Page 31 of Kiss and Tell
I’d checked for wires leading to his place and hadn’t seen any, so either there’s a Wi-Fi set up I can’t see or they’re doing it some other way. At this point, I wouldn’t put carrier pigeons or smoke signals past them.
The computer is cold, and it takes a minute to boot up and rumble to life, but getting in is no problem. Natalie also gave me her password, explaining it’s only protected to keep homesick campers from sneaking in and inundating their parents with messages.
I don’t feel a twinge of guilt that Natalie had not expected me to go into her and Ben’s emails. All’s fair in war and pranks when two of your oldest friends are hiding your ex at camp and not telling you.
Natalie’s email doesn’t yield much when I search for Sawyer’s name, only a message from a couple of months before, RSVP-ing for Juniper’s first birthday. She’d invited me too, but my shooting schedule wouldn’t allow it, so I’d sent her a giant unicorn piñata for the party.
Ben’s, however, is the motherlode. There’s an email from five days ago informing Sawyer that Jared and Kylie had gotten the house ready, and another from two days ago letting Sawyer know what time Natalie was supposed to pick me up the following day.
“Watch for the bike,” he said. “She’ll pick the red one. If it’s not in front of her cabin, the coast is clear.”
Ah. First mystery solved. Now I know how we’ve avoided crossing paths so far. I can’t decide if I’m impressed or bothered that they guessed I’d pick the red bike.
If it were anyone but Ben and Natalie, I’d find this whole thing incredibly creepy, but the two of them are good down to their bones. Whatever their intentions are, they aren’t trying to hurt me. But whatarethey up to?
Jared and Kylie. They’re the next key. I’d met them in passing the previous night when Natalie introduced me to the kitchen staff. They’re aides-de-camp, she’d explained. Which basically means they’re the senior counselors, and after breakfast today, they’ll spend all morning shuttling the new counselors from the airport as the camp buzzes to life.
We’d always just had four days to get the camp ready for summer, but this year, with a whole new slate of counselors, Ben wants to do extra training with them.
I’ll have to catch Jared and Kylie before they disappear into the madness of the day. I lock the office behind me and head straight for the mess hall where a light shines through the kitchen window. That would be Lisa, no doubt.
She glances up at me, startled. “Miss Winters,” she says, then corrects herself when I hold up my hand. “I mean, Tabitha.” She swallows like it hadn’t been comfortable to say. “You’re earlier than I expected. I’m sorry. I was planning on breakfast at eight, but I can whip up something for you. Here, let me—”
“Lisa, it’s fine. I know it’s weird to have other cooks in your space, but how about if I make us a frittata, and we can visit before we have to dive into business?”
She looks at me like it’s the most baffling idea she’s ever heard.
“You…don’t like frittatas?” I guess.
“No, um, I love them. I just…I don’t know what to do while you’re making me breakfast?” It comes out as almost a squeak.
“How about if you prep lunch and keep me company while I work? If there’s one thing I remember about running this kitchen, it’s that there’s no such thing as getting too far ahead on food prep.”
“Sure, okay.” She glances at me, still uncertain, and I give her an encouraging nod. “I’m, um, going to get chickpeas? For hummus? For the lunches,” she adds. “Take whatever you need from the cold locker.”
I fetch the eggs and all the veggies I want, deciding to go with Tuscan flavors. She meets me at the prep table with a number ten can of chickpeas. It looks comically large until you consider how much a staff of hungry college kids can put away.
“You’ve already been cooking this morning?” I nod toward the skillet on the stove, which has very recently been frying bacon. The question is where it went. There are already broken eggshells in the garbage can when I drop my six empty shells to join them. “Are Ben and Natalie up already?”
“Oh, this isn’t for them.” I know that. Natalie is vegetarian and Ben doesn’t eat first thing in the morning. But Sawyer loves bacon. “This is for, um. A guest?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“It’s for a guest,” she says firmly.
“Like…Sawyer Reed? And he asked for extra bacon.”
Her mouth falls open. “You’re…you’re not supposed to know that.”
“Well, I do. And Ben and Natalie can’t know that I know, so now you’re keeping a double secret. Can you do that?” She looks torn, and I realize I’m asking her to be loyal to me over her bosses. “Only until tonight,” I promise. “Then you don’t have to keep any more secrets.”
“Okay,” she agrees. “But not after tonight.”
“Deal. Now, do you want to learn the trick to making the best frittata in the world? I learned it from Giada herself.”
“Giada?” she whispers reverently.
“Giada.”
