The Complete Private Collection: Private; Invitation Only; Untouchable; Confessions; Inner Circle; Legacy; Ambition; Revelation; Last Christmas; Paradise ... The Book of Spells; Ominous; Vengeance (342 page)

“Oh. Well, you could have texted me to tell me that, at least,” I said, feeling relieved nonetheless.

“Sorry.” Two almost-perfect circles of pink appeared high on his cheeks. “Come on. We need to talk.”

“We
so
do.”

He tugged me toward the nearest oak tree and tossed his canvas jacket down beneath it for me to sit on. I chuckled at his chivalry, but accepted it. This was one of those rare days when I’d chosen to wear a skirt and I didn’t love the idea of twigs and rocks jabbing into my bare skin. I sat down and cradled my cast against my chest, feeling warm and nervous, wondering where this was all going.

Josh sat down next to me and bent his knees, resting his forearms
atop them and lacing his fingers together. He blew out a sigh, looked at me sheepishly, and began.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” he said, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He closed his eyes for a second, like he was building up his confidence. “I wasn’t exactly accepted at Cornell.”

I blinked. Whatever I had imagined was coming, that wasn’t even close. “Wait, you were rejected?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?” I asked, baffled. Josh had told me back in March that he’d gotten his acceptance letter.

“I was wait-listed,” he admitted, ducking his chin. He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “Do you hate me?”

“Hate you? Are you kidding? No!” My voice had gone shrill out of relief. This was so much less bad than anything I had conjured up in my mind. All I wanted to do was get up and do a happy dance. But Josh was not looking quite so elated. “I guess I’m just . . . confused,” I told him. “I thought you got in weeks ago.”

“I know. I lied,” he said, turning slightly toward me. “I’m so sorry, Reed, I was just so embarrassed. My entire family went to Cornell. I mean, everyone except Lynn, but he did get in. I’m the first ever to not get in.”

“But you didn’t
not
get in,” I said. “You got . . . maybe-ed.”

“I know. It was just so humiliating. And even worse because . . . ”

When he trailed off, my heart thumped fretfully. There was more?

“Because I didn’t apply anywhere else.”

My jaw dropped.

“I know! I’m such an idiot!” He covered his face with his hands, one of which was peppered with purple paint spots. “I thought it was a lock and I didn’t really want to go anywhere else anyway, so—”

“So what you’re saying is, as of right now, you don’t have a school to go to next year,” I clarified slowly. A light breeze rustled the green canopy of leaves over our heads, and I leaned back against the tree’s rough bark.

“That’s what I’m saying,” he replied. “And that’s why I’ve been so stressed. My dad has this friend on the admissions board who basically told him that if I want to get in, I need to get straight As this semester.”

Suddenly I felt like the worst girlfriend ever to call herself a girlfriend. Here I was, coming up with all of these disturbing theories, all these scenarios in which Josh was a real villain, while he was fretting about his future and studying his ass off to secure it.

“So that night that I said I was out with Trey, I was actually working with a calc tutor,” Josh told me. “And whenever I’m not around, I’m studying.”

“Wow,” I said.

“And that whole thing with Graham at the library that night?” he said.

My skin prickled with curiosity. “What about it?”

“He and a couple of the other guys found out about the wait-list thing a couple of weeks ago—I don’t know how. At first he was just being a dick about it, mocking me for it and crap like that, but that night . . . he actually said that if I didn’t break up with you, he was going to tell you about it. Can you believe that?”

“What?” I blurted.

“Yeah. I guess he, like,
really
wants you and Sawyer to get together. Like, badly.” He slumped back against the tree as well, tearing up a big chunk of grass and tossing it down in the dirt.

So this was why Graham had called Josh a liar. He knew that he’d lied about getting into Cornell. But why had he made it sound like it was such a huge deal? And what was with the major jones for me to date his brother? Never in my life had I ever heard of a brother who cared
that
much about getting his brother a girl.

“That boy has issues,” I concluded quietly.

“Tell me about it,” Josh said. “Anyway, that’s why I kind of freaked when I saw you with Sawyer that day. After what Graham said . . . I think it just threw me.”

“I understand,” I told him, reaching for his hand and holding it in my lap. “I just wish you’d told me about all this sooner. I could’ve helped you study or at least been more understanding about everything.”

