Chapter Sixty-Night Petra
Chapter Sixty-night
PETRA
We’re all due at Adrianna’s bachelorette party but Holly and Georgia have vanished. Which gives me a perfect opportunity to search Holly’s cabana for the birthday invitation I saw her find in the hot springs. As I slip inside, my cell rings. I check the display and my stomach does a flip.
It’s Max.
‘Hey,’ I answer, upbeat. ‘You get the pictures?’
‘Petra,’ he replies, his clipped English accent reminding me horribly of my former headmistress. ‘What the hell? Did you put the wrong attachment? You sent me a bunch of junk.’
‘You didn’t like the pictures?’ I pretend to be shocked. ‘What about the close-up with Georgia? You could twist that one to look like they were fighting or something.’
‘Don’t tell me how to do my fucking job!
’ The rage in his voice actually makes me take a step back.
‘You sent me a load of puff. And what the fuck was the picture edited crap with Adrianna kissing some dark-haired stud? Did you really think you could get it past me? A child of eight could see it had been spliced together with a picture editor.’
‘I—’
‘I told you,’ he interrupts. ‘I need something good. Titan has a million-dollar ad revenue because we break celebrity stories, not because we publish pretty girls in wedding dresses. You’re supposed to send me pictures to sell magazines.
Not something that’s going to put me in court. Otherwise, you know what I have to do.’
‘Wait,’ I tell him. ‘You didn’t let me finish. I’m in Holly Stone’s cabana right now. Looking for the old birthday invitation Simone set up to shoot for Wrongfully Accused.’
My eyes land on Holly’s battered skull-motif suitcase pushed partially under the bed. I kneel and flip the lid.
Golden foiling flashes. The birthday invitation to Adrianna’s twenty-first birthday is right on top. I let out a breath, hardly able to believe it.
‘I found it,’ I tell him. ‘I got the birthday invite Simone hid in the cave.’ I’m staring. I remember this. The game of Truth or Dare Adrianna played to try and reveal who’d sent it.
He pauses. ‘You did?’
‘Uh huh. It’s got writing on it,’ I add. ‘Six feet under. I guess this is another one of Simone’s puzzles. You watch the show, right?’
‘Of course I watch the show.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘Sepulcrum,’ he says. ‘It’s marked on publicity material. Sepulcrum means tomb. AKA six feet under.’
‘It’s a hidden bar,’ I explain. ‘Set in the old panic room where Adrianna was held. It would be the perfect place to shoot a high drama scene if you could get the lighting. I have to be at the bachelorette now, but we’re due at Fortune House later …’
‘You need to get there,’ says Max. ‘Like I told you in New York, we had a tip-off. Simone had some documents which she planned on revealing. Something that would smash the Kensingtons apart. Sounds like you cracked her hiding place.’ I can almost hear his grin over the phone.
My stomach lurches. ‘I can’t do that to Leopold,’ I tell him.
‘Then it looks like the world is about to get a very different idea of Petra Morka.’
I put a hand out to steady myself, breath catching. I feel like I might actually vomit.
‘I can get there,’ I babble. ‘Easily. Tonight. I just need to slip away from the party while no one is watching.’
There’s a long moment where I think he might have just hung up.
‘I’ll give you until midnight,’ he decides. ‘If those documents really do reveal why Adrianna was kidnapped, it will be front page all over the world.’
‘I’ll get them,’ I promise. ‘Midnight.’