Page 67 of The Sleeping Girls

Bianca waited until her parents went to their room to check social media. They’d been upset about the accusations against her, she figured mostly because her mother would be embarrassed in front of her country club friends and her father with his colleagues.

Their prestige and social status were all they cared about.

That and the glass house.

Better not break a collectable figurine or one of her mother’s precious Faberge eggs. Bianca had never understood her obsession with the overprized pieces of glass but her mother showed them off as if they were her babies.

Sometimes Bianca wanted to take a hammer and smash the stupid things to smithereens and strew the pieces across the floor so her mother would step on them when she slipped into the kitchen for her nightly bottle of Pinot Grigio.

When her mom was really being bitchy, Bianca imagined the prickly shards stabbing her delicate pedicured toes and her blood dotting the floor like the petals of a dead red rose scattered across the white marble.

A smile creased her lips. She tiptoed to the top of the winding staircase in the monster house. The light in her father’s studywas on, the door closed. She imagined him talking quietly to one of his colleagues, planning his strategy to minimize the damage caused by her actions. Or planning a clandestine meeting with one of his young assistants. So clichéd. But if the Italian loafer fit…

She heard her mother humming and spotted her staggering toward their downstairs bedroom, carrying a bottle of wine and an empty glass in one hand.

Irritated they were still up, she waited until the bedroom door closed, then she tiptoed down the steps and into the kitchen. Her bare feet were cold on the slick marble flooring as she snuck a bag of Oreos from the pantry, one she’d hidden from her mother because sugar was the devil in her mother’s eating-disordered world of tiny salads, tuna fish and spinning classes.

Sometimes, she couldn’t believe her mother actually allowed herself to sweat. But she supposed she had to sacrifice somehow to maintain her size-two figure. Besides, she always rewarded herself with a massage afterward to relieve the stress.

What kind of stress did she have in her life? She’d never worked or had any purpose, other than to be arm candy for Bianca’s father at his social events. Even so, she’d been cutting out of those lately with random excuses.

Tucking the Oreos under her arm, she grabbed a real Coke, not the diet ones her mother drank, and darted up the steps before anyone realized she’d been in the kitchen.

Shutting herself in her jail cell for the night, she crawled onto her bed, ripped open the package of cookies and stuffed two in her mouth. She popped the top on the Coke can and chugged it to wash down the crumbs.

Better clean it up in the morning before the housekeeper arrived or she’d rat her out. Sometimes she thought her mother paid the staff to spy on her.

She wolfed down four more cookies, knowing she’d have to purge tonight. Couldn’t gain a pound or her mother would completely freak or put her in some fat camp like she’d threatened to do last summer when Bianca had suddenly developed hips.

She grabbed another cookie, bit half of it in one bite, then opened her laptop and searched social media. News about the disappearance of Kelsey and Ruby was blowing up the internet.

Oh, God… they were saying Kelsey was dead…

SEVENTY-THREE

SOUTHERN LIGHTS STUDIOS

Digger’s head swam with confusion as he parked at the studio where Caitlin O’Connor taped her sessions. He had to talk to her. Assure her he hadn’t killed that girl.

Heath had looked skeptical at the idea he was being framed. Caitlin was the only person who might believe him.

The last few months, his memories had become like a hurricane, thrashing and flooding his brain with images as fractured as shattered glass. Sometimes he saw himself, hands picking up the pillow to smother Anna Marie.

Other times he was certain someone else had been there.

His stepfather’s shout. Accusations. His fists slamming into him. Himself hitting the floor, his vision blurring.

Then his stepfather leaning over Anna Marie, hands pressing against her chest in CPR. “You killed her!”

His little brother’s cry of horror when he saw what was happening.

“Call 9-1-1!” his father shouted to Heath. For a minute, Heath just stood there. Paralyzed.

“Do it!” his father yelled.

Heath bolted from the room.

The room blurred again. His father’s voice. “Come on, Anna Marie. Come on, breathe.”