Ambition (Private 7)

with the police force bustling around, trying to handle Thomas's murder and failing miserably, routinely arresting the wrong people.

Including Josh. "Don't you need my parents here or, like, someone from school if you're going to interrogate me?" I asked, wanting to

show him how very unintimidated I was, even though I was shaking in my borrowed-from-Tiffany Jimmy Choos. "I am a minor, you

know."

His bushy eyebrows shot up. "I'm not going to interrogate you. I'm just on a fact-finding mission. I want to chat." "About what?" I

spat. "Cheyenne Martin." If I was shaking before, I was trembling now. What could he possibly want to ask me about Cheyenne after

all this time? She had been dead for more than a month. "I understand that you and Cheyenne had quite the contentious relationship,"

he began. My heart was in my throat. "So?" He blew out a sigh and leaned back in his chair, adjusting his semi-twisted sweater over

his belly before lacing his fingers together over its widest point. "Reed, I'm going to be straight with you here," he said. "Cheyenne's

parents have had some time to go through her things, and they've asked us to look into the possibility that Cheyenne's death was not a

suicide."

All the oxygen was sucked right out of the room with those few words. Was not a suicide. Was, therefore, a murder. I knew they

had checked into this in the very beginning, but I thought they had come up with nothing. They had cremated Cheyenne's body, for

God's sake--the most important piece of evidence according to any of the ten billion police procedural dramas on TV. How could they

even begin to investigate something like this now? "So you think Cheyenne was murdered," I heard myself say. "Personally? No," he

replied, sitting forward. "But I believe we owe it to the family to check out every lead." Okay. Okay. So he didn't think it was a mur-

der. Only her parents did. That was better, right? If the detective was unconvinced?

Hauer flipped open his folder and slid a piece of paper toward him. "That said, I wanted to talk to you in particular because we've

just finished going through Cheyenne's computer files." Oh, shit. Oh, crap; oh, crap; oh, crap. The room was no longer cold. Quite the

opposite, actually. Was that the devil breathing down my neck? "And we found something interesting in her e-mail outbox," he said,

looking over the top of the page. "Any idea what that might be?" He had the e-mail. He knew. He knew that Cheyenne had blamed me

for her death. My worst nightmare was coming true, right here and right now. Under the table, my hands gripped the wool of Shelby's

coat and my feet slipped out of Tiffany's shoes, too wet to hold them on any longer. "Do I need a lawyer?" I asked, Up went the eye-

brows again. "Do you feel you need one?"

"I didn't do anything, if that's what you mean," I replied quickly. "Okay then." He placed the page on the table, turned it to face me,

and slid it across with his fingertips. "Why don't you tell me what this is all about?" It was a printout of the e-mail. Her address, my

address, the time sent, the subject line empty. Then the lines that had become so excruciatingly familiar over the past few weeks. Ig-

nore the note. You did this to me. You ruined my life. My empty stomach clenched at the sight of them and a dry heave rose up in my

throat. But I swallowed it back. As terrified as I felt-- what did Hauer think this meant?--I also felt a slight sense of relief. Someone

else had read the e-mail. It was real. It was right in front of us. Both of us. Part of me had started to wonder if I had imagined all the