Betrayal

“I don’t really know her,” Hayley said. She didn’t ever want people to think she was two-faced, a trait she considered among the worst a person could have. “I feel kind of sorry for her.”

Colton nodded. “How can they say all that about her?”

“My dad says that there isn’t anything the media loves better than a pretty killer. The media is dog-piling on her because she didn’t act sad when the camera was watching.”

“Yeah, but her behavior is kind of weird, to say the least,” Colton said. “Given what’s going on.”

Hayley couldn’t argue that, not much anyway. “Stupid, wrong, whatever,” she finally said. “That doesn’t mean that she killed Olivia.”

Colton pushed a little. “She had that cut on her hand—remember? We saw it at school.”

Hayley nodded. “But it was a small cut and the police didn’t find much blood on her. If Olivia fought back, Bria

“Yeah, I guess so,” Colton said, his mind now back to the first time he noticed the scars on his mother’s palms. She’d lied to him that she’d fallen though a plate glass window, but he later found out they were from the time she’d been attacked in the Safeway parking lot while he was in his car seat watching everything, but not really seeing enough of it to understand what was going on.

At least never admitting to it.

As Hayley and Colton surfed the web, they discovered that most of the tabloids and webzines portrayed Bria

The first was the Flip cam video that the North Kitsap Herald reporter took at the crime scene. The second was the surveillance footage from the Victoria’s Secret shopping trip the afternoon after Olivia’s murder. The last one was a grainy black-and-white make-out video taken by the surveillance camera in the elevator at the Silverdale Beach Hotel.

And then there was the Inside Edition piece. The reporter for the tabloid TV show had called it a “scoop,” but in reality it was an ambush on Port Gamble’s police chief.

A

“Isn’t it true that Bria

“I don’t really want to get into that,” A

The reporter cocked a caterpiller brow and went on. “Isn’t it true that she’s no longer cooperating in the investigation?”

A

“It is true that Ms. Co

“Wait a second! I have something to show you,” the reporter said.

A second later, he thrust his cell phone in her face and played back a video.

“This will air tonight,” he said.

The camera zeroed in on Olivia’s parents as they sat on a sofa in some posh Seattle hotel. A floral arrangement of ice-blue hydrangeas and creamy-white gladiolas the size of a Mini Cooper provided the backdrop.

“Sources tell Inside Edition,” the interviewer on the video said in a breathless voice, “that your daughter’s murder might have been some kind of a game gone wrong.”

Eager to make his point, Edward Grant nearly lunged at the camera to get closer to the lens. “Our daughter was slaughtered by a soulless girl and her boyfriend. I don’t have any idea what they were doing that night, but I can tell you that Olivia was not a willing participant. This was no game gone wrong. No girl as smart as our Olivia plays a game to lose her life.”

Mrs. Grant dabbed at her eyes when the interviewer turned to her.

“I just can’t comment. I really couldn’t. I’m not a judgmental person. I will say—and I hope this doesn’t offend anyone because the people here have been rather kind—but I really do wish that the police would do something.”

After ditching the reporter, A

Once inside the safety of the station, A

“I saw that through the window. You could use something to calm you down,” she said.

A

“What I could really use now is a Xanax,” she said.

Tatiana shook her head. “Just drink the tea. You’re go

“What’s that?”

“Bria

“Ran away? What do you mean?”

“The father says that his daughter is missing. She’s not returning his calls,” Tatiana said, passing the slip of paper across the desk. “He’s a real jerk too.”

A

IF THERE COULD BE A SUBJECT that trumped Olivia’s murder in the halls of Kingston High School as fodder for incessant gossip and Criminal Minds—type speculation, it was the sudden disappearance of Bria

Beth Lee, Colton James, and Hayley and Taylor Ryan sat across from the library and tried to piece it all together.

“You run when you’re guilty, right?” Beth said.

Colton unzipped his hoodie. “Or if you think you’ve been framed,” he said.

“Guilty, I say,” Beth repeated.

Taylor tapped the screen on her phone. “Neither one of them has posted anything on Facebook or Twitter for like sixteen hours.”

“My guess is that they are dead,” Beth said, testing the strength of her spiked hair by pressing her fingertips gently against each point. “Who can go without posting for sixteen hours?”

“Or sixteen minutes,” Taylor said.

“Let’s think about it a little,” Hayley said, always approaching an issue or problem with logic. “Any number of things could have happened to them. Flight doesn’t mean they went willingly.”

“What are you getting at?” Beth asked.

“Maybe they were kidnapped by the real killer?” Colton asked.

“Possible, I guess,” Hayley said, though she didn’t think it was likely. Even so, she wanted to back up her boyfriend’s theory.

“Like maybe they got in a car accident or something?” Taylor said, realizing that the minute she gave voice to the idea it was probably the lamest suggestion anyone could come up with.

“I’ll stick with my original theory,” Beth said. “You run because you’re guilty.”

LATER THAT DAY, the Seattle Times updated its website, moving the story of a police cadet who got drunk and rolled his car into a school playground from the top of the page to:

PORT GAMBLE COUPLE DODGES MURDER INVESTIGATION

Bria