“I know. I’m an idiot. I was embarrassed,” Josh said, tilting his head and giving me a small smile. “Didn’t want you to think you were going out with a deadbeat or something.”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Like I could ever think that.”

Josh turned my hand over so my palm was facing up. Gently, he traced the lines of my hand with his fingertip. “So, what’s going on with you? It sounded like you wanted to talk about something too.”

Josh knew about my latest brush with death, of course, but I’d yet to tell him about MT and the potential connection between the
accidents. As he looked into my eyes now, part of me wanted to keep it a secret. Clearly the last thing he needed right now was more stress. But nothing good had ever come of the two of us keeping secrets before. I pressed my lips together and turned toward him fully.

“Promise not to freak out,” I said.

“Uh-oh. No good conversation ever started that way,” he joked. “What’s up?”

So I told him. I told him the whole story of the mystery texter, all the way up to the message I’d received last night to avoid the awards banquet. Josh listened the whole time, his expression growing more and more tense with each passing second. Finally, his knee started to bounce up and down and I had to place my heavy cast on top of it to stop him.

“So? What do you think? Do I trust this person or not?” I asked, really hoping for a definitive answer. For some sort of direction. “Do I say screw it and go to the awards banquet, or do I stay home?”

“First, let me just ask you this,” he said. “
How
could you not tell me about this?”

I balked, leaning back. “Okay, pot, go ahead and call me black.”

Josh blushed. “Okay, fine, but my secret wasn’t potentially life-threatening,” he said. He shook his head and looked out across campus. “God, I can’t wait to get the eff out of this freaking place. I don’t even
care
where I’m going, I just want to get out.” Then he looked at me seriously and took both my hands. “I just wish you were coming with me.”

“Me too,” I said, feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly sad.

Josh looked at me for a long moment, as if trying to see inside, as if gauging exactly what I could handle and what I couldn’t. Finally he squeezed my fingers.

“You know what? Screw it,” he said with a devil-may-care smile. “We’re going to the banquet. You’re getting two huge awards and you should be there to accept them. Don’t let this latest freak scare you off.”

My chest instantly felt ten times lighter, and just like that I knew this was what I’d wanted to hear. “But what if something happens?”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” he assured me, looking me in the eye. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t. I’ll get a bunch of the guys together and we’ll all be on high alert. No one will be letting you out of their sight.”

“Yeah?” I said, raising my eyebrows hopefully.

“I swear,” he said, looping his arm around me and pulling me to his side. He kissed the top of my head and held me close. “I won’t think about school and you won’t think about Billings or this MT nutbag and we’ll just have fun.”

I narrowed my eyes and tilted my head to look up at him. “Is that even possible around here?”

Josh smirked. “Well, we can at least try.”

“Josh is right. You can’t just hide out in your dorm room for the rest of your life,” Ivy said that afternoon as she pawed through my jewelry box, holding an earring up to her ear, then trying out a necklace. She’d decided she wanted something new to wear with her blue Easton Academy graduation gown, and had apparently chosen to shop for it at the House of Reed. “If there’s some kind of threat at the banquet, then we’ll deal with it head-on, right? You have to show them you won’t be intimidated. That you won’t run scared.”

“You sound like you’re running for Senate or something,” I said, looking up from my history textbook. Then I lowered my voice to a deep grumble. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

“Who knew you could apply that policy at private school?” Ivy smiled as she clasped a beaded necklace around her neck. “Whatever. I’m just trying to get you psyched up.” She sat down next to me on my
bed and closed my book. “You do know everything’s going to be fine, right? Because it is.”

“Wow. You are seriously upbeat today,” I said, tossing the book aside. “What’s your deal?”

Ivy grinned. “I woke up this morning and realized that in one week, I’m graduating. One week and I will never have to sit in one of those awful hard chairs and listen to some obnoxious Easton teacher spout off about something no one in the real world will ever care about. And then I can spend the entire summer looking forward to Pepperdine, looking forward to getting as far away from Easton and Boston and my depressing-ass family as I possibly can, and taking whatever classes I want to take while staring at the Pacific Ocean all day long.” She grabbed my arm and shook it. “One more week!”

I groaned out my jealousy and flopped back on my bed. “I’m really starting to think I should have fewer senior friends.”

