Sara Shepard - Stunning

Spencer laughed nervously. “Well, it’s not necessarily my brownies, is it?” Harper had eaten all kinds of other dishes, after all. Who knew what they had baked into them.

When she noticed the puzzled look on Harper’s face, everything turned upside-down. Maybe none of those other dishes had illegal substances inside them. What if Spencer’s brownies were what was making everyone so crazy?

She looked around the room. In one corner, a girl was feeding another girl a bite of something gooey and brownie-like. Two guys by the window chowed down on the brownies like they were their last meal. The brownies were everywhere. On plates left on side tables. In people’s hands as they swigged back sips of punch. On cheeks and under fingernails and ground into the fibers of the carpet. A half-eaten tray sat on the coffee table. Another tray was balanced on the radiator. Spencer peeked into the kitchen. Her three trays of brownies were still there, the bottoms scraped clean. Had someone else brought brownies, or had she brought five instead of three? Her mind felt so cloudy right now she couldn’t think clearly at all.

Her skin prickled. Harper seemed thrilled by the pot-brownie prank. But it was one thing if her brownies were one of many illegal foods at the party, and another for them to be the singular secret potion that made everyone act insane.

The walls felt like they were closing in on her. “I’ll be back,” she murmured to Harper, pushing to stand. She wove around a bunch of kids making snow angels on the carpet and two guys dueling with antique swords pulled from hooks on the wall and grabbed her coat from a pile near the kitchen. Ahead of her was a heavy door that led to the backyard; she pushed through it and stood in the crisp, late-winter air. To her surprise, only a thin strip of sunlight gleamed through the trees. Hours must have passed since she’d arrived.

Spencer stepped off the patio, taking deep breaths of cold air. The university buildings shone on the horizon. A billboard cut through the sky, bearing a picture of a newborn baby and the words CHOOSE PRINCETON HOSPITAL FOR YOUR MOST PRECIOUS MOMENTS.

It made Spencer think of the day she’d met Emily at the hospital for her C-section. By the time she got there, still flummoxed by Emily’s news, Aria and Hanna were standing by her side. Spencer’s jaw had dropped at the sight of Emily’s swollen belly. Her heart had picked up speed when she saw the shadowy image of the baby on the fetal monitor screen next to Emily’s bed. This was real .

“Emily?” a nurse had said, popping her head into the room. “They’re ready for you. It’s time to have your baby.”

There was no question whether Spencer and the others would be there for Emily’s surgery. They dressed in blue scrubs and followed the gurney into an operating room. Emily was freaking out, but the three of them held her hands the whole time, telling her she was strong and amazing. Spencer didn’t have the guts to peek over the curtain to watch as the OB cut through Emily’s midsection, but within minutes, he let out a happy whoop. “A healthy baby girl!”

The doctor lifted a tiny, perfect creature over the partition. She had red, wrinkled skin, tiny, closed eyes, and a big screaming mouth. Tears welled in all of their eyes. It was amazing and sad, all at the same time. They squeezed Emily’s hands hard, so grateful they’d been able to share this with her.

Luckily, the baby didn’t need to be in the NICU, which meant the girls could follow through with their plans of sneaking mother and baby out of the hospital that very night. At midnight, when there was a nurse shift change, the girls helped Emily out of bed and into her clothes. They dressed the baby as quietly as they could and tiptoed out of Emily’s room. The maternity ward was silent and still. Nurses were tending to newborns in the nursery. When a doctor rounded the corner, Spencer distracted her by asking for directions to the cafeteria. The others spirited Emily and baby into the elevator. Once they were on the main floor, no one looked at them twice.

They crept to the parking garage, the lights of Philadelphia blazing all around them. But as they were getting into Aria’s car, a flutter of activity behind one of the concrete beams caught Spencer’s eye. Nerves streaked through her belly. Was checking a baby out of the hospital before it was discharged illegal? She stood very still for a few moments, waiting for whomever it was to reveal herself, but no one did. She figured she was just tired, although now she wasn’t sure. Maybe A had been there. Maybe A had seen everything.

Snap.

Spencer returned to the present with a start. Dark trees surrounded her. Branches scratched her skin. The bark on the trees spiraled psychedelically; the stars were huge and garish in the sky, like a Van Gogh painting. What the hell was in this pot, anyway?

There was a whooshing sound of someone crunching through leaves. Spencer rubbed her eyes. “Hello? Who’s there?”

No answer. The crunching sounds grew louder and louder. Spencer blinked, searching for the path back to the Ivy House, but her vision was distorted and blurred. “Hello?” she cried again.

A hand clapped on her shoulder, and she screamed. She flailed her arms, trying to see who it was, but her senses were too muddled, the night too dark. Her legs gave out from under her, and she felt herself falling, falling, falling. The last thing she remembered seeing was a dark shape standing next to her, glaring. Maybe wanting to hurt her. Maybe wanting to get rid of her forever.

And then everything went black.

Hanna knew she was supposed to be in the stretch limo with her father, Isabel, and Kate, heading to the fund-raising ball, not balanced on her four-inch Louboutin platform heels outside the familiar Victorian house in Old Hollis that was home to Jeffrey Lebrecque’s photo studio. But here she was, like it or not. Ready to nail Colleen once and for all.

The porch light was on, throwing golden light onto Hanna’s professionally made-up face. The front parlor window was all lit up, too, which meant the photographer was home. Just before Hanna climbed the steps, her phone chimed. It was Richard, one of her dad’s campaign assistants. Just wanted to let you know the voter registration records database is back up , he wrote.

Perfect , Hanna replied. That meant she could search for where the Bakers had moved. The site had been down, and she’d had to resort to asking Richard about it, but she didn’t dare ask him to look up the family himself.

Then, rolling her shoulders back, she rang the bell. There were footsteps, and the door creaked open and the same graying man she’d seen the day before answered.

“Hello?” Jeffrey Lebrecque looked Hanna up and down, from the big ringlets in her hair to her navy chiffon dress to the faux-mink shrug around her shoulders she’d picked out for the ball. There was a gaudy gold ring on his pinkie finger, and he had the top two buttons of his shirt unbuttoned, exposing quite a bit of chest hair. Ick.

“Hi!” Hanna said brightly. “Are you Mr. Lebrecque?”

“That’s right.” The man furrowed his brow. “Do we have an appointment?”

“Actually, I’m here to pick up photos for Colleen Bebris,” Hanna said in her most innocent voice, batting her eyelashes at him. “I’m her best friend, and she asked me to do it. She got held up at an exercise class. She’s a pole dancer, did you know that?”

The photographer frowned. “I’m not sure I can do that. Ms. Bebris didn’t say someone else was going to pick them up. Maybe I should call her.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cell phone.