He rubs his jaw. “She happened to be there to handcuff me when I sneaked into your backyard. And with Paige having access to your episodes before they air, it’s plausible that she would have access to them, too.”
Well, that’s hardly enough to accuse her. Although… she offered to come to my place when I admitted I was worried about thekiller. She was horribly mean to Paige when she tried to redirect Vanessa’s attention to herself. And every time I mentioned Rafael, she directed snark at him.
If he’s right, and Vanessa’s been playing Paige for over a year, what does that mean for my best friend? For us?
“Vanessa’s at work.” I join him, putting my shoes on. “Her shift on Mondays ends at five.”
He hands me my bag. “Is my girl suggesting we break into a cop’s apartment?”
Holy shit. I guess I am.
the confession[trope]
the climactic moment when the villain finally spills the beans, often under duress, guilt, or the sheer weight of their own melodrama; usually accompanied by tears, maniacal laughter, or an overly detailed recounting of their evil plan. why don’t they ever lawyer up?
“You’re a bad influence, you know that?” I ask as we enter Vanessa’s apartment. My heart hammers, the thought of being caught breaking into a police officer’s home making me question my sanity. How did I even get here?
“I’m surprisedyoudidn’t know.”
I follow Rafael into the open space, heading toward the kitchen while he steps into the living room. He explained the drill in the car before he pulled out a series of lockpicks at her apartment: look through documents, peek into drawers—search for anything unusual, basically.
I tug open the first drawer I find, expecting utensils, and am instead met with a chaotic assortment of mismatched takeout menus, crumpled receipts, and a lone rubber duck key chain. Shoving it shut, I move on to the cabinets, scanning rows of mismatched mugs and an alarming stockpile of protein bars. “Rafael,” I say as I stop in front of the fridge.
“What?”
He walks over and stares at the piece of paper stuck to the fridge with a small magnet. It’s the reminder of an appointment at Vanessa’s bank. Horizon Trust.
“If there’s one, there must be more. Let’s keep looking.”
Right. Hundreds of people in town must have an account at Horizon Trust, and this means nothing. But as I truly, fully consider that Vanessa might be the killer, I no longer wish to hide from it. Quite the opposite. If she’s been playing Paige, I want to find out right now.
I walk to her bedroom, looking for her laptop. Once I locate it on her bedside table, I pull it open, but it’s password-protected. “You don’t happen to have any hacking skills, do you?” I ask Rafael as he comes to stand by the entrance.
“Afraid not. What are you looking for?”
“Paige would never give her access to the scripts without telling me. If she is reading them before they’re recorded, she must have access to Paige’s email.”
“Try the usuals. Birthdays, one-two-three, first names.”
I do so as he goes through the drawers of her dresser. “Nothing.”
Setting the computer aside, I walk out into the corridor and toward her home office. I don’t remember ever seeing the inside of this room, actually. Whenever we came over for a movie night or dinner—even the first time, when she showed us around her place—this door was always closed. Work stuff, she said. With her being a cop… I didn’t think it was weird she’d been secretive about it.
“Here,” I say as Rafael walks behind me. “Whatever we’re looking for is in this room.”
“All right.” He tries to open the door, but it’s locked. He takes out the small set of lockpicks from his pocket, the metal tools glinting in his hand. Kneeling down, he inserts the tension wrench into the lock and works the pick, his fingers moving with precise ease. A faint sound as the first pin falls into place, then another, and another, until finally—click. He twists the wrench, and the door unlocks with a quiet snap. He stands up, tucking the tools away, and pushes the door open as if it had never been locked at all. “Holy… fucking…”
“… shit,” I conclude.
The dim room is a shrine. Tome. Every inch of the walls is covered in photos of me—at the coffee shop, walking down the street, laughing with Paige. Candid shots taken from a distance, like Vanessa had been lurking just out of sight, following my every move. Some pictures are blurry, hastily snapped, while others are crystal-clear close-ups of my face, my expressions frozen in time. Among them, there are photos of Rafael and me together, taken from outside my place, through the windows. Moments I thought were private, now pinned up like a twisted scrapbook.
But it’s not just me. Theo, Celeste, Paige, Quentin—they’re all here, too. Their faces captured in stolen moments, mixed in with newspaper clippings about the murders. The articles scream headlines about the bodies found, the police investigations, all cut out and arranged carefully beneath the photos. Red ink circles the names, underlines the dates. It’s all so deliberate, so obsessive.
I can feel my skin crawling, the air too thick to breathe.
Rafael throws a glance at me over his shoulder. “Do you want to wait outside?”
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice so weak it must be obvious I’mnotfine.
