Chapter 21
Adi
Adi stood apart from the others, waiting for an answer. Beck and Carter huddled together for warmth. Even Sierra inched closer to them.
“Okay,” she said. “You wanna know? The last time I talked to Alicia was by the pool around nine o’clock.
I asked where the hell she’d been sneaking off to.
She was hardly ever in the complex. Always disappearing, sometimes for hours at a time.
She wouldn’t even take the shuttle to the studio most of the time, just show up later in an Uber.
She never told anyone where she was going or who she was meeting, and I suspected she was cheating.
I wanted to confront her before the finale. ”
“What does disappearing have to do with cheating?” Beck said.
“She wasn’t as clever as the show made her out to be. I thought maybe she was meeting with someone and they were feeding her answers.”
“Really?” Carter said, voice lifting in surprise.
“She was charming and beautiful, a great foil for her villainous sister. Remember when they revealed I was one of her opponents and she flipped out? She thought I was there to steal her limelight. But the truth was, I never auditioned the first time. I was offered a spot to create sibling rivalry. They wanted her, but they’d done their research.
My job was to create drama, while she was there to win over the audience. ”
“Typical show business,” Adi muttered.
“So I played the villain and Alicia played the hero. But she knew stuff in the game. Math, ciphers, literature references—there’s no way she was solving them on her own.”
“A week ago, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Beck said. “Now I know how Ranielle Russell works, I’m not surprised.”
“They wanted the sisters to be in the finale, head-to-head,” Adi said.
“Exactly,” Sierra said. “And it wasn’t hard to figure out who the audience was rooting for—which meant the producers wanted her to win, too.”
“What happened when you confronted her?” Carter asked.
“I asked to talk outside. You can imagine how it went down when I accused her of cheating.”
Adi laughed dryly.
“But Elijah heard us fighting,” Sierra continued, “which obviously looked pretty bad for me after the fact.”
“And was she?” asked Carter. “Cheating, I mean.”
“Nothing she admitted to. She claimed I didn’t give her enough credit. But then she said something bizarre.” Sierra’s brow furrowed as Carter’s teeth chattered loudly. “Put your hood over your head. It’ll keep the heat from escaping too quickly.”
Carter followed her advice.
“What did Alicia say?” Adi asked.
Sierra huddled deeper into her jacket. “She offered to give me her share of the prize money if her team won.”
“No way,” Carter said. “Sh-she said in all the interviews that you two wouldn’t share.”
“Exactly. And it pissed me off. I was sure it was another mind game, but she kept insisting it was real. She said the prize money was small pickings compared to what was coming.”
“Alicia had other money coming in?” Beck said. “Shhhhivers, it’s cold. Join our huddle, Sierra. We need more body warmth.”
Adi was sure Sierra wouldn’t budge, but she shuffled over, next to Carter and Beck.
“You too,” Beck said, reaching out to Adi.
“Not a chance,” Adi said.
“Alicia worked retail before the show,” Sierra said. “Minimum wage. It wasn’t coming from there. It must’ve been from someone in Hollywood.”
“A boyfriend?” Beck said. “Or girlfriend? Maybe the same person who was giving her the answers?”
“Maybe, yeah.” Sierra paused. “Okay. Here’s the thing. There’s something only a very small number of people know. But you have to understand what it was like for us, growing up.”
She fell silent.
Adi was beginning to wonder whether Sierra’s brain had frozen over or something when Beck squeezed her shoulder gently and said, “It’s okay. Whenever you’re ready,” and Sierra released a shuddering breath.
“I told you our parents had died. Well . . . our first foster home . . . it wasn’t . . . it wasn’t safe.”
Her lashes, flecked with small icicles, blinked rapidly.
She drew another breath and said, much steadier, “I won’t bore you with the details, but basically, by the time social services found out what was going on, Alicia and I were already broken.”
The raw cookie dough churned in Adi’s stomach.
“Oh, Sierra,” Carter whispered.
“After that, Alicia survived by doing whatever it took to be liked. She gave away any piece of herself others wanted, manipulating everyone to get her way. My theory is she was seeing someone at the studio, whoever was helping her cheat, and they filled her head with some Hollywood nonsense about making her a star.”
Carter tried to draw Sierra into a proper hug, but Sierra gently pushed her away.
“None of that means she deserved what happened to her,” Sierra said. “I still remember her as the little girl who put stuffed toys to bed every night, and who held me tight when social services told us Mom and Dad had—”
The sentence ended as an exhalation of steam, Sierra’s face ghost-white in the glow of Beck’s flashlight.
“You didn’t stay close, though?” Beck asked. “You and Alicia?”
Sierra snapped back from wherever she’d gone. “We’d been through too much. She left as soon as she aged out of the system, abandoning me with foster family number thirteen. They weren’t all bad, but the later ones didn’t like my attitude.”
Adi sank against the shelves, then jumped up again, since they were metal and icy. The huddle in the corner was starting to look inviting.
Sierra’s fingers curled in her inner elbows.
“I don’t—I don’t have anything. I wake up in my shitty room in my shitty rental, sell my art, eat my food, then lie awake most of the night wondering what the hell happened.
Finding out who killed my sister is the only thing that matters to me.
” A bitter laugh escaped her. “I shouldn’t have left the complex that night.
I was so angry with her. As soon as she mentioned some other money, I knew she was going to get into trouble.
