Scout’s face whipped to mine, and I watched as the realization sank in. Her grip tightened on the Golden Globe behind her back—and slowly, she turned back to Emmy, fury making her words come out slow and lethal. “It wasn’t enough to destroy my sister… you needed to frame me and destroy my life, too?”
Emmy took a step closer, lowering the gun. “The two of you have been begging for someone to take you down a peg since we wereeighteen. You’ve always been so full of yourselves.” She thrust the gun at Scout again. “I’m just as talented as you. Just as pretty. I’m abettersinger. There’s no reason you should’ve gotten everything I didn’t. Do you know howinsaneit feels watching the world reward someone over and over again for no reason? I’ve had Easton’s money and connections for years and I thought that would change it, but—” She choked out the words. “You still got famous, and I didn’t.” She turned the gun on me. “Explain it to me, loser to loser.”
“She’s not—” Scout started, but I cut in.
“Explain why people like Scout more than you? I don’t know, Emmy, maybe because you’re a murderous bitch?”
“They all thinksheis, and they fucking love her for it.” Emmy shoved the pistol into my forehead. I closed my eyes, panic tripping up my heartbeat. But it wasn’t just the gun making me sweat—it was my own mind betraying me, calling up a lifetime of memories: everyone’s eyes turning to Scout when we walked in a room; our TV director remembering Scout’s name but not mine; our agent telling Scout she had star potential, then dropping me; everyone looking to Scout as the leader, the face, while I told myself I was fine with invisibility. The unbearable ego-death of being constantly compared to my best friend and coming up short—it knocked the wind out of me, this flash of empathy with Georgia’s killer, and the next words flew out.
“Life isn’t logical, Emmy. You can be more talented than everyone in the room and stay invisible until the day you die.” Did she hear the bitterness in my voice? Did Scout?
Emmy pressed the gun so hard into my skin I could feel the muzzle cutting. “That’s not good enough.”
I know, I thought, but didn’t say. “You’re the smallest person in the world, if you did all of this because you were jealous.” Scout’s voice was icy and cruel, purposefully provoking, and for a moment I thought she was talking to me. I opened my eyes. She’d turned her body so Emmy couldn’t see the Golden Globe. I wanted to whisper to her not to do anything risky, not with the gun pressed to my head, but I didn’t dare speak.
This was it. Scout was going to play the hero, and I was going to die. My heart beat so fast I went light-headed.
“Is that what all of this is about?” Scout continued. “My sister’s dead, and Elizabeth Drake, and Rosie Wright, and whoever the fuck else you framed me for, all because you’re a narcissist who couldn’t measure up?”
Emmy must’ve sensed something in Scout’s words, sensed the strike, because she took a step back—but before she could go far, a clap of noise like a bomb hit the house.
I screamed—Emmy gasped, eyes flying to the window in search of the source—and that was when Scout soared. She swung for Emmy’s hand with the Golden Globe, aiming for the gun, and it went off with a deafening crack as it flew out of Emmy’s grasp, a bullet shattering the desk mere inches from me.
I lunged to the floor, ears ringing, as Emmy staggered to her knees, clutching her battered hands, her mouth forming a wide, shocked O. Scout dove for the gun and scooped it off the floor. Chest heaving, she pointed it at Emmy just as Easton came to and sat up with a groan.
We had them. Scout had done it. She’d won.
The sound gradually came back, so that one moment Easton’s mouth was moving, and the next, his pleas filled my ears. “I’ll tell the truth,” he begged. “I’ll tell the cops she’s the one who killed your sister with the lamp.”
A lamp.The missing murder weapon that had killed Georgia was a lamp. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“I’ll testify,” he swore. “I’ll turn myself in. Just, please, put the gun down. Don’t shoot.”
“You idiot,” Emmy hissed. “You weak-spined sellout.”
“That doesn’t work for me,” Scout said. “You don’t deserve to live.”
I stared at her. My best friend stood in front of the two Bankses, gripping the handgun I’d begged her to get rid of. Had she ignored me because she’d known one day she’d need it? Had she pictured this moment? Counted on it?
I’d been so focused on guilt over the bitterness I’d been masking, I hadn’t thought to wonder: What parts of herself had Scout been hiding?
“Scout?” My voice was wobbly. I picked myself off the floor andinched toward her, wanting a better view of her face. Her eyes flashed to me in warning, then settled back on Easton.
“I want you to say her name.” Scout sounded like she’d rehearsed this. “Tell me you’re sorry.”
I’d assumed Scout had brought her gun for protection, that she’d wanted to confront Easton and force a confession. But like that awful night ten years ago when I’d followed her into Alden’s bedroom, I was a step behind.
What was my friend capable of?
“Georgia,” Easton babbled, rising onto his knees, blood from his head wound painting his face. “Her name was Georgia, and I’m sorry.” Tears ran down his face, turning the blood runny. “Please don’t hurt me.”
Emmy locked her jaw and looked at Scout through her lashes with unbridled hate.
“You two stole my sister’s life.” Scout’s hands began to shake, nerves seeping into her voice. “For the last ten years, I thought Alden killed her, and I’ve spent all this time wishing I’d been the one to take his life in return. Wished I could’ve seen the light leave her killer’s eyes. But it was you all along. Which means I get a second chance.”
My heart beat wildly. It was the nervousness in her voice that lifted the hairs on my arms—her nerves, more than her anger, that warned me of the truth: Scout had come here today to kill them.
At the center of Our Ladies is Scout Sage, and at the center of Sage is an enigma. For a person who has become so famous—whose every public appearance, song, video, criminal charge, and childhood detail has been pored over by legions and turned into legend—she remains a frustrating mystery.
