Braithe wasn’t hearing her; she was lying on her side on the ground, still handcuffed to the table, but Ginger had left her legs free. He must not see her as much of a flight risk. That was good. If he underestimated Braithe, they could use that.

  Rainy had been trying to wake her for a good thirty minutes, ever since Ginger had left, clanking her handcuffs against the table leg and calling out to her. But she was seriously dehydrated and her vocal cords were raw from the screaming she’d done in the freezer. She didn’t know how long he’d be gone, but the little fucker had run off without gagging her.

  He’d let her out of the freezer, his nose bandaged and his eyes looking slightly doped. Good. Rainy figured he’d gone to urgent care and come right back, even though it hadn’t felt like right back. But the four or five hours she’d spent in the cold had seemed like much more. Eventually, she’d fallen asleep, and when she’d woken up, Ginger had been standing over her. Without speaking he’d dragged her out of the freezer and back to her spot against the table leg. As soon as he ripped the duct tape from her face, she’d said, “I’d like to upgrade to a suite.”

  He’d shoved her down, hard. The back of her head hit the table and she moaned, dropping her chin to her chest, dizzy. He didn’t use the handcuffs to secure her to the table this time: Rainy saw him reach for his pocket, where he pulled out pink zip ties. He secured her arms around the table leg with the zip ties before he took off the cuffs and tossed them aside. Pink zip ties. She almost asked if he’d ordered them on Amazon, but she wanted a shot at some water.

  Pink, pink, your feet stink! She could hear her dad yelling that across their small apartment living room before charging for her: the tickle monster. Had he been high when he’d done that? Drunk? On a sober kick? Did she care? He was never scary to her; his sideburns were too big to be taken seriously and his laugh was contagious. Pink. She felt encouraged: this was so stupid and yet so real. Her dad had taught her how to break someone’s nose with her forehead; he’d demonstrated it many times in their living room. She’d thought it was hilarious, especially when he mimicked grabbing an imaginary someone by their shirt collar and rearing back his head, to “head-bash” them as he’d called it. “This is how you do it, Summer, are you watching?” Little had she known how that lesson would serve her now.

  “Time out for noisemaking?” she asked. He didn’t look at her, not in the mood for jokes after getting his ass beat, she supposed. Oh, how smug you are, tied-up woman! she told herself. Either way, she could see the dark bruises beneath his eyes and it pleased her somewhere deep and feral: she’d got him good. Thanks, Dad.

  Ginger had said no one could hear them because the restaurant was in a wing that was being remodeled, yet he was never winded when he arrived with his armful of groceries. That meant the elevators were probably working, and Ginger—as staff—would have access to the key codes that would allow him up here. He didn’t seem at all worried about the sound.

  When she looked over at Braithe, she was sitting up. It took a minute for Rainy’s mind to catch up to what she was seeing. She tried to say Braithe’s name, but it caught in her dry throat.

  “Rainy—” Braithe’s voice was so shocking in the silence that for a few seconds Rainy’s tongue stayed glued to the roof of her mouth as she tried to work it free.

  “Rainy...” she said again, more desperately.

  “Y—es. I’m here.” It had not felt real until now, a fever dream, but with Braithe’s cracked voice filling the room, Rainy started to wake up.

  “I’m so sorry. I never imagined...” It sounded like it hurt for her to speak. Rainy saw her look longingly toward the water bottle. She made a noise that sounded like she was trying to clear her throat. She knew it was ridiculous, given the situation they were in, but she needed to know.

  “He’ll come back soon. What happened between you and Grant during the baby shower?”

  The kitchen retuned to an awkward silence. Rainy could hear Braithe’s labored breaths.

  “Nothing,” she said finally. “God, absolutely nothing.”

  “But you tried...”

  Her answer came slower this time, labored. “Yes, I tried.”

  “Why did you pretend to be my friend?” She licked her lips. Everything hurt.

  “That was real. I like you.”

