There was a whooshing sound of someone crunching through leaves. Spencer rubbed her eyes. “Hello? Who’s there?”
No answer. The crunching sounds grew louder and louder. Spencer blinked, searching for the path back to the Ivy House, but her vision was distorted and blurred. “Hello?” she cried again.
A hand clapped on her shoulder, and she screamed. She flailed her arms, trying to see who it was, but her senses were too muddled, the night too dark. Her legs gave out from under her, and she felt herself falling, falling, falling. The last thing she remembered seeing was a dark shape standing next to her, glaring. Maybe wanting to hurt her. Maybe wanting to get rid of her forever.
And then everything went black.
24
HANNA BRINGS HER A GAME
Hanna knew she was supposed to be in the stretch limo with her father, Isabel, and Kate, heading to the fund-raising ball, not balanced on her four-inch Louboutin platform heels outside the familiar Victorian house in Old Hollis that was home to Jeffrey Lebrecque’s photo studio. But here she was, like it or not. Ready to nail Colleen once and for all.
The porch light was on, throwing golden light onto Hanna’s professionally made-up face. The front parlor window was all lit up, too, which meant the photographer was home. Just before Hanna climbed the steps, her phone chimed. It was Richard, one of her dad’s campaign assistants. Just wanted to let you know the voter registration records database is back up, he wrote.
Perfect, Hanna replied. That meant she could search for where the Bakers had moved. The site had been down, and she’d had to resort to asking Richard about it, but she didn’t dare ask him to look up the family himself.
Then, rolling her shoulders back, she rang the bell. There were footsteps, and the door creaked open and the same graying man she’d seen the day before answered.
“Hello?” Jeffrey Lebrecque looked Hanna up and down, from the big ringlets in her hair to her navy chiffon dress to the faux-mink shrug around her shoulders she’d picked out for the ball. There was a gaudy gold ring on his pinkie finger, and he had the top two buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, exposing quite a bit of chest hair. Ick.
“Hi!” Hanna said brightly. “Are you Mr. Lebrecque?”
“That’s right.” The man furrowed his brow. “Do we have an appointment?”
“Actually, I’m here to pick up photos for Colleen Bebris,” Hanna said in her most innocent voice, batting her eyelashes at him. “I’m her best friend, and she asked me to do it. She got held up at an exercise class. She’s a pole dancer, did you know that?”
The photographer frowned. “I’m not sure I can do that. Ms. Bebris didn’t say someone else was going to pick them up. Maybe I should call her.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cell phone.
“No need!” Hanna said quickly, whipping out her own phone and showing him a text on the screen. “See?” The sender was Colleen Bebris, and the text asked if Hanna could pick up her photos. Of course it wasn’t really from Colleen—Hanna just used her mom’s phone to send the text, temporarily changing her mom’s contact information to Colleen’s name.
Jeffrey Lebrecque read the text, and his caterpillar-esque eyebrows knitted together. “There’s also the matter of payment.”
“Oh, she told me to pay for it and then she’d pay me back,” Hanna piped up, proud she’d thought to raid her emergency cash shoebox before coming.
The photographer peered at Hanna, and for a moment, she was afraid he was going to call her bluff. Did Mona-as-A and Real Ali-as-A worry they were going to get caught when they skulked, stole, and lied to get top-secret information on Hanna and the others? Was it wrong of her to do this? It wasn’t like she was ruining Colleen’s life, though. All she wanted was her boyfriend back.
“Follow me,” Mr. Lebrecque said, turning and heading down the hallway and into his studio. Slides and printouts covered a work desk, and a large-screen Apple monitor glowed in the corner. A fluffy white cat padded lazily through the room, and a calico preened itself on the windowsill. The place smelled like a mix of dust and cat litter and seemed sketchy in a way Hanna couldn’t quite put her finger on. She hunted around for telltale signs that this guy was running a covert Internet-porn operation, though she wasn’t entirely sure what she should be looking for. Playboy magazines? Blackout shades? Bottles of Cristal, like they drank in hip-hop videos?
Mr. Lebrecque shuffled to a table at the back of the room, sorted through a pile of envelopes, and pulled one out. “I picked these up from the printer today. Tell Colleen that I printed all of them, just like she asked, but if she wants more copies it’ll cost her extra.” He punched some numbers into a calculator. “So . . . that’ll be $450.”
Hanna gritted her teeth. Couldn’t Colleen have chosen a slightly cheaper photographer? Begrudgingly, she traded the cash for the envelope of photos and bid the photographer good-bye, scurrying out of the apartment as fast as she could. Her eyes were starting to itch from all that cat hair.
Her phone chirped when she stepped onto the porch, but it was just her father—he, Isabel, and Kate were at the event space, and he was wondering where Hanna was. Be there soon, Hanna typed back before slipping her phone into her bag and excitedly ripping open the envelope. She wondered if the various As had sometimes felt like this, too, when they’d gotten their hands on valuable evidence. There was something satisfying about it.
