cavenger hunt, my ass. Three hours later, I was ensconced in a limousine with Lily on one side and Boone on the other. Campbell was sitting with her back to the privacy window, which she’d very pointedly raised. Lily held a list of items in her left hand and a handheld high-definition camera in her right.

Apparently, the annual Symphony Ball Scavenger Hunt was a video scavenger hunt. Limos had been provided for our convenience. The plan was for us to spend the next five hours—between now and midnight—racing around town, videotaping ourselves doing a range of mama-approved challenges in front of famous local landmarks. But to decode exactly which landmarks, we had to answer a series of riddles.

The list in Lily’s hand contained the first clue, which would lead us to our first location, and, in turn, to a clue that would point us to the next. At the bottom of the card, scrawled in scripted lettering, was the first challenge: One Deb and one Squire must do the chicken dance to a Top 40 song of your choice (no profanity, please).

“I am beginning to sense that I may have made an error in judgment in agreeing to be the only boy on this team,” Boone stated.

Campbell rolled her eyes. “You were born for this,” she told her cousin. “And besides, I know you’ll keep your mouth shut.”

And there it was: the catch I’d been waiting for.

“Might I ask what Boone will be keeping his mouth shut about?” Lily inquired, her tone taking weaponized politeness to a new level.

“Simple,” Campbell replied. “My dear cousin Boone and I will do the chicken dance. It will be the best and most hilarious chicken dance any of you has ever seen. And then I’m going to take advantage of the fact that our driver could not be less interested in these proceedings to duck out for a bit.”

“Duck out where?” Sadie-Grace asked.

She was the only person in the limo who expected that question to be answered.

Immediately after Campbell and Boone had finished their chicken dance and the camera had been turned off, Campbell began to strip. She tossed her shirt at Sadie-Grace.

“Tuck your hair up under your cap,” she said. “We’re about the same size. As long as they only shoot you from the back, no one will know the difference.”

Suddenly, the fact that Campbell had gone out of her way to make sure the four of us were dressed in matching outfits with our names on them made total sense.

Six weeks ago, when our former hostage had confronted me at the pool party, she’d told me that the three of us were her alibis. I’d assumed—erroneously, apparently—that she meant her alibis for that weekend.

What were the chances that the past four weeks of misery had just been Campbell’s way of testing her power over us and making sure we’d do what we were told tonight?

The manipulator in question tossed her cell phone to Lily. “I recorded some voice memos for when ‘I’ am offscreen. Make sure you catch Sadie-Grace as herself on camera while I’m talking, and I’ll see you girls in a couple of hours.”

I glanced at Boone. The three of us were being blackmailed. What was his excuse?

“Don’t look at me,” Boone said solemnly. “She knows where I sleep.”

Great. While we were parading around town, recording ourselves in front of this statue and that plaque, Campbell would be off doing who knows what. Every bone in my body said this was a bad idea.

And yet…

Campbell sidled up beside me. “I’m sensing some reluctance. And I’m sympathetic.” Campbell gave my arm a little squeeze. “Would it make you feel better if I promised you, girl to girl and on my family’s honor, that my intentions are pure?”

No. The answer was obvious enough that I didn’t bother with it out loud. Campbell didn’t expect me to.

“Would it make you feel better,” she said instead, “if, after tonight, I promise to give you this?”

She slipped something out of her purse. The tablet.

“The security footage is on there, too,” Campbell said. “I haven’t made backups.” There was almost no inflection in her tone. No sugary sweetness, no innuendo, no threat. “I swear that I haven’t, Sawyer, and I promise you that if you three do this for me tonight, I will give you everything I have on Lily—on all three of you.”

She’s telling the truth. I knew that the way Lily knew exactly which shade of lipstick to pair with a modest pastel—instinctively.

“I also promise,” Campbell continued, “that if you don’t do this for me tonight, I’ll leak the footage of my kidnapping and upload every naughty, uncropped picture of Lily I have.”

Also true.

“One way or another,” Campbell said, “this ends at midnight.”

Whatever the senator’s daughter was planning to do, whatever she needed an alibi for—it mattered to her more than continuing to torture the three of us.

She’s a spoiled Southern belle who likes to play mind games, I thought. How bad can what she has planned possibly be?

“Do we have a deal?” Campbell asked.

I glanced back at Lily. I was only in this mess because of her, but day by day and week by week, she’d grown on me. Being blackmailed was something of a bonding experience.

I turned back to Campbell and lowered my voice. “Deal.”