  Rainy tried to laugh but it was just a crackle. Braithe had used her to have more access to Grant: the couples’ nights, the dinners, had put her in his life more soundly than it had with just her and Stephen. Now, in light of everything, she was seeing Braithe differently. Not as the elegant, kind friend, but as a conniving, manipulative liar. Maybe she had liked Rainy, but it was only to use her.

  “But you liked Grant more.”

  “Yes, I suppose you could see it like that. At first, I thought I was making the right choice, with Stephen,” she said softly. “He was so good to me, and Grant...well, he was never as into me as I was into him, if I’m being honest. When we were together, I was like an afterthought. I suppose that’s when the addiction really started.”

  “The addiction to what, Braithe? To Grant? To wanting what you don’t have?”

  “That’s fair... I get it. But he didn’t want me back, Rainy. And I don’t know what’s going to happen here, but you should know that.”

  Rainy leaned her head forward and hit it backward against the table leg. It hurt but it felt good, woke her up a little. She wasn’t going to thank Braithe for telling her that Grant wouldn’t cheat on her. This woman was not her friend.

  “He’s who you were talking about the night we played that game.” It wasn’t a question, and Braithe didn’t try to answer it. “And you’re the one who asked my question, not Tara. What were you going to do if I didn’t draw that question? Use it as an opening to ask me, anyway?”

  Braithe’s silence confirmed that she was correct.

  “Did you call Grant that night?”

  Even in the dim light, Rainy could see her head bounce in a nod.

  “Yeah. I called to tell him again how I felt.”

  “And what did he say to you?” Did she really want to know? That night, she’d tried to call Grant herself, and he’d sent her calls to voice mail because he had Braithe on the other line, pouring out her feelings. Why hadn’t he told her? Why hadn’t Viola said something? They’d all just let her be a fool. Anger at all of them burned in her chest, so much it almost made her cry out.

  There was a long pause. Rainy wasn’t sure if Braithe was crying. She did not care, she did not. The last year of her life had been a complete lie.

  “That he didn’t feel the same way.”

  She ground her teeth, wondering if she should believe her. Braithe needed Rainy on her side if they were both going to get out of here. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

  “Okay, why would I lie about that, Rainy? I may have been harboring feelings for Grant since the beginning of time, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t sincere about liking you.”

  “You didn’t give a shit about me, Braithe. You were using me to stay close to Grant.”

  Braithe’s lack of response pinned the tail on the donkey. Rainy turned her face away. She didn’t want to look at any part of her, not even her lying, shitface profile.

  “Why did you come?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” There was an edge to her voice now.

  Oh, are we seeing the real Braithe Mattson? Rainy thought.

  “Why. Did. You. Come? You made a choice to come here when Paul texted you from my phone. If you hate me so much, explain why you did it.”

  “He said he was going to kill you.”

  “So, why not let him?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, listen to yourself. I should let someone kill you because you fucked my boyfriend once upon a time in high school and you still have a thing for him?”

  “Fuck, Rainy. Okay. What are we going to do?”

  She licked her lips. “I think I know this guy. I’ve been thinking and I have a few plans. None of them are actually very good but—”

  “Oh my God,” Braithe said.

  “I think he was watching me...maybe before now. But he saw us together and he—”

  “Used me,” Braithe finished.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Braithe whimpered.

  “We have to focus.” Her backside was numb, and she shifted her position, painfully aware of the cuffs. “I set some things in motion before I got here. But first, I need to tell you about my past.”

  * * *

  It was light out when Ginger came back, this time carrying a black duffel bag, the same dingy beanie still on his head. His face was different. What was it? He turned his back to her to set the bag on the table; it made a solid noise when it hit the surface: it was heavy. How long had it been since she’d woken up in here? No more than seventy-two hours. Would that give him enough time to find her? Hurry, Taured.

  If he comes...

  He will come.