She stared at the stack of photos under the street lamp. The first was of Colleen looking fresh-faced and oh-so-sweet, like an actress on a Disney Channel show. The next shots were pretty much the same, just with slightly different facial expressions and camera angles. Hanna flipped through the stack, gazing at Colleen looking elated, then brooding, then bookish. Before she knew it, Hanna was looking at the last photo, a shot of Colleen winking at the camera from over her shoulder. She riffled through them once more just to make sure she hadn’t missed any, but she hadn’t.
They were exactly the same shots she’d seen from the window the day before. Nothing from a previous photo session, nothing she’d missed. They were all perfectly kosher and professional, and worse, Colleen looked really amazing in a lot of them, far more photogenic than Hanna was. Hanna kicked the streetlamp post. Why the hell had A told her to follow this stupid lead? Just to mess with her? For her to lose some cash? She should have known A was going to screw her over, not help her.
Someone coughed across the street, and Hanna shot up. It was only a college-age couple walking hand-in-hand down the sidewalk, but she felt nervous all the same. She tottered to her Prius, her ankles already aching, wrenched the car door open, and tossed the envelope inside so hard that it careened off the door and landed in the footwell. Groaning, she slid into the driver’s seat and reached for it, but she grabbed the wrong end and all of the pictures spilled out onto the carpet.
“Damn it.” Hanna leaned over and shoved the photos back into the slightly-too-small envelope once more. Her fingers grazed something behind the last photo. It didn’t feel glossy, like the photos, but more like a piece of computer paper.
She pulled the paper from the envelope and held it to the light. Colleen Evelina Bebris, it said at the top in plain font, listing her address, e-mail, Twitter name, and blog. Below that was what looked like a list. Dramatic experience, it said in bold. There were descriptions of the various school plays Colleen had been in, culminating with her part in Macbeth last week. It was a resume, presumably for when Colleen went on auditions. Boring.
Then, something at the bottom caught her eye. Commercial experience, a heading said. There was only one entry below it. Visiem Labak, Latvia, it said. Starring role in Latvian commercial for an important dietary supplement. According to the resume, the commercial had run last year on the most popular Latvian TV station.
Rifling through her bag, Hanna grabbed her phone and punched Visiem Labak into Google. All better, a translation came up. A bunch of what she could only assume were Latvian websites also popped on the screen, and a few showed a smiling person eating yogurt. A YouTube link appeared at the bottom of the first search page. Visiem Labak Commercial, it said. There was a still shot of Colleen’s face.
Hanna clicked the link. The commercial started with three girls sitting around a table at a café, drinking coffee and laughing. The camera then focused on Colleen, who rattled off something in a language Hanna couldn’t even begin to decipher, then clutched her stomach miserably. The other girls handed her a cup of yogurt, which Colleen began to eat with gusto. Next Colleen shut herself in the coffee bar’s bathroom, putting up a sign that surely said OCCUPIED in Latvian. Happy music played, there was a voice-over in Latvian, and Colleen emerged from the bathroom looking victorious. She held up a pot of the yogurt and grinned maniacally. The commercial ended with another shot of the yogurt.
“Oh. My. God,” Hanna whispered. This was just like those stupid commercials where Jamie Lee Curtis pimped out Activia to bloated, constipated women. And here Colleen was, playing the Latvian girl who needed a yogurt laxative to get her regular again. No wonder she hadn’t bragged about it. Hanna guessed she hadn’t told anyone.
“Yes,” she whispered, placing the resume and envelope into the glove compartment. After all this went down, she’d charge Colleen for the pictures, if she still wanted them. It wasn’t like Hanna needed them anymore. Those pictures didn’t tell a story. But a certain video did.
25
SECRETS, OPEN AND CLOSED
As dusk was falling, Aria pulled into the circular driveway at Noel’s house and shut off the engine. The house was dark, with only one of the porch lights lit. She checked the text on her phone again. Come at six, Noel had said—and it was six on the dot.
She stepped out of the car and walked toward the door, careful not to trip in her high heels. She was going to Mr. Marin’s fund-raising ball after this, an event she and Noel were supposed to attend together. Obviously, that was off. Aria wasn’t sure if Noel was planning to go anyway. A lot of kids from Rosewood Day would be there, after all.
Footsteps sounded from inside after she rang the bell. Noel opened the door quietly, not looking her in the eye. Aria almost gasped at his appearance. His face was puffy and red, his eyes bloodshot. His hair looked like it hadn’t been washed that morning, and he had the exhausted, heavy-lidded look of someone who hadn’t slept.
“I got your stuff together,” Noel said woodenly, turning and heading toward the den. Aria followed. The house was unusually quiet and still, with no TVs blaring or music playing or Patrice humming jovially in the kitchen.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
Noel sniffed, walking stiffly to a cardboard box that was sitting on the couch. “My mom went to that fund-raiser. My dad’s . . . somewhere.” He eyed her. “Why do you care, anyway?”
Aria flinched. It was weird to see Noel angry, especially at her. “I was just making conversation,” she said sheepishly. She grabbed the box and hefted it into her arms. “I’ll go, okay?”
