Danielle touched her throat. “It wasn’t me in the surveillance video,” she whispered. “It was you.”
“It was necessary, honey,” Julia explained. She kept the gun held up, reaching for her daughter with her other hand. “Don’t you see? You deserve to be an heiress just as much as they do.”
“But why Poppy?” Rowan asked hoarsely.
Julia turned back to them. “I wanted Mason to pay for dropping me, and refusing to acknowledge Danielle. At first I planned on killing him. That’s how Poppy’s parents died—Mason was supposed to be on that flight to Meriweather, but he backed out at the last minute because he had business to attend to. It was too late then. That plane was already going down.” She shrugged. “Once I saw how sad he was about the accident, I realized this would be better revenge—killing his family, one by one.” Julia’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “I tried to hurt sweet little Penelope, the bitch who’d never move out of the way, but I didn’t manage to kill her. So I moved on to Poppy instead.”
“Why wait so long?” Corinne whispered.
Julia laughed. “Why not? It was so much fun being your curse. I submitted items to that site about you for years. I should write a thank-you note to whoever runs it. I sent Will that letter about your daughter, Corinne—I thought he deserved to know. And I sent angry letters from Will to the Griers, demanding to spend more time with her.”
Corinne’s mouth dropped open. “How did you figure that out?”
“It’s not rocket science,” Julia snapped. “None of you hide things very well. And technology makes it so easy these days. Right, Aster?” she asked, glancing over. “Just ask your little tech boyfriend.” She smiled, aiming the gun straight at Aster’s head. “I hated you the most, for the way you just dropped Danielle cold. But I never really had to do anything to you—you just crashed and burned on your own. And Natasha protected herself the day she disinherited herself.” Julia shook her head. “Now I’m going to finish what I started.” She waved Danielle over. “Stand by me, honey. We can take them down, one by one.”
Danielle didn’t move. Her chin was still wobbling. “You pretended to be me,” she said slowly. “You wore my dress. You used my pass.” Her eyes grew round. “The police could have linked it to me. You had no idea you wouldn’t get caught, did you? But that was okay, because if you did, the cops would just pin it on me.”
Julia scoffed. “You’re being dramatic. Has anything happened to you? No. I made sure of it. I even called the FBI from your cell phone, pretending to be you. I knew they were interviewing everyone who was there that morning.”
Danielle’s hands shook. “I can’t believe you. You don’t know what the FBI is thinking. They could be looking into me right now.”
But Julia just smiled. “The FBI, huh. Now that you girls have seen the surveillance video, your little agent friend has some explaining to do, doesn’t she?” Her grin grew wider. “She was in Poppy’s office before I was. They were talking, their heads bent together, all hush-hush. Strange Foley never mentioned it, hmm?”
She turned to Danielle. “Everything I did, I did for you, so you could have a better life.”
Danielle’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I have a good life,” she finally said. “And if you had ever listened to me, you would have understood that.”
Swallowing a sob, she turned away from her mother and walked over to where Aster, Corinne, and Rowan were huddled against the guardrail, and stood in front of them. Then she turned and faced Julia, tears streaming down her face.
Julia lowered the gun. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” Danielle said. “But this is coming to an end right now. If you want to kill them, you have to kill me too.”
Julia’s eyes blazed. The protective, loving look on her face dropped away, and she stared at her daughter with a cold, psychotic glare. “You are one of them. It’s like I don’t even know you,” she said in a dead voice. There was a sharp click as she released the safety latch. “Fine, then. If that’s the way you want it to be.”
She took a step forward. Danielle, Aster, Corinne, and Rowan crowded together. Aster shut her eyes, her mind swirling with everything she’d learned tonight. Strange, that in her last few minutes of life, all she could think about was how wrong she’d been about her dad and Danielle. She reached for the other girl’s hand, and Danielle took it. Aster gave her a squeeze. I’m sorry, she tried to convey through the touch. I should never have jumped to conclusions. I should have let you explain, trusted in our friendship.