Three
Belle, West Virginia
Giselle Buckley had just given the worst performance of her life.
It wasn’t in front of a panel of judges, nodding inscrutably as they ticked the boxes on their scorecards, and it wasn’t in
front of the audience usually composed of her fellow competitors’ grousing families, local reporters, and the occasional model
scout—if, of course, they could be persuaded to make the journey from New York or LA to her corner of Appalachia, where America’s
last functioning coal mines still coughed out a few hundred union jobs a year.
She wasn’t laced into a sequined gown; she wasn’t wearing false lashes so thick she could hardly blink; she wasn’t, at least,
woozy from forty-eight hours of fasting. And she wasn’t angling for a tiara or a ribbon or her fourth Miss Teen title. She
was, at the moment, just trying to convince her backstabbing weasel of an ex-boyfriend to unlock her cell door.
“Please, Sutton,” she’d whimpered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I want you back.”
Even Sutton Reeve, who had dropped out of high school in tenth grade in the hopes of being a professional motocross driver,
could tell she was full of shit.
“Shoulda thought of that before. Shoulda kept your promise.”
Giselle wrapped her fingers around the bars. Pressing her face as close to Sutton’s as she could manage, she said softly,
“I know. I’m sorry.”
It came off far more convincing this time. Pageants weren’t acting—they were performing, which was more than just a slight difference in semantics. But pageants still required Giselle to pretend to be something she wasn’t. And she was good at that; she always had been.
So she could play penitent. She could play ashamed.
Sutton shook his head fiercely and stepped away from her. “I don’t believe you.”
“I made a mistake.” Giselle strained to meet his gaze. “I wish I could take it back. More than anything.”
His gaze dropped, but Sutton didn’t retreat any farther. For all his bluster, his six-foot-three frame, and the wispy beard
he’d been trying to grow since freshman year, Sutton Reeve was actually on the verge of crying. Giselle’s heart fluttered
with hope.
Sutton raised his head to look at her, a swallow rippling in his throat. The glaze of unshed tears in his eyes turned her
stomach hollow.
Maybe it was so easy to play ashamed because, deep down, she really was. Not because she had made Sutton cry. He deserved
that, and the four flat tires on his ATV. He had done her in, ratted on her, out of jilted, petulant humiliation. All because
of one stupid photo.
Sutton’s voice was more whiny than tremulous. “Did you take my ring off when you kissed?”
Giselle flinched. It was a promise ring, not an engagement ring—he had repeatedly made that clear—and when Sutton had gotten
it at Walmart he had asked very meaningfully about the return policy. Still, Giselle knew, it had been no minor expense, given
that his only current work was being paid under the table at Jiffy Lube. Another quiver of guilt went through her.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “But it didn’t mean anything. I swear.”
Tears were still pooling at the corners of Sutton’s eyes, and it did make her stomach clench, just a little bit.
If nothing else, Sutton was a known quantity.
He had been after her since fifth grade, making moony faces over his lunch tray, scrambling to sit next to her in class, inviting her to his motocross races or on fly-fishing trips.
Sutton, in isolation, was harmless. But that was discounting his blood.
Maybe her biggest mistake, then, had been running around with the sheriff’s kid. She suspected that, had Sutton gone to anyone
else but his own father, he wouldn’t have been believed. After all, what was the concrete evidence of her crimes? Whispers
about her lingering suspiciously around checkout counters and lottery terminals?
“Shit.” Sutton wiped at his face. “You’re a real good liar, you know.”
A bolt of anger finally cracked her charade. Giselle tensed. “You’ve picked up some tricks of your own. Did you tell your
daddy where you got your new NASCAR jacket?”
Immediately he flushed bright red. “You keep your mouth shut.”
“I don’t think he’d be too pleased to hear that you bought it with stolen credit card numbers.”
Another reason Sutton probably wouldn’t have ratted on her to anyone but his father: He had enjoyed the profits of her criminal
behavior, too. So had all their friends. Giselle had been convinced it was safer that way—no one could narc without damning
themselves, too. What was the term for that? Mutually assured destruction? Belle High wasn’t exactly rated for its academics,
but they’d all lived through enough duck-and-cover drills to understand the fundamentals of nuclear war.
She hadn’t accounted for her own slipup. Well, really, she hadn’t accounted for Cody witnessing it. Cody Simms—Sutton’s best
friend and fellow high school dropout—was not someone Giselle considered sly or clever. And maybe it wasn’t cleverness, just
cruelty. What else would have provoked him to not only snap the photo, but to send it to everyone at their school? He had
to have known it would end like this.
