Chapter Forty-Three #2
Whitney's face flashed in my mind. The precise hair, the practiced empathy, the money that opened every door and disappeared every problem. And Peyton—beautiful, feral, a predator in a school uniform.
"Peyton Alistair," I said. "She broke into my house and slashed Leah's painting.
She dumped the spray paint in your trash can to cover her ass.
Zara saw red paint on her fingers. She also saw Peyton bury the camera.
Chloe could have told Peyton what had happened with Leah when they went back inside. "
I thought back to Monday after school, when I saw Peyton leaning toward Mia at the drinking fountain, her hand on Mia's arm, the way Mia's face had gone carefully blank. Not an act of comfort as I first thought, but a threat.
I'd mistaken manipulation for kindness. And so, apparently, had my daughter.
I'd been so wrong about so many things.
"What's her motive?" Camille asked.
"Leah suspected either Alexis, Chloe, or Peyton was behind the LakeshoreTea cyberbullying account. Zara said Leah was planning to find and expose them. Maybe at the slumber party, Leah discovered Peyton was the guilty one."
"According to the detectives, Leah's phone came back clean," Camille said.
"No screenshots, no saved messages, no relevant deletions, nothing incriminating.
It makes sense if Leah was paranoid about digital evidence after what happened with those AI-altered images.
She didn't trust phones. That's why she kept her diary hidden, not in her bedroom, and why she planned to get Zara to physically clone someone's phone at the sleepover.
She needed proof that couldn't be deleted or denied. "
I said, "Once she got proof, Peyton would've been outed.
Expelled from school, kicked off the swim team, humiliated.
Public humiliation is as good a reason as any for a girl to kill to protect herself, especially these girls.
Mia said Peyton, Chloe, and Alexis were suddenly cozying up to Leah, so maybe Peyton recruited Alexis and Chloe to help her, and they had something awful planned for her all along.
and Mia's accidental push accelerated the timeline.
Then Peyton went down and made sure Leah would never talk again. "
Camille's brow furrowed. "The camera is a problem, though.
Why would there be anything on it that would incriminate Mia?
Why bury it? And if there was something on it, why not smash it?
Throw it in the lake? Remove the memory card and burn it?
Why take the risk of leaving it where it could be found? "
"Maybe she planned to retrieve it later, and then something prevented her. She panicked and didn't know what to do with it. She may be a killer, but she's still a kid."
Camille made a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat. "Or Chloe did it herself. She was on that bluff. She told Mia to leave Leah's body there."
"But Chloe had been right there with Mia, equally panicked, or at least, she'd acted that way, according to Mia’s account. Why would she go back if she believed Leah was already dead?"
Chloe's beautiful, doll-like face flashed in my mind—her devastating performance at the memorial, the way she'd coached Mia to keep quiet in the aftermath of Leah's fall. She'd told Mia she was protecting her, and perhaps in her mind, she was.
I tried to think back, to conjure the specific details from the shock and horror of that Saturday morning. Had there been a guilty tension on Chloe's face? On Peyton's? A furtive, knowing glance passed between Alexis and Peyton?
The panic of that morning cast everything in a frenetic fog. I couldn’t recall clearly, couldn’t know for certain whether the memory was accurate or if it had shifted, subtly altered by the knowledge I had now.
"Mia was the one who pushed Leah, not Chloe, " I said.
"Chloe had everything to lose by going back out to the bluff and killing Leah.
She didn't bury the camera, either. Peyton did.
She didn't enter our house with the spare key and slash Leah's painting, deface it with GUILTY in red spray paint, and then toss the can in your trash. Peyton did that, too."
"Granted, that pisses me off," Camille admitted. "That pretty little asshole." She tapped her thumb against the wheel, considering. "What about Alexis? She had access to your house. She assaulted Leah once before. She could be behind the cyberbullying as easily as Peyton."
"Leah saw Brooke hit Alexis at the Christmas party," I said slowly. I thought of Alexis’s gentleness with Falcon, her tangible fear of her mother.
Anger on her behalf clogged in my throat.
"Alexis cut off Leah's hair as a threat to protect her family.
She was terrified CPS would get involved.
But that was months ago. Why wait until now to do something so drastic?
And Alexis seemed genuinely confused when I asked about the camera and slippers.
