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Not that this hasn’t happened before.

I just can’t get her back for it because if I do, the Connor thing is definitely popping out.

And I’m saving that information for an emergency.

Oliver checks his watch. “We should get to dinner. But first, everyone put their cell phones on the table.”

“Why?” Harper asks.

“You know the rules.”

“That doesn’t seem prudent given everything going on, does it?”

“It won’t kill you to give up your phone for a couple of hours, Harper,” Oliver says.

“Everyone keeps saying that,” I say. “But yeah, thingscankill us. Like your phone. Which almostdid.”

“Okay, okay.” Harper looks at the phone in her hand. “Goodbye, Rebecca.”

“You named your phone?”

“No, I namedyourwork phone. She’s the one who answers Crazy Cathy when she starts to email me incessantly.”

I start to laugh. “You’re the best.”

“I know.” She puts the phone down on the table and pats it. I put mine next to it; then Oliver does the same.

We’re ready.

For what, remains to be seen.

Cocktails are on the veranda, which faces the club’s private beach. Everyone is dressed up and happy under the setting sun, and I wave hello to those I know as I search for Emma.

Like the night before at Shutters, I find her in the middle of the crowd.

She’s dressed in white but not a wedding dress, and she’s talking to Simone and Tyler with her jaw clenched.

Which means she’s in trouble.

Not that they can tell. I’ve just known her long enough to know.

Once, when we were small, we ended up at some grown-up party her parents were throwing. Our parents had put us in matching sundresses, and we were expected to “use our manners” and answer questions politely. Emma had gotten caught in a conversation with an older guy who was saying how beautiful shewas—she was ten!—and he could help her go places. Her jaw was clenched in that same way. I ran up and saved her by being rude, and we laughed and laughed while our parents looked on disapprovingly.

Later, when we were older and she was going to lavish parties for meetings with producers, she always used to bring me along, and I’d watch her face, and when her jaw got tight, I’d sweep in and ask some stupid question, and maybe she wouldn’t get the part, but she also never ended up as one of those terrible stories in a documentary about young women in Hollywood.

So I know what I have to do now.

I kiss Oliver on the cheek and I walk up to her.

“This is my cue,” I say, and she turns to me, startled, with a kind of wild look in her eyes, and then she laughs.

She leans closer to me. “You always know. How do you always know?”

“What’s going on?”

“Fred’s missing.”

Ah,shit.