Page 32 of Dare To Fall

“Halloween.” Eli’s voice is void of emotion. “The night she died.”

Chapter 19

Eli

Logically, I’d known they had to have sent Arabella a photograph of Zoey. And I knew everything about her outfit and look was the same as how Zoey looked the last time we saw her. But mentally, I still wasn’t prepared to see her face staring up at me.

“This is good.” Kellan’s words draw a frown from me.

“How the fuck is this good?”

He plucks Arabella’s cell from her fingers and looks down at the screen. “Because it narrows down the pool of suspects.”

I take the shirt he hands me and pull it over my head. “Explain.”

“Well, whoever we’re dealing with is the same person who connected with Zoey. And, just like last time, everything seems to be linked to you.”

“That doesn’t narrow anything down.”

“No, but when you add their demand for photographs of your back, that means it’s someone who remembers where your nickname came from.”

“Still leaves a shit ton of people.”

He nails me with an exasperated look. “Will you stop interrupting me? Please and thank you.” He hands Arabella her cell. “As I was saying, it means it’s someone from our year.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because it was someone in our years who coined the term in the first place. The years below us had no idea who you were, only that you were that shy kid who’d been in an accident and lost his mom. The years above us are no longer here. By process of elimination, that leaves someone in our year.”

“What about one of the faculty?”

He shakes his head. “Doesn’t make sense. Plus, that video of the two of you fucking in the Hamptons? Pretty sure none of the faculty were there. But that also brings the pool of suspects into a smaller, more manageable amount. We need a list of everyone in senior year and cross-reference it to who was at the club that night.”

“Not really.” I push off the bed and rummage through my dresser for a pair of sweatpants and pull them on. When I turn back, it’s to find Arabella’s eyes on me. I hike an eyebrow. “Enjoying the view?”

“What do you mean not really?” Kellan says before Arabella can answer me.

I scratch my jaw. “Someone could have posted that video somewhere, and then whoever is behind all this bullshit picked it up.”

“All that means is that it could be more than one person, and at least one of them matches my theory.”

“But that doesn’t narrow it down enough for us to pinpoint where to look. There are over one hundred people in senior year.”

“But you don’t know all of them, Eli.”

“No, but like you said, they all know who I am.”

The cell in Arabella’s hand chimes, and all three of us stare at it. When she doesn’t move to read the text, I take it from her and swipe across the screen.

Unknown number: Well done. Did you fuck Kellan? We know he likes to mark the people he sleeps with. Show us one of his bite marks. One from somewhere “special.”

“They want a photograph of either your pussy or your tits.”

“Don’t they have enough of me already?” The tremor in her voice is clear.

“It’s for control. They must be running out of things to use from the cloud. I don’t think we uploaded that much.”

“I’ve got an idea.” Kellan stands. “Bella, take your top off.”

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