in fifteen minutes. I didn’t do it.”
“Then why did you wait three days to tell us?” Kitty asked.
Ed dropped the glib facade, his face suddenly hard. “Because you were the only ones who knew I was supposed to meet Margot that night.”
Olivia stiffened. “What are you trying to say?”
“It might have crossed my mind that you were setting me up to take the fall.”
“You think we tried to kill Margot?” Olivia asked, horrified. “She’s our friend, you little weasel. If you think for a second—”
“Was she really your friend?” Ed jutted out his chin. “I seem to recall some pretty horrific photos of Margot from back in junior high.” He pointed at her accusingly. “Photos you took.”
Olivia’s hands began to shake as the shame of what she’d done to Margot washed over her anew. “Oh yeah?” she said, lashing out. “Well, how do we know you’re not Christopher Beeman?” She wasn’t entirely sure it made sense, but someone had to be Christopher, and they were running out of options.
Instead of denying it, Ed the Head burst out laughing.
“Why is that funny?” Kitty asked.
“If I’m Christopher Beeman,” Ed gasped, “I’ve got bigger problems than a murder rap.”
A creeping sensation spread down Olivia’s spine, as if she’d just backed into a spiderweb. Something about Ed’s tone put her on edge. “What do you mean?”
“That’s what I discovered in Arizona,” he said. “Christopher Beeman is dead.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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THREE
THE DAY ROOM AT THE SANTA CLARA COUNTY GIRLS’ JUVENILE Detention Center was by far the most depressing place Bree had ever been.
Intended as some kind of free space, the day room was a windowless, color-blocked cell furnished from a cut-rate office supply catalog where inmates were allowed to watch TV, play board games, read, or tackle homework as their privilege level allowed.
The bland atmosphere mirrored the inmates’ moods. Everyone looked worn down and half-dead, like a room full of lobotomy patients. They slogged from table to door to bookcase, eyes aimlessly searching for something new and interesting to break the monotony, and as Bree stared at TV commercials during the overly chipper local morning news, she wondered how long it would be before she felt as beaten down as the rest of the girls in her housing pod.
She could already feel the hopelessness seeping in. It had been a long three days since her arrest after claiming responsibility for the DGM pranks, during which she’d endured seemingly endless police interrogations about the murders of Ronny DeStefano and Coach Creed. Bree had stonewalled mercilessly, taking great pleasure at Sergeant Callahan’s growing irritation as she refused to answer any of his questions. Then the daily therapy sessions with Dr. Walters, who seemed intent on connecting Bree’s “attention-seeking” behavior to her relationship with her parents. Again, she gave the doctor very little satisfaction. Even in jail, Bree couldn’t help rebelling against authority.
Meanwhile, it had been radio silence from everyone she cared about. Bree had no idea what had happened to Margot, and no clue as to whether or not Christopher had stayed true to his word and left the rest of DGM alone after Bree turned herself in.
Not that she’d expected to hear from Olivia or Kitty. They had work to do. If the killer had been true to his word, then he would have backed off once Bree confessed. She needed Olivia and Kitty to use this truce to find Christopher and get her the hell out of there. They were her only chance at freedom.
Because, as Bree well knew, dear old dad wasn’t going to come to her rescue this time. He’d made that abundantly clear last week when he saved her from expulsion after she punched Rex Cavanaugh in the face. Next time, you’re on your own.
And then there was her mom. Bree blinked and stared at the wall, slabs of concrete painted butter yellow and Pepto pink. Had anyone told her? Would she even care?
Bree swallowed and fought back the emotion welling up inside. Despite her bravado, Bree was scared. She felt utterly alone, abandoned by her friends, her family, even John.
I know you didn’t kill them.
No, not John. He would never abandon her. Would he?
Bree clenched her teeth so hard she felt the tendons pop around her jaw. She was a convict now, being held on suspicion of murder. Would he feel the same way about her? Would he forget about her if she spent the next twenty years behind bars? Was she destined to become as forgotten as the rest of these inmates?
“Bree Deringer?”
Bree jumped in her chair at the sound of her name. Dr. Walters stood in the doorway. “Come with me, please.”
Every set of eyes in the room turned to Bree. Some looked combative, as if they resented the new girl being singled out. Others watched her wistfully, wishing they too had been summoned away for reasons unknown just to break the routine.
Dr. Walters was all smiles as she led Bree to her office. “Lovely day, isn’t it?” she said, making small talk.
Apparently Dr. Walters had missed the fact that she’d just retrieved Bree from a windowless room. “Um, yeah.”
Dr. Walters closed her office door behind her. “Well, it’s about to get even better for you.”
Bree had no idea what she was talking about, but took a seat while Dr. Walters shuffled through some papers on her desk.