She didn't know what I was talking about. "
"Fear makes people good liars."
"Maybe. But the evidence points more to Peyton, not Alexis or Chloe."
Camille pursed her lips. She looked like she wanted to say something, then thought better of it.
"What?" I asked.
She shrugged. "This is hearsay. Take it with a grain of salt."
"Tell me."
"At the Christmas silent auction, that humane society fundraiser Rowan hosts every year, Brooke got a little too buzzed at the open bar.
She was slurring her words, stumbling a bit, definitely drunk.
She leaned in and told me that everyone always judged her for drinking to deal with her son's special needs, but that Rowan and Whitney weren't as perfect as they pretended. "
I waited, hardly breathing.
"She said Rowan's husband was always gone because he's been having an affair.
Their marriage was on the rocks, but Rowan didn't want anyone to know.
" Camille glanced at me to gauge my reaction.
"And Whitney and Graham were nearly sued the summer before last. They'd had to pay off the Everett family to make a scandal disappear. "
My pulse quickened. "What kind of scandal?"
"Something about Taylor Everett's near drowning being suspicious.
There were drugs involved. Pills. Taylor had been in competition with Peyton to make swim captain, and then after her accident, Peyton got the title.
" She shook her head in disgust. "That's all I know.
As I said, just drunk gossip from Brooke. But..."
The lorazepam bottle prescribed to Brooke but found in Whitney's trash. It made sense now. "But it tracks," I finished.
"It tracks."
My scalp prickled with sweat. I rubbed at the tension headache forming behind my eyes. The pressure had been building for hours, a dull throb that matched my pulse.
Mia had made a terrible mistake, yes, but she wasn't a murderer. Somewhere in Blackthorn Shores, someone was walking free who had deliberately ended a young girl's life.
Chloe remained on the suspect list, and so did Alexis, but perky, blue-eyed, blond-haired Peyton Alistair fit the most pieces of the puzzle.
A fourteen-year-old girl. That's what kept snagging in my mind: not a monster, not some criminal mastermind. Just a kid. A kid who'd been taught that consequences were for other people.
The Mercedes glided to a stop by the curb opposite my cottage. Hydrangeas heavy with blooms lined my cracked walkway. The rain had thinned to a mist, but heavy clouds still obscured the moon as thunder boomed in the distance.
Camille put her hand on my forearm. "This is where you let me do the job you hired me to do. I will see Mia first thing in the morning and fight for her release pending adjudication. I will do everything I can. Just don't do anything stupid."
"I hear you." I opened the door and stepped out of the car. The night wrapped around me, close and damp and stifling. Behind me, the Mercedes idled and then pulled away. The taillights smeared red in the wet air and vanished around the curve.
What Camille said made sense. I knew I should go inside, lock the doors, and let Camille do what she did best, but good sense had stopped mattering somewhere around the moment they put handcuffs on my daughter.
I stood in my driveway, keys in hand. The front door was ten feet away. Apollo was waiting inside, alone for hours. The right thing, the sane thing, was to go in, lock the door, and trust Camille.
Every piece of evidence we had was tainted. The camera was compromised. The rock was hidden. Mia's confession was damning, and Chloe's testimony would seal Mia’s fate like a tomb. Along with the DNA evidence, Mia's skin cells, and Leah's blood.
Even if Zara recovered more footage, it might not be enough.
I needed something irrefutable.
But if Peyton was the killer, she'd left evidence somewhere. Killers always did. And Whitney would do anything to protect her daughter. I knew that like I knew my own mother’s heart. That's where the truth would be found.
The threat of danger had a strange effect. It steadied me. There wasn't a safe path. There wasn't even a good one. The only way forward was straight into the mouth of the dragon.
Without Mia, I had nothing left to lose.
That realization should have terrified me. Instead, it clarified everything. The police weren't going to find the answers that would free Mia. But I could. I had to.
I’d been helpless and impotent long enough. No more.
I waited until Camille had enough time to park in her garage, then I started walking north along Wyld Wood Lane. My legs felt heavy. Each step required conscious effort, like wading through Jell-O. I kept moving.
The house loomed larger with each step. Curtains framed wide panes of warm light as movement behind the glass.
The Alistairs were home.