Where Beauty Lies (Sophia and Ava London) (17 page)

“Someone stop him,” a reporter farther down The Rug yelled, but the messenger was already catching air over a planter and gone before anyone had even given chase.

An uneasy silence was followed by a smattering of applause, as though people weren’t sure if that had been a piece of performance art or guerrilla marketing, and the regular babble of voices started up again.

The security guard limped to Ava and Sophia. “You responsible for that?” he demanded. “Can’t just stage stunts without prior approval.”

Sophia shook her head. “I have no idea what that was about.”

“Try opening your letter,” he told her.

Sophia looked at the envelope as though she’d forgotten she was holding it. There was a slight bulge in one corner, as though someone had written a note and taped a key to it, but there was no address on the outside or other marks of any kind.

The reporter they’d been in the middle of the interview with ordered his cameraman to zoom in on the envelope and every other crew within earshot crowded around.

“Maybe it’s the credentials for Fashion Week that Lucille was working on,” Ava said.

It seemed a bit showy for Lucille Rexford, Sophia thought, to have them delivered by bike messenger in the middle of an event on the red carpet, but you never knew.

Sophia tugged the flap open. Inside was a single piece of paper and two strips of leather that looked like—

Sophia glanced at the paper, held it toward Ava, saying, “I’m afraid it’s not our credentials,” gasped, and turned away from the cameras.

Pet collars.

“No!” Ava cried, staring from them to the letter. “Oh my god, someone has kidnapped Popcorn and Charming.”

LonDOs:

Keeping your answers short

Honoring real people

Paying attention to what others are wearing

Paying even closer attention to bike messengers

Airbrush foundation

911

LonDON’Ts

Fashion only for the cognoscenti

Supercilious interviewers

Stealing

Cruelty to animals

Cruelty to animal lovers

15

furryous

“IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR SPOILED RATS AGAIN, HAVE $100,000 READY AND WAIT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS,” the laser-printed note said.

The Contessa was in consultation with the police while Sophia and Ava went from one news crew to another, showing the note and making impassioned pleas for the return of Popcorn and Charming.

Ava’s mind was racing with questions but she tried to stay focused and sound sane when talking to reporters. She pulled up a picture of Popcorn and Charming on her phone and showed it to the cameras, but she couldn’t bare to look at it herself.

Her phone had been bouncing in her pocket like a living thing with texts and tweets and Facebook messages of support but she felt it jiggle differently now and realized it was ringing. She looked at it and saw that it was Jax. She hesitated for a moment, then sent him to voice mail.

Almost immediately it rang again. This time Dalton’s name flashed on the screen. Without thinking, she answered.

“Ava, I just heard. I’m so sorry,” he said.

Hearing his voice made her feel like someone had wrapped strong arms around her. She felt herself relaxing, felt her breathing slowing down. “Thank you. I know it’s—I can’t even put it into words.”

“Of course not. Listen, I can be there in twenty minutes. Will you still be there or should I meet you at your apartment?”

Every inch of her wanted to tell him to meet her at the apartment. Every part of her longed just to be next to him, to feel his palm against hers, to be able to look up into his eyes. The Contessa would have to understand, she told herself. At least for tonight.

And what about tomorrow? When you say thanks for the support, I can’t see you anymore, let’s never speak again?

You can’t do that. You can’t see him. You shouldn’t even be talking to him.

“I—I’m not sure,” she said. She felt like someone was sucking the breath out of her. “It’s probably better if you—” she had to squeeze her eyes shut and force the words out. “If you don’t come by.”

There was a long pause. “Okay.” Another pause. “Are you sure?”

She nodded violently, not able to trust her voice, but she realized he couldn’t see her nod. “Yes,” she bit out. “Sure. I … gotta go, bye.”

“Ava, I—”

She hung up and, wrapping her arms around her middle, turned away from the cameras and felt tears on her cheeks.

