Page 6 of Deadly Little Scandals

A second box—this one bearing my name—sat near the pillow. I crossed the room, picked it up, and opened it. Nestled inside, I found a single elbow-length white glove. Pinned to the glove, there was another note, this one written on thinner paper in blood-red ink.

The Big Bang, 11 p.m., back room.

“Lily,” I said calmly, “don’t take this the wrong way, but is this an invitation to an orgy?”

“A what?”Lily Taft Easterling did not, as a rule, shriek, but this time, she came close.

“The Big Bang,” I replied. “Doesn’t exactly sound PG to me.”

Lily glared at me. I grinned. Sometimes getting a rise out of her was just too easy. A pang came after a brief delay, and the grin froze on my face.

I could lose this. Lose her.

Putting those emotions on lockdown, I examined the contents of the box more closely. The pin holding the note to the glove was made of silver. Carved into the end, there was a small rose, and wrapped around the rose’s stem, there was a snake.

“An orgy,” I repeated, forcing a grin and trying to get the moment back. “With serpents.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “When you’re done repeating that word ad nauseam, I’d be happy to inform you that The Big Bang is a local establishment.”

“A brothel?”

“They sell hot wings,” Lily said defensively. “And beer. And…other beverages.”

“So you’re saying it’s a bar.” I’d grown up in a bar—almost literally. My mom and I had lived over The Holler until I was thirteen. “Someone wants to meet the two of us in the back room of a bar at eleven p.m.?”

I was skeptical. The world Lily had grown up in—the world I’d reluctantly taken my place in this past year—was a place of charity galas and twin sets and pearls. A bar wasn’t exactly the natural habitat of an Easterlingora Taft.

“Not just someone,” Lily told me, removing the contents of her box and cradling it reverently in one hand. “The White Gloves.”

re yousurethat’s how we ended up at the bottom of this hole, Sawyer?”

“Trust me. You were unconscious, but I held on just long enough to see the person responsible.”

“Maybe it was an accident?”

“How do you accidentally drug someone, Sadie-Grace?”

“Accidentally…on purpose?”

ily refused to enlighten me as to who or what the White Gloves were until she could be certain that we wouldn’t be overheard. At the lake, that apparently meant hitting the water. Within five minutes, the two of us were swimsuit-clad and Jet Ski–bound. We made our way down to the dock.

And Lily’s father.

After more than a month of playing this game, seeing J.D. Easterling shouldn’t have hit me so hard. I shouldn’t have cared that he was in full-on Dad Mode, puttering around the dock and getting way too much pleasure out of power-washing everything in the near vicinity, including and especially the boats.

“How are my favorite girls doing?” he called out. “Making your escape already?”

Don’t say a word,I told myself.Don’t think about it. Think about the White Gloves. Think about the snake and rose on that pin. Don’t even look at him. Look at the boats.

There were two of them, one a speedboat and one that Lily would have insisted wasn’t a yacht.

“Sawyer’s never ridden a Jet Ski.” Beside me, Lily was talking. “Think we could take outThing OneandThing Twobefore the weekend traffic hits the water?”

I took a step toward the boats, telling myself that it was only natural that I would be curious, natural that I would focus on reading the name on the back of the larger boat, rather than joining the conversation between Lily and her father.

Ourfather.

“I have noticed, Daughter, that when you preface a statement with ‘Sawyer has never…’ you’re usually up to something.”