This is WAR (27 page)

Trip claimed to have turned it in after supposedly finding it on the yacht earlier that week. His face was apologetic, but Madge saw the thin sheen of satisfaction in his eyes. The phone was his trump card. He must have been sitting on it the whole time, waiting for the perfect moment to play it. And now, he’d finally slapped it down on the table and won.

“She’s not well, Carol. She’s found a way to deflect the blame. That website is in direct violation of our agreement. We have to talk to him …”

Smoke seemed to drift through the vents and from beneath the sill of the window, through cracks in the floor, billowing around her like a cloud. She thought of the revolution she’d hoped to start, of that first meeting, lighting candles, planning, then blowing them out, trails of smoke urging the girls onward. Her dad was right. She wasn’t well. Maybe she deserved to be punished. Maybe they all did.

“You heard the detective. They’ll reopen the case. She’d be a suspect, David.”

Surely now was the time to give up. It would be easier to hold her hands in the air, palms up, and surrender. She thought of Willa all alone in the water, struggling to stay afloat even though she’d been drugged. Or maybe there wasn’t a struggle. Maybe her sister had fallen into the water and sunk to the bottom like a stone. Maybe she’d let the water wrap
slippery fingers around her neck and tug the life right out of her. Maybe it was time for Madge to follow in her footsteps.

But then the door to her room cracked open, and Madge sat up in her bed a bit straighter. Lina poked her blonde head in, a finger poised at her lips.
Shhh
.

For that brief second before anyone slipped in, Madge swore she saw Willa in the empty space. A ghost or maybe just a trick of the light. Either way, she tasted mint and smelled ashes. Sloane and Rose slipped through the gap where Willa should have been, and Lina gently shut the door. All of her friends approached her on the bed, taking her hands in theirs, no one uttering a word. The silence was striking, their tear-filled eyes catching on one another. Madge thought they were lost to her, these friends. They’d surrendered her so easily yesterday, and she didn’t blame them. Not really. But she’d been wrong. The relief was almost sweet enough to overcome the sickly taste in her mouth. Almost.

“There’s not a lot of time,” Rose whispered, breaking the spell. “When the Captain took you, we went to James.” She lowered her head, trying to hide how she felt about the boy. Madge couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for her to go to him. “He wants to make this right.”

Sloane wiped beneath her eyes. Everyone had always known James killed Willa, but no one was prepared for how the truth would feel when proven. And no matter what, they each felt their own sense of responsibility, their own hand in Willa’s death. They always would.

“He promised to go to the Captain. To turn himself in,” Lina broke in. “He promised to end this.”

Sloane reached into her bag and pulled out a phone, laying it gently in the center of Madge’s bed. Madge wrinkled her forehead in confusion. She’d never seen it before. “We gave
this to Nadia so we could record James’s confession. It should all be on here.” Sloane’s dark eyes pierced Madge’s and hope swirled within her. She felt dizzy with the power of it. Even though she knew it was dangerous, she couldn’t help herself. Could it be? Was the War really not lost? They had the truth. On tape …

Rose nudged the phone toward Madge. “We waited for you. It didn’t seem fair to listen without you.”

Lina threw Madge a jagged smile. Madge brought the phone to life, her fingers shaking as she slid them across the screen to access the recording.

The girls leaned closer into the circle, into position. Madge pressed play.

They heard movement first, shifting bodies, shuffling papers. And then James’s voice, strong and clear.

“You have to stop this. Madge didn’t kill Willa and you know it. I killed her, Grandpa. Everyone knows.”

Static crackled through the speaker and the next sound caused goose bumps to erupt, trailing along Madge’s arms and legs. The Captain laughed. Madge dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands, willing them to break skin. How could he laugh?

“You really believe that, don’t you?”

Silence from James.

“You didn’t kill that girl, James. Trip did. And the boy couldn’t even manage not to screw that up, worthless son of a bitch. He set it up to look like it was you. You know what happened with your parents. You know he never recovered from me cutting him out of the will. He’s sick, James. Your brother is sick and now we’re paying for it.”

The girls jumped when his fist slammed on top of the desk.

“Do you know how much money I had to pay that girl’s
parents to keep this whole thing quiet to preserve our family’s name? To keep the Club out of the national news?”

Madge felt her stomach heave. The money. The sudden improvement in their finances. The conversation she’d overheard in her dad’s office. How could she have missed this? She looked around her room, at the clothes in her closet, the shoes strewn on the floor. How much of it had been purchased after Willa died? How much of her sister’s blood did she have on her own hands?

“I’ve got an entire team of people working to get that site down, but it’s protected by more firewalls than the CIA. The damn thing refuses to die. Thank God your idiot brother at least had the foresight to set up that Madge Ames-Rowan. Serves her right.”

Madge’s eyes grew wide, and she pushed her shaking fingers against her lips not knowing what else to do with them. The recording crackled as the girls leaned closer, afraid they might miss something. But the silence continued.

“No.”

From James.

It was a wonder she’d even caught it, a wonder anyone did. The word barely registered on the recorder. Madge tried to imagine what the Captain might look like if he’d heard the word slip out of James’s mouth. She didn’t have time to find out. They had heard enough. Madge fumbled with the phone, her body shaking violently. Everyone’s eyes were wide, jaws slack, frozen.

“We have to go. We have to go NOW.” Madge jumped up and shot for the door.

Little waves of heat
radiated off the sidewalk leading into the squat brown building that housed Hawthorne Lake’s tiny police station. This was Rose’s turf, so Madge dutifully fell
in line behind her. One by one, the girls marched through the front door, straight past the front desk and toward Detective McCaan’s office.

