Chapter 70
Agnes’s parents’ yacht, Catalina Channel, Offshore from Newport Beach
I’m so wrapped up in the delicious bliss of just lying in the arms of the man I love that I stop paying attention to anything else. When I finally glance up, I notice that Agnes and Antoinette have materialised and are sharing a lounger on the top deck, they’re both asleep.
Charlie is gently snoring next to me.
I look around but can’t see Lauren anywhere.
I haven’t seen her since she said she needed a moment to herself.
A jolt of concern flashes through me.
I stand up and wrap a sarong around my waist. There’s a breeze coming off the sea now that makes me shiver. Goosebumps prickle on my arms.
I find Lauren staring over the side of the boat, into the dark, swirling water.
She’s holding her lighter, flicking it on and off as she stares at the waves.
I cough to alert her to my presence.
She spins around and stares at me in surprise. ‘Kitty! I thought you were—’
‘Asleep?’ I say, moving closer to her. ‘Like the others?’
She nods and smiles at me. ‘It’s been an exhausting few days.’
‘It has,’ I say, joining her and looking into those black, black waters. ‘It really has.’
She peers at my face, her eyes searching it for something. ‘Aren’t you tired?’
I shake my head. ‘Too hyped up over finally getting rid of those bodies,’ I say. ‘That and the fact I didn’t drink any of your drugged lemonade.’
Lauren stares at me.
There’s silence for a moment or two before she regains her composure.
Another smile, saccharine sweet.
A little shake of her head.
She’s good.
I have to give her that.
I totally underestimated her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her brow furrowing in confusion. ‘I’m not sure I quite follow.’
I lean in closer. ‘It’s quite simple,’ I say.
‘I didn’t drink any of your drugged lemonade.
That’s why I’m not unconscious on deck like the rest of them.
’ I take another step towards her. ‘So what was the next part of your plan going to be, Lauren? Because it was you, wasn’t it?
The WeHo Ripper. It’s been you all along. ’
Her face folds.
It was Travis who told me.
I didn’t really think he was talking about the police when he was gasping ‘Law-man’ as he bled out. I knew he was trying to say ‘Lauren’, that she was part of what had been going on with Cort.
I just hadn’t realised how big a part she’d played.
I was given another clue on the way home from the cabin.
‘I’m so glad Agnes got Lauren’s message telling you where we were,’ I’d said to Charlie as we drove through the desert. We were following Agnes and Lauren in Agnes’s car. Antoinette was asleep in the back seat.
Charlie glanced over at me, his face puzzled. ‘What message? We didn’t get a message.’
That didn’t make sense. ‘How did you find us then?’
He gave a sheepish smile. ‘Location sharing,’ he says. ‘I didn’t turn it off. I liked seeing where you were.’
But Find My Friends doesn’t work without a signal.
And Lauren had told me there wasn’t any.
The smoking gun, though, had been the notebook.
The one that Lana Del Gay accidentally led me to. I pulled it out and flicked through it. Imagine my surprise when I found pages and pages of that list of names Cort had supposedly written. Pages and pages of Lauren trying to perfect his handwriting.
She planted the note.
She stole Antoinette’s scarf.
She wanted Cort to take the fall.
For her murders.
The only thing I don’t know is why she did it. Why was she killing women?
She’s staring at me now, a look of confusion on her face that I’d totally buy if I didn’t know she was a killer.
‘Me?’ she says. ‘Kitty, I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was Cort. We all know that. And why would I drug the lemonade? I made that to distract myself. Hello. My boyfriend just died, remember?’ There’s no hint of fear or desperation in her voice.
‘You’re actually a really good actor,’ I say. ‘It’s a shame you didn’t apply yourself in school as much as you did in plotting and killing.’
‘I’m not acting,’ she says but a muscle twitches at the corner of her mouth. That’s her tell.
‘You set Cort up.’
And, just like that, the mask drops.
She blinks at me and lets out a cracked laugh. ‘That idiot? Kitty, I didn’t set him up. He knew exactly what I was doing. He might not have actually killed anyone, but he was still complicit. He brought them to me. He might have been an annoying motherfucker but women flocked to him.’
‘He charmed them so you could murder them?’
‘I didn’t murder them,’ she says, sounding almost outraged. When I open my mouth to tell her to tell the truth she holds a hand up to silence me. ‘I saved them.’
‘They’re fucking dead, Lauren,’ I say. ‘That doesn’t scream saved to me.’
She laughs but it’s a horrible hollow noise. ‘I saved them from themselves, Kitty. Don’t you see?’
‘No. I really don’t. All I see is four dead girls. Four families who will never see their daughter, their sister, their cousin again.’ I pause for a moment. ‘Is it four? Are there any more?’
She shakes her head. ‘Just the four. For now. When I’ve got rid of all you nosy little gremlins, there will be more.’
That’s when I notice the bottle at her feet is actually a fuel cannister.
‘You’re going to kill more women?’
‘Kitty,’ she says, shaking her head as if she’s disappointed in me. ‘I’m going to save more women. Once I’ve got rid of y’all snoopers.’
‘Lauren,’ I echo her tone. ‘How is strangling these women and leaving their bodies by Hollywood landmarks saving them exactly? You’re really going to need to walk me through that one because I don’t understand.’
The only thing I understand is that she’s a fucking lunatic and that I should push her overboard now.
But I’m curious.
She clearly believes in her mission as much as I believe in mine.
‘Is this a trick?’ she’s saying now, narrowing her eyes at me.
‘How would it be a trick?’ I say, holding my hands up and showing her that I’m not carrying anything in my bikini. ‘Tell me. I want to know.’
Her brows pinch. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’
I shake my head. ‘Not really, Lauren, no.’
She sighs and shakes her hair out. ‘You saw all those comments. Online,’ she says.
