New town slogan: people are just dying to go to Port Gamble. #EasyBreezyDead

Never forget Olivia Grant. #EasyBreezyDead

Probably killed herself. Proves her guilt. Please RT

#EasyBreezyDead

Taylor and Hayley followed the tweets from the warmth of their living room in house number 19. Neither thought for one minute that Brianna had killed herself.

“She was pretty selfish,” Taylor said, looking up from her phone after seeing the suicide suggestion tweet.

“I’ll give you that, but no one digs a hole, kills herself, and falls into her grave like she was jumping into bed,” Hayley said.

“Right,” Taylor said, scrolling though the flurry of #EasyBreezyDead tweets.

“With Olivia, and now, Brianna,” Hayley said, “there can be no denying that there’s a serial killer running around Kitsap County.”

“Right,” Taylor said again. “And one of us could be next. Any one of us.”

THE BRITISH TABLOIDS had immediately posted their take on the demise of Brianna Connors before the twins had even made it home. Reporters there didn’t have the time or the interest to bother checking the police updates to present an unbiased story. From nearly the moment the story broke overseas, as far as they were concerned, Brianna and Drew had been arrested, tried, and proclaimed guilty. No one seemed to care who had killed Brianna—only that she got her just desserts. The headlines screamed:

TABLES TURN ON OLIVIA GRANT’S MURDERER

EASY-BREEZY GETS HER COMEUPPANCE

DEAD RIGHT: EASY-BREEZY GOT WHAT SHE DESERVED

The evening news also had a field day with the story, and, tired of following the deluge of hashtags on Twitter, Hayley, Taylor, and Beth watched TV, safe in the Ryans’s living room.

“Wow,” Beth said, her eyes fixed on the screen.

“Double wow,” Taylor and Hayley agreed in unison.

“I hate it when you do that,” Beth said.

“So do we,” they both said and laughed.

Beth made an exaggerated expression of annoyance. “Knock it off. I want to hear this.”

Brianna’s mom was on TV, dropping a bombshell in an interview recorded before her daughter was found in the woods of Port Gamble.

Brandy, whom nobody had seen in years in Port Gamble or Kingston, was a phantom mother in more than one sense of the word. Under the lights, she looked otherworldly as she stood in front of the TV camera. There was no doubt her face had gone under a plastic surgeon’s knife, and it seemed that her nipping and tucking had gone a little too far.

Hayley and Taylor remembered seeing her last at a Parent’s Night in junior high (an event later renamed Guardians’ Night, a more inclusive title that made all the kids feel like they were either orphans or in special ed). Brandy Connors Baker seemed to be older back then. Not quite grandma-old, but not too far off.

Apparently, Brandy made the media rounds after Brianna had failed to show up for a shopping trip they’d planned in Seattle.

“Bree loves to get her nails done. She is a girly girl, and I promised her a day of pampering considering, you know, what you all have put her through,” she told a KING-TV reporter as a microphone was nearly shoved down her throat.

With the wind kicking up and the clouds threatening to unload, Brandy stood in a rose-colored Versace trench coat and gleaming black boots outside the Seattle Public Library, a striking building that looked like the result of a sight-challenged architect, a fistful of pills, and an Erector Set.

“When was the last time you saw or talked to Brianna?” asked the reporter.

“I saw her a few days ago. It’s hard to say. We’re so close. The last time I talked to her was this morning. And let me tell you, she was simply crushed by the media attention. You people should get a life. You have fanned the flames and made her the subject of scorn and ridicule all over the world. I got a call from a paper in Hamburg last night. It’s a feeding frenzy, and my poor daughter is the shark bait.”

Shark bait? There was no doubt in Taylor’s mind that Brandy wouldn’t hesitate to chomp on her young if she needed a little mid-morning snack.

“Your daughter is the prime suspect in Olivia Grant’s murder and you’re saying that she’s been victimized because of it?”

Brandy looked right at the camera.

“I’m not really sure what I’m saying, because I have no idea what you’re asking.”

“Do you think your daughter has run away, or do you think something else has happened to her?”

“How would I know? I have no idea what she’s doing, but I can tell you that there is no way she would miss out on a mani-pedi with her mother. So yeah, something is very wrong.”

“What’s very wrong is that Brianna had a mother like that,” Hayley said after the segment was over.

“Yeah,” Beth replied. “That lady doesn’t look like she’s too choked up about her kid going missing. Whenever I see moms like that, I’m glad that I have mine.”

“Me too,” said Taylor.

“Me three,” said Hayley. “Whenever I think Mom could be more forthcoming about something or maybe stop talking about the freaks at her work—and I don’t mean the patients—I see someone like Bree’s mom and I know how lucky we are.”

“Forthcoming about what?” Beth asked.

“Stuff,” Taylor said. “Nothing big.”

Taylor hated lying to Beth, but she knew that as close as the three of them were, they could never, ever share everything.

Chapter 26

THAT NIGHT HAYLEY AND TAYLOR, bandaged up and in bed, swiveled open their outlet covers and went over everything that had happened. Foremost on their minds was not the terror of the day—or how they’d led police to Brianna’s grave.

Mostly, they talked about Taylor’s vision of Moira and what happened after Shania’s car had sent her tumbling into Paradise Bay last year.

The night Moira had threatened to expose their abilities, Colton’s mom, Shania, had unexpectedly and intentionally gunned the gas and pushed the reporter into the bay. Afterward, Shania had come back from accidentally-on-purpose killing Moira, Colton’s mom sat in her husband’s black leatherette La-Z-Boy recliner and faced the trio of teens on the sofa.

“We shouldn’t talk about this after tonight,” Shania had said, clasping her hands in her lap. Every word that came from her ached with sorrow. “It was an accident. Accidents happen. And sometimes what you think is an accident, really isn’t accidental at all.”

Hayley flashed back to the vision she’d had of the shaking man pressing the button to open the bridge span just as the bus approached the gaping seam. She shook her head and tried to focus again on Shania’s words:

“I did what I had to do to prevent Moira from knowing what was really behind the crash and to stop whoever hired her from getting his hands on you. He would stop at nothing to end what started before you were even born. This is bigger than all of us. Bigger than Port Gamble. I had to protect you girls. I can’t exactly explain it. It isn’t mine to explain even if I could. And if circumstances send me to jail, I’ll go. I’m not proud of what I did tonight, but I don’t regret it.”

But that was then. Before Taylor had seen what Text Creeper had done to Moira. Shania had not killed her after all. He had.

“Who do you think Text Creeper is, besides the super-scary ‘employer’ who hired Moira to find out about us?” Taylor asked her sister as the dark sky started picking up the first hints of dawn.