Page 24 of The Towering Sky

Avery clutched a chenille pillow to her chest. “Did you tell them about Dubai?”

“You mean, did I tell them that Mariel tried tokillme? I don’t think it would make me look very good in a murder investigation. All I said was that I have no idea what happened to her.”

“None of us know anything!” Rylin burst out. “So we’re fine, right? That’s the end of it?”

“Except that Mariel knew our secrets,” Watt said, speaking up for the first time.

All three girls whirled around to face him. Avery’s and Rylin’s eyes were wide and startled and thick-lashed; but Leda just met his gaze evenly. She’d clearly already been down this line of thought.

“She knew our secrets,” he repeated. “There’s a clearconnection between Mariel and us. Now that the police are digging into her death, it’s only a matter of time before they figure it out. After all, they already found Leda.”

Leda gave a terse nod of agreement, her dangle earrings brushing forward over the collar of her sweater.

“Are you saying that we’resuspects?” Rylin demanded.

Watt knew what she meant. If Mariel had been gathering files on all of them, it could look like they’d killed her to cover up what she knew. It was proof of motive, if nothing else.

“There’s no way,” Avery insisted. “We didn’t even know Mariel. Why wouldwebe suspects?”

“Because the police seem to be questioning motive rather than means,” Watt explained. “They obviously don’t know who killed her, so they’re trying to figure out who might havewantedto kill her and working backward from there. And if they make the connection between Leda and Eris’s death—”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. If the police learned the truth about Eris’s death, the fact that Leda had blackmailed them all to keep it hidden, then they would clearly try to find out what that blackmail had entailed. Which would lead them straight to everyone’s secrets.

Avery gasped. The sun cast the shadow of her eyelashes on her cheekbones. “You’re saying that if the cops keep investigating, they might discover what Mariel had on all of us,” she summarized.

Silence hung in the air. Watt imagined he could see it, as if all their unspoken fears had been made tangible, swirling like snowflakes.

“Now you see why I wanted to meet up. I had to warn you guys,” Leda said miserably.

“I still don’t get it. If they have no clue who might have killed Mariel—if their only option is to guess at motive and workbackward—then why did they reopen the case at all?” Avery asked.

“They must have some new evidence,” Rylin posited. “Something that made them think it was murder without suggesting who did it.”

Leda bit her lip. “The police told me how she died,” she said softly, and they all looked up, because that information definitelyhadn’tbeen in the obit. “Mariel drowned in the East River.”

“She drowned?” Avery repeated. “That sounds like an accident to me. What new evidence could they possibly have found to prompt a reopening of the investigation?”

The room erupted into a storm of theories.

“Maybe they found new security footage of someone pushing her, but can’t see who it is?”

“Or maybe they found a weapon, and realized that someone used it to attack her.”

“But how would they know that weapon was used on Mariel? DNA?”

“Why can’t they just use location data to see who was there that day?”

“Location data isn’t stored for more than forty-eight hours, youknowthat. It was a landmark Supreme Court case—”

“Maybe they found a record of a security breach somewhere along the river but can’t tell who it was?”

“Enough!”

Leda had begun pacing back and forth like a caged lioness. When she reached one end of the carpet, she would turn automatically and start back in the other direction. Watt had forgotten that about her: the way she was always doubling and twisting on herself, as if it were impossible for her to ever fall still.

“I didn’t call you guys here to instigate a blind panic, okay? Especially since you might not even be involved! Mariel wasobsessed withme. This is my problem. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all of yours. I only wanted to warn you, just in case,” she added a little less vehemently.

“It’s my problem too, Leda. If they find out about—” Avery faltered. “It wouldn’t be good, if anyone learned what Mariel knew about me.”