Influenced by Eva Robinson (best free ebook reader TXT) 📗

few basil leaves. “Isn’t there some kind of database of teacher information?”

“Aspen, yeah. Can you tell me what this is about?”

“Absolutely not. It’s not interesting anyway,” he lied. “I’m just wondering about an address.”

“Is this shady? Don’t you have, like, DMV records or something you can get through normal police ways?”

“Yes, but it takes too long, and I wanted to hear your voice.”

“So charming! How could I resist. Okay, Hannah Moreno, twenty-seven years old, lives on 37 Porter Street in Somerville. Apartment 12 A.”

Somerville. “Brilliant. Oh, Katie? You won’t mention this to anyone, will you?”

“Hmm. What would you do if I did? Would you handcuff me and spank me?”

“Absolutely not, because it seems like that would be an incentive.” He shot a nervous look at Ciara and cleared his throat. “I have to go, Katie. I have a friend over.”

“Tell her I’m jealous,” she shouted into the phone.

Michael hung up. “Somerville; 37 Porter Street.”

“That’s it.” Ciara gestured with her hand, spilling her wine. “That’s the same block where Arabella’s laptop was turned on.”

Thirty-Two

Rowan sat in her dark apartment, peering outside her window, just a crack. Were there people watching from outside? Did they all know what she’d done?

Music floated through the room—horns and drums.

A tear spilled down her cheek, and she wiped it away. She was sure she was rotting from the inside out. She took a swig from her bottle of scotch.

They’d found Peter, and now she was wondering what the hell she’d been thinking when she agreed with the plan. And why had she thought deleting the photos from her feed would do anything? Those Reddit psychos online tracked everything she did. Everything. They were convinced she’d murdered Arabella, and soon they’d find out she was there when Peter died.

She drank deeply from her bottle, then crossed back to her sofa. She flopped down flat on it, trying to untangle the reasoning that had made sense to her at the time. In the fog of drunkenness, it had seemed clear—the grant money being in Peter’s name, needing him to be alive for it to go through. The money was now sitting in the teen center bank account, just waiting to help underprivileged youth graduate from high school.

But couldn’t they have found another way to get the grant money? Now they looked sketchy.

Was it really about the grant money for her, though? Yes, she’d wanted the funding, but it had been more of a blind panic that had driven her to grip Peter’s limp legs. She’d been tried online, and people already thought she was a killer. Not just one, but two dead friends now. She’d sort of hoped Peter might sink to the bottom of the pond, never to be found, and no one would connect his vanishing to her. That maybe she could escape that scandal and repair her image.

Now she could see how dumb that was. That wasn’t how anything worked, because Peter, of course, hadn’t stayed at the bottom of the pond. And their cover story—that he’d walked home, and that was all they knew—didn’t sound quite as convincing now that she wasn’t completely hammered.

Lying flat on her sofa, she opened TOI.com. She took a deep breath as she read through the latest theories about why she’d killed Arabella. It was all over Arabella’s husband, because Rowan was desperate for all the male adulation she could get. No, it was because she couldn’t handle anyone else around her being genuinely talented when she was such a vapid, alcoholic mess. Her rage and jealousy came through in all her posts. Anyone could see it.

The vines slithered in her mind. Look at her, lying there. Drinking again. Alone. She’s killed two people now—two people who had more to offer the world than she ever could, and she couldn’t handle it. You can see her rotting, can’t you? So corrupted. The evil is ravaging her face. She looks worse than Peter at the bottom of the pond.

The pressure in her mind was getting to be too much. The voices built louder.

No one could ever love her.

Her heart was beating so loud that she could hear it, and she thought it might explode. She needed Marc more than ever. It had been ages since she’d spoken to him, but she needed to hear his voice. She picked up her phone and clicked on his name. Her blood pounded hard as she listened to it ring.

No answer.

She called again and again, listening to the phone ring, increasingly desperate, until at last—

“Hello?”

“Marc?”

He sighed. “Rowan. Is this an emergency?”

“Um, I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Are you joking, Rowan? It’s three in the morning here. Please, please try to think about other people for once.”

She winced. The line went dead, and her heart twisted.

As soon as he hung up, the voices started up again in her mind.

At some point, everyone realizes how vile she really is.

Her lungs were constricting, and she rolled over, curling up in a ball. She needed to think clearly.

One thing at a time.

What would Marc say if she could talk to him?

She’d tell him how the secrets were crushing her, smothering the life out of her. All of them. She’d tell him that people found out the truth sooner or later.

And he would tell her she should get to it first, and tell the story in her own words.

Rowan pulled herself off the bed and crossed to her wardrobe. She opened the doors and took in the silky negligees on the bottom of the wardrobe. She pulled out a black one with the smallest hint of ruffles at the neckline. She pulled off her clothes, then slid it on.

As she carefully applied her makeup in the bathroom, she hummed along to the music. Black eyeliner, highlighter on her cheeks. Ruby-red lips.

She crossed back to her chaise longue and set up the ring light. She snapped her phone onto the selfie stick. Always, when she took a photo here, she was thinking of Marc, imagining him with her.

The