Page 86 of Web of Lies
“You don’t have to,” my voice trembles at the thought of him walking away now. After so much. “You can walk away now to save you and Ainsley.”
“But if you stay, you stay. There’s no going back to how it was.” Zepp adds to the tension in the room that’s building around the four of us.
Chase swallows hard, eyes darting between the three of us and the computer screen. The thoughts in Chase’s mind swirl, showing every emotion in his eyes. His face twists and turns until he bolts up to his feet. His mouth drops open, his feet carrying him halfway across the room and back again.
And when his answer finally comes, tension fills the room tenfold.
“What do you mean, a crazy cult and murderer?” Chase sits back down in his abandoned chair. He eyes the twins, who still cling to me in support.
“Go ahead, New Girl.” Seger nudges me with his hand. Gee, thanks, leave it all up to me.
“Tell him everything.” Zepp squeezes my shoulder one last time as they take a seat around us.
Chase’s eyes haven’t left mine since Seger’s admission. But Chase agreed to stay, even if it meant losing everything. Even if he lost his spot here and to me, it speaks volumes. I can trust him with everything, and in return, I’ll figure this all out.
Two happy girls peer back at me from the photo on my phone. Their smiles light up the entire picture, even with the pink flowers in the background. My eyes close, the screams of our adventures floating through my memories like a movie reel. Memories. Oh—the memories, forever memorialized in a single photograph. One I’ll never forget.
Magnolia’s birthday. Addison thought it’d be fun to take us to an amusement park, not knowing my fear of roller coasters or, rather, motion sickness. We ate pretzels until we puked. I tried the small roller coasters to give Magnolia an enjoyable experience, even when they made me dizzy and discombobulated.
“She was my best friend—my only friend.” Chase’s eyes widen at the sight of the picture now sitting in the palm of his shaking hands. “Even when she moved away to a different school. We stayed in contact, but the moment I found out what happened, I had to do something.” Tears burn the back of my eyes, tingling at the tip of my nose. Emotions threaten to overtake me and drown me in the grief I’ve repressed for months. But I still can’t let them. Only when I’m finished. Only when the murderer steps forward and is punished like they deserve to be, then I’ll grieve.
“Maggie,” Chase whispers, running his finger along the outline of her. His beautiful gray eyes glaze over in a fog, trapping him in a memory.
“Kaycee has proof that what we all thought happened didn’t happen.” Zepp shifts in his seat, snapping Chase’s attention back to me.
“Yeah? Like how?”
I glance at the guys. Their heads nod in encouragement. “Magnolia wasn’t suicidal. We had plans. We were going to go to college together. We had a future, and she was excited about it. She sent me emails detailing everything that happened to her—or well—what I thought happened to her.” I run my fingers through my hair, shifting in my chair. They weren’t my suspects anymore. Not by a long shot. They were more than that now. My allies. Saviors. Friends or more than that. The unmistakable chemistry sizzling between us grounds me.
“Clever shit wrote Kaycee in code, giving—get this—our names as the culprits for her bullying. If she were here right now, I’d have some fucking words with her.” Seger wipes his hand along the creases of his eyebrows.
“What? Our names? What the shit? No, no, we tried to help her whenever we could. Ainsley was her best fucking friend on the sly. We tried….” Sadness edges into his tone, his eyes turning down towards the floor.
“But they threatened you all, didn’t they?” They all nod together. “Was it the same as this year?” They all nod again.
“Do they have the same thing on your sister as they do on you?”
Chase shrugs. “As of last year, yeah, they did. But we told Maggie this stuff. We showed her everything. We tried to protect her with everything going on. But we could sneak past them last year, tiptoe around however they were keeping tabs on us, but it’s different this year,” Chase says, frowning.
“They got smarter this year. Last year was probably a trial run,” Zepp says, shaking his head.
“Their first fucking time doing it,” Seger adds with frustration in his voice, fist-raising into the air like he wants to punch his frustrations away.
“So last year was the first year any of this happened?” I ask again, and they all nod again.
“So, if she named us, you don’t still think?” Chase shifts in his seat again, staring at me. Desperation pours from his eyes, pleading with me to tell him I don’t think he’s a murderer. His body stiffens, jaw ticking, waiting for my answer.
“No, no, we are working on that,” I say with a sharp nod.
“She was able to track down a few of the responsible parties. Carter, of course,” Zepp says, scratching his jaw.
Seger rolls his eyes at the mere mention of Carter. “Fucking Cruel Carter, I don’t know what crawled up his grumpy ass and died, but that guy needs to be taken down a peg,” Seger grumbles, fiddling with his fingers.
“Trent, Hadley, and Oscar too. But I don’t know about anyone else. There are more people.” As my programs hack into Chase’s father’s information, I bring up the mirrored text conversation.
“What the shit?” Chase leans in towards the screen. I scroll through the conversations slowly, letting them get their fill of what I’ve read these past few weeks.
“Smartypants stole Carter’s phone and mirrored it to her computer.” Zepp’s voice sounds so proud of me, and I preen at his praise. My back straightens, and my chest puffs out. Yes, yes, boys, I did that! I stole from an asshole and won, kind of. If you don’t count the whole—head in a toilet bowl ending—thing.
