Get Even (26 page)

FIFTY-THREE

BREE WAS ALL SMILES AS SHE SAUNTERED BACK TO THE
theater. Olivia and Kitty might have been out, but at least Margot was willing to fight. It felt so much better to have a plan than to lay low and hope that their anonymous friend would stop killing people and leave them alone. Nope, Bree was taking matters into her own hands. For the first time in days, she was in control. She felt so giddy she practically skipped as she rounded the corner into the back entrance of the theater.

Where she ran smack into John.

“Hey!” she gasped, the wind momentarily knocked out of her.

“Hey.”

He was in costume, or at least Bree hoped so. He wore a black biker’s vest, completely open with nothing underneath, and low-slung black jeans barely held in place by an enormous silver belt buckle. A leather headband crowned his black hair, making him look like a cross between Tonto and Jimi Hendrix, and his wrists were bound with matching leather cufflets.

“How are you?” Bree said. She tried to keep her eyes on his face, but they kept drifting south. Despite two years of friendship, she’d never seen John with his shirt off. Though skinny, he was more muscular than Bree would have guessed based on his almost total lack of physical exertion, and there was a trail of dark brown hair below his belly button that disappeared into the hip-slung pants, igniting an absolutely inappropriate feeling deep within her.

“I’m good,” he said. “And you?”

Bree forced herself to focus. John was a suspect. She had to remember. “Good.”

John turned to leave. “Yeah, well, I’ve got to get back to the dressing room.”

“John, I think we need to talk.”

He paused, but didn’t face her. “About what?”

About what? That was such a loaded question. Bree had about a million things she wanted to talk to him about, but all she could manage was—

“Stuff.”

Stuff? Really?
Bree’s face burned.

“Stuff? Really?” John asked.

Damn, was he inside her head?

Bree opened her mouth to clarify her brilliant statement, but no words came out. She was desperately trying to keep her eyes above John’s equator, failing miserably, and her brain was getting all jumbled in the process.

What is wrong with you?

“Look,” John said with a heavy sigh. “What do you want, Bree, huh? Do you want things to be like they were between us? Because that isn’t going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because things have changed. Can’t you see that?”

“What’s changed? You’re still my best friend in the whole world. Hell, you’re my only friend.” It felt so pathetic when she said it out loud like that.

“I’m not your only friend,” John said quietly. Something about the icy calmness in his voice caught her off guard.

“What do you mean?”

Instead of answering, John shook his head. “You accuse me of keeping secrets from you, Bree. But are you any better? Haven’t you been doing the exact same thing?”

Bree swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said automatically. She’d lied about DGM for so long it was second nature.

John turned away. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Bree clutched his hand. She felt like she was losing him forever, and the panic almost blinded her. “I’ll be a better friend, John. I promise.”

“I don’t want a better friend.”

“Huh?”

John set his jaw. “And I can’t be your consolation prize.”

What a mess. Something had changed, shifted in her brain and her heart. But how could she even explain that to John if she wasn’t sure what it was?

“I care about you,” she said.

Dear God, that sounded lame.

John looked at his hand still clasped in her own; then his eyes traveled up her arm to her face. She gazed into his eyes, framed by that ridiculous seventies headband. He wasn’t her geeky best friend anymore. He was something more. Something she’d been yearning for without even knowing it.

“You care,” John said softly. “But not enough.”

“That’s not true!” Bree blurted out. “I—”

“John!” Amber came tearing up the aisle into the lobby. Like John, she was in costume. Also a seventies monstrosity, but significantly more on the streetwalker side. She wore high-waisted short shorts with a white patent leather belt and a pink, midriff-exposing halter top that tied together between her boobs. Her sky-high crushed-velvet platform sandals made her lean legs look about ten miles long.

“John,” she repeated, grabbing him possessively by the arm without even a glance in Bree’s direction. “I’ve been looking for you.”

John didn’t shake her off. “What’s up?”

“Mr. Cunningham wants to sign off on your costume.” She leaned back and scanned him from tip to toe. “If you want my opinion,” she added, “meow.”

“Ew.” Bree couldn’t help herself. The idea of Amber looking at John with anything even resembling a sexual interest made Bree want to throw up.

Amber casually looked Bree up and down, assessing her outfit. “Wow,” she said with a laugh. “Thrift-store dress
and
jeans? Couldn’t make up your mind this morning?”

Bree curled her lip. “It’s so I can be stylish
and
comfortable when I kick your ass.”

“Stylish?” Amber said, her hand languidly stroking John’s arm. “Try again.”

