Get Even

  “The Ledge?” Margot said, her mouth suddenly dry.

  “That’s it! Anyway, we’re all supposed to support them, like a drama class field trip, and I was wondering if you’d like to go.”

  Holy Mary, Mother of God, had Logan just asked her out on a date?

  Logan must have seen the fear in her face, because he immediately backpedaled. “I mean, you don’t have to just because you’re in the production. I thought it might be fun.”

  “Yes,” Margot said.

  Logan’s lopsided smile crept across the right side of his face as he slung his bag over his shoulder. “Awesome.”

  Awesome. Yes, it was awesome. And horrifying, and terrifying, and mortifying all rolled up into a ball of anxiety. Not only was she going to have to get out of the house for rehearsals, but now for a concert at a club? This was going to take one epic con job on her parents.

  “So, I guess I’ll see you Monday morning in class,” Logan said, clearly loitering at the table.

  “Monday.” The word floated out of her mouth dreamily.

  Logan touched her hand with the tips of his fingers. “Bye.” Then he was gone.

  It wasn’t stalking. That’s what Bree kept telling herself. Staking out John’s apartment building to see where he went on his Saturday afternoon was totally and completely not stalking. Not really.

  She had a good reason, of course. John was on the brink of figuring out who was involved in DGM, if he hadn’t already. Thankfully, his free time was scarce. Between the school play and band rehearsals, John’s weeknights were packed. Which meant Bree really only had to stalk him on the weekends.

  It’s not stalking, she repeated to herself. You’re just keeping an eye on him for his own safety.

  Sure she was.

  So when she followed Mrs. Baggott’s minivan to the public library, Bree was immediately suspicious. John didn’t have any school projects that required outside research, and he hated studying with people around. What was he up to?

  A sobering thought hit her. Maybe he was meeting Cordy? Fine, whatever. She and John weren’t dating. He could study with another girl if that’s what he wanted. Bree totally didn’t care.

  Didn’t she?

  Margot returned to Ronny’s emails and chat transcripts with a sigh of resignation. So far, most of his communication with Christopher Beeman had been of the regular dude variety—chicks and school and bands and sports. They’d met in eighth grade when Ronny’s mom sent him to Archway, discovered they both had parents in Silicon Valley, and struck up a friendship. But as she moved deeper into their freshman year at Archway, hints of a problem with Coach Creed crept into their conversations, and soon they were plotting to get him fired.

  Which apparently had worked. It was a simple plan, lacking in the kind of finesse and extensive planning that was the hallmark of DGM, but an effective one. Both Ronny and Christopher claimed that Coach Creed had made inappropriate advances, and that he’d showed them lewd images from gay pornography. When his office was searched, the offending materials were found, and though Coach Creed professed his innocence and official charges were never filed, Creed was fired.

  There was something abhorrent about the whole incident. DGM was in the business of revenge, but it was never manufactured. They never lied about anyone or anything, merely used people’s hypocrisy against them. But falsely accusing a teacher of sexual misconduct, even one as awful as Coach Creed, was hitting below the belt. Margot had never met Ronny or Christopher Beeman, but she was liking them less and less by the second.

  After Creed’s dismissal, Ronny and Christopher’s friendship took a turn. They were obsessive friends, attached at the hip and chatting online for hours each night from their dorm rooms. That’s when Christopher started dropping hints about an encounter he’d had with a boy back home in sixth grade, and his growing feelings for Ronny. Romantic feelings.

  Then all hell broke loose. Something must have happened between them sophomore year because by spring, Ronny had left Archway and moved in with his dad and stepmom in California, where he stopped responding to Christopher’s increasingly desperate emails.

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  You can’t run away from what happened between us. Don’t you understand? We’re soul mates. Think about what we could accomplish together? You can’t cut me out of your life. I won’t let you.

  I know you felt something when I kissed you. Don’t even try to deny it.

