“It’s like he doesn’t—or didn’t—know you at all,” I added, thinking out loud. “You would never do something like that.”
Lacy didn’t speak immediately and I looked at her like I was questioning her sanity.
She quickly clarified. “No, I wouldn’t sleep with him, but… I was planning to meet him. I needed to get what he has—or had. That’s what I was telling him right before he started coughing.”
That would be why she’d been so close to him when he’d started choking and why she’d been rifling through his pocketsafter he’d died. Relief uncoiled in me even though I’d known she wasn’t guilty of anything. She couldn’t be.
“So… these photos. What could he possibly have on you?” I asked.
“He has pictures of me, photos I gave him on his eighteenth birthday.”
“Like glamour shots?” I guessed but then felt bad because her face told me it was so much worse.
She closed her eyes as if to block out what she had to say. “Like, nudes.”
At first words stuck in my throat, and when they emerged, they sounded almost like a groan. “Oh, Lacy, you didn’t.”
But even as I spoke, I knew she’d done just that. Perhaps even worse, she hadn’t told me years ago or tonight, when we’d found her backstage with the body. I’ve never been one to “slut-shame” – if a woman chooses to use her body as art or a thirst trap or otherwise, that’s up to her. But nudes? To Brett?
“I was young and impulsive. I figured it was our last few months together, so I wanted to give him a gift that was… memorable. I set up the old film camera I used the year I took darkroom photography, and I even developed them myself. I gave him three photos, each with a little note from me on the back. Back then I thought I was being smart by not texting the pictures.” Lacy’s eyes swelled with tears. “When we broke up, I figured he threw them away or burned them or something, but he didn’t.”
Lacy was growing more and more flustered. “He told me…” She sniffed, blinking several times, as if she couldn’t believe the next few words were true, “he told me that he would send them to all of my clients on Saturday at midnight, that he would anonymously send them to TMZ and tell them that I was a former girlfriend of Brett Brinkley. He said I had until midnight tonight to decide if I would be a part of his… charade.”
“What an asshat,” I muttered, imagining him whispering threats to my friend. “What a dickhead, creep-o, dysfunctional… asshat!”
Lacy’s anxiety and anger were becoming my own, and the urge to protect her pulsed through me.
“How was he planning to send the photos?” I asked. “Email?”
Lacy nodded. “He said it is already scheduled to send. The last thing he whispered to me was, and I quote, ‘If you don’t do as you’re told, then the only person who can stop me is the one who got away.’”
“What does that even mean?”
“At first, I thought he was talking about me. Like…” Lacy pointed a finger and imitated Brett. “‘Only you can stop this.’ But now, I’m not so sure.”
“So when you were going through his pockets, you weren’t just looking for the photos?”
“I was looking for anything that might give me a clue to this elusive person who broke his heart, or damaged him so much that he would consider such a thing. A long shot, maybe, to think that there might be evidence on his person, but I couldn’t think of where else to start.” Lacy’s face crumpled as she began to cry again.
I hated Brett, even if he was dead, for making her feel ashamed and anything less than an amazing human being. My heart pounded in my chest, but I tried to steady my own breathing so I could approach things reasonably. For her.
I wrapped my arms around Lacy, pulling her close. “This isn’t your fault,” I whispered, wishing I could shield her from whatever was coming next.
“But I’m the one who took the photos and gave them to—” Lacy cried harder, choking out the words.
“—to someone you trusted,” I reminded her. “He’s the one who was using them in the wrong way.”
Lacy settled a bit at that realization and wiped her nose, still sniffling as she said, “This weekend was not supposed to go like this.”
“Definitely not,” I agreed, checking my phone again for a signal. Nothing. As I reminded myself not to panic, we heard steps outside the door.
I didn’t even take a second to think about who would know about these stairs and why anyone would attempt them when there was another hundred thousand feet or so of the mansion to explore. “Hello?” I yelled. “Is someone there? We’re stuck in here.”
“Help!” Lacy said, jumping to her feet and overlaying my words with her shouts. “We can’t open the door.”
More steps. We heard someone try one door and then, blessedly, our own.
The door was flung open and there stood Savilla. I’d never been so glad to see her face, which was almost as surprised as our own.
