“What?” I ask, even though half of me wants to cover my ears, to beg her not to say anything more.

She smiles grimly. “The Optimal Skanks,” she says.

Chapter Forty-One

As I drive home, the road starts to blur. I’m so dizzy with disgust that I have to pull over.

I’m now convinced that Misha knows exactly where Kaycee is. Sheriff Kahn might even be in on it, or at least have been persuaded by Optimal to look the other way.

It all makes terrible sense: Kaycee’s game, and the chance to make some real money. It likely started with a single buyer; one of the head guys at Optimal might have told Mitchell what he was looking for. One buyer became two, and then three, and then more than that. At some point, the demand for photos morphed into a desire for the real thing, and grew into its own kind of culture, into its own economy. Optimal executives could use this special kind of sexual entertainment—deeply forbidden, deeply illegal, and, to a certain kind of person, doubly appealing—to keep the regulatory agencies and government higher-ups happy while they did whatever they wanted.

But however things began, Misha—and her contacts at Optimal—are clearly the ones now running the show. The Optimal Scholarship is bait. It’s how they fish for targets.

What would someone like Misha, the vice principal, the person in charge of doling out scholarship money to at-risk students, be able to convince the girls to do? How easily might they confuse what was happening for friendship, for attention, the way Amy had online?

I can’t imagine. I won’t.

It’s small comfort to think that Kaycee died—must have died—because she refused to keep participating.

I can’t call Joe; he’ll just say that I’m grieving or that I’ve finally lost it. I can’t go to the cops because Sheriff Kahn is in Optimal’s pocket—he must be. Who knows how long he’s been covering for them, or how many others in the sheriff’s department are in the know? I trust Condor, but I don’t know whether he’ll trust me. He freaked out when I suggested Kaycee hadn’t left town, and practically accused me of being a conspiracy theorist—what will he think if I tell him I’ve exposed an actual conspiracy?

Still, I pull up Condor’s number before I can second-guess myself. The phone rings six times and then rolls over to voicemail. I hang up, then wish I hadn’t. I redial, hang up after one ring when I realize he’ll think I want to see him.

I send him a text instead. I decide on the truth, or something close to it.

There are enough lies in this town.

You said I was chasing a conspiracy. I found one. I don’t know who else to talk to. Call me back. I add please, then delete it. Too desperate.

I press Send.

Is it possible that Kaycee pretended to be sick because she was trying to communicate a message about Optimal? Was she not so much pretending as signaling? A way of making Optimal the focus of attention without implicating herself directly?