And then, suddenly, a voice rang out in the darkness. Aster opened her eyes and immediately lifted a hand to shield them. Headlights blinded her, and tires screeched at the end of the bridge.
“Drop your weapon!” a man screamed, jumping from the SUV and advancing toward Julia. An agent from another SUV stepped forward as well, his gun pointed at Julia’s head. Katherine Foley appeared from the front seat and ran toward the girls. She was wearing a bulletproof vest, and her eyes were bright. “Don’t move!” she screamed at Julia.
Julia looked right and left, her eyes rolling wildly. She squeezed the gun in her hands, showing no sign of dropping it. She aimed it at the agents.
“Grab her!” one of the officers screamed.
“Mom!” Danielle yelled, her voice ragged.
Suddenly Julia rushed over to the edge of the bridge. None of the Saybrook women put out a hand to stop her. She climbed up onto the railing, her bright red hair blowing in the breeze. She still held tight to the gun, which gleamed in the bright headlights.
“Drop your weapon!” the agents bellowed again. “Hands up, or we’ll fire!”
But Julia just grinned. And then a gunshot rang out.
Aster screamed and ducked her head. The noise reverberated through the air, piercing her eardrums. A second scream sounded from the edge of the bridge, and when Aster looked over, Julia’s eyes were wide and stunned.
“No!” Danielle wailed, sinking to her knees.
Julia spun halfway around. Aster leaned forward, trying to see if the bullet had hit her. But before she could, Julia’s legs went slack. A strange, mournful expression crossed her features.
“Good-bye,” she said softly. And then she turned, opened her arms, and fell back into the water.
31
The hospital doors swished open, bringing with them the astringent scent of cleaning products. Rowan hurried across the marble lobby, ducking around patients in wheelchairs and harried doctors in mint scrubs. A gift shop bearing racks of candy, stuffed animals, and trashy magazines was on her left. The cover of nearly every tabloid and newspaper in the window bore pictures of Rowan, Corinne, and Aster shortly after their incident with Julia on the bridge. “The Curse Wears Kors,” one headline screamed. Below it was that grainy image of Julia Gilchrist posing as Danielle in that color-block dress the morning she killed Poppy. What most of the papers glommed on to was the fact that Julia was still missing. The authorities had dredged the sound and found nothing. It had been so dark, and it had all happened so fast, no one knew whether the bullet had hit her.
Rowan turned away and hurried to the elevator bank, riding it to the neurological intensive care unit on the fourth floor. The last two days had been a whirlwind—first the police questioning, then the concerned hugs from family members, and then meeting with Deanna to decide how to spin the damaging story. In one night, everything the Saybrooks had worked so hard to create had crumbled, their dark secrets finally exposed.
The family’s lawyers had been furious that the cousins hadn’t consulted them before speaking with the FBI. As a lawyer, they said, Rowan should have known better than to implicate Mason. Rowan loved her uncle, but it was time for him to come clean. His affair had given new life to the curse, and too many people had already paid the price for his deceit. They were lucky Foley had discovered Julia exactly when she did—otherwise Rowan, Corinne, Aster, and maybe even Danielle would be dead too.
Rowan had spoken to Foley shortly after their rescue. Foley had explained that the headlights at the end of the driveway that night had been hers; Julia had been on her radar, and she’d wanted to speak to Danielle about whether her mother had access to her Saybrook’s keycard. But when she got there, only Danielle’s father was home.
“He said that Danielle and Julia had just left with you girls. And so I followed the car, and called for backup.”
Foley had also apologized for lying to Rowan and the others for leaving out that she’d known Poppy, catered that party, and even had a brief fling with Steven Barnett. “My superiors knew,” Foley explained. “But I didn’t think it was necessary for you to.”
“Did you ever think Poppy killed Steven?” Rowan had asked.
Foley shook her head. “It never sounded right. But I looked into it and discovered what really happened. That’s what led me to Mason . . . and then to Julia.”
Apparently Mason had paid off the coroner to falsify the autopsy results after Steven’s death, reporting that his blood-alcohol level had been higher than it really was. All to make sure no one knew the real reason Steven died.