  Ginger dumped out the rest of the bag on the small table behind her. The noise of the objects hitting the tabletop was loud and metallic. There were a limited number of things that could fit in a bag of that size and be that heavy. Glancing at Braithe nervously, she saw her playing along, her head resting on her shoulder. He would kill Braithe first, she knew it. He’d played with her the longest, but she hadn’t been his real target, anyway.

  He smelled...stank. Rainy wrinkled her nose, watching his movements closely. Beer and unwashed body, she thought. He’d gotten a drink this time...probably a lot of drinks, judging by the smell of alcohol.

  “Paul,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Are you okay?”

  His shoulders hunched but he didn’t turn around.

  He’d been manic so far, riding his own chaotic energy. This was a crash. This is what she’d been hoping for.

  “Ginger,” she said clearly. “I have to pee. She probably does, too.”

  He froze. She could see his fingers gripping the edge of steel table, gnawing without teeth at the metal until the knuckles turned white. He’d heard her.

  Fuck. Maybe that was too far. Licking her lips, she tried again. “Did you think that I didn’t know who you were?”

  Still, he said nothing, his back to her.

  “You were closest to him, weren’t you? I saw you the night of my mother’s...her funeral, or whatever he called that spectacle. I saw you other times, too...” She let that linger. “I know what he did to you. And I know what you did to Sara.”

  His torso jerked and then he turned around. He was smiling, one side of his mouth jerked up like a cartoon character.

  “Hey, Summer.”

  Something was different, wrong. Not wrong—right. That was it: he’d shaved. Without the beard, he looked a lot more like a kid. She could still see that kid in her memories, tripping over his words and his feet...being tripped. Looking like he’d explode every time Taured paid attention to him.

  He’d been on the receiving end of Skye’s right arm, just like her. At the time, she’d only heard the rumors about what had happened to him; it hadn’t been out in the open, in front of most of the compound, like with her. Some of the boys had seen it, and then there was Sara, who, when taking her father his dinner tray, had seen Ginger in the infirmary.

  “But why?” Summer had asked. Sara hadn’t wanted to tell her, but Summer had pressed her, so she had: Taured caught Ginger touching his thing. Looking at something bad and touching his thing. Taured said it was a terrible sin. So he had Skye hit him so hard his jaw dislocated.

  That had been a few weeks before Skye had launched the baseball at her own face. After that, everything had snowballed, and Ginger had receded to the back of her mind with everything else that happened at the compound. To be happy was to forget, but something had changed in Rainy. Remembering hadn’t felt painful when she went back to Friendship. That had surprised her. She’d expected to feel depleted being there and, instead, felt energized, furious. She’d stayed away for so long to protect Summer, not realizing that it wasn’t Summer who’d be going back: it would be Rainy.

  She had just disfigured his face further by breaking his nose. Ginger wasn’t going to poison her anymore, she realized. She’d changed the course of her punishment.

  “Skye got you, too,” she said, and his smile dropped. “Do you remember when he broke my nose?”

  “He didn’t break your nose,” Ginger said quickly. “Taured broke your nose.”

  “He was too much of a coward to do it himself.” Rainy laughed. It was a genuine sound, and Ginger looked startled. “He used kids to do his dirty work.”

  Ginger was visibly upset now. “He was the coach—the one in control.”

  “And now what? You’re the one in control?”

  “Looks like it.”

  He was still drunk, she realized, swishy on his feet. He took a step toward her and thought better of it. Turning his back to her, he opened the bag. The zipper was loud. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Braithe move. Ginger saw it, too, and his head snapped sideways. She saw the twisted side of his face where his jaw had never quite healed properly, more visible now. He’d used his beard to hide it, like wearing a mask, but today he wanted her to see. Why?

  He’s going to kill you, and he wanted you to know who he is first. The thought came in clear and sharp. She watched him take a hammer out of the bag, set it neatly on the table. He glanced at her, and then kept working. Another hammer, and then another, and he was organizing them. Not by size: he took out a small hammer painted entirely gold and set it next to a silver one with a black handle. He was lining them up like a collection. It felt like there was an anchor in her intestines: the drop and pull hurt. Oh my God, he’s going to make you suffer...

