“Have you shown anyone else?” I ask.

Becca grins and says, “Not yet. But I will.”

“I need to give this to the police,” I say, thinking of Lorraine, imagining how she’ll react to an actual clue.

But Becca snatches it back and says, “I’m showing the police. And I’m telling them it was you.”

“It wasn’t,” I whisper, but whatever they think, I don’t care as long as they tell the right people.

The Magpie Man took it. He has kept it for years. If anything has his DNA on, it’s this.

“I’ll come with you,” I say.

“What?”

“I’ll come with you. To the police station. Call them now.”

The girls look at each other. Whatever they expected when they cornered me, it wasn’t this.

Behind them, the door opens, and a sixth grader sees us, turns, and walks out again.

“Maybe it wasn’t her,” Taryn says.

Becca shivers. “Or maybe she’s playing us.”

But I already have my phone out, dialing the number on Lorraine’s card that’s still in my purse.

When she hears me leaving a message, Becca throws the photo back on the floor, and they leave in silence. Without their boyfriends, they’re as scared as I am.

But my fear is just getting started, because the Magpie Man knows where she lives. He walked right up to her door and left that.

I think back to the warning written across Sara’s article—I’ll show you how pathetic I am—and realize there is more to come.

Chapter 93

I hand Lorraine the photo without saying a word, and her face changes so quickly, so completely, that I know I’ve done the right thing.

“Where did you get this?” she asks, so I tell her everything.

“I’ll need to speak to the other girls.”

“I only know their first names,” I say. “You’ll have to talk to Mrs. Bradley.”

I can’t help smiling at the thought of the police turning up on Becca’s doorstep. She will have to explain that night in the alley, the song she sang, the fact that the Magpie Man was listening.

Is he angry that someone else is taunting me? Does he want me all to himself? And how did he know Becca’s address? He must live close by, and he must be up early, before people leave for school, or late, when everyone else is asleep. You wouldn’t risk leaving something like that in daylight.

He responded to my makeup video, he killed two months early, and now this. Is he rattled? Is what I’m doing working after all?

He did this to mess with the girls who messed with me, and that is both exciting and terrifying.

Chapter 94

“It’s bold,” Danny says when I tell him the plan. “I might need extra cameras.”

“But we can do it?”