“Should we do a group cuddle?” Beck suggested.
“Absolutely not,” Adi said.
Beck jiggled on the spot. “Ranielle’s going to be so mad. Anyone got a good reason for why we’re in the freezer besides breaking in to steal ice cream?”
“Forget that. We have something more important to talk about.” Adi looked at Sierra. “How about you tell us what happened the night Alicia was murdered?”
21
Adi
Adi stood apart from the others, waiting for an answer. Beck andCarter huddled together for warmth. Even Sierra inched closer to them.
“Okay,” she said. “You wanna know? The last time I talked to Alicia was by the pool around nine o’clock. I asked where the hell she’d been sneaking off to. She was hardly ever in the complex. Always disappearing, sometimes for hours at a time. She wouldn’t even take the shuttle to the studio most of the time, just show up later in an Uber. She never told anyone where she was going or who she was meeting, and I suspected she was cheating. I wanted to confront her before the finale.”
“What does disappearing have to do with cheating?” Beck said.
“She wasn’t as clever as the show made her out to be. I thought maybe she was meeting with someone and they were feeding her answers.”
“Really?” Carter said, voice lifting in surprise.
“She was charming and beautiful, a great foil for her villainous sister. Remember when they revealed I was one of her opponents and she flipped out? She thought I was there to steal her limelight. But the truth was, I never auditioned the first time. I was offered a spot to create sibling rivalry. They wanted her, but they’d done their research. My job was to create drama, while she was there to win over the audience.”
“Typical show business,” Adi muttered.
“So I played the villain and Alicia played the hero. But sheknewstuff in the game. Math, ciphers, literature references—there’s no way she was solving them on her own.”
“A week ago, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Beck said. “Now I know how Ranielle Russell works, I’m not surprised.”
“They wanted the sisters to be in the finale, head-to-head,” Adi said.
“Exactly,” Sierra said. “And it wasn’t hard to figure out who the audience was rooting for—which meant the producers wanted her to win, too.”
“What happened when you confronted her?” Carter asked.
“I asked to talk outside. You can imagine how it went down when I accused her of cheating.”
Adi laughed dryly.
“But Elijah heard us fighting,” Sierra continued, “which obviously looked pretty bad for me after the fact.”
“And was she?” asked Carter. “Cheating, I mean.”
“Nothing she admitted to. She claimed I didn’t give her enough credit. But then she said somethingbizarre.” Sierra’s brow furrowed as Carter’s teeth chattered loudly. “Put your hood over your head. It’ll keep the heat from escaping too quickly.”
Carter followed her advice.
“What did Alicia say?” Adi asked.
Sierra huddled deeper into her jacket. “She offered to give me her share of the prize money if her team won.”
“No way,” Carter said. “Sh-she said in all the interviews that you two wouldn’t share.”
“Exactly. And it pissed me off. I was sure it was another mind game, but she kept insisting it was real. She said the prize money was small pickings compared to what was coming.”
“Alicia had other money coming in?” Beck said. “Shhhhivers, it’s cold. Join our huddle, Sierra. We need more body warmth.”
Adi was sure Sierra wouldn’t budge, but she shuffled over, next to Carter and Beck.
