“He said that he wanted to make Presley jealous. I thought it was stupid, but I also wasn’t that surprised. I always figured that’s how those kinds of shows work. You know, almost everything is staged and scripted. I tried to laugh it off and get back to the game, but he wouldn’t let me go.”
“Exactly what does that mean?” My voice was husky with fatigue, but I was also deeply concerned.
“He blocked my way, told me that he wanted me and Presley to have a big fight over him on camera at the reunion party tonight.” Lacy huffed out a breath. “He was so serious, so intense, but when I actually started getting nervous about his request, it was like he flipped a switch and went back to his old self. You know how charming Brett can be.”
Um, I must’ve had a different definition of “charming” because Brett had never been it for me, not even in that god-awfulSmall Town, Big Romance.
“I thought it was over until…”
“Until?”
Lacy shivered, which I suspected had nothing to do with the chill in the room. “Brett kissed me.”
“Noooo,” I said. “Did you kiss him back?” I tried to sound neither disgusted nor judgmental.
“Of course not.” She hesitated. “Or, maybe, for, like, a second, I don’t know. It just caught me off guard, and it’s… it’s Brett, you know? He was my first everything. My first love, the first guy I slept with, my high school sweetheart.”
I remembered that fact all too well, mainly because it was the only substantial thing we’d ever disagreed on. Finally I’d had to accept that the heart wants what the heart wants, but I’d been ecstatic when she’d finally moved on and started dating other guys in college.
“Tonight, when Brett grabbed me, I felt a kind of rush. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I also wasn’t exactly expecting him to… to try something under the bleachers at tonight’s game. We’re not kids anymore. When I pulled away, Brett was smiling, started talking about how much he’d missed me.”
“Basically the exact same thing he wanted you to say to him on camera.”
“Right.” Lacy rubbed at her forehead as if she was getting a headache.
“Did you tell Anton?”
“Not about the kiss, no, but it took me a while to get back to him, so when Anton asked where I’d been, I did mention what Brett had asked me to do. I mean, who cares about harmless flirting, especially with a high school sweetheart?”
“Um, maybe your boyfriend?”
“I know.” Lacy’s face fell. “I had no idea how much it would bother him.”
I thought of Anton at the reunion party in the ballroom, of how he’d teased her for dancing with Brett but then backed off. He hadn’t seemed angry, but something had obviously bothered him.
“I decided I would tell Brett no, and after that I wasn’t even planning to talk to him at the party tonight,” Lacy continued. “Then, he practically pulled me onto the dance floor as soon as I arrived and whispered in my ear that I had to meet him in the Music Room at midnight. When I told him I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Anton alone at the reunion, he held me tighter, said that if I didn’t meet him, if I didn’t dance with him, if I didn’t act like everything was fine, if I didn’t…” Lacy was crying now, struggling to let out words that seemed to cause her shame even though none of this was her doing, “Brett said that if I didn’t sleep with him tonight, then he had something on me.”
Heat rushed up my throat. This was only getting worse. “He wanted you tosleepwith him?”
Lacy raised her head up and down as if on autopilot, as if she could hardly believe what she was saying. “I don’t know if he planned to go through with it, but I…” She swallowed, obviously disturbed by the thought. “I think he wanted the two of us on camera, wanted Presley to catch us in the act.”
“So he didn’t just want you to flirt?”
Lacy hung her head. “He said he’d scanned the photos, and if I didn’t ‘play nice,’ he would send them to my clients. Those were his exact words: ‘Play nice or your career will be over.’”
Lacy had built her event planning business into something impressive, handling everything from school galas to political extravaganzas. The pageant’s success—murder and all—had only increased her reputation as a reliable and ethical person who could operate in the most challenging of situations. Her brand was her reputation, and these photos—whatever they were—could destroy all that.
The force of the threat struck me like a slap. Brett Brinkley had been blackmailing my best friend to sleep with him this weekend, threatening her career if she didn’t agree. I wanted to yell and scream, and if Brett wasn’t dead already, I might’ve been tempted to take care of him myself.
“How did Brett’s ‘ask’ go from ‘Will you flirt with me?’ to ‘Will you sleep with me?’”
“I have no idea,” Lacy answered. “But he seemed almost manic right before he started choking.”
“Like he was on drugs?” I asked, thinking this would explain so much.
“I don’t think so. More like he was on a power trip.”
The two of us were quiet as we considered next steps.
