Page 16 of The Getaway

She pushed her phone across the table so he could see the headline. Sean made no move to pick it up. He took one look and rolled his eyes.

“You can’t believe everything you see online.”

“He’s a certified meteorologist!” Suzy snapped. Wintour gave a yip to punctuate her statement.

“Oh, and are the teenagers outside certified cosmetologists or whatever?” Sean said in a mocking tone. Clearly he had seen her complimenting their work as embarrassing fangirling.

Suzy’s face burned. “Whatever. Let’s go home. I don’t see the point of being here anymore.” The very thought of leaving this place and its many minefields filled her with a sense of peace that she wouldn’t have been able to describe to Sean if he asked. Away from Lincoln. Away from the notes and whoever had written them. Just away.

“We can’t up and leave. It’s Hamptons week,” Sean replied. “Besides, there’s something I need to talk to Lincoln about, and I’m not leaving before I do.”

Join the club, Suzy thought.

“Wait, how did you even know I was in here?” she asked.

It wasn’t as if he paid enough attention to her to know that this was her favorite room in the house.

“Lincoln said you were in here.” Sean sat on one of the chairs at the table. He went to lean back and hit his head against the tall, hard back of the chair, then winced. “He said I should come see what you were freaking out about.”

A shiver of fear raced down Suzy’s back. Was this some kind of throwing down of the gauntlet from Lincoln? Trying to force her into explaining their little arrangement to Sean? She wondered if he could have possibly written the note. It would make sense, in that as far as she knew, he was the only person on the planet who was aware that she was blackmailing him. But then why not just confront her? Was he trying to be cute?

“So?” he said.

“So what?” she stalled.

“So what are you freaking out about?”

“The weather, obviously!” Suzy said, grabbing her phone off the table again. She waved her arms around to illustrate the enormity of the situation. Then she opened her messaging app and typed to Lincoln:

Screw you

Sean sighed and pulled his own phone out of his front shirt pocket, she assumed to check a “reputable” weather app. When he did, a small blue notecard fell out and landed with a clack on the table. He tried to grab it back, but it was too late. Suzy had already lunged for it.

“Suzy—”

“What’s this?”

It was, in fact, a note just like hers and Juliet’s and Marley’s. Same card stock, his name written on the envelope in the same handwriting.

But that didn’t make any sense. It hadn’t been on the bed when she’d found her own.

“Where did you get this?” she asked.

Sean hung his head and shook it, a man defeated. “It was in the drawer of my bedside table.”

What the hell? Why would it have been there? Lily had always put their notes on their pillows. Which meant someone had purposely been trying to hide this one. With shaking hands, Suzy opened the torn envelope and pulled out the card.

Lincoln is going to replace you, and you’re going to go to jail.

Her vision grayed over. The nausea ramped up, sending bile up her throat. She went to the soda machine on the counter—at least Hazel hadn’t gotten rid of that yet—and filled a glass with ginger-flavored bubbly. Only when she’d downed half of it did she speak.

“Jail?” she said through her teeth. “What the hell is going on, Sean?”

“Suzy, I need you to take it down a—”

“Don’t tell me to take it down a notch!” she shouted, slamming her glass down so hard the soda sloshed over the rim. Wintour went berserk, barking and running back and forth on the bench. Suzy ignored her. “This is insanity! We need to go talk to Lincoln and hash this out. Right now.”

Sean launched out of the hideous chair. “No! No, we can’t do that. He’s with Hazel and the caterers. There’s some issue with the tents. They’re worried about high winds or something.” She leveled him with a glare, like, See? He ignored it. “He’s going to be stressed and preoccupied.”