Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Of course,” she says, her smile growing, and she looks behind me, to where Tibby is lingering by the door, no doubt watching the time like a hawk. “Tibby, did you send them and put Evan’s name on them?”
“Send what?” says Tibby, sounding distracted. “The flowers? Er—no, I’m afraid not. Perhaps Fitz did?”
Rosie’s expression falls. “No, Maisie hasn’t spoken to me since…well, you know.” Her throat constricts, and I frown.
“She hasn’t reached out to you since January?”
“Of course not,” says Rosie with a sigh that speaks volumes. “It’s all right. I didn’t expect her to, not after…”
I press my lips together. I’m not sure I can fault Maisie for that one, not after Rosie’s involvement with the fire and blatant betrayal.
But considering how close the two were for nearly all their lives, part of me—the part of me that thinks I know my sister better than I clearly do—expected Maisie to at least reach out to…
I don’t know. Yell at Rosie. Or find some sense of closure.
But then again, maybe that was Gia’s influence on her.
Maybe Gia was the glue holding the three of them together, and with her gone, there’s no hope for reconciliation between Maisie and Rosie, either.
The thought is devastating, and I’m trying not to picture the way Maisie was watching Gia from across the lobby less than an hour ago when suddenly I see it. Tucked among the roses, nestled in a clump of crimson and blending in so well that at first I think it’s an illusion. But it isn’t.
A single blood-red gerbera daisy.
“Rosie,” I say, a fireball of panic forming in my chest. “How do you know these came from me?”
“The note, silly,” she says, and she hands me a plain but heavy card that rests beside the vase.
Dearest Rosie,
I’m sorry you couldn’t be at the premiere tonight. Thinking of you and the part you played in our journey.
Love,
Evangeline
The handwriting looks nothing like mine, and I sure as hell wouldn’t use “dearest” as an opening. Or sign it with “love” when Rosie and I barely know each other. My heart is pounding, and I set the card down, careful not to touch more of it than I already have.
“We need to get out of here,” I say, searching the kitchen as if Ben is lurking in the shadows, ready to strike. “Now.”
“You’re scaring me,” says Rosie, her eyes wide as she pinches another bonbon between her fingers. “What’s going on? Evan—”
“Ev?” Kit is by my side now, and my pulse is so fast that I’m dizzy. “What—”
But then he lets out a curse so unlike him that I know he sees it, too. That damn flower. That message, specifically for me. How did he know I’d be here? How did he know I would come?
He didn’t. It was a gamble, and now I have to get Rosie out of here before she and I both lose.
“No time to explain,” I say as Tibby pokes her head in, and I take Rosie’s elbow. “Come on. Tibby—tell them we’re coming out, and we need a security team here as soon as possible. It’s urgent.”
To her credit, she doesn’t question me, and Kit takes Rosie’s other arm as we head toward the door, leaving the bouquet behind.
Is there a bomb inside? Is someone—Dylan, undoubtedly—already in Rosie’s townhouse, waiting to kill us?
My mind whirls with possibilities, each worse than the last, but just as we’re about to step out into the night air, Rosie stops.
“Snickers!” she cries, and she deftly slips out of our grips and bolts back inside. Kit and I exchange a horrified look, and he darts after her before I can even think to kick off my heels.
“Rosie, no!” I cry. “We’ll come back for him!” But even as I say it, I know I’d do exactly the same thing for Poppy. And so, as Tibby rushes back toward the door with our PPOs following her, I hurry after Kit and Rosie, cursing every inch of this dress train and how much it slows me down.
I hear footsteps overhead, and Kit’s voice calling for her, too. But his pleas quickly turn to yet another curse, and he bellows, louder than I’ve ever heard him before, “Evan! Tibby!”
With my heart in my throat, I rush upstairs, and something in the back of my dress rips as I turn down the hallway, but I don’t care.
Kit is kneeling in a doorway that leads into a pink-and-white bedroom, and I see Rosie’s feet twitching before the rest of her comes into view, sprawled out on the carpet.
She’s seizing.
“Rosie—Rosie, you’re all right,” says Kit as he hovers over her, clearly unsure what to do. Foam forms at the corners of her mouth, tinged pink at first before turning undeniably red, and my stomach turns.
“What happened? Did she fall?” I say, kneeling on her other side. Kit shakes his head.
“I found her like this. She’s never had seizures before.”
“We need to turn her so she doesn’t choke,” I say as heavy footsteps thud up the staircase. “If she bit her tongue—”
But just as Kit and I start to ease her onto her side, the seizing stops.
For one horrible moment, her green eyes open to meet mine, and I can see the fear and pain in hers before they roll into the back of her head.
A torrent of blood spills from her mouth, and she stiffens once more as every muscle in her body seems to tense, before—
It’s over.
“Rosie?” I say as two PPOs rush into the room, and I touch her warm cheek. “Rosie. Rosie.”
The larger of the two shoulders me aside, and he presses his fingers to her neck. “I can’t feel a pulse,” he announces to the other, and my insides turn to molten lead.
“What?” I say. “No, that’s not right—she’s okay, she just had a seizure—”
But they’re doing CPR now, the chest compressions hard and fast and deeper than I’ve ever seen on any show or movie. I can hear her ribs snapping as Rosie lies there motionless, showing no sign of pain. No sign of life. No sign of anything at all.
“What happened?” says the second PPO, and I shake my head, baffled and unable to speak. This doesn’t make any sense. None of it makes any sense.
“Evan, Kit,” says Tibby from the doorway, and it’s an unspoken order, not a request. But I can’t move.
I can’t tear my eyes away from Rosie, who two minutes ago was talking and breathing and—and living, but is now nothing more than an inanimate body, her sweatshirt soaked in her own blood.
Vaguely I hear a whimpering sound behind Tibby, and when I finally look at her, I see Snickers in the hallway, cowering at the commotion.
Snickers. He’s okay. I’m okay, and Kit’s okay, but Rosie—
“Ev.” Kit’s beside me now, helping me to my feet. I’m trembling so hard that I can barely stand, but he gathers me in his arms, carrying me the same way he did after Jasper attacked me. I can feel him step over Rosie’s legs, and my stomach lurches violently.
“It was just a seizure,” I say as he sets me back on my feet on the other side of the doorway.
Tibby immediately wraps her arm around me as well, but I slip out of her grip and kneel down to scoop up the quaking dog.
As I do, I chance one last glance back into the bedroom, where the PPOs are still performing CPR on Rosie’s lifeless body.
She’s so impossibly pale now that she blends in with her white rug, and I bury my face in Snickers’s fur.
This can’t be real. She was fine minutes ago. We were going to leave. We were bringing her to safety. How is she—how is she like that, and Kit and I are okay? How? We’re the real targets, not her. Why is she the one on the floor, not us?
But as the three of us head down the steps and through the kitchen in one awkward huddle, I spot the single daisy among roses once more, and my blurry vision drifts to the box of chocolates on the marble counter.
They’re expensive, handpicked ones, not the cellophane-wrapped packages that come premade.
They’re the kind Rosie, an aristocrat, would be used to getting. The kind she wouldn’t question.
The kind that could easily be tampered with.
Before I can put my suspicions into words, Tibby ushers Kit and me through the front door and into the night air, where flashing lights reflect on the neat row of expensive townhouses, and the wail of sirens fails to muffle the words echoing through my head.
Rosie is dead.
Rosie is dead.
Rosie is dead.
And Ben’s the one who killed her.