Before she died, she’d pulled away from me.
What didn’t she want to tell me?
I clutch her necklace. I was always holding out hope. That her obsession with dance would end at some point. I just had to wait. And someday I’d have my sister back.
Now I never will.
So this is all I have left. Finding out the truth. I owe her that.
I turn from the bench and run toward the park.
Gen. Thatcher. Seth’s dad. Gen’s mom. Jeremy. Seth. It’s kind of unbelievable that just a few weeks ago, I thought Thatcher had to have been the one to kill Fiona, because I couldn’t find a single other suspect. And now there are so many, I don’t know where to look. It’s like for every answer we uncover, ten more questions come with it.
If Fiona was having an affair with someone and she got the money for school from them—wouldn’t there be some evidence of it? Some big bank transfer? But the police should be able to uncover that. They should have seen it when they took her computer and phone. Which makes me remember that they still have my computer and phone.
And then, at the edge of the park, I stop.
The phone.
Whoever gave Fiona the money for school—she must have had a way of communicating with them.
Like a secret phone.
Of course, I don’t know if there was one for sure. But if she had a second phone, it must not have turned up in the cops’ search—or it would have led them to somebody. Which means she didn’t have it on her the night she was killed. And they didn’t find it in her room.
Unless Fiona did have it on her, and it fell out by the ravine.
Was that why we were shot at? Was the killer there, too, looking for her secret phone so they could destroy it? Tying up more loose ends? Was that all Thatcher was to them? A loose end?
Or the killer could be looking for the phone at the ravine, but that doesn’t mean it’s there. Fiona could have hidden it somewhere else.
If I were Fiona—where would I hide something like that?
They didn’t just search Fiona’s room last summer. They searched our whole house. And while our house is old, it’s not the kind of place full of charming little hidey-holes, the way the Montgomerys’ house probably is. Also, it’s not that big. And we don’t have a pool house, or even a shed—
Then it hits me.
The tree house.
I turn on my heel and run straight into the woods, faster this time. Back toward Bier’s End.
The woods are quieter than usual, as if all the birds and insects and woodland creatures are holding their collective breaths, watching me make my way deeper into the brush. My breath is loud in my ears. After what seems like both a long time and no time at all, I turn a bend in the path, and there it is: the abandoned tree house of our childhood.
It’s about twenty minutes from here to the ravine on foot, so anyone looking for clues around the ravine itself wouldn’t necessarily have come here. But it would be a good place to hide something if you were on the way there from our house.
I put my foot on the lowest plank nailed into the trunk of the tree. It doesn’t feel as sturdy as I remember, but it doesn’t wobble. Then the next, and the next. Five steps up, and I’m at the wooden platform below the tree house.
It’s covered in dead leaves, sticks, years of whatever the woods have dropped onto it when none of us were here to sweep it clean. I put my palms on the nearest plank of wood, test it. It feels like it will still hold my weight.
I pull myself up gingerly. Look at the pile of wood debris. Start a slow, careful sweep underneath with my hands.
It takes less than a minute before my hand strikes something hard.
I grab it.
It’s a small dark phone.
33
I was right.
I can’t believe it.
It’s inside a plastic bag. I take it out and stare at it. It’s last generation, the same model as the secret phone Seth gave me. No case. But there isn’t a scratch on it. With any luck there’ll be no water damage.
I press the power button, stupidly. Nothing. But that’s okay. It uses the same charger my phone does.
I’m just about to climb down the steps and run back to my room to plug it in when I pause.
Fiona’s journal that the cops couldn’t find. Could that be here, too?
After sticking the phone into the waistband of my shorts, I move cautiously forward on my hands, pushing leaves over the edge and onto the ground, until the entire platform is clear.
Nothing here.
I look up at the tree house. It’s not safe to put my weight on the wood. But if I could just climb up the trunk, look around while keeping most of my weight on the tree—
I put my foot on the next wooden plank nailed into the trunk, then the next. Soon my torso is through the hole in the tree house floor.
