“And what about Spencer?” Ash asks. “Pretty weird and convenient that he happened to show up here and have booked the campsite right next to us.”
“I didn’t even know he was coming!” Caro hisses.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course!” Caro spits.
It’s not going to work out. Caro knows this now. She’s standing up hereon top of the world, and she can see it so clearly. Her mom is dead. Her dad is as good as gone. She saw a woman die. She lied to her husband. She’s had these friends. She won’t anymore. “What are you saying?” Caro asks. “You think Spencer has been spying on us? Somehow, even though I haven’t had contact with him since college? Or wait. Do you think I brought Hope here to offer her as—what—some kind of sacrificiallambto Spencer’s friends?”
“No,” Ash says. “I—”
“Don’t you thinkWadeshowing up here is creepy?” Caro asks. “Don’t you think he’s probably the one who’s been watching us?”
Ash doesn’t answer.
The corners of Caro’s mouth twitch.
“What?” Ash asks. “Go ahead. Say it. Whatever it is.”
“It’s what I said before.” Caro takes a deep breath. “I’ve been wondering if Hope is behind all of this, somehow.”
“You think she stalkedherself?”
“Not that, exactly.”
“Why do you keep doubting Hope?” Ash’s voice is shrill with disbelief. “She might bedead, Caro! Why are you so hard on her? She’s yourfriend. Why do you keep asking me these things?”
Caro looks Ash right in the eyes. “I want to know if you’ve been in touch with Hope since she left.”
“No!”Ash says. “No, of course I haven’t!”
Their phones vibrate again in their hands. They both look down.
It’s another picture, but this one is texted to the two of them, not posted to the @findhopehanover LikeMe account. It’s of Caro and Ash, here. At the top of Seraph’s Perch. Arguing.
Caro spins around. Who is taking their picture? She tries to see behind the sunglasses, under the ball caps and sun hats, past the scrawny trees clinging for life to the rocks—
“Oh no,” Ash says. “They’rehere.”
Caro’s throat has gone dry. “We know it isn’t one of us, then,” she says.“We know that neither of us could have taken this picture. We’ve been talking. This is from seconds ago.” Her hands are trembling.
Their phones vibrate again, but this time Caro sees the text is just for her. Her heart skips a beat. She looks at Ash. She seems to have gotten one, too. But she doesn’t ask what Ash’s text says. She can’t trust her anymore.
They came here with a plan. They were so close.
But they’ve failed.
52
BEFORE
IT IS THEIR FOURTHbook club meeting, before Hope has revealed who she really is. They’ve finished readingThe Grapes of Wrath(Hope’s choice, because she’d never read it and there might be a remake of it coming up that will be absolute Oscar bait). The others don’t know that she has an ulterior motive. They think she’s the kind of person who reads classics for fun, apparently. Their lovely faces are up on the screen, and hers still shows the photo of her on a hike with her back to the camera.
Can she trust them?
Shewantsto trust them.
“I have to say,” Hope says, “I know I’m the one who picked this book, but I hated it.”