  The sweat beaded at her hairline and trickled down the side of her face.

  Derek’s face had paled when she’d asked him how his mother passed. She’d sworn she could see his heart pounding beneath the polyester of his shirt and had immediately regretted asking. She’d expected him to say cancer; that had been a hopeful thought on Rainy’s part, wishing for Sara to have died of something...normal? Cancer seemed safer than what he’d said; she could understand cancer.

  “It was a homicide,” he’d mumbled. “They’ve never found her killer.”

  This is what she’d known in her gut ever since he’d told her Sara had died. But she’d thought right away that it was Taured. He’d killed her mother; why not Derek’s?

  Until she got back to the hotel in Vegas and had opened the Ziploc bag—the floppy disk, the photos, the driver’s licenses, both her mother’s and Feena’s dad’s—and she’d put it all together. Taured was a killer, but his insanity had created other killers. The one standing before her was working his way through the floppy disk, punishing the women Taured had already punished by taking those photos in the first place. But why?

  “Isn’t it enough that I—that Sara—had to live through that place? That he drugged teenage girls and photographed them naked to blackmail them and their parents? That he destroyed our lives? Now you want to hunt us down and kill us?” Spittle flew out of her mouth, clinging to her chin. She’d screamed the last part and now Ginger was red with outrage. But he seemed to collect himself, and in the next minute he was smiling again. God, she wished he hadn’t shaved his beard. What he said next made the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention.

  “Don’t be stupid. I never had to hunt Sara. She was a lamb. I just took her while she was visiting that cactus you girls used to love. Do you remember how you’d get all horny for that cactus?”

  She opened her jaw and screamed at him in anger, her neck extended as far as it would go. That did it. He stalked toward Braithe, the little gold hammer in his hand.

  “No! No!” Rainy knew she shouldn’t have screamed. “I won’t yell again—”

  But it was too late: he swung the hammer. She saw Braithe tilt her head up to look at him; she made a noise in the back of her throat, and then the hammer came down. Braithe’s head fell once more to the side. The breath whooshed out of Rainy; her lungs pushed but they wouldn’t pull. Straining against her cuffs, she yanked forward, but she was held fast.

  He’s killed her, he’s killed her, she thought as she saw the blood drip from Braithe’s ear to the floor. He killed Sara, and now Braithe...

  She took her first breath in; her lungs expanded. She was going to scream again because this time Paul was heading to her, the little gold hammer wet with Braithe’s blood.

  A crime scene, she thought, watching another drip hit the floor. He was a serial killer. She’d be dead and she’d never know if they caught him. How many murders did it take to class someone as a serial killer? Three, she thought. And she would be the third, assuming he hadn’t killed anyone else first. Her photos had been third on the disk, behind Feena’s and then Sara’s.

  She’d searched Jon’s last name, too, and two pages of articles had popped up, his obituary among them. Jon died of a heart attack years before Ginger killed Feena. They’d been living in Texas at the time. Feena had later moved to Colorado to be near some family, and that’s where Ginger had tracked her down.

  “You killed Feena, too,” she said.

  He didn’t acknowledge this, but he didn’t need to. “She started using her real name after Jon died. You were the hardest to find.” He was standing in front of her now. “Who would have thought you’d be D-list famous? I was looking in the slums and our girl was eating caviar in the city. I thought I’d have to travel to see you, but then—I couldn’t believe it!—you brought yourself right to me. Can you believe how lucky I am?”

  Crouching down, he reached out and chucked her beneath the chin. “It was fun, too, the whole little game to draw you out. I make it my mission to know my girls. And you, Summer—Rainy...whatever you want your name to be—carry a lot of guilt. Despite how Braithe treated you, I knew you’d come after her. A person can be controlled by their weakness.” His crooked mouth pulled to the side.