t never even occurred to Lily or Sadie-Grace to get Campbell’s lunch from McDonald’s. No, our temporary hostage could only be served an organic beef burger of the finest provenance. In fact, my fellow kidnappers bought two twelve-dollar gourmet burgers, because neither my cousin nor her best friend could recall with any degree of certainty whether Campbell Ames was in favor of avocado as a burger topping, or against.
“You guys do realize that she’s not going to be writing a review of this experience, right?” That earned me two blank stares. “Five stars,” I deadpanned. “Would definitely be kidnapped again.”
“Believe me,” Lily replied crisply. “We realize.”
Sadie-Grace nodded seriously. “Campbell never gives anything five stars.”
It took everything I had not to start massaging my temples. “I’m just saying that if you guys are feeling guilty, maybe it’s time to reconsider option one.”
Let Campbell go. Gamble that she wouldn’t have us arrested and weather the scandal that would result from Lily’s outing as the Secrets blogger. Eventually, a bigger scandal would come along.
“Sawyer.” Lily pressed her lips together, then forced herself to continue speaking in a pleasant tone. “It’s not just what people would say. It’s that they’d enjoy saying it. I’m Olivia Taft Easterling’s daughter. I am proper and respectful and polite. I say the right thing. I do the right thing.” She took a breath, but there was a long pause before she let it out. “Sadie-Grace is probably the only friend I have who wouldn’t be glad to see me fall.”
“That’s not true,” Sadie-Grace argued immediately.
“It was when Walker broke up with me.”
Before Sadie-Grace could reply, Lily’s phone rang, and my cousin glanced at me. “It’s Mama. Whenever I even look at this many calories…” She held up the brown bag containing Campbell’s burgers. “… she knows.”
I plucked the phone from Lily’s hand and declined the call. Based on the reaction from the peanut gallery, you would have thought I’d done actual witchcraft.
“Your mom will live,” I said.
“She just likes to know what I’m doing,” Lily replied automatically. “Where I am.”
“What you’re eating?” I suggested.
Lily responded to my pointed question with one of her own. “Doesn’t your mama care about nutrition?”
When I was a child, we’d named our dog Pop-Tart. My mom’s idea of a balanced breakfast probably didn’t match up with Aunt Olivia’s.
“Let’s put it this way,” I told my cousin. “If I was the one running the Secrets blog and my mom found out? She’d try to turn it into a mother-daughter activity and ask if she could submit some photos of her own.”
Lily was either awed… or aghast. “They never talk about her, you know.” She slowed her pace as we neared her parents’ house. “Your mama. I was in the fourth grade before I even knew she existed.”
I took that to mean that Lily hadn’t known that I existed, either.
“That’s the scary thing.” Sadie-Grace was wide-eyed. “With some scandals, people talk. But with others…”
Lily looked down. “They stop talking about you. Forever.”
She couldn’t possibly believe that the reaction to Secrets would, in any way, equal the one to my mom’s teenage pregnancy, but I doubted she’d find They won’t exile you forever to be comforting.
For better or worse, we definitely were not going back to option one.
“You requested a burger,” Lily declared as she opened the door to the pool house. “We got you a…” She stopped talking.
I looked past her and saw why. Campbell was gone.
Incredulous, I stalked over to the empty chair and picked up the ropes that lay there. “How the hell did she…”
“I told you,” Sadie-Grace whispered. “She’s in congress with the Beast.”
“She’s flexible, she’s driven by vengeance, and she has sharp fingernails,” Lily corrected tersely, holding on to her composure by a thread.
Sadie-Grace was dismayed. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to file her nails to points during that hot stone manicure!”
I couldn’t help myself. “You kidnapped her and gave her a manicure?”
“Enough with the Monday-morning quarterbacking,” Lily told me tartly. “Campbell’s gone, and that’s that.” She plucked a handwritten note from the arm of the chair.
I moved close enough to read it. Campbell’s message was all of two words long.
GAME ON.
Beside me, Lily bolted. At first, I thought she was going outside to puke her brunch up, but she kept running.
To the main house.
Up the stairs.
To her room.
I managed to keep up with her, but only just.
“It’s gone.” Lily sank to the floor next to her trash can, and in an uncharacteristic burst of temper, she knocked it over. “The tablet I used for Secrets,” she whispered hoarsely. “I threw it away, and now it’s gone.”