  I’ll keep fighting for you, Ron. Don’t think I’ll just go away. We can start fresh in California, far away from here.

  The article Kitty had mentioned about Christopher going AWOL was easy to track down, and the dates fit perfectly. Christopher jumped the wall last spring a mere two weeks after his last unanswered email to Ronny. Had he followed Ronny to California?

  If so, he could literally be anyone. He could be working at the Coffee Clash, or the gas station. He could be posing as a freshman at Bishop DuMaine, a new face no one would look twice at. Or a transfer student, like Theo Baranski or . . .

  Margot’s eyes involuntarily flew to the chair across from her, so recently occupied. Or he could be Logan.

  She pulled up an internet browser window, desperate to find out what Christopher looked like. Please don’t be Logan. He could be Theo, or John—anyone but Logan. Or maybe it wasn’t Christopher they were dealing with at all, just someone who knew about him and Ronny?

  Google wasn’t much help; aside from the AWOL article, there was nothing at all about Christopher Beeman on the internet. No information, no mentions, and no photographs. But he’d gone to St. Alban’s with Bree. There must be a yearbook photo of him somewhere.

  Margot snapped her laptop closed. And she just happened to be in a public library with a whole collection of yearbooks.

  She was packing up her bag when she noticed two unusually tall people walk through the main entrance of the library, hand in hand. Margot dropped her head to the table, hiding her face behind her oversize backpack as she realized who it was.

  Kitty and Olivia’s ex-boyfriend, Donté Greene.

  “I’m sorry a morning date is all I could manage this weekend,” Donté said. “Between rehearsals and practice, my schedule is whack.”

  “It’s okay,” Kitty said. She’d had ulterior motives for suggesting the library. “I’m sorry I had to drag you along with me here, instead of the Coffee Clash.” Not that she’d ever set foot in there again after her run-in with Barbara Ann. “I know this isn’t exactly the best place for a date.”

  Donté squeezed her hand. “Any place with you is the best place for a date.”

  As much as she wanted to pull him behind a stack and attach her face to his like a cyclone-powered vacuum cleaner, she was at the library for a reason. Christopher Beeman.

  The public library was Kitty’s last shot.

  Since making the link between Christopher Beeman, Coach Creed, and Ronny’s death, Kitty needed to know more about him. The internet had been a waste of time—it was as if Christopher Beeman didn’t exist in any files, search engines, or databases online. She needed to know who he was and who had left her clues about him. His connection to Bree seemed to make her extremely uncomfortable, and why had his head been cut out of the photo of the two of them? Somehow, she felt if she could just see a photo of Christopher, everything would fall into place, so she’d trekked over to St. Alban’s after practice one day to check out the yearbooks they kept in their school library.

  Slight problem. The page that should have contained Christopher’s photo had been torn out.

  Thankfully, the public library had its own collection of yearbooks from local schools. It was her best chance to find him.

  Bree kept her distance as she followed John into the library. She waited until he disappeared through the main doors before she rounded the front of the building and dashed up the stairs, where she was just able to catch a glimpse of his floppy black hair winding through the magazine ra
cks.

  By the time she made her way back, John had disappeared. Bree gazed down the wrought iron spiral staircase leading to the old house’s wine cellar, which held the forgotten archives. He must have gone down there. But why?

  The good news was that Cordy was nowhere in sight. The bad news was she couldn’t risk following him. She’d been in the old cellar once; the stairs were noisy and the room was small. It was a miracle John hadn’t already caught Bree spying on him—if she followed him into the cellar, she’d get busted for sure.

  So she waited. Five minutes tops, though it felt like an hour, hiding behind an old filing cabinet, waiting for John to come back. He did, eventually. Was it Bree’s imagination or was he practically running toward the entrance?

  She had to think fast: Should she follow him or try to ferret out what he was looking for?

  As Bree picked her way down the rickety staircase, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d made the wrong choice.

