Page 33 of Broken Princess
“Even with the lizard shit?”
“Yeah. We thought the whole lizard thing might’ve been some sort of code. But then I started to wonder if it was something else. An autocorrect error, maybe. After all, the post seemed really rushed, and then it just… ended. The main body of it was written like they were going to give us a ton of names and details later, but that never happened. So I thought: what if they were writing it out on a cell phone, but they got caught halfway through? Maybe they quickly pressed ‘enter’ and posted what they had, figuring something was better than nothing, and they didn’t realize there was a mistake.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, slowly tapping a finger on my jaw.
“I went and looked at the screenshot. I was right. It was definitely posted from a mobile device. It was just too bad the post got deleted right away, or else I could’ve traced the phone,” Rowan said. “Anyway, I reread the end, and I realized I could be right. It didn’t actually say: ‘The leader is a lizard’. It just said: ‘The leader is lizard’. There was no ‘a’ in there, and no period at the end. It just trailed off into nothing. So it looked like the poster was actually trying to tell us the name of the leader, but then they got disturbed and quickly pressed enter without realizing there was a typo.”
“Then the person who caught them found the post and deleted it,” I said, brows furrowing.
Rowan nodded. “Probably, yes. Anyway, what name is the most likely to autocorrect to ‘lizard’ on a cell phone keyboard?”
“Liz.”
“Yes. Or Liza. Maybe even Lisa.” He paused to take a quick breath. “After I realized that, I started considering every power player in D.C. with those names. The first person I looked into was Liza Winters.”
“The Treasury Secretary?”
“Yeah. She’s fairly powerful. Rich, too. I figured it was possible she could be the leader of a secret society, so I looked into her.” Rowan hesitated again, brows puckering. “I won’t bore you with all the details, but that went nowhere. There was just no way it was her.”
“So then you thought of my mom.”
“Yeah. It sounded stupid at first, because I always thought she was a vapid socialite, but—” He stopped abruptly and winced. “I mean… no offense.”
I held up both palms. “None taken. Go on.”
“I knew she was a Hale before she got married, and they’ve got a ton of connections and more money than God, so theoretically, she’s always had access to a lot of power. I figured it was worth checking out because of that, even though she was the last person I’d ever suspect.”
“So you started looking into her?”
“Yes. I found something pretty interesting right off the bat. You know she went to Yale, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I overheard her talking to my mom and some other women at a party once. Someone mentioned that she went there, and she laughed and said she only got in as a legacy. I went and looked it up. It’s not true.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Your mom got into Yale all on her own. She could’ve had help from her family if she needed it, but she didn’t. Her grades were perfect.” Rowan frowned and leaned forward. “It made me wonder. Why would someone downplay their achievements or intellect like that? It seems totally pointless.”
I lifted a brow. “Unless they were trying to cultivate a certain image for themselves.”
“Exactly,” he said, touching the tips of his fingers together to form a steeple. “It seemed like she was trying to portray herself as an airheaded socialite, when really, she’s a total genius.”
“So after that you knew she had to be the leader of this alleged secret society?”
Rowan shook his head. “No. Even then, I was only mildly suspicious. I mean… Liz Thorne? Her? It just seemed ludicrous,” he replied. “But I couldn’t shake the feeling I was onto something, so I kept digging.”
“And?”
He looked down for a moment, twisting his lips in silence. “Remember how you asked if you could trust me?” he finally asked.
I stiffened. “Yes.”
“I need to tell you about something, but I need to know I can trust you too,” he said, forehead creasing. “No one else can hear about it.”
“You can trust me. What is it?”
His eyes narrowed. “Seriously, Logan, this is huge. It can’t leave the room under any circumstances.”