Dammit,
she thought.
I should not be crying.
She should never have answered the phone, should never have let herself hear his voice. The thought that under other circumstances he could have been with her, would have rushed to her side and stood close, waiting to wrap his arms around her and support her and hold her and let her cry on his sweater, made her stomach crunch into a knot and her chest ache.

Enough,
she told herself.
No more pity party
. She was just drying the tears off her face with the sleeve of a jacket someone had put over her shoulders when she heard a man behind her say, “Those London sisters have to be the two luckiest girls in the world. You can’t buy publicity like this.”

Ava swung around, fists clenched to punch the guy, but before she got there a familiar voice said, “And you wouldn’t want to, moron,” and Hunter appeared, pushing his way through the crowd.

Ava may have envied how much of Sophia’s time he got, but she still adored him, and seeing his strong, decisive face made her instantly feel better. She didn’t even think to wonder what he was doing there when he was supposed to be in LA. They hugged, he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll find them,” and then went to where Sophia was giving an interview.

Ava watched as Sophia’s interview ended and she turned and saw Hunter for the first time. Her face lit up even through the tears and she threw herself into his arms.

“You came,” Ava heard Sophia say. “My Prince Charming.”

“Always,” Hunter answered. “I just missed you too much.”

Ava approached them. “If you want to go home and spend some time together, I can finish the interviews,” she said.

Sophia shook her head. “Absolutely not.” Her hug with Hunter had made her hair come loose, and between that and the fiercely determined gleam in her eyes, she looked like an ancient goddess of revenge. “I won’t rest. I’m going to find them. And they are going to pay.”

“N
O
K
ITTEN
A
ROUND,
S
LEEPING
B
EAUTY
S
AYS
P
ETNAPPERS
W
ILL
P
AY.
”

“F
UR
F
LIES AT
F
ASHION
W
EEK
O
PENER.
”

“F
UR-OR
O
VER
F
URRY
F
RIENDS.
”

“T
HIS
C
ITY
I
S
G
OING TO THE
D
OGS!
P
ETNAPPING AT
P
RESTIGIOUS
P
ARTY.
”

Lily read each of the headlines from the New York morning papers aloud in a different voice, then pushed them across the kitchen island toward MM and Sven. “Not bad, but it’s the photo that really makes the story.”

Pretty much every article featured the same picture of Sophia looking gorgeous and furious simultaneously. Their parents in Georgia had called that morning at eight, worried that their daughters were in trouble and that New York City just wasn’t a safe enough place for them. Ava spent the next hour reassuring them that she and Sophia weren’t in serious danger and were confident about getting Charming and Popcorn back.

Only they weren’t. When they’d gotten home the night before, the Contessa had revealed that she would be happy to give them the ransom money, except that she didn’t have it. “After the show, yes, this will not be a problem, but today, right now, we are, as you say, at the bottom of the bank account.” And there was no way Ava and Sophia could get the money on their own. Which meant their one chance was to figure out who the kidnappers were and rescue Charming and Popcorn themselves.

After getting off the phone, Ava had padded to the kitchen and found everyone but Hunter already there, having breakfast. She was halfway through a bowl of frosted flakes when her phone rang again.

“Unknown number,” Ava announced, and Sophia, Lily, MM, Sven, and Sam froze, all wondering the same thing: if it was the kidnappers with instructions about getting their pets back. She hit Speakerphone. “Hello?”

“Ava? It’s Dalton.”

Everyone got very busy with their breakfast again.

“Oh,” she said, trying for a relaxed, what-no-you-don’t-make-my-heart-pound tone as she took him off speakerphone and slipped from the kitchen to the long, formal dining room that adjoined it. “We thought you might be the kidnapper. I mean, we didn’t think you were, but this came from an unknown number so it seemed like it could be them calling.”

“I completely understand,” he said. “Have there been any new developments?”

Ava wondered if Toma had done something strange to the wiring in the room because Dalton’s voice sounded kind of strange and nasal. “No,” she said.

“I felt really bad not being able to support you last night.”