  Much to Margot’s relief, Kitty and Donté disappeared into another area of the library seconds after walking through the front door. Margot was 99 percent sure Kitty hadn’t seen her.

  This is not good. Olivia’s association with Rex and his buddies was one thing, a necessary evil in order to gain reliable information. But dating a ’Maine Man? What was Kitty thinking? She was endangering the team at a time when they needed to be as low profile as possible. There was a murderer on the loose, someone who was trying to frame Don’t Get Mad for a brutal crime. Romance should be at the bottom of the priority list.

  Hypocrite. Hadn’t she just spent two hours pursuing her own romantic interests? She was turning into Olivia.

  Time to refocus. She had work to do. Without another thought of Kitty or Donté or Olivia or Logan, Margot shoved her laptop into her bag and headed down to the cellar.

  A peaty mix of age-old dust and wet newspaper tickled Bree’s nose. The row of overhead lights could barely muster enough wattage to illuminate the eight-foot-tall bookcases arranged in makeshift rows throughout the cellar. It seemed so anachronistic in comparison to the mega-modern, LEED-certified, tech-heavy structure attached to the older building above, and Bree wasn’t surprised that this seemingly forgotten basement housed local school yearbooks—things no one wanted to see in a place no one wanted to go.

  Bree strolled through the aisles, wondering what John could possibly have been searching for down in the moldy old cellar. She pulled a volume from the shelf. An old yearbook from Gunn, the local public high school. From the layer of dust on top, Bree guessed it hadn’t been looked at since the day it became property of the library. She shoved it back into its longtime home and continued to scan the shelves. No wonder the cellar was so abandoned. Not exactly the most popular books in . . .

  A yearbook caught her eye. There was something odd about it. The uniform coating of dust that adorned every other volume was smudged with fingerprints, like it had been handled recently.

  Hardly daring to breathe, Bree slid out the volume and tilted it so she could see the title. St. Alban’s.

  Bree’s sixth-grade yearbook.

  A giggle from the other side of the stacks startled her.

  Bree stood still for a second, yearbook balanced precariously against her index finger, and listened. A girl laughing. It cut off abruptly, and was immediately followed by a soft, slobbering sound that could only mean one thing: kissing.

  So the library basement was the local make-out spot? Great.

  Dilemma. Should she clear her throat? Signal that she was there and risk being found with the yearbook? Depended on the culprits. Bree noiselessly slid the yearbook back into its slot, then pulled two heavy volumes off the opposite shelf and peered through to the adjacent aisle to see who she was dealing with.

  The guy she recognized right away: Donté Green, Olivia’s ex-boyfriend. She saw his face in profile as he kissed the cheek and neck of a tall girl. The girl arched her head back as he ran his fingers through her thick, black hair, and he pulled the V-neck of her shirt aside so he could kiss the exposed area of her chest.

  The girl took a deep breath and righted her head, eyes closed, lips parted as if expecting a kiss. That’s when Bree got a clear look at her face.

  It was Kitty.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THIRTY-FIVE

  BREE GASPED. SHE COULDN’T HELP HERSELF. AND THOUGH she clapped her hand over her mouth the instant the sound escaped her lips, it was too late.

  “Did you hear that?” Kitty asked in a harsh whisper.

  Bree ducked down and held her breath.

  “No.” Donté’s voice sounded thick and heavy, as if he was drunk.

  “Someone’s here,” Kitty said.

  “No one ever comes down here,” Donté said. “Trust me.”

  Kitty paused as if considering Donté’s reassurance, then checked her watch. “Don’t you have to be at rehearsal?”

  Donté groaned. “You had to remind me.”

  There were more kissing sounds before the two lovebirds finally separated. “I’ll call you tonight,” Donté said. “Bye, baby.”

  “Bye.”

  Bree heard shuffling footsteps, then the sharp metallic ring of the spiral staircase as someone ascended from the cellar.

