“I don’t really know her,” Hayley said. She didn’t ever want people to think she was two-faced, a trait she considered among the worst a person could have. “I feel kind of sorry for her.”

Colton nodded. “How can they say all that about her?”

“My dad says that there isn’t anything the media loves better than a pretty killer. The media is dog-piling on her because she didn’t act sad when the camera was watching.”

“Yeah, but her behavior is kind of weird, to say the least,” Colton said. “Given what’s going on.”

Hayley couldn’t argue that, not much anyway. “Stupid, wrong, whatever,” she finally said. “That doesn’t mean that she killed Olivia.”

Colton pushed a little. “She had that cut on her hand—remember? We saw it at school.”

Hayley nodded. “But it was a small cut and the police didn’t find much blood on her. If Olivia fought back, Brianna’s injury would probably have been bigger and she would have been splattered with blood.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Colton said, his mind now back to the first time he noticed the scars on his mother’s palms. She’d lied to him that she’d fallen though a plate glass window, but he later found out they were from the time she’d been attacked in the Safeway parking lot while he was in his car seat watching everything, but not really seeing enough of it to understand what was going on.

At least never admitting to it.

As Hayley and Colton surfed the web, they discovered that most of the tabloids and webzines portrayed Brianna as intentionally hyping up the drama for a potential book or movie deal. Nobody had seen her or Drew since her dad and stepmother had returned to town, and until the pair surfaced, all the daily rags had was the same, tired footage that they kept replaying over and over.

The first was the Flip cam video that the North Kitsap Herald reporter took at the crime scene. The second was the surveillance footage from the Victoria’s Secret shopping trip the afternoon after Olivia’s murder. The last one was a grainy black-and-white make-out video taken by the surveillance camera in the elevator at the Silverdale Beach Hotel.

And then there was the Inside Edition piece. The reporter for the tabloid TV show had called it a “scoop,” but in reality it was an ambush on Port Gamble’s police chief.

Annie Garnett had taken a short walk to the General Store and back to clear her head when the Inside Edition cameraman and reporter—a young man with fake, tanned skin that made him look like a Cheeto with bushy eyebrows—scurried over to grab a few sound bites outside the police department.

“Isn’t it true that Brianna Connors was doing yoga in the hall right after the murder?” he asked.

“I don’t really want to get into that,” Annie said, feeling very uncomfortable. She moved her large hands out of view.

The reporter cocked a caterpiller brow and went on. “Isn’t it true that she’s no longer cooperating in the investigation?”

Annie’s unflappable composure sank a little more, though she hid it well. She was pissed off. Big-time. She wasn’t about to lose her cool, however. Not then, not there with that twit from tabloid TV.

“It is true that Ms. Connors and Mr. Marcello have declined for now, but we’re hoping we can schedule something soon,” she said, stepping away.

“Wait a second! I have something to show you,” the reporter said.

A second later, he thrust his cell phone in her face and played back a video.

“This will air tonight,” he said.

The camera zeroed in on Olivia’s parents as they sat on a sofa in some posh Seattle hotel. A floral arrangement of ice-blue hydrangeas and creamy-white gladiolas the size of a Mini Cooper provided the backdrop.

“Sources tell Inside Edition,” the interviewer on the video said in a breathless voice, “that your daughter’s murder might have been some kind of a game gone wrong.”

Eager to make his point, Edward Grant nearly lunged at the camera to get closer to the lens. “Our daughter was slaughtered by a soulless girl and her boyfriend. I don’t have any idea what they were doing that night, but I can tell you that Olivia was not a willing participant. This was no game gone wrong. No girl as smart as our Olivia plays a game to lose her life.”

Mrs. Grant dabbed at her eyes when the interviewer turned to her.

“I just can’t comment. I really couldn’t. I’m not a judgmental person. I will say—and I hope this doesn’t offend anyone because the people here have been rather kind—but I really do wish that the police would do something.”

After ditching the reporter, Annie Garnett sighed. She felt upset and disappointed. Things were spiraling out of control. She wondered who told the TV reporter about the yoga. She didn’t want that out. It was a piece of the puzzle—and an inflammatory one at that.

Once inside the safety of the station, Annie was greeted by Tatiana bearing licorice spice tea, the chief’s favorite.

“I saw that through the window. You could use something to calm you down,” she said.

Annie allowed a slight smile to cross her face. It was as fake a smile as she’d ever given.

“What I could really use now is a Xanax,” she said.

Tatiana shook her head. “Just drink the tea. You’re gonna need it.” She held out a slip of paper.

“What’s that?”

“Brianna’s dad. He’s mad, mad, mad. Says that Brianna ran away because of you.”

“Ran away? What do you mean?”

“The father says that his daughter is missing. She’s not returning his calls,” Tatiana said, passing the slip of paper across the desk. “He’s a real jerk too.”

Annie nodded. That he was.

IF THERE COULD BE A SUBJECT that trumped Olivia’s murder in the halls of Kingston High School as fodder for incessant gossip and Criminal Minds—type speculation, it was the sudden disappearance of Brianna Connors and Drew Marcello. One minute they were the focus of a police investigation for a murder and what they may or may not know about what happened Halloween night. The next, they’d morphed into the dreaded “persons of interest” category. And then, just as quickly, they were gone.

Beth Lee, Colton James, and Hayley and Taylor Ryan sat across from the library and tried to piece it all together.

“You run when you’re guilty, right?” Beth said.

Colton unzipped his hoodie. “Or if you think you’ve been framed,” he said.

“Guilty, I say,” Beth repeated.

Taylor tapped the screen on her phone. “Neither one of them has posted anything on Facebook or Twitter for like sixteen hours.”

“My guess is that they are dead,” Beth said, testing the strength of her spiked hair by pressing her fingertips gently against each point. “Who can go without posting for sixteen hours?”

“Or sixteen minutes,” Taylor said.

“Let’s think about it a little,” Hayley said, always approaching an issue or problem with logic. “Any number of things could have happened to them. Flight doesn’t mean they went willingly.”

“What are you getting at?” Beth asked.

“Maybe they were kidnapped by the real killer?” Colton asked.

“Possible, I guess,” Hayley said, though she didn’t think it was likely. Even so, she wanted to back up her boyfriend’s theory.

“Like maybe they got in a car accident or something?” Taylor said, realizing that the minute she gave voice to the idea it was probably the lamest suggestion anyone could come up with.

“I’ll stick with my original theory,” Beth said. “You run because you’re guilty.”

LATER THAT DAY, the Seattle Times updated its website, moving the story of a police cadet who got drunk and rolled his car into a school playground from the top of the page to:

PORT GAMBLE COUPLE DODGES MURDER INVESTIGATION

Brianna Connors and Drew Marcello, the teenagers caught in the drama of an investigation surrounding the murder of Olivia Grant, a 16-year-old exchange student from London, have fled Port Gamble.