Killer. (Book Six)

Seven: Kate 1, Hanna 1.

Hanna set her venti skim latte on the sugar and milk counter at Steam, the coffee bar adjacent to the Rosewood Day cafeteria. It was lunchtime that Tuesday, and Kate, Naomi, and Riley were still in line. One by one, Hanna heard each of them order an extra-large mint tea. Hanna had missed the memo, but apparently, mint tea was the drink du jour.

She ripped open a second Splenda packet with her teeth. If only she had a Percocet to go with her latte—or, better yet, a gun. So far, lunch had been a disaster. First, Naomi and Riley had fawned over Kate's Frye boots, saying nothing about Hanna's far-cuter Chie Mihara sling-backs. Then they'd babbled on about how much fun they'd had at Rive Gauche yesterday—one of the college-age waiters had sneaked the girls tons of pinot noir. After they'd drunk their fill, they popped into Sephora, and Kate bought Naomi and Riley gel-filled eye masks to ease their hangovers. The girls brought the masks to school today and put them on during an extra-long bathroom break during second-period study hall. The only thing that lifted Hanna's spirits was seeing that the cold mask had turned the area around Riley's brown eyes a harsh, chapped red.

"Hmph," Hanna sniffed quietly. She tossed the empty Splenda packet into the little chrome trash can, vowing to buy Naomi and Riley something far better than a stupid mask. Then she noticed the flat-screen TV above the big jug of lemon water. Usually, the TV was tuned to the closed-circuit Rosewood Day channel, which showed recaps of school sporting events, choral concerts, and on-the-spot interviews, but today, someone had turned it to the news. No Thomas Body in Woods, said the headline.

Her stomach churned. Aria had told her about this story earlier this morning in AP English. How could the Thomases have received a note from Ian? How could there be no trace of Ian in those woods, no blood, no hair, nothing? Did that mean they hadn't seen him? Did that mean he was still...alive?

And why were the cops saying Hanna and the others had made it up? Wilden hadn't seemed to think they'd made it up the night of the party. In fact, if Wilden hadn't been so damn hard to find that night, they could've gotten back to the woods faster. Maybe they could've even caught Ian before he got away—or got dragged away. But no, the Rosewood PD couldn't like screwups...so they had to make Hanna and the others look crazy instead. And all this time, she'd thought Wilden had her back.

Hanna quickly turned away from the TV, wanting to put the story out of her mind. Then something behind the cinnamon sifter caught her eye. It looked like...fabric. And it was the exact same color as the Rosewood Day flag.

Hanna swallowed hard, yanked the fabric free, spread it out, and gasped. It was a piece of cloth, cut into a jagged square. The very edge of the Rosewood Day crest was in the upper right-hand corner. Safety-pinned to the back was a piece of paper with the number 16 on it. Rosewood Day always numbered each piece so they'd know how to sew the flag back together.

"What's that?" said a voice. Hanna jumped, startled. Kate had slunk up behind her.

Hanna took a second to react, her mind still reeling from the Ian news. "It's for this stupid game," she muttered.

Kate pursed her lips. "The game that started today? Time Warp?"

Hanna rolled her eyes. "Time Capsule."

Kate took a long sip of her tea. "'Once all twenty pieces of the flag have been found, they will be sewn back together and buried in a Time Capsule behind the soccer fields,'" she recited from the posters that had appeared all over school. Leave it to goody-goody Kate to have memorized the Time Capsule rules, as if she were going to be tested on them later. "And then you'll get your name immortalized on a bronze plaque. That's a big deal, right?"

"Whatev," Hanna mumbled. Talk about ironic—when she didn't give a shit about Time Capsule anymore, she found a piece without even looking at the clues posted in the school lobby. In sixth grade, the first year she'd been allowed to play, Hanna had fantasized about how she'd decorate a piece if she were lucky enough to find one. Some kids drew pointless things on their pieces, like a flower or a smiley face or—dumbest of all—the Rosewood Day crest, but Hanna understood that a well-decorated Time Capsule flag was as important as carrying the right handbag or getting highlights from the Henri Flaubert salon in the King James. When Hanna, Spencer, and the others confronted Ali in her backyard the day after the game started, Ali had described in detail what she'd drawn on her stolen piece. A Chanel logo. The Louis Vuitton pattern. A manga frog. A girl playing field hockey. As soon as Hanna got home that day, she wrote down everything Ali said she'd drawn on her flag, not wanting to forget. It sounded so glamorous and exactly right.