Sara Shepard - Burned

“Aria!” Graham called after her, but she didn’t stop. Only when she got to the bottom did she peer up the stairwell. Graham stood at the top, looking flummoxed. His eyes were wide and sad, the corners of his mouth turned down in a frown.

She skittered away and felt guilt wash over her. Had she led Graham on? Was he crushed now? How had this gone so horribly wrong?

The elevator couldn’t come fast enough. She hit the button again and again, afraid Graham might decide to come and talk to her. Then a tinkling sound of piano keys sounded behind her. There was a baby grand piano in the waiting area, and someone was pressing a high note over and over again. It sounded like the soundtrack to Psycho .

She turned around, ready to tell whoever it was to stop it, but there was no one at the bench. She blinked hard around the empty room—had she heard the sound at all? But no, the sound of a just-plucked piano string echoed in the air. Someone had been playing the piano. And she knew, immediately, who it had been.

“Welcome to Bermuda!” Jeremy’s voice chirped over the speakers that afternoon. The opening bars of “Over the Rainbow” played. Instead of rushing to the railing and waving at everyone on the dock, as Hanna had done every other time they arrived at an island, she remained parked behind a stack of books in the lending library, her gaze trained on her stateroom door down the hall.

“How long are you going to sit like that?” Mike asked, propping his feet up on the oak desk next to her and rifling through an old Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

“I already told you,” Hanna said under her breath. “I’m waiting until Naomi leaves.”

Mike peeked over the centerfold. “You seriously can’t deal with seeing Naomi for even one second ? Are you scared of her?”

Hanna glared at him. “You can leave at any time, you know.” When Mike had asked her what she was up to that morning, Hanna said she wanted to check out the library on her floor. Mike had offered to come with her, but after a half hour of watching Hanna stake out her room and not leaf through a single book, he’d caught on to what she was really doing.

“I still think mud-wrestling is the way to go,” Mike said, turning back a page to look again at a supermodel in a high-cut string bikini.

“Thanks for the suggestion,” Hanna said. “I just don’t really want a confrontation. She caught me looking at her computer, and she’s pissed. I want to go back into the room when she’s not around, that’s all.”

It was almost the truth. Hanna didn’t feel it necessary to add that she wanted to go back into the room so that she could look at Naomi’s computer again . Or that Naomi was probably extra-pissed at Hanna because she’d ditched out on her without an explanation.

“You were going through her stuff?” Mike said. “What’s gotten into you? First you stalk Colleen, now it’s Naomi …”

“Would you stop asking questions?” Hanna hissed, feeling more and more exasperated.

Mike laid down the magazine. “God, fine.” He stood up and stretched. “I’m going to find Noel so we can run through our talent show song one more time. Call me when you’re done playing Stake-Out.”

As he stormed off, the door to her stateroom opened, and Naomi sauntered out, dressed in a white eyelet dress and blue sandals. Several chunky bangles lined her wrists, and she carried a small red leather bag under her arm.

Hanna held her breath as Naomi walked by the library, praying she wouldn’t stop inside. She didn’t. As soon as Naomi stepped into the elevator, Hanna crept down the hall toward their room. When she was almost there, a figure passed through the intersecting hallway, and she froze. It was Jeremy. His fingers were entwined behind his back, and he was whistling “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

She leaned against the wall, her confidence shaken. As the elevator dinged, a horrible thought struck her. What if Naomi forgot something and came back?

She scuttled back to the library and dialed Spencer. “It’s Hanna,” she whispered when she answered. “I’m right outside my room, and I want to look at Naomi’s computer, but I don’t want to get caught. Can you be a lookout?”

Spencer groaned warily. “I don’t want to piss her off even more.”

Hanna glanced at the elevator again. Hopefully Naomi hadn’t just taken a quick jaunt down to the gift shop. “Please, Spence? It’ll take five minutes. We need to nail her.”

Spencer let out a long sigh, then hung up the phone with a clunk . In less than a minute, the elevator chimed, and she limped out. Her face was pale, and one side of her hair was matted. Spencer caught Hanna looking and said, “There was gum in my hair. It was a bitch to get out.” Then she gestured down the hall. “Let’s make this quick.”

Hanna let herself into her room. Inside, Naomi’s bed was neatly made, her clothes folded on the bureau. Hanna looked right and left, and finally spied the laptop underneath Naomi’s desk. Her heart did a flip as she lifted the cover. She found Naomi’s photo folder quickly and opened it. Her gaze went immediately to a folder titled Vacay . She opened it up, then clicked on the first icon. The same photo that had been on Aria’s phone appeared. It had almost been too easy.

“Oh my God,” Hanna whispered. “Here they are.”

“Really?” Spencer ran from the doorway and peered at the screen. “Jesus. Delete them!”

“I will.” Hanna highlighted the images and dragged them into the trash. “Go back to the door and make sure she isn’t coming!” she instructed.

Spencer did as she was told, though after a few seconds she’d wandered away again. She poked her head into Hanna’s bathroom. “Hey, your shower’s nicer than mine.”

“How do you think Naomi got those pictures, anyway?” Hanna murmured, answering yes to a prompt that asked if she was sure she wanted to delete the photos.

“I thought we covered this. The second A must have sent them to her.”

“Do you understand the implications of a second A?” Hanna wished the photos would delete a little quicker. “It means someone else hates us, too. It also means someone else has these photos. That’s the person who saw what happened in Jamaica.”

“I know,” Spencer said gravely.

“Who do you think it could be?”

“Hanna, if I knew , maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess!” Spencer sounded exasperated.

Hanna didn’t know either, but the possibility of a second A was really starting to sink in, and it was terrifying. Even if they took Naomi down and found proof that she was Gayle’s murderer, they wouldn’t be safe. This alleged second A could still nail them for everything.

Finally, a message popped up saying that the photos had been removed. Phew .

“Holy shit,” Spencer cried. She emerged from the bathroom carrying a bottle of baby oil, Ex-Lax tablets, and a large package of bubble gum. “Look at what I found in Naomi’s bag!”

“Don’t mess with her stuff!” Hanna hissed, jumping up.

“Don’t you see?” Spencer waved the bottles around. “This proves without a doubt that she’s the one who’s torturing me! She used the Ex-Lax to make me think I had food poisoning. She spilled the baby oil so I’d slip. And she put this”—she held up the gum–“in my hair!”

“Spence, I need you at the door!” Hanna guided her down the little hall. Then she shoved Naomi’s stuff back into the bathroom and turned back to the computer. Now that she’d deleted those photos, she needed to find something incriminating about Naomi that would connect her to Gayle. An e-mail, maybe. She opened her Gmail account again, hoping to find a note signed A . Maybe they’d get lucky and even find something that gave away whoever it was Naomi was working with.