Instead of coming to her defense, John turned toward the theater. “I’ll talk to you later, Bree,” he said. Then he marched back down the aisle with Amber hanging off him like tinsel on a Christmas tree.

Bree watched them go, John’s words from Sunday night ringing in her ears.
After tonight, nothing will be the same.

He’d been right on more levels than perhaps he’d known at the time. She realized with a stabbing pain somewhere between her heart and her spleen that if Amber was all over the new rock-star version of John, then half the girls in school would be too. He was no longer Baggott the Faggot, but one of the cool kids. Like Shane. And it was only a matter of time before he forgot about Bree entirely.

Bree bit her bottom lip to keep it from quivering. Just when she realized that John was more than a friend, she’d lost him forever, and she’d have to stand idly by at school while he dated someone else—Cordy or God forbid Amber—and pretend like it wasn’t ripping her heart to pieces.

Worst of all, it was entirely her fault. She’d spent so much time denying that there was anything between them, ignoring the very real connection she felt with John because she’d labeled him as a friend. She’d hurt him in the process, and now he could never forgive her.

Bree swallowed and took a deep breath, forcing the self-pity back to the depths of her mind. There was one thing she could do, one way she could still protect John, even if he was lost to her forever.

Find the killer before he struck again.

FIFTY-FOUR

ED THE HEAD CROSSED ONE FOOT OVER HIS KNEE AND LEANED
forward, resting his pointy chin on his hand. “Tell me again why I’m giving up my lunch, the most profitable fifty-five minutes of my day, to be holed up in the computer lab with you?”

“After all the money I’ve made for you in the past year,” Margot said, organizing papers on the desk in front of her, “I’d think you’d be elated to do me a favor.”

“I already
did
you a favor, remember? And you stiffed me on payment.”

Margot thought of Logan, eating lunch in the quad by himself. “It’s not a concert,” she said with a shrug. “But consider this a lunch date.”

Ed the Head stretched his legs in front of him. “I guess it’ll do in a pinch.”

Margot had had a difficult time lying to Logan about why she needed to be someplace else at lunch. But with the opening of
Twelfth Precinct
in just over twenty-four hours, Don’t Get Mad was running out of time. She and Bree had to act immediately if they were going to prevent another murder, and she didn’t want to get Logan involved in what they were about to do. It was too dangerous.

“Are we waiting on someone?” Ed the Head asked. “Or are you just relishing my presence too much to get down to business?”

“Ha, ha.”

“Because if you don’t have anything for me,” he said, rising to his feet, “then I am considerably out of here.”

As if on cue, there was a knock at the computer lab door. Margot threw the bolt and Bree slipped inside.

She did a double take at the sight of Ed the Head. “This is your contingency plan?” she asked.

Margot shrugged. “You said we needed help. I got us help.”

“Can we trust him?”

“For a price.”

Ed the Head raised his hand as if waiting to be called on by the teacher. “Hello? In the room!”

Despite her usually rabid concern for safety, security, and secrecy, for whatever reason Margot trusted Ed the Head. He had no love for the administration at Bishop DuMaine, and besides, they weren’t actually revealing DGM’s secrets to him—just tasking him with some information discovery.

“I trust him,” Margot said.

Bree nodded. “Good enough for me.” She pulled a manila envelope out of her bag and slapped it on the table.

Ed the Head’s eyes grew wide. “You got one too?”

“Yep,” Bree said, offering no explanation.

Ed the Head eyed the envelope. “You, Margot, Olivia. What is it the three of you have in common?”

Margot stared at him coldly. “That’s not important, Edward.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You sure about that? Could it possibly be three little letters known as DG—”

“What’s important,” Bree said, interrupting him, “is that there’s a killer on the loose and what’s in this envelope could be the key to stopping it.”

Ed the Head nodded. “Proceed.”

Bree took a deep breath. “Let me tell you a story about a boy named Christopher Beeman.”

Olivia sat in the back of the house, watching Amber and Donté on the stage. The final dress rehearsal was in just a few hours, and Amber was still stumbling over her words every few lines. As much as Olivia secretly wanted Amber to fall on her face onstage, she didn’t want the show to suffer as a result. But at this rate, it would take another month of rehearsals to get Amber up to par.

Soon all of Olivia’s dreams could be coming true. Or blowing up in her face.

Maybe she’d been too hasty when she shot Bree down? Whoever had been sending the envelopes was clearly on to them, and Bree had a point. If they just sat around and waited for something to happen, they were giving this person all the power. Striking back at least meant they weren’t giving up.

