Spencer groaned warily. “I don’t want to piss her off even more.”
Hanna glanced at the elevator again. Hopefully Naomi hadn’t just taken a quick jaunt down to the gift shop. “Please, Spence? It’ll take five minutes. We need to nail her.”
Spencer let out a long sigh, then hung up the phone with a clunk. In less than a minute, the elevator chimed, and she limped out. Her face was pale, and one side of her hair was matted. Spencer caught Hanna looking and said, “There was gum in my hair. It was a bitch to get out.” Then she gestured down the hall. “Let’s make this quick.”
Hanna let herself into her room. Inside, Naomi’s bed was neatly made, her clothes folded on the bureau. Hanna looked right and left, and finally spied the laptop underneath Naomi’s desk. Her heart did a flip as she lifted the cover. She found Naomi’s photo folder quickly and opened it. Her gaze went immediately to a folder titled Vacay. She opened it up, then clicked on the first icon. The same photo that had been on Aria’s phone appeared. It had almost been too easy.
“Oh my God,” Hanna whispered. “Here they are.”
“Really?” Spencer ran from the doorway and peered at the screen. “Jesus. Delete them!”
“I will.” Hanna highlighted the images and dragged them into the trash. “Go back to the door and make sure she isn’t coming!” she instructed.
Spencer did as she was told, though after a few seconds she’d wandered away again. She poked her head into Hanna’s bathroom. “Hey, your shower’s nicer than mine.”
“How do you think Naomi got those pictures, anyway?” Hanna murmured, answering yes to a prompt that asked if she was sure she wanted to delete the photos.
“I thought we covered this. The second A must have sent them to her.”
“Do you understand the implications of a second A?” Hanna wished the photos would delete a little quicker. “It means someone else hates us, too. It also means someone else has these photos. That’s the person who saw what happened in Jamaica.”
“I know,” Spencer said gravely.
“Who do you think it could be?”
“Hanna, if I knew, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess!” Spencer sounded exasperated.
Hanna didn’t know either, but the possibility of a second A was really starting to sink in, and it was terrifying. Even if they took Naomi down and found proof that she was Gayle’s murderer, they wouldn’t be safe. This alleged second A could still nail them for everything.
Finally, a message popped up saying that the photos had been removed. Phew.
“Holy shit,” Spencer cried. She emerged from the bathroom carrying a bottle of baby oil, Ex-Lax tablets, and a large package of bubble gum. “Look at what I found in Naomi’s bag!”
“Don’t mess with her stuff!” Hanna hissed, jumping up.
“Don’t you see?” Spencer waved the bottles around. “This proves without a doubt that she’s the one who’s torturing me! She used the Ex-Lax to make me think I had food poisoning. She spilled the baby oil so I’d slip. And she put this”—she held up the gum–“in my hair!”
“Spence, I need you at the door!” Hanna guided her down the little hall. Then she shoved Naomi’s stuff back into the bathroom and turned back to the computer. Now that she’d deleted those photos, she needed to find something incriminating about Naomi that would connect her to Gayle. An e-mail, maybe. She opened her Gmail account again, hoping to find a note signed A. Maybe they’d get lucky and even find something that gave away whoever it was Naomi was working with.
But when the screen loaded, there weren’t any messages in the Gmail inbox at all. Frowning, Hanna clicked on some of the other folders within the server, but they were all empty. The conversation Naomi had had with Madison was gone, almost like it had never existed.
25
FORGET YOUR TROUBLES
Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe.
Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe.
Emily reached the wall, did a flip turn, and pushed off toward the other side of the pool. Her arms cut rhythmically through the water. Her legs kicked with full power. Halfway down the lane, she had to swim around a fun noodle, then a floating toy that looked suspiciously like a giant penis. The pool technically wasn’t for lap swimming at that time of day—plenty of kids were milling around in the water, soaking up the Bermuda sun. But swimming laps was the only thing that helped Emily think, and she needed to think as hard as she possibly could. She hadn’t yet given Jordan an answer about running away with her, but Jeremy had just announced that they were pulling into Bermuda. She had to make a decision soon.
Stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe.
Could she really leave Rosewood forever? Never see her family again? And was it really safe, going off with a criminal? What if someone hunted Jordan down and hauled her back to the States? Then what would Emily do?
But then she thought about Thailand. She’d looked up the beaches online last night and almost swooned. There were tons of posts about the country that said it was easy-going, clean, affordable, and accepting. No one cares what you do here, someone had written. You are free to be yourself. Wasn’t that what Emily wanted? Wasn’t that not what Rosewood—or a swimming future at UNC—could ever provide?
She could wake up every morning next to Jordan. They could go shopping in the Thai markets, travel to remote and amazing villages, make pilgrimages to other countries. Maybe she could teach English, like Jordan was thinking of doing.