Page 138 of Good Girls Lie

Ford still can’t even believe what she’s hearing. “Why would she hurt Becca?”

“Because Becca hurt me.” Alex raises her shirt and Ford sees the bandage on her rib cage. A small part of her whispers in silent agony. She, too, was branded, something the Ivy Bound society is expressly forbidden to do anymore. What was Becca Curtis thinking? She’s brought back every hazing ritual outlawed by Ford when she came on board a decade ago.

Rumi told Ford she was naive. Maybe they’ve been doing this all along and she’s simply not been paying attention. Or maybe Becca Curtis thought she could get away with it because of who she was.

“It’s not only the brand,” Alex says. “Or the hazing. Becca broke my heart, too. Ashlyn was furious yesterday and looking for someone to take it out on. She couldn’t torture and kill me, not until I made things right, so she went after the one thing, the one person, I give a damn about. Becca.”

She turns to Kate. “How did you figure it out?”

“A photograph from the crime scene, of a family portrait. After that, it was only a matter of finding someone from the household still alive to look at the photo from your customs entry. The cook confirmed for us who you really were.”

“Dorsey,” Alex says, smiling. “She was always so kind to me. Never sent me home hungry. I always wondered if she knew I was Damien’s, or if she was just a soft touch. He treated her abominably. Another innocent caught in Ashlyn’s crossfire.”

“This is all very heartwarming, but where is Ashlyn now?” Tony asks.

“I don’t know. I saw her in the graveyard last night—did you know there’s a tunnel out from the sophomores’ hall? It’s down the stairs from the storage room across from mine. So convenient, these tunnels. She’s been moving about freely for days, nicking food, lurking, snooping, stealing. She realized Camille was trying to spy on my computer, and though there wasn’t much to see, Ashlyn couldn’t risk it. She had to find out what she knew.”

“So you’re saying she killed Camille.”

“Yes. It’s the only logical explanation.”

“Did she admit this to you?” Tony asks.

“She didn’t have to. I don’t know exactly what happened that night, I was being tapped for Ivy Bound. The shirt is the key, though. Becca gave it to me, I found it on my bed after I took a shower. I assumed it was put there in that fifteen-minute window, but then I realized, it could have been there the whole tap. Which means Ashlyn, who was moving in and out of the buildings at will, would have had access to the shirt and my room for a few hours. I assume she wrote the summons and got Camille upstairs, questioned her, pushed her off the ledge, then hurried back and put the shirt on the bed.

“It was a good plan, to make it look like either Becca or I were responsible. Unless she confesses, though, we may never know what really happened.”

“This is quite a tale, Alex,” Ford says. An impossible, ridiculous tale.

“It is. But it’s the truth. I have no reason to lie anymore.”

Ford wants to believe her. But there’s something so strange about her story, something missing.

The convenient specter of a psychotic missing sister.

Something niggles at the back of her brain.

“The piano. You gave up the piano. Muriel told me you were just having an off day.”

Alex smiles, delighted with this tiny bit of proof. “Not an off day. I never had proper lessons, only school lessons. Ashlyn taught me how to get through the meeting with Muriel. She is an amazing pianist, total natural. Do you know how hard I had to work to at least make it seem like I had the tiniest spark of talent? I learned enough to make it seem like I was just out of practice. It was a right pain in the arse, I’ll tell you that. But Muriel, she wasn’t fooled. Not really. She knew something was wrong that went deeper. She saw it within the first few minutes, when I set my fingers on the wrong keys to start and had to shift over an octave. God, what a stupid mistake. I might have even stuck with it, pretended until she taught me more, but after that, I knew she’d be watching too closely. I had to quit.”

The story is a good one. It might very possibly be true. Except...

“And then she died,” Tony says, the words Ford is thinking. “Is this Ashlyn’s doing, too?”

Alex’s face falls. “I don’t think so. I think that was just a terrible, horrible coincidence.”

Is this girl capable of the lies, the deceit, it would take to pull off a stunt of this magnitude? Is Ford staring into the eyes of a killer?

Or is she some sort of split personality, and moments from now, the other part of her will claw its way to the surface and laugh at their pain?

And what is that smell?

84

THE SURPRISE

Oh, come on. Are you really buying into all of this crap?