  Had they both left or just Donté? After a few moments, she heard another set of footsteps on the stairs. Kitty was leaving as well. Phew.

  Bree peeked out from behind the book stacks. That was a close one. Kitty and Margot already had John in their headlights. How suspicious would she have been if she found Bree checking out her junior high school yearbook after trailing her best friend to the library? She was glad she wasn’t going to have to explain that one.

  She slid the yearbook from the shelf and jumped back, her heart in her throat, as an eyeball stared back at her from the empty space.

  “Bree?” a voice said.

  Bree shoved the yearbook back onto the shelf once again and ducked around the bookcase, coming face-to-face with Margot.

  “What are you doing here?” Margot asked, suspicion in her eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” Bree countered.

  “Margot?” Kitty came around the end of the last row of shelves. “Bree?”

  Margot and Kitty stared at her—awkward and confused and ever so slightly combative. Really? She was the one under suspicion?

  “I was doing research,” she said at last.

  “Me too,” Margot and Kitty replied in unison.

  Okay. So everyone was keeping secrets. Just what they needed while being framed for murder.

  “Whatever you guys say.” Bree pushed past them both toward the staircase. She’d check out the yearbook later when there wasn’t so much traffic. “I’m out of here.”

  She’d just gripped the railing when the whole staircase rattled. Someone else was coming down.

  “If that’s Olivia,” Kitty said calmly, “I’m going to scream.”

  By way of an answer, a soft singing descended into the wine cellar. The song was familiar. Too familiar. “And if I had to walk the world, I’d make you fall for me.”

  “It’s John!” Bree whispered. She sprinted away from the staircase, looking for a place to hide.

  “He can’t see us together,” Margot said.

  Kitty glanced around helplessly. “What do we do?”

  Margot pulled a key out of her pocket and sprinted to a glass door on the far side of the cellar. “Follow me.”

  In an instant she had the door open. They ducked inside the darkened room, and barely had time to close the door before John’s head descended into the cellar.

  Without pausing, he disappeared into the row with the St. Alban’s yearbook.

  It seemed as if they waited an eternity huddled on the floor of the special collections room before Kitty heard John’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. She let out a contr
olled breath as Margot cracked the door.

  “Why do you have a key to the special collections room?” Kitty asked.

  Margot turned on her. “Why were you holding hands with Donté Greene?”

  Kitty flushed pink. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I saw less holding hands,” Bree said with a snide grin, “and more sucking face.”

  Kitty set her jaw. “It’s none of your business.”

  “He’s a ’Maine Man,” Margot said. “That makes it our business.”

  “Not to mention he’s Olivia’s ex-boyfriend,” Bree added.

  “He dropped out of the ’Maine Men,” Kitty said coolly.

  Bree rolled her eyes. “Yeah, cuz that makes it better.”

  Kitty whirled on Bree. “And what were you doing spying on us?” She made air quotes. “Research? Or maybe I should ask why you’re hiding from your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Bree said, throwing her arms wide in exasperation. “And that’s rich, you accusing me of keeping secrets.”

  That was it. Kitty’d had enough of Bree’s attitude.

  “You want to talk about keeping secrets?” she asked, turning toward the library stacks. “Fine.” She scanned the call numbers at the top of each row, looking for the yearbook section. She realized with a start that it was the same row John had just visited.

  “What are you doing?” Bree asked, her voice sharp.

  Kitty’s eyes landed on one volume, curiously askew on the shelf as if someone hadn’t pushed it all the way back in. It was also the only yearbook whose thick coating of dust had been marred.

  “What is it?” Margot asked, following close behind her. Bree lingered near the end of the case.

  “A yearbook,” Kitty said.

  Margot sucked in a breath. “St. Alban’s?”

  Kitty eyed her. “How did you know?”

  Margot stared at the book in Kitty’s hand. “That’s what I came down here looking for too.”

  “Christopher Beeman,” Kitty and Margot said in unison.