“You’re hurting me,” Aria said shakily, staring down at his nails in her arm. Her heart thundered in her chest.
Graham released his grip, suddenly looking horrified. She shot away fast, diving for the spiral staircase and clomping down as fast as her high shoes could carry her.
“Aria!” Graham called after her, but she didn’t stop. Only when she got to the bottom did she peer up the stairwell. Graham stood at the top, looking flummoxed. His eyes were wide and sad, the corners of his mouth turned down in a frown.
She skittered away and felt guilt wash over her. Had she led Graham on? Was he crushed now? How had this gone so horribly wrong?
The elevator couldn’t come fast enough. She hit the button again and again, afraid Graham might decide to come and talk to her. Then a tinkling sound of piano keys sounded behind her. There was a baby grand piano in the waiting area, and someone was pressing a high note over and over again. It sounded like the soundtrack to Psycho.
She turned around, ready to tell whoever it was to stop it, but there was no one at the bench. She blinked hard around the empty room—had she heard the sound at all? But no, the sound of a just-plucked piano string echoed in the air. Someone had been playing the piano. And she knew, immediately, who it had been.
24
SOMETHING’S MISSING
“Welcome to Bermuda!” Jeremy’s voice chirped over the speakers that afternoon. The opening bars of “Over the Rainbow” played. Instead of rushing to the railing and waving at everyone on the dock, as Hanna had done every other time they arrived at an island, she remained parked behind a stack of books in the lending library, her gaze trained on her stateroom door down the hall.
“How long are you going to sit like that?” Mike asked, propping his feet up on the oak desk next to her and rifling through an old Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
“I already told you,” Hanna said under her breath. “I’m waiting until Naomi leaves.”
Mike peeked over the centerfold. “You seriously can’t deal with seeing Naomi for even one second? Are you scared of her?”
Hanna glared at him. “You can leave at any time, you know.” When Mike had asked her what she was up to that morning, Hanna said she wanted to check out the library on her floor. Mike had offered to come with her, but after a half hour of watching Hanna stake out her room and not leaf through a single book, he’d caught on to what she was really doing.
“I still think mud-wrestling is the way to go,” Mike said, turning back a page to look again at a supermodel in a high-cut string bikini.
“Thanks for the suggestion,” Hanna said. “I just don’t really want a confrontation. She caught me looking at her computer, and she’s pissed. I want to go back into the room when she’s not around, that’s all.”
It was almost the truth. Hanna didn’t feel it necessary to add that she wanted to go back into the room so that she could look at Naomi’s computer again. Or that Naomi was probably extra-pissed at Hanna because she’d ditched out on her without an explanation.
“You were going through her stuff?” Mike said. “What’s gotten into you? First you stalk Colleen, now it’s Naomi …”
“Would you stop asking questions?” Hanna hissed, feeling more and more exasperated.
Mike laid down the magazine. “God, fine.” He stood up and stretched. “I’m going to find Noel so we can run through our talent show song one more time. Call me when you’re done playing Stake-Out.”
As he stormed off, the door to her stateroom opened, and Naomi sauntered out, dressed in a white eyelet dress and blue sandals. Several chunky bangles lined her wrists, and she carried a small red leather bag under her arm.
Hanna held her breath as Naomi walked by the library, praying she wouldn’t stop inside. She didn’t. As soon as Naomi stepped into the elevator, Hanna crept down the hall toward their room. When she was almost there, a figure passed through the intersecting hallway, and she froze. It was Jeremy. His fingers were entwined behind his back, and he was whistling “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
She leaned against the wall, her confidence shaken. As the elevator dinged, a horrible thought struck her. What if Naomi forgot something and came back?
She scuttled back to the library and dialed Spencer. “It’s Hanna,” she whispered when she answered. “I’m right outside my room, and I want to look at Naomi’s computer, but I don’t want to get caught. Can you be a lookout?”
Spencer groaned warily. “I don’t want to piss her off even more.”
Hanna glanced at the elevator again. Hopefully Naomi hadn’t just taken a quick jaunt down to the gift shop. “Please, Spence? It’ll take five minutes. We need to nail her.”