Ryan. God, it’s been a while,” a man with blond, short-cropped hair said before Becca could do no more than murmur a hello to Tamara.
Her heart sank. She’d know that voice anywhere even if she didn’t recognize the sharp features of Christopher Delacroix III. The Third hadn’t changed much in the twenty years since Jessie’s disappearance. Older, a bit thicker, maybe, although it looked like all muscle, he still possessed the leadership quality—or should she say “belief that they should all do his bidding”—that had made him their unofficial but indisputable ruler. In the past Hudson hadn’t paid attention to The Third’s despot ways, but he hadn’t challenged him for the role, either. Hudson hadn’t been interested in those group dynamics. A part of the group and yet not. Even then, he’d been his own person and had told The Third to “shove it” more often than not. Somehow, despite his disdain for authority, or maybe because of it, he’d been allowed to stay. And Becca had loved him for it.
“It has been a long while,” Becca admitted. “And it’s Becca Sutcliff now.”
“That’s right, you’re married.” He snapped his fingers as he remembered. “You’re with Bennett, Bretherton, aren’t you?” The Third was a lawyer at another firm, and Becca had spoken on the phone with him a couple of times.
Already Becca was regretting attending this meeting. Two minutes with The Third and she remembered what she’d hated about high school. “I’m widowed, actually.” She didn’t add anything else, didn’t want to expose herself. Let them think what they wanted.
He snorted, intense blue eyes focusing on her. “Divorced, here. Don’t know why I ever thought I could be married to anything other than my job.”
She forced a smile and dared a glance around the table. No sign of Hudson yet, though his sister Renee was seated at the end of the table, her dark hair in the same short style Becca remembered from high school. She gave Becca a tight return smile, but Becca sensed it wasn’t anything personal. Renee seemed her usual uptight, disinterested self.
But she called the meeting, remember? According to Hudson, this get-together was her idea. On the table in front of Renee, near an untouched glass of wine, was a stack of papers—along with a neatly folded newspaper with the picture of the Madonna statue.
Tamara said to the group at large, “Is Hudson going to show?”
“He’ll be here. He’s always running late.” Renee met Becca’s eyes, and for the first time in her life, Becca definitely did not feel invisible to Hudson’s twin.
“Well, of course he’ll show,” the woman at the other end of the table stated emphatically as Becca took an empty chair between Tamara and a man she recognized as Jarrett Erikson, another one of The Third’s buddies. With dark hair and a swarthy complexion, he, along with The Third, had loved mercilessly teasing Mitch and Glenn, referring to Glenn as a “nerd with a complex.”
“We all had to show, didn’t we?” the same woman said. She was petite, blond, and nervous, and clung to the hand of the man seated on her left. Beneath the pendant lights suspended above the table, a huge diamond glittered on her left hand. “Kind of a command performance.” She shot a dark look toward Renee.
Becca took a second to remember her: Evangeline Adamson. “Vangie.” She was seated next to Zeke St. John, who greeted Becca with a silent nod. As Becca remembered, Evangeline had always been chasing Zeke, but Zeke hadn’t seemed to want to commit to a relationship. It appeared now, after over twenty years of clinging to a dream, that she’d finally gotten her wish, as there was no question the ring she was wearing was for an engagement. Zeke, meanwhile, looked a little worse for wear. His chiseled jaw had loosened with age, his athletic build was softer, and his once-dark hair was shot with silver.
Hudson’s best friend, who, when he’d been nineteen, hadn’t given Becca the time of day.
Renee pushed back her chair, its legs scraping over the dark hardwood. “Let’s get to it, okay? We don’t need to wait for Hud.”
“You’re pretty hot about that skeleton those kids found up at St. Lizzie’s,” The Third observed. “That’s what this is about, right? You think it’s Jessie’s.”
Leave it to The Third to cut to the chase and ruin all of Renee’s drama. Becca and the rest of the group turned their collective eyes toward her. “Yes,” she said, but before she could go on, Evangeline cut in.
“It can’t be Jessie. I mean…she ran away, right? She was always running away. She told me she was going to run away.”
Vangie had been one of Jessie’s closest friends, an inner circle among the larger clique, Becca recalled.
Jarrett Erikson’s dark eyes gazed coldly at Vangie. “It’s not like we forgot what you told the police.”
“What did I say?” she demanded, affronted.
“Just that. You were her best friend and Jessie told you she was running away.”
“I wasn’t her best friend.”
“We were all good friends,” Renee put in brusquely, intent on pulling the conversation back to her own agenda. “I was a good friend of hers.”
“Yeah, but Vangie acted like she and Jessie were like this,” The Third said, crossing his fingers.
“I don’t know why you’re picking on me!” Vangie sniffed.
“Hard to believe it’s Jessie,” Zeke cut in. His gaze fell on the way Evangeline’s hand clung to his and he moved it to his lap, as if embarrassed.
A cell phone chirped. The Third reached into his pocket, withdrew a sleek BlackBerry, checked the number, then clicked the phone off. “Sorry.”
Renee said tightly, “Okay, so if it’s not Jessie, then whose bones are they?” She glanced around the table, but no one responded. “Come on. Whether we like it or not, we all know that the body up there is Jessie Brentwood and it’ll only be a few days, maybe even shorter, before the police put two and two together.”
“Is that what this is all about, going to the police?” For a split second, The Third seemed unnerved. He grabbed his short, near-empty glass, jiggled the ice cubes, and took a last swallow before cracking one of the melting cubes between his teeth.
Renee shook her head. “No. But they’re bound to come to us again. It’s what they do.” Her gaze skated around the table, to the faces staring at her. “Come on, we all know this thing’s been eating at us for years. Everyone of us has said, ‘I wonder what happened to Jessie. Where she went.’” Renee took a sip of her wine. “Now it looks like she’s been found. Part of the mystery solved.”
“Nothing’s been eating at me,” The Third pointed out, and he seemed relaxed again. An act? Or for real? “And I don’t know what the hell you mean about a mystery. Vangie’s right. Jessie ran away.”
“Are we all going to order something, or what?” Scott asked, his now-bald pate gleaming in the subdued lighting. Becca realized he scarcely had any hair left and apparently chose to shave it off completely. “How about a couple of bottles of wine? Looks like we could use some refills and a few new glasses. Glenn…” He glanced pointedly at his business partner.
Glenn Stafford looked like he’d been enjoying the fruits of his own