“Here’s the schedule for the group therapy outpatient sessions,” Dr. Walters said, handing Bree a printout. “It’s the same setup as here—everything we discuss is completely confidential and all the girls are former inmates of the Santa Clara County Girls’ Juvenile Detention Center.”
Bree took the schedule from Dr. Walters’s outstretched hand, her brain still focused on the word “outpatient.”
“Excuse me,” Bree said, hardly allowing herself to believe it might be true. “Are we being transported somewhere for group therapy?”
Dr. Walters tilted her head to the side. “No, Bree. You’re being released today.”
“What?”
“You’ll be fitted with an anklet at the processing desk, and then remanded to parental custody under house arrest.” Dr. Walters beamed. “Isn’t that exciting?”
Oh, shit. Her dad was going to rip her a new one when he hauled her out of juvie. Maybe he already had a cell reserved for her at that East Coast convent school he kept threatening her with? Bree swallowed, her tongue suddenly two sizes too large for her mouth. “When is my dad coming to get me?”
“He’s not,” Dr. Walters said. “We’re releasing you to your mother.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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FOUR
KITTY STARED AT ED, DUMBFOUNDED. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, Christopher Beeman is dead?”
Olivia shook her head. “That’s impossible.”
Ed knew they wouldn’t believe him. “You think I’d make up something like that?” He pulled a folder from his backpack and handed it to them. “Check it.”
With Olivia perched on her arm, Kitty perused the official copy of Christopher Beeman’s death certificate, and Ed watched as a harsh realization dawned on them—for the last few weeks they’d been chasing a ghost.
“How did we not know this?” Kitty asked.
“Like everything else about the mysterious Mr. Beeman,” Ed said, “the internet was totally purged. Someone wanted to erase him.”
Olivia glanced at him sidelong. “Then how did you find out?”
; Ed straightened his shoulders, offended. “I’m a professional.”
“What does that mean?” Olivia asked.
Ed shrugged. “It means I bribed the janitor to tell me what he knew about Christopher Beeman.”
“Death by strangulation, ruled a suicide.” Kitty studied the death certificate as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was reading. “This happened last year around the same time that article about Christopher going AWOL was published in the local paper.”
“How did it . . .” Olivia swallowed, her face pale. “I mean, how was the body . . .”
“He hung himself from the overhead pipes in the boiler room below the gym at Archway,” Ed said matter-of-factly. He tried not to imagine how miserable Christopher’s death must have been—cold, dark, and alone.
Olivia gasped and rushed over to one of the computers. “Oh my God! We have to unsend that email.”
“Email?” Ed asked.
Kitty ran her fingers through her hair. “We sent an anonymous email to Sergeant Callahan with all our evidence against Christopher Beeman.”
Ed whistled low. “Yeah, they’re going to delete that in about ten seconds.”
“I don’t understand,” Olivia said. She took the death report from Kitty’s hand and looked through it again. “All the clues, the missing yearbook photos, the deaths—everything pointed to Christopher Beeman.”
“Someone wanted you to believe you were dealing with Christopher,” Ed said simply. “Pretty epic snow job if you ask me.”
“What are we going to do?” Olivia asked.
“Stay calm,” Kitty said, sounding anything but. “The killer doesn’t know we found out about this.”
Olivia bit her lip. “Okay . . .”
“So while he lays low, thinking this is all over, we go back and look at our suspects again,” Kitty explained.
“Yeah,” Ed snorted. “Beat that dead horse.”
Kitty narrowed her eyes. “You have a better idea?”
“Actually, yes.” Ed threaded his fingers together and rested them on his knee. “Aren’t you guys missing the most obvious suspects of all?”
Olivia cocked her pretty head. “I don’t get it.”
Ed smiled at her. “I know.”
“Spit it out, Ed,” Kitty snapped.
These girls had no imagination. “Did you ever think that maybe your DGM exploits are coming back to haunt you?”
“You think one of our DGM targets is behind this,” Kitty said, catching on. Better late than never.
“They do kinda have a reason to hate you,” Ed said. “Like a lot.”
“But why would one of them kill Ronny?” Kitty asked. “Or Coach Creed?”
“At least Christopher had a reason,” Olivia said.
Ed snapped his fingers in front of Olivia’s face. “Wake up! Unless he’s a vengeful spirit hunting down his tormentors, he didn’t kill anyone.”
Olivia’s brow clouded. “I guess.”
You guess? “But what if someone was trying to frame you by going after other DGM targets?” Ed leaned back. “Creed and the Ronster were the most recent.”
Kitty sighed. “It’s worth looking into.” She pointed at the nearest computer. “Ed, I need your Google-fu.”
Ed swung around and poised his fingers over the keyboard. “Ready.”
“Let’s start with DGM’s first target,” Kitty said. “Wendy Marshall.”
Ed got a hit right away. “Senior at St. Francis High School. Updated her Twitter feed this morning.”
“That’s practically down the street,” Olivia said.
