“Thanks.” Veronica slid it into her wallet. “Hang in there. I’ll be in touch.”
Outside the room, she took a deep breath and glanced at her cell phone. It was nearly two, coming up on time for her meeting with Lamb. She was almost at the elevators when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see Ella Dewalt hurtling determinedly after her.
The girl didn’t speak until she’d caught up with Veronica. Panting slightly, she jerked her head toward the terrace beyond the glass doors. “I only have a minute. Mom thinks I went down to get something from the vending machine.”
Wordlessly, Veronica followed her.
The air on the terrace was warm and dusty, the tile beneath their feet sun baked. A glittering blue pool twinkled in a courtyard below, a handful of spring breakers floating on rafts. Ella pulled a pack of Camels out of her back pocket and lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. When she noticed Veronica watching her, she offered her the pack.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you those aren’t good for you?” Veronica said, waving her off.
“Yeah, well.” She took a quick drag and exhaled. “Neither is living in a two-bedroom hotel suite with your family.”
“Has it been like this the whole time?”
“It’s always like this.” The girl leaned on the balustrade like it was too much effort to hold herself upright.
Veronica didn’t say anything. Ella Dewalt looked brittle, nervous. She didn’t want to push her.
She smoked in silence for a moment, carefully blowing her smoke away from Veronica. When she spoke, her voice came in a rapid tumble of words.
“Crane can be an asshole, but he’s not exactly wrong.” She exhaled loudly through her lips like a horse. “Hayley was weird when she came home at Christmas.”
“Can you be a little more specific?”
The girl shrugged with a quick jerk of her shoulders. “She didn’t tell me anything. She always treated me like …” She trailed off, and Veronica could hear the unspoken like a child. “I don’t know. She didn’t go out with any of her high school friends the whole time she was there. She just holed up in her room. And she pretended to be sick when it was time to go to my grandma’s for Christmas dinner. Not that I blame her—that meal always blows.” Ella made a face. “I overheard her fighting with her boyfriend on the phone a few times.”
Veronica raised a brow. “So she does have a boyfriend?”
“Yeah, my mom means well, but she doesn’t know half of what goes on in Hayley’s life.”
“Do you know her boyfriend’s name?”
“Chad Cohan,” Ella said promptly. “I’ve never met him. He goes to Stanford. I thought he looked like a tool in his Facebook pictures.”
Veronica nodded slowly. “So what’s the story with Crane?”
A cagey, uncomfortable look suddenly flashed across the girl’s face. She glanced down at her hands as she spoke.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “He was mad when Mom and Dad sent Hayley to school. She got a really good scholarship, but they’re still spending a ton of money on it.”
“Why does that make him mad?”
“He’s been unemployed for ages.” Ella scuffed her sneakers along the ground. “Last summer he asked them for money to start a T-shirt printing business. They said no. Since then he’s been pissed. He thinks they’re playing favorites, paying for her school and not his screen-printing stuff.”
“Sibling rivalry is not pretty.”
“Fucking tell me about it.” She stabbed her cigarette out viciously against the bottom of her shoe, then pocketed the butt.
“Look, I have to ask. Is there any way Hayley would disappear like this on her own steam?”
The girl hesitated, then shook her head.
“I kind of wish there were. I wish she’d just show up and say, ‘Sorry, guys, didn’t mean to make you worry!’ But there’s no way. Not with Mom sending her panicked texts every single day. Not with …” Her voice faltered a little, but she steadied herself. “Not with me sending pictures of every single meal I’ve had in this suck-ass town. Mom’s right. Even if she made some kind of mistake, she wouldn’t do that to us.”
She shoved her hands in her pockets and took a deep breath. “I guess I’d better go back. Mom freaks out if I’m out of her sight for more than ten minutes.”
She looked at Veronica for a moment. Her eyes were fierce and apprehensive at the same time.
“Are you going to find her?”
It was almost unconscious, the way Veronica’s jaw tightened. The way her shoulders squared off, her fingers curling into fists. She hadn’t realized it before that moment—before meeting Ella’s eyes. But now she was sure.
“I won’t stop until I do.”