Ava felt like a piece of her heart had chipped off. “That is the nicest thing you could have said.”

“It just means you have to let me help today. When can I come by?”

Looking down at Popcorn’s favorite toy lying sadly on the rug, she wanted to say,
Right now
.
This second.

But that was impossible. She glanced through the door back into the kitchen and saw that everyone was busy with their own thing but she was still standing on the phone with Dalton in the middle of the Contessa’s territory. That was like putting a bull’s-eye on herself and thinking she could pass as a spectator at a darts contest. She needed to get him off the phone.

“That’s really kind of you to offer,” she said, trying to sound nice but not too nice. “But I think it’s probably better if you don’t. And I’m afraid I have to go now.”

“Wait, Ava.” He sounded confused and short of breath. “Is there someone there? Is that why you seem so—”

“Bye.”

Her insides ached when she hung up, as though she’d eaten broken glass, and she realized she would rather have done that than treated him that way.

You have no choice,
she told herself.
This is kinder than the alternative.

She went to her room to wash her face and when she came out she found everyone in the living room. The countdown clock had been pushed to one side and in its place was a whiteboard.

“We need a board that we can put pictures on and write on and run pieces of red thread around,” Lily had said the night before when they got back from the party. “Since the police have made it clear they’re going to be useless.”

“Is that something you learned from reading
Town & Country
?” Sam had asked.

“No, New Dork City, it’s according to Lily van Aden.”

“I stopped wearing my Doc Martens,” he’d said. “Do I still have to have the nickname?”

“If the shoe fits.”

“But that’s the point—” he had started.

“What is the red thread for?” Ava had asked.

“I don’t know. We’ll see when we get there, won’t we?”

Now Lily was standing in front of the board, red thread, magnetic tacks, and a box of markers neatly laid out next to her. She uncapped a pen and wrote “IT” and “NOT IT” at the top of the whiteboard. Under “NOT IT” she wrote, “Present company because we were all together at the time of the kidnapping.”

They knew exactly when that was because the Contessa’s building had an extensive closed-circuit camera system as well as three doormen. Both the human and electronic monitors had recorded a man in a Pet Sanctuary windbreaker entering the building at 2:03
P.M.
Lily had told the doorman that someone from Pet Sanctuary was coming to pick up Popcorn and Charming, so they’d let him up. Twelve minutes later he’d been back with Popcorn and Charming.

All three doormen agreed that he was young, Caucasian, a little overweight, and wore glasses and a baseball cap. If he’d been trying to make himself hard for the security cameras to capture, he couldn’t have done a better job. The cap meant it was hard to see more than the lower half of his face, and if you did, the glasses reflected the light, blurring the image.

“I called the spa and they said no one matching the description I gave works there. They also told me the appointment I had made was canceled,” Lily said now, sniffing the tip of the marker.

“Don’t worry,” MM whispered to Ava, “I bought the child-safe ones.”

Lily looked at the marker. “These used to smell much better.”

No one was sure when the Contessa had arrived but she was suddenly there, one hand on her hip, standing next to Lily at the whiteboard. She was wearing brown trousers and a brown cowl-neck sweater, both of which had red hearts printed all over them.

“It is a very good thing I am here,” the Contessa said. “We have fun making the scribbles on the board of course. But now we will be the serious people.” Ava groaned but the Contessa ignored it. “Of course it is obvious who did this thing.”

“It is?” Sophia asked.

“I think this over all night. To take pets, it’s very personal. This is not a thing you do for money. This is done to distract you. Destroy your confidence.”

“How does assuming it’s personal make everything obvious?” Sophia said.

“It means we are not asking, ‘Who in all New York City would take our pretty babies?’” the Contessa explained. “It means we are asking, ‘Who in all New York City would like to rip our heart out and watch us suffer?’”

“I really can’t think of anyone who would go to all that trouble,” Ava told her. “All anyone who wanted to hurt us would have to do is go online and make an insulting video about us, or even slam us in our own comments section.”