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Chapter 7
“Are we in the right place?” Poppy’s forehead was all but pressed up against the windshield as she peered out into the dark, the car’s headlights illuminating the gate in front of us.
Yasmine sat in the passenger seat next to her. They put their heads together to read Kelly’s last text.
It’d come in only an hour ago.
Better late than never.
“They’re pretty cagey around here.” Annabel yawned, stretching her arms and shifting to change her position in her seat. “The address was posted back by the street next to those three mailboxes. It’s going to be hard to know which megamansion is the right one.”
We’d turned up a side road that serviced three properties and had stopped in front of the first gate on the left.
“I’m pretty sure this is it,” Yasmine said.
Poppy had her maps app open and was doing the Google Earth thing.
Then she gasped.
“What?” I asked, craning my neck around to make sure police cars weren’t rolling up. “Are we in the wrong place?”
“No. This is it,” Poppy confirmed. “But right up there, just a few hundred feet, is the entrance to Harry and Meghan’s property.” She gestured with a flapping motion like the story was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t get it out because she was too verklempt. “We’re so…close. They…they drive on this road. We are on the same road they drive on. Our tires have touched the same surface their tires have touched. Or maybe they walk the dog here, and their shoes have touched the same places. Oh my God, this is a Kevin Bacon six degrees thing. Nothing separates us but the gravel!” She covered her mouth with her hand.
Um, not exactly how that worked.
We let her have her moment.
When she was done, she dropped her hand and straightened her shoulders. “Okay. I’m back. Let’s figure this out.”
Annabel leaned into the front seat, peering at the gate. “It doesn’t look like there’s a place to punch in a code or anything. It just looks like a speaker coming up out of the ground with a red button.”
She was right.
In front of us, a large black gate blocked the entrance to a long driveway. It looked like the gate swung in only one direction. There didn’t appear to be anywhere to enter a security code.
“Kelly said there’s a remote behind one of the big rocks,” Poppy said.
“A remote?” I asked.
“Yeah, they use it for staff and delivery people when they’re out of town, or something like that,” Yasmine said. “We just have to find it, aim it at the gate, and it should open.” She unbuckled her seat belt and opened her car door, getting out.
We all did the same, leaving the car idling with the headlights on.
I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting security guards to already be approaching because we were making so much noise. It was twelve twenty-five a.m., and even though we were trying to be quiet, I felt like we were being loud. I also felt like we were trespassing.
“Kelly said the remote is on the right, but there are a whole bunch of rocks here,” Poppy said.
The four of us began to search for the hidden device.
After five minutes of constant searching, Poppy placed her hands on her hips. “I don’t see it, and we’ve looked behind every single rock. Kelly’s not answering Yasmine’s texts or calls.”
“That doesn’t leave us with a lot of options,” I said.
Annabel offered, “We can sleep in the car.”
Poppy gaped at her sister like she’d uttered a string of filthy words. “We are not sleeping in the car! We’ve come all this way to see the inside of a fifty-two-million-dollar mansion that was once owned by a nineties heartthrob.”
“Eighties,” Annabel corrected. “He was an eighties heartthrob.”