Kitty pulled a sheet of paper from the printer and scribbled down Wendy’s name. “Now look for Christina Huang.”
Again, Ed got a result within seconds. “Looks like her parents shipped her back east to Choate.”
“Still alive?” Olivia asked.
Ed shrugged. “If you can call Choate Rosemary Hall alive.”
“Okay,” Kitty said. “But she lives like four thousand miles away. Probably not our killer.”
“Try Xavier Hathaway,” Olivia suggested.
“That douche who used to stick my head in a toilet and flush it freshman year?” Ed asked.
Olivia nodded. “They didn’t call him the Swirlie King for nothing.”
Xavier didn’t have a Facebook page, so it took Ed longer to find a reference. The result, however, was unexpectedly gratifying. “Looks like he works for the Hayward Department of Sanitation.” He looked up, smiling broadly. “That is the best thing I’ve ever heard.”
“And he might be a killer,” Kitty added. She clearly didn’t appreciate the irony of Xavier’s craptastic job.
“Coach Creed and Ronny are dead, so that leaves three more,” Olivia said, counting them off on her fingers. “The Gertler twins, Melissa Barndorfer, and Tammi Barnes.”
Ed cocked an eyebrow. “That’s four.”
“Just look them up!” Kitty cried.
“Fine.” Ed quickly sought online references to DGM targets three through six. “The Gertlers work at a surf shop in Mountain View, and according to Melissa’s Facebook page, she’s in Prague with some Eurotrash boyfriend.”
“And Tammi?” Olivia asked.
“Working on it.” Ed typed furiously, cycling through all of his stalkery internet go-tos. One by one, they all came up blank. He slumped back in his chair. “I can’t find any current info on her.”
“Nothing?” Kitty asked.
“That’s what I said.”
“Okay.” Kitty glanced at her watch. “We’ll look into it later.” She held up her list of suspects. “Wendy, Xavier, Maxwell and Maven Gertler, and Tammi Barnes. Plus person or persons unknown, connected to Christopher Beeman. All of them are possible suspects.”
Olivia threw her arms wide in despair. “We’re never going to figure this out. Bree’s going to rot in jail. She’ll shave off all her hair, take over a prison gang, and start calling herself Bitchslap.”
Ed smirked. “That sounds like a great porno.”
“Look,” Kitty said, grabbing Olivia by the shoulders. “We can’t panic and we can’t give up. We have to keep fighting for Margot and Bree.”
“How?”
“We start with this list. Initiate contact, see what we can learn,” Kitty said.
Olivia sniffled. “Okay.”
“And don’t forget Amber and Rex,” Kitty added. “We still don’t know what they were doing in Ronny’s room the night he died.”
Olivia nodded, her lips pressed together as if she was trying to steel herself against an unpleasant task. “I’ll try.”
“And I,” Ed the Head said with a flourish of his arm, “will look into Christopher’s family and friends.” He wasn’t going to trust either of them with that task.
Kitty looked at him suspiciously. “We don’t need your help, Ed.”
This time, his laugh was completely genuine. “You need it now more than ever.”
Olivia placed her hand on Kitty’s arm. “Maybe we should let him? Margot . . .” Olivia paused, her lip quivering. “Margot trusts Ed. And she doesn’t trust anyone.”
“Fine.” Kitty pulled him to his feet. “But there’s something you have to do first.”
“Blood pact?” he asked, feigning excitement. “Initiation ritual? Do I get a DGM pin or a secret decoder ring?”
Kitty took a deep breath, then she thrust her hand forward.
“I, Kitty Wei, do solemnly swear, no secrets—ever—shall leave this square.”
He watched intently as Olivia grasped Kitty’s wrist.
“I, Olivia Hayes, do solemnly swear, no secrets—ever—shall leave this square.”
Together, they turned to him. “I dig, I dig,” he said. “Secret oath. I’m in.”
He grabbed Olivia’s wrist and then moved his arm closer to Kitty so she could link to him.
“I, Ed the Head—”
“You don’t have a last name?” Kitty asked.
Ed sighed. “Fine.” He cleared hi
s throat dramatically. “I, Edward Headley, do solemnly swear—”
Olivia giggled. “Headley? Are you serious?”
“Do you want me to finish or not?” Ed asked.
“Sorry,” Olivia smirked.
“I, Edward Headley, do solemnly swear, no secrets—ever—shall leave this square. Er, triangle. Whatever.”
“Good enough.”
“Yay.” Ed cheered with fake enthusiasm. “Now shouldn’t we get out of here before those ’Maine Men goons defile this corridor with their V-D crap?”
Kitty didn’t answer, but her eyes hardened as she looked at him. “We’ll meet at the warehouse tonight to debrief, understood?”
Olivia nodded, while Ed just winked.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “Now, let’s get our hands dirty.”
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FIVE
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 monitor 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.
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