Still, if they got caught, Olivia faced expulsion, arrest, prosecution for murder, juvie. She wasn’t sure which was worse at this point. No, she had to be selfish right now. She had to focus on herself and her performance tomorrow night. Her entire future was riding on it.

Olivia’s phone buzzed. She had an email.

She picked up her phone, and froze the moment she saw the sent-by address: [email protected].

Olivia opened the email and realized it had been sent through the all-school email system, which meant that every student, teacher, and administrator had just gotten the same message.

You had us at an unfair advantage, knowing so much about us when we knew nothing about you.

Now, we’ve evened the playing field. It’s our turn to dictate terms.

We know who you are, and we know what you’ve done.

We’ll keep your secret as long as you keep ours. And if anything happens to us—or anyone else—all bets are off. Get it?

Had Bree and Margot just called out a killer?

Margot exhaled slowly and closed the lid to her laptop. It was done, the email sent.

“And that went to everyone?” Bree asked.

Margot had only explained this to her about twenty times. “I hacked into the main contact database,” she said once again. “Everyone at school got that email.”

Bree grinned. “Then I’m sure our friend got it too. Do you think he’ll buy it?”

Margot shook her head. “I’d say there’s only about a forty-five percent chance.”

“Crap.”

It was a bluff, of course. But they had to buy some time so Ed the Head could work his magic.

“Still,” Margot said slowly. “It’ll give him pause. Whoever this is, cockiness drives him. A belief that he’s a step ahead of us all the time. If this email shakes that confidence even a little, it should give us enough time to actually find out who’s behind it, and gather some evidence that links him to both murders.”

“I hope Ed the Head comes through.”

“He will,” Margot said. She’d assigned Ed the task of tracking down any and all information about Christopher Beeman. All roads seemed to lead to him, just like the list Bree had found in Ronny’s room: Theo, Rex, Coach Creed, and Ronny were all connected to Christopher.

“Guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” Bree said, rising to her feet.

The dressing room door flew open and Olivia burst into the room. “What did you do?”

“Saved our asses,” Bree said.

“But you just emailed the entire school!”

“They’ll think it’s another prank,” Margot said. She couldn’t even look at Olivia.

“Oh.” Olivia plopped down in the empty chair and stared at the floor. “You were right, you know. About fighting back. Sorry I was such a wuss.”

“Not the first time,” Bree said.

The room fell silent. Out of the corner of her eye, Margot caught Bree making eyes at Olivia, nodding in Margot’s direction.

“Right,” Olivia said to Bree’s unspoken comment. She swallowed, then shifted her chair to face Margot. “I’m sorry, Margot. I know you can’t ever forgive me for what I did, but I want you to know that I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you.”

Margot wanted to hate Olivia. And right up until that moment, she truly thought she did. But maybe too much time had passed. Maybe Margot was in a happier place in her life. Maybe she realized that Olivia had also been one of Amber’s victims. Whatever the cause, as Olivia stared at her, pleading silently with her enormous blue eyes, Margot realized that despite the tremendous sense of betrayal, she didn’t hate Olivia. And she was ready to forgive.

On one condition.

“Tell Kitty she can date Donté,” Margot said.

“What?” Olivia asked.

“Tell her you want them both to be happy. That’s how you can make it up to me.”

“Really?” Olivia glanced at Bree. “That’s it?”

Margot raised an eyebrow. “You have to mean it.”

Olivia stared at her for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Okay.”

As if on cue, the tall figure of Kitty slipped inside the dressing room.

“What did you do?” she asked, panting. She wore her workout clothes from volleyball practice, complete with knee pads.

“Took matters into our own hands,” Bree said.

With a determined nod, Olivia sprang to her feet, head thrown back, and hugged Kitty fiercely. “I forgive you,” she said dramatically.

Kitty stood there in shock, Olivia’s arms still wrapped around her midsection. “What did you guys do to her?”

Bree laughed. “I think she’s trying to apologize. Right, Olivia?”

“Yes!” Olivia squeaked into Kitty’s stomach. “I’m sorry I was a bitch the other night.” She pulled back and embraced Kitty’s shoulders. “I want you and Donté to be happy and get married and make babies. Okay? I really, truly mean it.”

Margot hid her smile. Leave it to Olivia to go completely overboard.

“Okay.” Kitty leaned back against the door. “I’ve got ten minutes till I need to be back in practice. You guys want to fill me in on the plan?”

“Gladly,” Margot said.

The gang was back together.