After the photo had been circulating for three excruciating days, her mother and grandmother had sat her down for a talk.
“You know we don’t support that,” her grandmother said quietly. “Not in this house.”
Her mother, at least, had the decency to cry. But she didn’t protest; the deed to the double-wide was in her grandmother’s
name. Giselle was given an hour to pack her bags, to hug her little sisters goodbye, to flip off her mother’s deadbeat boyfriend
one last time. And then she was out, into the hopelessly heavy dusk.
She tried Bonnie’s house first. After Giselle rang the doorbell twice, Bonnie had appeared, her puffy-eyed and tear-streaked
face lit up from behind by the kitchen’s humming fluorescent light.
“I’m sorry, Gigi,” she whispered. And that was all. Before Giselle could even say a word, Bonnie shut the door in her face.
Stomach churning and heart pounding, Giselle had spent the night on a park bench. She wondered how Bonnie had managed to explain
herself. Bonnie Nash was the quintessential good girl, a crucifix-wearing deacon’s daughter. Maybe she’d been able to convince
her parents it was a one-time mistake, a drunken fuckup; maybe she’d even claimed that Giselle had taken advantage of her.
The photo hadn’t told the whole story. No one knew that they had been sneaking around since January.
At least Giselle didn’t have to sleep outside for long. The next morning Sheriff Reeve had pulled up in his cruiser, cuffed
her, and brought her to the station. His expression was grim, his voice gruff, as if he were delivering her to the firing
squad.
“I expected better from you,” he said, and Giselle was certain he wasn’t just talking about stolen credit card numbers.
But the holding cell was warm, and so was the microwaved meal he’d grudgingly shoved at her through the bars. Sutton had let
her pass a whole day and night in silent panic before he’d had the decency to show his face.
It had taken almost an hour of wheedling and not-so-veiled threats, but at last Sutton was wavering. Surely he would fold soon. Sutton Reeve was a lot of things, but he wasn’t malicious. And he really did care for her. Which made everything she had done worse.
Sutton took a step toward the cell. Then another. He leaned forward, fingers closing around the bars, near enough that their
noses brushed. Giselle felt another flicker of hope.
“You know,” he said, voice low, “it’s not just the law coming down on you. I could forgive a thief, even a cheater. But you
gotta get right with God. It’s your kind of sin that He isn’t too keen on pardoning.”
And with that, her heart dropped into her stomach. Even if she convinced Sutton that she still loved him, even if she persuaded
Sheriff Reeve to release her without charges, she had nowhere to go. Her pageant earnings were held hostage in her mother’s
bank account, inaccessible until she turned eighteen in July. Her friends had all turned their backs on her; her grandmother
had probably already changed the locks. There was nothing left for her in Belle. Her life as she knew it was over.
But it was easier to feel fury than grief. Anger was safer than despair. And that was why, instead of dissolving into tears,
she spat in Sutton’s face.
He stumbled backward, clutching his cheek as if he’d been struck. “You b—”
At that precise moment, the door to the jail room swung open.
In the threshold was Sheriff Reeve, who Giselle expected, and then two more figures behind him, who she had not. Sutton began
to garble out an accusation, but Sheriff Reeve cut him off with a glare. He fell silent as the two others filed into the room.
The first was an older man with a thick shock of white hair, blindingly white, almost as if from dye rather than age.
He wore a fitted dark suit, its simplicity belying the finery; Giselle could recognize 100 percent wool and real silk.
Other than that, he was unremarkable—unnervingly so.
A specter of a man, featureless and anonymous. It made her skin prickle.
The second was a girl around her own age. She had olive skin and wide, liquid-dark eyes, a delicate-boned face framed with
curtain bangs. The rest of her hair, pin straight and pure black, was bound up in a high ponytail. She couldn’t have had more
than an inch on Giselle, but her lithe and angular frame made her seem taller. There was something subtly powerful about her,
maybe in her still, impassive expression, or her perfect posture—shoulders back, chin held high.
Or maybe it was the outline of the pistol on her right hip, beneath her leather jacket. That sinking feeling returned.
Sheriff Reeve jerked a hand toward Sutton. “Come on. Time to go.”
Sutton’s jaw dropped. “But she—”
“That’s enough.” Sheriff Reeve spoke in the same rough tone that he had used when loading Giselle into the back of his cruiser.
“Come with me. Now.”