The Ivies - Alexa Donne Page 0,70

her coffee, finishing with a wet smack. “Back off, Olivia. That’s my advice. But if you don’t want to…I’ve given you everything you need.” And with a pitying look and a small salute, she bids me farewell.

The words back off echo in my ear. Quit Meddling’s first email came before I ever contacted Kaila, so she can’t be the secret emailer. There’s no way. But she’s saying the exact same thing.

Stop digging.

“Did she leave?” Ethan looms over the table, a bag with my scone in hand.

“Yeah, let’s go.” I push back to leave, and immediately a hipster dude with a laptop appears to take the table. Vultures.

Ethan and I walk back to the train station in uneasy silence. I suspect he knows I sent him on an errand to give me time alone with Kaila. He doesn’t pry into what we discussed, but his jaw keeps flexing, gloved fingers ticking against his thighs. He wants to ask. My wheels are turning. Emma had secrets upon secrets, but they’re like wisps of smoke dancing away from my fingers as I try to grab hold.

We wait on an empty platform for the 11:15 train back, frigid wind cutting through the station and through our coats. There’s a shelter down the platform, but neither Ethan nor I make a break for it. I think we both need to feel the burn of the cold.

“What do you think?” Ethan asks finally. All that silence, and he opens with such a widely fielded question.

“I think if Kaila got the worst that Emma did and she didn’t want to kill her, then the revenge motive is thin. Unless Jason Wang was willing to kill over some abdominal distress.” I stare at a point across the platform, eyes trained on a tattered two-sheet ad for a concert that took place three months ago.

“My guess, it’s all about Beau,” Ethan says.

I unconsciously thumb Emma’s phone in my bag. “The candlelight memorial tonight—you’re going?”

“We have to, lest we look like heartless assholes.”

“Right, which means Beau will be there, even if he killed her,” I reason. “I have the phone, so I have his number. So we set a trap at the memorial. I’ll text him, and you scan the crowd to see who is on their phone.”

“Why would he answer a text if he knows she’s dead? He’ll know it’s a trap.”

I begin to pace, an improvement on leaning forward every twenty seconds to check if the train is coming. “We don’t need him to text back. Just look at his phone. React. It’ll give him the fright of his life, even if logically he knows she’s gone. We’ll get him.”

A two-toned wail signals the approaching train, cutting off any protest Ethan might make. We move to the end of the platform, ready to board. “Meet me there. It’ll work,” I say, trying hard to convince myself.

I’m crossing the quad with Ethan when Cataldo calls my name. We stop, Ethan asking with an apologetic look to leave me to it. I let him go with a wave and paste on a smile as I turn to find the detective jogging toward me. A laptop bag is slung over her shoulder and looks to be bumping painfully against her hip.

“Hey, how are you?”

“Uh, fine.”

“Are you going to Austen again? Can I walk you?”

I eye Austen, then the laptop bag. Emma’s laptop bag. I wasn’t heading to the admin building, but I nod. If there’s anywhere I can find out the depths of Emma’s secrets, it’s in her personal files. This might be my only chance with her laptop.

“Isn’t that breaking the chain of custody?” I indicate the bag.

“So you were listening?”

“Couldn’t help it.”

“Yes, but no. Claflin’s lawyer was happy to explain it to me this morning. I am merely dropping off the laptop into Claflin’s custody until tomorrow, when an FBI tech, who is assisting with the investigation—not taking over!—will help us crack the password.”

I try my luck. “I can take it in for you if you want.”

“I have to deliver it myself to a secure location.”

“Of course.”

“I’m glad I ran into you. I’m piecing together the timeline for the night Emma died, and I have some questions.”

I let her go on.

“What was Emma wearing at the party?”

“Blue dress, red sweater, black leggings, her black boots, and a navy-blue peacoat.”

Cataldo stops. We’re outside Austen again. Déjà vu. “So that’s why you felt she had returned to your dorm room, correct? Because of the sweater.”

“It was on her desk

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