Cruel Love (Privilege 6)

But then, it was his own fault. There was always a price to pay for getting involved with the wrong girl.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

As Ariana walked out of the Privilege House café, she popped the top off her vanilla latte and took a nice, long whiff of the sweet, comforting scent. Slowly, her shoulder muscles started to uncoil. It had been a long, cold day. She’d had a lot of success, of course—nailing down Reed’s schedule, getting some ideas as to where, when, and how the deed could be done—but by the time it was over, she felt frozen from the inside out. Now that she was back home, she deserved a little downtime.

Halfway across the common room to the lobby, Ariana caught a glimpse of April’s red curls inside the lounge. She was sitting on one of the couches with the TV tuned to the news, which seemed to be covering one of the charitable stories of the season—all fresh-faced kids and lovingly wrapped presents. Ariana smiled, seeing a perfect opportunity to nail down April’s currently iffy Stone and Grave vote. Apparently the downtime would have to be put off a bit.

But the moment she was through the door of the lounge, she stopped in her tracks. Seated on the couch in front of the second flat-screen TV were Palmer, Christian, Rob, and Landon, playing a raucous game of Call of Duty. The last thing she wanted was to be around Palmer, and she almost backed out again, but then he turned and saw her. His face was covered in day-old stubble and he wore a rumpled V-neck sweater, but was still annoyingly hot. He gave her a cursory, dismissive glance and returned his attention to the game. Ariana’s face burned. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t leave now. She couldn’t let him have the satisfaction.

“Hi, April,” she said brightly, walking around the side of the couch. She plopped down next to the senior, disturbing the binder she had open across her lap and ruffling some papers. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were studying.”

“I’m not,” April replied, heaving a sigh. “I’m trying to organize all these submissions for the lit magazine.” She lifted a sheaf of papers in one hand. “Hasn’t anyone at this school ever heard of e-mail?”

Ariana smirked and took a sip of her latte. “Need help?”

“Yes, please, thank you,” April said in one breath. She handed a disorganized stack of submissions to Ariana. “I’m starting by sorting them into piles by format. This one’s poetry and that one’s fiction,” she said, pointing to two separate stacks placed on the couch at her sides.

Ariana put her coffee down on the glass coffee table, and noticed another pile of looseleaf and printer paper there. “What’s that?” she asked, as the guys on the other couch shouted over a huge explosion.

April rolled her eyes behind her tortoiseshell glasses. “Unknown format.”

Ariana laughed. “I don’t even want to know.”

“And now, a breaking news story from our nation’s capital,” the newscaster on the television announced. Ariana and April both looked up, and Palmer glanced over from the opposite couch. “This afternoon, a grizzly discovery was made on the banks of the Potomac River as the body of a young woman washed up on shore.”

The back of Ariana’s skull went fuzzy and weightless. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

“Pause the game,” Palmer ordered.

Rob did as he was told and Palmer got up, then lowered himself onto the arm of the couch, facing April’s TV. On the screen, a half dozen police loaded a black body bag into the back of the ambulance on the banks of a river.

“The remains have been identified as those of international fashion model, Kiran Hayes,” the newscaster’s voiceover continued. Ariana’s blood turned to icy slush as suddenly Kiran Hayes’s smiling face grinned out at her.

“Oh my God,” she uttered, her hand flying to her mouth.

“What?” April said. “Ana? Are you all right?”

“M’fine,” Ariana mumbled, even as her life flashed before her eyes. How had they found her body? How? It had been weeks since she’d shoved a very drunk Kiran off a bridge into the raging Potomac on Halloween night. Ariana had thought that with each passing day she was safer and safer from her former friend’s body ever being found. And now, there Kiran was in the flesh and larger than life, strutting down a Fashion Week runway, posing with other models for a makeup ad, getting out of a limo with some half-wasted Hollywood B-lister.

“Widely acknowledged to be one of high fashion’s rising stars, Miss Hayes has not been seen or heard from since Halloween night, when she called an old friend from her former prep school, Easton Academy.”

Now the guys were fully interested, murmuring and conjecturing as they realized that Kiran was one of their own ilk.

“Shhh!” Ariana said, holding out a hand.

She caught a few confused looks, but everyone quieted down. On the screen flashed a photograph of Kiran and Noelle taken in front of Billings during Kiran’s junior year. The photo had been cropped, but a hand hung around Kiran’s shoulder in the center of the picture. Ariana nearly blacked out at the sight of it. It was her own slim, pale hand. If they’d shown the entire shot …

If they’d shown the entire shot, everyone in the room would have seen it. Every single one of them would have recognized her.

“And while this looks like a possible accident, police have yet to rule out foul play,” the newscaster was saying. “For WDCW news, I’m Melinda Chang.”

Ariana stood up shakily, strewing papers all over the floor at her feet. She turned away from the screen and stumbled back toward the lobby. Foul play. They hadn’t ruled out foul play. Had she left some kind of evidence on Kiran? A fingerprint? A fiber? A hair?

“Where’re you going?” Palmer demanded.

Ariana froze. Her spine felt like a long strip of ice. “What?” she said, turning to him.

“That’s the most emotion I’ve seen from you since your so-called best friend died,” he said belligerently, approaching her. “How is it you’re crying over some dead model when I’ve never seen you shed a tear over Lexa?”