‘You said yourself that they didn’t even let the bodies get cold before they were calling those women sluts.
’ Her voice cracks a little on the last word.
‘That’s what the world thinks of women who sell their bodies.
The saving grace is that they didn’t have to read any of it themselves.
Now they don’t have to worry about any of their sins. ’
‘Their sins?’ I repeat. ‘You mean making their own choices about their own bodies?’
Lauren just stares at me. ‘You have no idea, do you? No idea what it’s like to be called a slut. For it to be the one thing that defines you. To be the biggest skank in the world. To get anonymous death threats on Myspace. For your own father to call you a whore. To disown you.’
Ah.
So there’s a personal story here.
There usually is.
‘What happened to you, Lauren?’ I keep my voice low and level. A trick that I learned from my time in the cellar with Aidan Ward. Guess it wasn’t a total waste of time after all. ‘Tell me.’
She stares at me for a moment as if trying to work out whether I’m being genuine. ‘I’ve lived it,’ she says eventually. ‘I know what the future looks like for those girls.’
I take another tentative step towards her. ‘How?’
She sighs. ‘I was thirteen,’ she says. ‘There was this house party. I was going through my pushing-boundaries era so I snuck out of the house and went.’ She stares back out to sea.
‘Where I grew up, it was small, my dad was the local pastor. I didn’t know that some of the boys had a bet on to see who could nail the pastor’s daughter. ’ Her gaze turns watery.
‘Lauren,’ I say but she holds a hand up to stop me.
‘Anyway, I was young and wanted to show the other kids that I wasn’t just this prim little princess.
So when this guy offered me a drink, I took it.
I’d never had alcohol before. He thought it was funny and, when I finished it, he got me another.
And then another. I guess I blacked out at some point.
’ She pauses to take a deep, shuddery breath.
‘All I can really remember is coming round in a bedroom and my dress was all bunched up, my underwear off. I couldn’t find them so I had to go downstairs without them. Everyone was looking at me.’
‘You were assaulted,’ I say but she’s not listening to me. She’s still staring out at the horizon, flicking the lighter on and off.
‘The next day at school, everyone was talking about me. The guy went to our local high school and had been bragging about what he’d done to me.
Some kids from school had seen me come down the stairs all crumpled and confused.
The story spread like wildfire. I was a slut for the next three years.
Until my dad threw me out. That’s when I came to LA.
’ The tears that have been pooling in her eyes finally fall down her cheeks.
She wipes them away with the back of her hand like they’re an embarrassment.
‘That’s when I saw how many girls out here needed my help. ’
‘Killing them is not helping them, Lauren.’ It’s Antoinette.
I was wondering when she was going to make an appearance.
Of course I didn’t let my wing woman drink drugged lemonade either.
Even if it was watered down.
‘About time,’ I say to her. ‘No rush. Just a lunatic with a lighter and a cannister of fuel.’
‘Sorry,’ Antoinette says. ‘I think I did actually drift off for a bit. It’s really soothing, isn’t it? Being rocked by a boat in the sun. I think I’ll buy one.’
‘That’s great,’ I say. ‘But maybe you can share your wishlist with me some other time.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Of course.’ She side-eyes Lauren. ‘Are we doing this then?’
I shake my head. ‘No,’ I say.
Antoinette looks confused. ‘What do you mean no? We agreed. Get her confession, then throw her overboard.’
Lauren is looking back and forth between us, watching a verbal tennis match.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I say. ‘We’re not killing her.’
Antoinette stares at me as if I’ve checked out of reality. ‘She is literally standing there with a lighter and a cannister of something I’m willing to wager isn’t fucking Mountain Dew. She was going to kill us.’
‘She’s not a monster,’ I say. ‘She’s a survivor.’
My sister still looks baffled. ‘What? How is she a victim? A victim of what exactly?’
‘Of men,’ I say. ‘Of the patriarchy. Of violence starting in the mouth. Of having her body policed from the age of thirteen.’
Antoinette rolls her eyes. ‘Yes, I heard her little story. How do we even know that’s true though, Kits?
She’s already proved to us that she’s a better actor than we realised.
It could all be lies.’ She folds her arms across her chest. ‘The only thing we know for sure about her is that she’s killed women. A lot of women.’
‘Because of the patriarchy,’ I say. ‘Because of how it uses words like slut to control women.’ I shake my head. ‘No. We’re not killing her.’
‘What are we going to do with her then?’
‘We’re going to recruit her,’ I say and Antoinette stares at me so hard that I think her eyes might actually eject from her skull.
‘Recruit her?’ she hisses. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘She can help us,’ I say. ‘She can help us get rid of the real enemy. The men who assault women. The men who hurt women.’ I smile at my sister. ‘She’s already pretty proficient in killing.’
‘Have you totally gone off the deep end? She’s a killer. Of women. She was going to kill me. Us.’
I take a step towards my sister. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But we don’t kill women. Not when we can help them. Lauren’s just been damaged by the patriarchy and shame and everything that goes with being a woman. We can help her. I know we can.’
Antoinette presses her lips together. ‘Kitty …’
But I haven’t finished. ‘No, listen to me. I know it won’t be easy but we can train her up. She can head up operations over here when we go back to London!’
Antoinette holds her hand up. ‘No, Kitty. She’s completely unhinged. She can’t be trusted with something like this. Absolutely not.’
‘But—’ I start before I’m interrupted by a scream.
I spin around and stare at the spot where Lauren was just standing but she’s not there. I look around. She isn’t anywhere.
And then I hear it.
The crash of something hitting the water.
Something that sounds like a body.
Antoinette and I run to the railings and stare over into the black water.
There’s no sign of Lauren.
But Agnes is standing there, her eyes full of flame and fury.