Page 131 of To All the Men I’ve Killed Before

She’s good.

I have to give her that.

I totally underestimated her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, her brow furrowing in confusion. ‘I’m not sure I quite follow.’

I lean in closer. ‘It’s quite simple,’ I say. ‘I didn’t drink any of your drugged lemonade. That’s why I’m not unconscious on deck like the rest of them.’ I take another step towards her. ‘So what was the next part of your plan going to be, Lauren? Because it was you, wasn’t it? The WeHo Ripper. It’s been you all along.’

Her face folds.

It was Travis who told me.

I didn’t really think he was talking about the police when he was gasping ‘Law-man’ as he bled out. I knew he was trying to say ‘Lauren’, that she was part of what had been going on with Cort.

I just hadn’t realised how big a part she’d played.

I was given another clue on the way home from the cabin.

‘I’m so glad Agnes got Lauren’s message telling you where we were,’ I’d said to Charlie as we drove through the desert. We were following Agnes and Lauren in Agnes’s car. Antoinette was asleep in the back seat.

Charlie glanced over at me, his face puzzled. ‘What message? We didn’t get a message.’

That didn’t make sense. ‘How did you find us then?’

He gave a sheepish smile. ‘Location sharing,’ he says. ‘I didn’t turn it off. I liked seeing where you were.’

But Find My Friends doesn’t work without a signal.

And Lauren had told me there wasn’t any.

The smoking gun, though, had been the notebook.

The one that Lana Del Gay accidentally led me to. I pulled it out and flicked through it. Imagine my surprise when I found pages and pages of that list of names Cort had supposedly written. Pages and pages of Lauren trying to perfect his handwriting.

She planted the note.

She stole Antoinette’s scarf.

She wanted Cort to take the fall.

For her murders.

The only thing I don’t know is why she did it. Why was she killing women?

She’s staring at me now, a look of confusion on her face that I’d totally buy if I didn’t know she was a killer.

‘Me?’ she says. ‘Kitty, I have no idea what you’re talking about. It was Cort. We all know that. And why would I drug the lemonade? I made that to distract myself. Hello. My boyfriend just died, remember?’ There’s no hint of fear or desperation in her voice.

‘You’re actually a really good actor,’ I say. ‘It’s a shame you didn’t apply yourself in school as much as you did in plotting and killing.’

‘I’m not acting,’ she says but a muscle twitches at the corner of her mouth. That’s her tell.

‘You set Cort up.’

And, just like that, the mask drops.

She blinks at me and lets out a cracked laugh. ‘That idiot? Kitty, I didn’t set him up. He knew exactly what I was doing. He might not have actually killed anyone, but he was still complicit. He brought them to me. He might have been an annoying motherfucker but women flocked to him.’