LITMIR.BIZ

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her favorite swim-team shirt. I leaned closer to read the red text.

       Kill!

      And another: a knife drawn plunged into Olivia’s heart, blood dripping down her chest. The words U die! were scrawled on the picture.

      Shock rippled through me.

      There were a handful more, all variations of the first three: pictures of Olivia with her neck slit, blood dripping down the image, her eyes whited out, bloody intestines vomiting from her mouth. All with die, kill, and fuck you scribbled across them.

      ‘Oh my God,’ I whispered. A rush of adrenaline thumped hot and silent in my blood.

      Someone had been cyberbullying Olivia.

10

       ABI

      november

      I started to shake all over, a shocked and angry vibration that started at the very core of me and radiated out.

      Why would somebody send these to Olivia? And who?

      I scrolled down through the rest of the photos, but there was nothing else there. Nothing threatening, anyway.

      I rested my head on the desk and thumped it softly against the edge, as if that would knock loose rational thoughts that might solve this puzzle.

      ‘Think, Abi. Think!’

      Her phone. I bolted upright. Maybe there were more on her actual phone. I racked my mind, trying to think where I’d put it. I barely remembered what had happened since Olivia fell. It felt like I’d been sleepwalking since then.

      I ran to the kitchen and grabbed Olivia’s phone from the coun ter I’d thrown it on after the detectives left. The fact that the police hadn’t even asked for or looked for Olivia’s cell was further proof they weren’t taking the investigation seriously.

      I plugged the phone in to charge, and after a few seconds it chimed and burst to life.

      There were two unread text messages.

      The most recent was from someone Olivia had saved as K at 10:42 a.m. later the same morning Olivia was found: You ok? I’m so sorry. I seriously didn’t know. Anyway, he’s a dick. If you’re like me you’ll cut him out for good!

      I brushed a hand over my face, more baffled than ever. I scrolled down and read the other text.

      It was from Tyler at 11:20 p.m. the night Olivia fell.

      I scrolled up to read the whole thread.

      Olivia: You’re right. We need to talk. You still at bbq? Meet in 15?

      Tyler: Yep. See you in a few.

      I paused, letting the part of my brain that allowed me to analyze numbers so well take over. I latched on to something as my mind anchored and examined it. The thought crystallized into something cold and hard.

      ‘Fuck,’ I whispered out loud. Tyler had told me Olivia left at 10:45 p.m. and he hadn’t seen her after that. But according to this text, they’d met up at around 11:30 p.m. ‘Tyler lied to me.’

      I scrolled back through some of Olivia’s old texts. The most recent ones were from K and a string of texts from somebody called only D. As I read, I realized they were sweet, some rather romantic, and I remembered Tyler telling me the baby wasn’t his. Perhaps this D was the baby’s father.

      The shock of finding the disturbing images in Olivia’s iCloud account and the texts from Tyler had begun to dissipate, leaving behind a completely clear view.

      This was the proof I needed. Somebody had hurt Olivia on purpose. I had to go to the police.

      × × ×

      The Portage Point Police Department was situated in a miniature antebellum-style brick building on the far side of town, nestled under tall pine trees and fronted by a series of low boxwood shrubs.

      I drove too quickly up Main Street, flying past the white, steepled church, a handful of indie coffee shops, a yoga studio, and the small town square, then turned right past a children’s playground and baseball diamond. I parked outside the station, between a police SUV and an American flag flapping aggressively in the wind.

      Carol-Ann, the police station receptionist, recognized me as soon as I walked in.

      ‘Abi!’ She came around the desk and reached for me, folding me against her massive, doughy bosom. She smelled of lavender and soap, which made me suddenly aware of how long it had been since I’d showered. When Carol-Ann pulled away, her soft brown eyes sparkled with tears.

      Carol-Ann was like the police department’s built-in grandma, complete with thick glasses and permed graying hair that poufed around her face. She’d run the front office as long as I could remember, helping the town’s four police officers and two detec tives organize legal paperwork, answer the phones, and comfort victims.

      ‘Carol-Ann, I need to see Detective Samson or McNally. Are they here?’

      I took a step toward the half-open inner door and caught a glimpse of Samson sitting in a small kitchen, a sandwich in front of her as she stared at her cell phone. The murmur of police radios floated out to me.

      Carol-Ann stepped in front of me and put her hand on my elbow, gently guiding me to a chair by her desk. ‘Let me see if they’re free. I’ll be right back.’

      A few minutes later she returned with Detective Samson.

      I jumped up, anger flaring in me. ‘Where have you been?’ I snapped. ‘I’ve left a thousand messages for you guys, and nothing! No wonder you haven’t solved Olivia’s case if you’re sitting here eating lunch and checking your phone all day!’

      Samson’s ice-blue eyes flashed something I couldn’t immediately recognize. Not anger, exactly. Surprise.

      She nodded at Carol-Ann, then jerked her head toward the door. ‘Please come with me.’

      I followed her down the hallway past the kitchen to a characterless room painted a cold gray. There were no pictures on the walls, no decorations, nothing except a window to the hallway with half-closed blinds and a table like the kind you’d find in a cafeteria with a handful of folding chairs around it.

      I pulled Olivia’s phone out of my purse, set it on the table with a loud thunk, then glared at her as she sat down.

      ‘You didn’t take Olivia’s phone.’

      Samson crossed one leg over her knee and studied me for a long minute. ‘Didn’t Detective McNally ask you for it?’

      ‘No.’ I started to shake my head, then stopped. I couldn’t actually remember. ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘We are pursuing a number of leads, Miss Knight.’

      I gritted my teeth, knowing that was code for We haven’t found anything.

      ‘Olivia’s boyfriend, Tyler, he lied to me. He told me they didn’t see each other after she left the barbecue, but there’s a text here.’ I clicked into the text thread and handed the phone to her. ‘See? She says she’s going back to the barbecue. She would’ve met him at eleven thirty. And . . .’ I dug in my purse for the threatening pictures I’d printed from Olivia’s iCloud account and laid them on the table. ‘Somebody sent her these.’

      Samson scrolled through the phone for a moment, then picked up the pictures, her face a cold, hard mask. She studied them for a long moment. ‘Were these on her phone?’

      I shook my head. ‘No, they were in her iCloud account, which was synced with her phone. They must’ve been deleted from her phone.’

      ‘Any idea who sent these?’

      ‘No. None at all.’

      Samson

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