Kim let out a breath. Annie could almost feel her relax over the phone line. “Thank you. Thank you,” she said. “She is a good girl, maybe not perfect. But good, you know?”

“Yes, I know,” Annie said. “Just wanted you to be the first to hear the news.”

“Thank you, Annie. Thank you.”

Annie hung up and looked back through the forensics report. There was no evidence to pin the murder on Brianna Connors, either, or to corroborate a two-person attack.

She glanced at the photographs of Olivia, Brianna, Drew, Beth, and the bloody crime scene that she’d taped to the whiteboard on the far side of her office. She got up and pulled Beth’s photo from the board.

If not Beth Lee or Brianna Connors, then who? Who killed the girl that came all the way from England? And why?

A GIANT WEIGHT LIFTED off Beth’s shoulders after her mother called from work with the news. At first she had been scared, but now she was just mad and sad. Deep down, she knew she hadn’t been a suspect. Not really. But it still hurt to have to explain herself. She could act tough, but she wasn’t that tough. Her mom once told her that she was like a porcupine: “spiny on the outside, but so tender and sweet on the inside.” The analogy grossed her out, and she wondered when her mom had ever eaten porcupine.

The first thing she did as a “free woman” was text Hay-Tay:

BETH: UR NOT GETTING RID OF ME.

HAYLEY: ?

BETH: POLICE LAB SAYS NO BLOOD ON MY GEISHA COSTUME.

HAPPY DANCE!

TAYLOR: LIKE WE’D EVER BE ABLE 2 LIVE W/O U. I’M SO GLAD UR OK & TALKING 2 ME. I NEVER TOLD YOUR SECRET. SWEAR!

BETH: T, I’M SORRY. FRIENDS?

TAYLOR:

And while the group of three girls had finally made up, like they’d all known they eventually would, things were about to get very, very difficult for another Port Gamble girl.

Chapter 23

BRIANNA CONNORS WAS BORED OUT OF HER MIND. She’d been hunkered down in that drafty, smelly, abandoned Port Gamble house number 7734, alone for over an hour while Drew went off to parts unknown. Getting food, she hoped. It was so cold that even though she hated the thought of it, the sixteen-year-old decided to scrounge around for some extra blankets. She never let used clothing touch her skin—even if it was labeled “vintage”—but just then she’d gladly take a scratchy old blanket. Even a painter’s drop cloth. Anything that would keep her warm. As she moved along the darkened hallway, she noticed her phone on the table. She knew that Drew had said not to use it so the police couldn’t track them, but the flashlight app surely couldn’t hurt, right?

Brianna turned on the phone and nearly jumped up and down when the screen flickered brightly.

Drew must have replaced the SIM card, she thought and smiled.

But her giddiness dissipated when a strange new text flashed across the screen:

LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU’VE DONE IT.

It was from a number she knew all too well, but the message was confusing. Was this text actually for her? And what was “it”? Brianna scrolled up to see the text history, but there was only the single message. Any others had all been erased.

That’s odd, Brianna thought, turned on the flashlight, and found her way to the bedroom.

Peering through the darkness, she saw that the room still had the remains of a bed—and a musty blanket.

Gross! How did I end up in a dump like this?

The door slammed, and though it seemed impossible, the rickety house got even colder.

“Brianna!” Drew yelled out.

“I’m in here.”

“I have something for you. I think you’re going to like it.”

Drew breezed into the room, and Brianna’s mood brightened.

“I hope it’s a space heater or a hot panini.”

“It’s better than a panini,” Drew said.

“What is it?”

“Hug first,” he said, reaching for her in the dark.

Drew kissed her on the forehead and ran his hands up over the small of her back. The effect gave her even more goose bumps. She pushed away, and like a sprung trap, his hands were around her neck.

“Hey, stop messing around, stupid!” she said, trying escape.

Drew grinned. “Game over, Bree.”

“You’re hurting me,” she gasped.

Brianna started to choke as she tried to twist her way from her boyfriend’s vise-like grip.

“That’s kind of the point,” Drew whispered in her ear. “You’ve called me stupid for the last time. You’re the stupid one. You always have been and soon you will be dead.”

TO HAYLEY AND TAYLOR’S DISMAY, Text Creeper would not give up. The mystery texter sent yet another message, and this one crossed the line of mere commentary:

CASE FILE #613-7H: PLS MEET ME. WE NEED 2 TALK.

At least the creep was polite, the sisters thought. Of course, it didn’t matter how polite Text Creeper was. Taylor and Hayley knew they shouldn’t meet him. It violated another one of their crime writer dad’s cardinal rules: “Politeness is sometimes a trick. A killer will pretend to be friendly, or even needy—then, bam! You’re buried alive.”

Hayley and Taylor picked up their phones as if they were AK-47s, synchronized, loaded, and ready to fire in tandem. As they sat at the big kitchen table, house number 19 smelling of cinnamon and sugar from an apple pie Taylor had made in her continuing quest to learn how to do one domestic thing better than anyone, the twins started scrolling through the text messages from the freak who had stalked them since Olivia died:

CASE FILE #613-7H: I KNOW WHO KILLED HER.

CASE FILE #613-7H: SHE DESERVED WHAT SHE GOT.

CASE FILE #613-7H: PLS MEET ME. WE NEED 2 TALK.

Naively, they had believed that if they simply ignored him, he’d go away. Maybe he was a creepy thrill seeker who liked to mess with the heads of young girls. How would they ever know if they didn’t meet him and find out what he wanted?

“I’ll text him back,” Hayley said.

“What are you going to say?” Taylor asked.

“Something short,” Hayley said. “I don’t know.” She thought a moment and worked her thumbs over the characters on her phone. She spun her phone on the table so Taylor could see what she wanted to send:

HAYLEY: OK. WILL MEET U. WATER TOWERS IN PG. B THERE @ 4.

Taylor stared at the tiny screen and then looked her sister in the eye.

“Holy crap, Hayley. Are you sure?”

Hayley nodded. “We can always back out. But I want to get to the bottom of this. Nobody seems to be able to figure out who killed Olivia. So what are we supposed to do? I want to know what’s up. We aren’t like other people. We can do this.”

Despite how hard they tried to be just like everyone else, the fact of the matter was that they were not. Their mom knew it. Savannah knew it. If they could help find Olivia’s killer, both twins believed they had to try—even if it meant meeting Text Creeper.

Taylor pushed back her chair and got up. She carried her pie from the counter where it had been cooling to the table.

“What makes you think this freak knows something?” she asked.

Hayley disregarded the question and eyed the pie. It looked pretty good—maybe the best one her sister had made in her never-ending pursuit for baking supremacy. “I could tell you I have a feeling,” she finally said. “But when I say that to you of all people, it sounds so lame. But, really, that’s all I have. And maybe a little bit of hope.”

Taylor wasn’t convinced. “Shouldn’t we tell Dad? Mom?”

“Dad is clueless,” Hayley said, feeling a little disloyal by saying so, but it was true. When it came to whatever it was that was going on with them, he was oblivious. She let out a sigh. “Mom’s been working so much, we’ve hardly seen her.”