“Wait! Rose! You can’t go in there. He’s with …” The plump woman in uniform at reception was flushed and panicked, but none of the girls even turned to look at her. They were on a mission and nothing was going to stop them. Least of all Madge, who finally held the truth, quite literally, in the palm of her hands.

“Look, there’s just no evidence. It’s your word against his and the autopsy results came back—” Detective McCaan stopped mid-sentence as the girls filed into his office. James Gregory sat across from him, gaping at the small but determined army before him.

“We have evidence.” Rose looked at her father with a mixture of pity and hope.

Just as Madge’s finger hovered over the play button on the screen, the Captain barreled in.

“Stop!” he bellowed.

Madge froze not because she wanted to, but because her body was somehow still unable to disobey the authority in the Captain’s tone.

“I need five minutes with Ms. Ames-Rowan,” he said easing himself into the chair at the head of the table.

“I really can’t have you in here right now, sir.” Detective McCaan’s voice was soft, pleading.

“I’m not asking, I’m telling. I need her alone. Five minutes. Go!”

“I’ll be fine,” Madge nodded at the girls, Detective McCaan, and finally James, who shook his head, eyes wide. Madge waited and took his chair. James hesitated but finally walked out of the office. The others followed.

Detective McCaan was last. “I’ll be right outside if you need me,” he said, with a sharp eye at the Captain.

The finality of the door’s click was fitting.

“This stops here,” he said evenly. His blue eyes pierced her own. “I need you to give me that recording and take down that damn website.”

Madge did her best to choke back a snort. “Yeah, sure. I’ll get right on that.”

“Two million dollars.” The Captain leaned forward in his seat. “The first payment to your parents was five million. The money will transfer semi-anually for the next five years. But you must agree to my terms.”

“What would possibly lead you to believe that I’d choose money over justice?” Madge’s hand flew to the key around her neck. A reminder of what was at stake.

“You’ll have justice, too. Trip will be tried as an adult, for one. He deserves to be. I have evidence that demonstrates this was premeditated. If he’s tried as an adult, he’ll get life in jail. Maybe even the death sentence.” The Captain leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. His jaw twitched. “The attorney general won’t touch him without my blessing, so I’ll ensure he gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It’s justice. Besides, justice is what Willa would have wanted.”

Madge was already up and out of her seat. “You don’t get to say her name. Not ever.” Her palms slapped the wood desk.

“Punishing me, destroying the Club, that won’t bring her back, Madge. But making sure her mother is well taken care of, providing financial stability for your family, those are things that were very important to your sister.”

The Captain stood and reached past Madge to open the door for her. “Of course I know you want to do the
right
thing, in which case I will update the terms of my agreement with your father and begin the repayment process. Just say the word.” He raised an eyebrow, challenging her.

He might as well have pushed her head under water. She had no choice. She never had any choice.

Madge hesitated, overcome by memories. Willa’s smile over cereal in the morning, screaming for Madge to hurry up in the shower, tearing out of the house when their homework was finally done, text messages, shopping trips, whispers in their beds, late-night swimming, trick-or-treating, Christmas. Everything rushed in at once, pressing down on her, shoving her back under.

“He’s sick, Madge. My grandson is sick, and your sister is dead. Nothing can bring her back, but you have my word that Trip will pay.”

Madge straightened her body to stand at full height in front of the Captain. “I’ll take the website down.” And she turned before she could see his satisfied smile. She raced through the police station, avoiding her friends’ and the Detective’s eyes. She pushed through the door and collapsed onto the sidewalk in front. Fire burned in her throat. No matter how hard she tried to swallow them back, tears followed. They streamed down her cheeks, hung on her jaw for a second and exploded onto the cement below. Had she done the right thing? What would Willa have done? As much as she hated to admit it, the Captain was right. Willa would have wanted Trip to pay for killing her. Not James. Not her friends. Not anyone else.

And the Captain? Well, someone else would have to solve that problem.

Madge was done.

“She deserved someone better than me.” James spoke
behind her but Madge didn’t dare turn for fear of displaying her tear-stained cheeks. “I never could have been good enough.”

Madge knew exactly what he meant, had spoken the same words to Willa in the dead of the night, curled in on herself between her sister’s empty sheets. Willa deserved a better sister, one who wouldn’t have left her behind.

“She was so lucky though. She was lucky to have you.”

She shook her head. Even though she didn’t believe him, wasn’t sure she ever would, she lifted her face to the sun and turned to meet his broken eyes. “You did the right thing,” she whispered.

This time James had to turn away, his back to her, head bowed. After a minute, he walked to a car where a friend was waiting and ducked into the passenger seat. She wasn’t the only one with a long road ahead.

And then one by one, shadows appeared over her. Three angelic forms, silhouetted in the sun. Her friends. At least she wasn’t going to have to go through any of it alone.

Chapter 31

Madge stood in front of the dusty attic window tracing her fingers along what had to be Sloane’s handprints, watching for her friends. It’d been over a month since one of the valets had driven Trip’s expensive car off the property and over to the used car lot in the center of town. Like so many others, Trip had simply disappeared from Hawthorne Lake, never to be heard from again. Unlike the others, however, his picture was everywhere. The Captain had spent long hours talking in soothing tones about the moment he’d discovered his grandson was guilty of murder—the importance of equality and justice in a world where the rich were rarely held accountable for their crimes. The Captain was a local hero and Willa was Hawthorne Lake’s sweetheart. In that way, things were very much the same.

Madge was trying to force herself to forget because she knew she’d never, ever be able to forgive. But the anger was still there. Black and terrible. She did her best to keep it at bay because Willa wouldn’t have wanted her to be angry or sad.
Willa would have wanted her to move on, to live her life, to find pockets of happiness and hope.