He winced a little and shook his head. “Just let me die.”

Hayley was practically on top of him. She wanted him to give her answers. She needed to know. They all did.

“Why do you want to die? Because of what happened to Olivia? Brianna?”

In that moment, Hayley didn’t have it in her to say what she was really thinking: Because of how you murdered Olivia? Stabbed her? Strangled Brianna? You want to die because that’s the easy way out and you’re a weak coward?

An alarm sounded. Drew pulled her close and whispered what she wanted to know.

He was still talking when a nurse came in.

“Who on God’s green earth are you?

“I’m Meg,” Hayley said, looking up at the fortyish nurse who stared at her in the most no-nonsense way.

“Like hell you are,” the nurse said.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ER, Taylor bent over Brianna’s mother. Up close, Brandy Connors Baker didn’t seem like such a monster. She was no bigger than a girl, really. Taylor could easily make out the tiny incisions that Brandy’s oh-so-styled hairline had covered after her latest bout of cosmetic surgery. She remembered how Brianna had once quoted her mom as saying that after thirty-five “a woman needed a face and body makeover” and that “diet and exercise alone were for people without the money to do better.”

Brandy didn’t look better just then. She looked small. Tiny. Weak. So frail. Even though she’d been a witch to Brianna, Taylor couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for her.

“I know you,” Brandy said, looking up at Taylor. Her eyes were softer than Taylor remembered, though in that moment she conceded that it might be the result of the wooziness that came with the IV pain medication dripping to her bloodstream.

“Hi, Mrs. Baker,” Taylor said.

“You’re one of those twins. You’re friends with my daughter.”

Her lips looked dry, but Taylor wasn’t about to offer her an ice chip from the container on the tray next to her bed. She wanted to keep her talking.

“I’m sorry about Brianna. I really am.”

Brandy looked up at Taylor. “You found her, didn’t you?”

She shook her head. “Yes, I did.”

Brandy nodded. “Is your sister here, too? You two were always together, as I recall.”

Taylor tilted her head and indicated Hayley on the other side of the ER. “Hayley’s over there. She’s talking to Drew. Or trying to. I think he’s still unconscious.”

“He’s alive?” she asked.

Brandy’s heart monitor started to accelerate.

“I think so,” Taylor said. “At least, for the time being. The cops were talking about how it didn’t look like he was going to live. He lost a lot of blood. You both did.”

“He tried to kill me, Taylor. He stabbed me! He said that he hated me more than he hated Bree. He killed poor Olivia too. He killed her by accident. He thought he was killing my little girl.”

“I know. I know,” Taylor said.

The heart monitor had just kicked into overdrive, the worst beat remix ever. An alarm sounded, and faster than the fatal slash that had killed Olivia, three nurses were on top of Taylor.

ANNIE GARNETT CORNERED Taylor and Hayley just outside of the ICU. She dropped her full coffee cup in the trash, and it landed with a thud. She had always been a gentle giant of a woman, but this time she seemed scary.

“Taylor, I’m not going to blame you for this,” the police chief said in a tone harsher than any of them had ever heard. “No one is. But Drew is hanging by a thread and you and your sister’s stunt almost killed him. I get that you wanted to find out what happened to your friend. I know that you care about people and you know the difference between right and wrong. But this was a mistake. A big one. I don’t know if hypothermia pickled your brain, but I’m going to cut you some slack because . . . well, I’ve known you since you two were babies.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We’re sorry.”

“I know you are. I also get that Brianna’s mom doesn’t exactly qualify for mother of the year by anyone’s standards. But going into the ICU to question her, well, that’s stupid and wrong.”

Both girls felt their faces grow red.

“Again, sorry,” Taylor said.

“I know who’s responsible for killing Olivia and Brianna,” Hayley said. “If that’s any help to you. I mean that with great respect.”

“We know Drew is the killer. We matched black fibers from his Darth Vader costume found at the scene.”

Hayley nodded. “Right. Drew did the stabbing, but he had an accomplice.”

Annie liked these girls, but really, they should leave the investigation to the professionals.

“Brianna wasn’t his accomplice, dear,” she said. “She was his victim.”

“I didn’t say Brianna.” Hayley looked over in the direction of the group of nurses around Brandy’s room. “She was Drew’s accomplice.”

“Brandy?”

“Look in her purse. Drew told me that Brianna’s mom had waved a big cashier’s check in his face. She had laughed at him. He had loved her. Trusted her. She had convinced him to kill her daughter for the insurance money.”

“But Drew messed up and killed Olivia by mistake when she and Bree switched costumes at the party,” Taylor chimed in, remembering the moment the doctor had mistaken her for Hayley and she had put two and two together. “Olivia was never supposed to die.”

“Mrs. Baker told Drew he was never getting a dime because he’d messed up and killed Olivia by mistake,” Hayley said.

Annie turned on her heel and headed to the nurses’ station. She didn’t need a warrant. Her team had taken Brandy’s black-and-silver Kate Spade purse from the Silverdale Beach Hotel for medical reasons. The hospital staff had placed her purse and paperwork into a plastic bin.

Annie poked through its contents, a hodgepodge that included a one-way airline ticket to Mexico, four kinds of face lotion, and six lipsticks.

And a cashier’s check for one million dollars.

The price, it seemed, of her daughter’s life.

SEEING TAYLOR AND HAYLEY SIDE BY SIDE in a hospital room was déjà vu for their parents. Hoses and IV lines crisscrossed helter-skelter from each girl to their respective life-support equipment. A large wall clock ticked away the time above the pair of rocking chairs borrowed from a couple of vacant maternity rooms down the hallway that the staff had brought in for Kevin and Valerie.

The scene was not nearly as dire as it had been when the girls were five and had been treated at Children’s Hospital in Seattle for thirty-one days after the bus accident on the Hood Canal Bridge. For that, everyone was grateful.

With Valerie behind him, Kevin stood between both beds and blinked back tears.

“I don’t know what you were thinking,” he said. “Please don’t ever do anything as stupid as that again. I can’t live without you. Your mom can’t live without you.”

Hayley met his gaze and glanced over at her mother. She had been crying. Her eyes were puffy and shiny streaks of tears ran down her cheeks.

“We’re sorry. We just had to know.”

“Know what?” Kevin said, looking completely confused.

“Girls, I’m sorry. I hope you will forgive me.” Valerie wedged herself between Kevin and Hayley.

“It’s all right, Mom,” Taylor said.

Tears rolled down Valerie’s cheeks. “This is my fault. I should have told you what you wanted to know. I should have told you everything.”

“It’s okay. Don’t worry, Mom,” Hayley said, closing her eyes and sending a question to the person she had seen in the corridor under the prison.

You saved Tony, didn’t you?

Hayley looked up at her mother, who remained silent while her tears fell.

When Hayley closed her eyes again, she heard an answer.

Yes, I did.

Postmortem

IT WAS OBVIOUS in the weeks and months after Drew and Brandy were arrested for murder and conspiracy to commit murder, that Port Gamble was never going to be the same again. Even before the trial it was clear that Brandy Connors Baker held the advantage.