Sweet Deceit (Privilege 4)

“Uh, thanks?” Tahira replied dubiously. “I just hope someone from Stone and Grave was paying attention,” she whispered, reaching for her coffee cup. “It all happened right before . . .”

“Right before they found Brigit?” Kaitlynn said.

Ariana took a deep breath and reached for the juice. She couldn’t let Kaitlynn see how much just talking about Brigit affected her.

“I don’t even know if our tasks are going to matter anymore,” Kaitlynn said, slathering cream cheese on her bagel.

“What? Why wouldn’t they?” Allison asked.

Kaitlynn shrugged as she chewed and wiped a bit of cheese from her fingers onto her linen napkin.

“Well, I mean, they said there were four open spots . . . ,” she said, keeping her voice down. She said it as if it had just occurred to her recently—as if she was thinking out loud—when, in fact, she had already killed someone based on her logic.

Tahira swallowed so hard that Ariana heard the gulp. “And now there are four of us.”

Allison and Tahira looked at one another, then at Ariana, who found herself liking them for the first time since she’d met them more than a month ago. At least they had the decency to appear scandalized and depressed over what Kaitlynn had just said, while Kaitlynn sipped her orange juice and looked to be about three seconds away from humming a jaunty tune.

“Well, I for one will be happy if we do all get in,” Ariana said, forcing a chipper tone into her voice.

“You will?” Kaitlynn said, clearly surprised.

“Yes,” Ariana replied. “I mean, after everything that’s happened . . . it would be nice if something positive came out of it. Who knows? Maybe Hell Week will bond us somehow. Maybe, by the end of it, we’ll all be friends.”

Tahira and Allison glanced at each another.

“I think Brigit would have liked that,” Ariana added, looking at Kaitlynn.

For the first time in a long time, Kaitlynn seemed to be at a loss, like she had no idea what game Ariana was playing.

Which was just the way Ariana liked it.

LIFE IS CRAZY

Late Monday evening, Ariana held a tennis ball in her right hand. She thought of Brigit and squeezed. She thought of Kaitlynn and squeezed even harder, gritting her teeth, holding her breath, clenching her arm muscles. She thought of Brigit falling, Brigit screaming, Brigit’s neck breaking as she hit the cold, hard floor, and she reached back and hurled the tennis ball at the wall of her dorm room. It smacked into the Monet poster Kaitlynn had hung over her bed, causing a slight tear in one of the center flowers before ricocheting across the room and taking out the perfume bottles atop Ariana’s dresser. As a few more items crashed to the floor, Ariana grabbed another ball from her tenni

s bag and hurled it, widening the tear.

If only she had walked in on Brigit and Kaitlynn before it had happened. Ariana was sure she could have stopped it.

She hurled another ball. It missed the poster completely, bounced wide, and came to rest just inside Kaitlynn’s open closet.

She could have overpowered Kaitlynn and then it would have been Kaitlynn’s body that was found at the foot of the stairs, not Brigit’s.

Another ball. The tear reached the top of the poster.

Ariana reached for a fifth, but there were none left. She closed her eyes, leaned back in her desk chair, and breathed.

She imagined her and Brigit clinging to each other after Kaitlynn’s fall, still scared by the confrontation—the near miss—but grateful to be alive. Imagined telling the Norwegian guard what had happened—that “Lillian” had tried to kill the princess and “Ana” had saved the day.

But the fantasy stopped there. Ariana blinked and sat up straight. If Kaitlynn had died that night, in such a public way, it would have taken about five seconds for the authorities to find out that she wasn’t a girl named Lillian Oswald at all—that she was in fact Kaitlynn Nottingham, escaped convict. And if they figured that out, it would have taken them about five more seconds to ID Ariana. Okay, maybe ten, but still. Even if Brigit were alive and Kaitlynn were dead, it would have been all over for Ariana.

Ariana turned toward her desk and slammed her heavy U.S. government book shut, cursing under her breath. It seemed as if she wouldn’t be getting any studying done tonight, which sucked considering Kaitlynn was going to be out at an away soccer game all evening. Ariana hadn’t even known Kaitlynn played soccer until she joined the team as her mandatory APH sport, but apparently the girl was good. She’d already been named a starter. Ariana wondered how many other secrets Kaitlynn was hiding, whether banal or harrowing.

She clutched her forearm in her fingers and squeezed, holding her breath as a hot wave of fury crashed through her.

Control, Ariana . . . control.

She closed her eyes and started to breathe.