That’s why we fought. She wouldn’t tell me who she was seeing.
Just kept saying things were going to get better. ”
“You’re sure she was getting the cheats from a secret lover?” Adi said.
“I can’t be sure of anything. But she was so smug that night.
Like she had a foolproof plan. I remember .
. . She had her comforter with her. You know, the one from her room they never found?
She wore it like a cape, like she was queen of the villas.
Like everything was finally going her way. I wish I knew what she’d been hiding.”
“You didn’t see anyone hanging around the complex?” Beck said.
“No. We fought. I left. Elijah was already swimming laps when I got back at four thirty. That was early, even for him. I figured it was nerves before the finale.” She shrugged.
“There were no security cameras back then, so they couldn’t track what time she left.
They just know her phone wasn’t at the villas when the signal went dead. ”
“And cameras didn’t catch the killer at the studio?” asked Beck.
“No, because of the power outage. The power company had been doing rolling blackouts for weeks, trying to lessen the load on the power grid. It didn’t affect us here, but the power was down around the studio.
No lights. No cameras. No security gates.
” She rattled the facts off like they were just that—simple, basic facts.
Not the convenient details that had kept her sister’s killer from ever being found.
Adi couldn’t imagine how much she’d had to compartmentalize.
“So that’s it. That’s all I know. I’d wandered the streets for a few hours, slept at a park, and headed back. I have no idea where Alicia went that night, who she saw, or how she ended up in that coffin. I didn’t even know she was missing until . . . until we found her.”
A contemplative silence fell over the group, punctured only by their shivery breaths and chattering teeth.
“You th-think it was Fitzy,” Carter said.
Sierra fixed her with a look. “He’s the obvious choice.”
“Young, hot, flirtatious,” Adi muttered.
“Access to producers and agents,” Beck added. “Not to mention the Game Master. Probably wouldn’t be hard to get info on upcoming rooms.”
“There are so many people in the studio, all the time,” Carter argued. “It could have been anyone. A sound tech, a set designer, someone in costuming, an assistant.”
“I know,” said Sierra. “But whoever it was must have had money. And Fitzy—”
“Was doing a livestream,” Carter reminded her. “You know how it feels to be accused of something without any proof. You c-can’t just—”
“I know,” Sierra said again. “I just . . . have a feeling.”
“You mean like how millions of viewers had a feeling about you?”
Sierra’s dark lips thinned in irritation. “Until we know for sure, you need to be careful. We all have to be c-careful.”
“I think we need to sit,” Beck said.
“Don’t sit,” Adi said. “The floor is way too cold.”
But Carter was already sinking down. Beck joined her. Adi regarded them, wondering how much warmer it was against other people.
“You’re wrong, Sierra,” Beck murmured. “You said you were broken. But you’re always trying to look after us.
With the cooking and wanting to protect Carter.
After everything that’s happened to you, after that first foster family, after losing your sister, after the world accused you of murdering her—you still have the capacity to care about other people.
That’s not broken. That’s . . . that’s incredible. ”
It looked like Sierra couldn’t speak, even if she wanted to.
Carter reached for her. “Come down here. It’s warmer with three of us.”
Hesitantly, Sierra lowered herself to the floor. Beck and Carter hugged either side of her.
“You just haven’t found your people yet,” Beck said, putting his chin on her shoulder. “But it’s okay. We’ll be your people.”
“Y-y-y-yep,” Carter said. “Come d-down here, A-Adi.”
“The floor is a terrible idea,” Adi said. “We’ll definitely freeze to death.”
“Come down here and be Sierra’s people!”
“Jee-sus,” Adi snapped, but he was grateful as he dropped down to find it a touch warmer in the huddle.
Carter squeezed his side. “Hey,” she whispered. “D-don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
“Noticed what?”
“That you haven’t gotten any phone calls or messages since we got here.”
Adi’s jaw tensed. “That’s not true. My mom’s texted.” He tried to laugh, but his mouth was too cold to do the sound justice. “To ch-chew me out for getting her c-c-car towed.”
“Then we’ll be your people, t-too,” Carter said.
He grimaced.
“My s-sister left a clue,” Sierra said. “She told me if anything happened to her, I had to look under the terrace in her villa. At the time, I assumed she was being melodramatic, but now I think she might have left me a note.”
“W-wait,” said Beck. “She knew something was going to happen to her?”
“Yeah. At least, that’s what she said a week before she died. And then something changed. I guess she thought she had everything under control.”
“Did you tell the police?” Beck said. “They could have searched—”
“They did. They thought I was lying to save my ass. If I could have a look at the terrace myself, maybe I’ll find what they missed.”
Adi tried to process this, but his brain was no longer cooperating.
“So?” Carter asked. “Have you searched the terrace?”
“I’ve been t-trying. Alicia’s old villa is the one Elijah and Lisa are in now. I can’t get close without them seeing or hearing me.”
“Sounds like you need a team,” Beck said.
“How long has it been?” Carter whispered. “Maybe Vera’s not coming.”
“Let’s call the police,” Adi said, though his sludgy brain could barely comprehend the words.
But as his numb fingers fumbled for his phone, light flooded his vision. He blinked up at a furious Vera in a long floral nightdress, holding the padlock’s key in her hand.
“I got accepted to four Ivy League universities,” she said. “I could be halfway through a degree on mechanical engineering. Instead, here I am, dealing with you.” She grunted and spun away. “Big regrets.”