“You too,” Beck said, reaching out to Adi.
“Not a chance,” Adi said.
“Alicia worked retail before the show,” Sierra said. “Minimum wage. It wasn’t coming from there. It must’ve been from someone in Hollywood.”
“A boyfriend?” Beck said. “Or girlfriend? Maybe the same person who was giving her the answers?”
“Maybe, yeah.” Sierra paused. “Okay. Here’s the thing. There’s something only a very small number of people know. But you have to understand what it was like for us, growing up.”
She fell silent.
Adi was beginning to wonder whether Sierra’s brain had frozen over or something when Beck squeezed her shoulder gently and said, “It’s okay. Whenever you’re ready,” and Sierra released a shuddering breath.
“I told you our parents had died. Well . . . our first foster home . . . it wasn’t . . . it wasn’t safe.”
Her lashes, flecked with small icicles, blinked rapidly.
She drew another breath and said, much steadier, “I won’t bore you with the details, but basically, by the time social services found out what was going on, Alicia and I were already broken.”
The raw cookie dough churned in Adi’s stomach.
“Oh, Sierra,” Carter whispered.
“After that, Alicia survived by doing whatever it took to be liked. She gave away any piece of herself others wanted, manipulating everyone to get her way. My theory is she was seeing someone at the studio, whoever was helping her cheat, and they filled her head with some Hollywood nonsense about making her a star.”
Carter tried to draw Sierra into a proper hug, but Sierra gently pushed her away.
“None of that means she deserved what happened to her,” Sierra said. “I still remember her as the little girl who put stuffed toys to bed every night, and who held me tight when social services told us Mom and Dad had—”
The sentence ended as an exhalation of steam, Sierra’s face ghost-white in the glow of Beck’s flashlight.
“You didn’t stay close, though?” Beck asked. “You and Alicia?”
Sierra snapped back from wherever she’d gone. “We’d been through too much. She left as soon as she aged out of the system, abandoning me with foster family number thirteen. They weren’t all bad, but the later ones didn’t like my attitude.”
Adi sank against the shelves, then jumped up again, since they were metal and icy. The huddle in the corner was starting to look inviting.
Sierra’s fingers curled in her inner elbows. “I don’t—I don’t have anything. I wake up in my shitty room in my shitty rental, sell my art, eat my food, then lie awake most of the night wondering what the hell happened. Finding out who killed my sister is the only thing that matters to me.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “I shouldn’t have left the complex that night. I was so angry with her. As soon as she mentioned some other money, I knew she was going to get into trouble. That’s why we fought. She wouldn’t tell me who she was seeing. Just kept saying things were going to get better.”
“You’re sure she was getting the cheats from a secret lover?” Adi said.
“I can’t be sure of anything. But she was so smug that night. Like she had a foolproof plan. I remember . . . She had her comforter with her. You know, the one from her room they never found? She wore it like a cape, like she was queen of the villas. Like everything was finally going her way. IwishI knew what she’d been hiding.”
“You didn’t see anyone hanging around the complex?” Beck said.
“No. We fought. I left. Elijah was already swimming laps when I got back at four thirty. That was early, even for him. I figured it was nerves before the finale.” She shrugged. “There were no security cameras back then, so they couldn’t track what time she left. They just know her phone wasn’t at the villas when the signal went dead.”
“And cameras didn’t catch the killer at the studio?” asked Beck.
“No, because of the power outage. The power company had been doing rolling blackouts for weeks, trying to lessen the load on the power grid. It didn’t affect us here, but the power was down around the studio. No lights. No cameras. No security gates.” She rattled the facts off like they were just that—simple, basic facts. Not the convenient details that had kept her sister’s killer from ever being found. Adi couldn’t imagine how much she’d had to compartmentalize.
“So that’s it. That’s all I know. I’d wandered the streets for a few hours, slept at a park, and headed back. I have no idea where Alicia went that night, who she saw, or how she ended up in that coffin. I didn’t even know she was missing until . . . until we found her.”
A contemplative silence fell over the group, punctured only by their shivery breaths and chattering teeth.
“You th-think it was Fitzy,” Carter said.
Sierra fixed her with a look. “He’s the obvious choice.”