There was a quick rap on my door and it flung right open. I sat up straight in surprise as Carolina rushed in, out of breath, a laptop tucked under her arm and a pencil shoved behind one ear. She looked
Go Green!
camera-ready in a plaid shirt unbuttoned over a lace-trimmed tank top and jeans flared over tan work boots, but the intense vibe she was giving off was definitely not fit for TV. Unless she was guest-starring in a new episode of
Southland
.

“Carolina!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“Sorry to interrupt, but you have to see this.” She shoved aside my own computer and placed her laptop down on my desk. Ivy and I exchanged a nervous look as we both stood up from the bed and
gathered behind her. It took Carolina about thirty seconds to boot up her computer and open up a video screen. “We were going through some of the footage from yesterday, and you’re never going to believe what we found.”

I gulped back a surge of fear as I leaned in toward the screen. The
Go Green!
trailer appeared in the shot, the logo painted in bright kelly green on the side next to the door. Carolina walked out, talking to the camera. Her lips were moving, but there was no sound.

I reached for the volume button.

“There’s no audio on this one,” Carolina said. “What I’m saying in this clip is not what matters.”

“Carolina, what’s going on?” I asked.

Her face was like stone. “You’ll see in about five seconds.”

On the computer screen Carolina gestured to her right and Mike panned the camera in that direction, taking in the moving construction vehicles, the other trailers, and eventually the foundation of the new Billings. It looked like they were trying to give the viewer a tour of the site—a kind of “before” shot.

“What are we looking for?” Ivy asked, leaning one hand on the desk’s surface.

“There!” Carolina hit the space button and the video paused. She pointed at a spot near the top right-hand corner of the screen, her finger trembling. Ivy and I both leaned in as far as we could, but all I could really make out were two people standing close together, one in a hard hat, the other in a straw fedora, and the person in the fedora was handing over a heavy-looking duffel bag. “That’s someone paying
off one of the workers. The worker who was operating the crane,” Carolina said pointedly.

“How do you know there’s money in there?” I asked shakily.

“Oh, come on! Just look at it! Haven’t you ever seen a spy movie?” Carolina exclaimed, her face reddening. “What else could it be?”

Ivy and I exchanged a dubious look, but said nothing.

“Do you realize what this means?” Carolina continued. “Someone paid him to drop that pallet. Someone was actually trying to kill us. You see it? Do you have any idea who that is?”

I leaned closer. Whoever was handing over the bag was wearing a black trench and jeans. It was obviously a girl, by the short height and the thin waist, but I couldn’t make out her face. Still, the idea of a stylish female hanging out around our construction site, handing things off to one of the workers, didn’t exactly sit well.

“Hit play,” I demanded.

Carolina did. The video kept rolling, and the girl turned away from the camera. There was never a good shot of her face. But as she walked off, I saw something that stopped the breath in my lungs.

“Holy crap,” I said under my breath. “Rewind it.”

“What? What did you see?” Ivy asked.

My mouth was so dry I could taste my lunch from four hours ago. I reached for the space button and waited. And waited. As soon as the girl started to turn, I hit pause. Now I was certain that Carolina was right—there was money inside that bag, and probably a ton of it.

“There!” I stood up straight and looked at Ivy. “You see her hair? I only know one person with hair like that.”

Ivy squinted at the screen, taking in the one, short, silky auburn curl that flew out from under the fedora’s brim. Slowly, realization flooded her face and she straightened her posture.

“Who?” Carolina asked, whipping out her phone.

Ivy and I nodded slowly. My blood pulsed in my ears. “That’s Paige Ryan.”

For once, the arrests weren’t made on Easton Academy grounds. The police found the crane operator at his favorite bar. Apparently, Paige had done her research to figure out who would be the most likely crew member to take a payoff, because the guy had immediately and tearfully confessed, saying he needed the money or he was going to lose his house, his family, and pretty much everything else he had in the world. Paige, meanwhile, had been holed up in her parents’ vacation home near Mystic, having her feet exfoliated by her personal pedicurist, when the cops came calling. According to my good buddy at the Easton Police Department, Detective Hauer, when she was hauled off for booking, her hair was wet, she had no makeup on, and her toenails were unpolished.