Privilege (Privilege 1)

parents died. The ones who now had control of all of Kaitlynn's family money.

"It turns out there was a clause in her dad's will," Ariana said, walking around to the backseat with a towel. She wanted to clean out Rambo's dog hair. The new Briana Leigh Covington did not drive around in a hairy car. "She wasn't getting any of the inheritance until she was twenty-five."

"That's bullshit!" Kaitlynn shouted.

Ariana paused, leaning halfway into the car. That was definitely annoyance. She stood up again and looked over the car at her friend.

"Don't worry. I've got fifteen thousand in cash that Grandma Covington gave to Briana Leigh for emergencies. That should be enough to--"

Kaitlynn let out an irritated squawk. She walked around the side of the car and faced Ariana. Her brow was creased in consternation. Ariana stared at her friend. She felt as if she had missed something. As if she was playing catch-up.

She hated that feeling.

"You're telling me that you spent all that time with that bitch and you didn't even get your hands on the money?" Kaitlynn spat, her teeth clenched. "You have to be kidding me!"

"Kaitlynn, calm down," Ariana said, wrapping the towel around her fist. "I told you--"

"I don't believe this!" Kaitlynn seethed. "God, I should have known better. If you want something done right... But I couldn't do it myself, could I? You were my best shot!"

263

Ariana's heart slowly turned to stone inside her chest. She suddenly felt cold. Very, very cold. "What are you talking about? Handle what?"

"This!" Kaitlynn flung her hands out as if to encompass the whole world. "I couldn't go myself because Briana Leigh knows me. I had to send someone else," she ranted, pacing the dirt clearing. Her growing voice startled a few night birds from the trees. Ariana's heart seized up in her chest at the noise. She attempted to focus, but she simply could not. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "So I fed you all the crap you'd need to know to get in with Briana Leigh and gave you my whole sob story and you ate it up. All of it. It was the perfect plan, Ari. Because I thought it up!"

The world started to spin in front of Ariana's eyes. She brought her hand to her head and tried to stop it, but it was no use. The person in front of her was supposed to be her friend. Supposed to be innocent, naive Kaitlynn Nottingham. But at that moment the person in front of her was unrecognizable. Fury lined her pretty face and she spat when she talked. The transformation was utterly horrid.

It hadn't been Ariana's plan. It had been Kaitlynn's plan all along. Kaitlynn had planted it inside Ariana's mind, just like Ariana had planted the identity-switching plan in Briana Leigh's head, making her think she'd come up with it herself.Ariana's stomach turned and bile rose up in her throat. Wrong again, Ariana. You were wrong again....

"But now, as it turns out, you used me to get the body you wanted and now you're leaving me high and dry," Kaitlynn ranted.

264

It wasn't possible. It just was not possible.

"Kaitlynn, why?" Ariana said, her mouth dry. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely speak past its frenzy.

Kaitlynn stepped toward Ariana. "Why? Because I killed Derek Covington. He broke my heart, so I killed him. I took out his prized antique Winston revolver and I shot him right between the eyebrows. It was me. And if you weren't such an idiot, you would have figured that out by now."

Ariana's vision clouded over so fast she had to lean into the side of the car to stay on her feet. Her blood sounded like a freight train in her ears. Suddenly all she could see was Briana Leigh's face as she sank beneath the surface of the lake. It brought back with utter clarity the sight of Sergei Tretyakov's face. She had held him under as he clung to her hands--begged for help before sinking to his death. All for nothing.

She had killed the wrong person. Again. She had killed Briana Leigh for no good reason. Just like Sergei. All for nothing.

Not again. Not again not again not again.

"But she told me," Ariana whispered hoarsely, barely clinging to consciousness. Her fingers trembled. Her knees were rubber. She could hardly breathe. "She told me on the plane that she killed him. That it was her fault."

Kaitlynn clucked her tongue. "It was. If she hadn't told him to break up with me, he'd still be alive. But she had no idea what it's really like to kill someone, did she, Ariana?"

Ariana squeezed her eyes closed. Briana Leigh hadn't been confessing.

265

She hadn't been unburdening her heart. She had been drunkenly babbling. Feeling sad and guilty over the loss of her father.

And Ariana had killed her for it.

How could I have been so wrong? How could I have been so gullible? She felt so stupid. So humiliated. All those stories Kaitlynn had told her--she had believed every last one of them. Kaitlynn had played her for months, and she had simply let her. So much for her ability to read people. It was nonexiste