Her First Mistake by Carey Baldwin (books for 10th graders txt) 📕

and steered you back to your room. I asked if you were okay. You nodded and kissed me goodnight, so I thought you’d remember.”

“What time was that?”

“My talk show was just ending, so around eleven p.m., I think.”

“You didn’t see me leave the house later?”

“No. I was worried though, and I stayed in the living room and binged watched that British cooking show until two a.m. to make sure you didn’t get up again. You were still sleeping soundly when I finally went to bed.”

So Mia couldn’t have left her house until after 2 a.m.—but according to Samuels the battery had been removed from Celeste’s phone shortly before midnight.

Her hand flew to her heart, and a tear of relief slid down her cheek.

She didn’t do it.

She’d taken a pill that had triggered disordered sleep and she’d made a late-night doughnut run—that was all. Nothing to be proud of, but she hadn’t hurt anyone. She wished she’d confided in her aunt before. She wished she’d talked over a lot of other things with her, too.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes. And there is something I want to tell you—about my mother.” When it came to the subject of Mia’s mother, her aunt didn’t always take things as well as Mia would like. “I’ve been undergoing hypnosis with Dr. Baquero, and I’ve recovered a memory from my childhood.”

Audible on the other end of the line, a chair scratched across the floor.

Good.

Better her aunt was sitting for this.

“Did my mother ever mention a man named Arnie to you? Someone with a scar on his face? A Navy man with dark, wavy hair?”

“No. But we never talked about her boyfriends. It was a sore subject because I didn’t think she should bring men around with you there.”

Mia’s mother used to hide her in a shed whenever men came around. And as wrong as that seemed, as terrible as it truly was, in the end, that had probably been Mia’s salvation. Knowingly or unknowingly, her mother had most likely protected her from an evil predator.

“I don’t think Mother ran away. I know she wouldn’t have left me,” Mia said, then waited for her aunt to try to argue her out of it.

“Honestly, I don’t think so either. She was terrified of losing you, scared to death social services would take you away from her.” Aunt Misty’s took a ragged breath. “And the truth is, I’m the one who called them on her. I’m the reason she took you and ran and hid out in the woods.”

“What happened to my mother, what happened to me, isn’t your fault. If I were in your shoes, I would have called protective services, too. It was the right thing to do.” Mia’s face was wet, and she reached for her purse from the bedside table. She stuck her hand deep inside, rummaging for tissue, and found none.

“Are-are you still there?” Her aunt was sobbing now—great gusting sobs.

“Hang on a second.” Mia, too, was crying in earnest now, along with her aunt. Mia turned her bag upside down and dumped everything out.

Really? In this entire bag of junk, not one tissue?

She jerked her arm, and the empty purse flew up and banged her in the eye.

Her bag was soft, but something in it was really hard. She squeezed the fabric between her fingers and found the offending object, a tiny rectangle, buried deep in one of the many zipper compartments.

A flash drive maybe?

“Mia?”

With some difficulty she managed to get the zipper unstuck and slide open the pocket, grasp the object between her fingers and yank it out.

“Oh God,” she said, her throat so tight she could barely speak. After Samuels found that tracker on her car, she’d done a search of spy shops to check out the latest surveillance gadgets. This innocent-looking thing she held between her fingers wasn’t a flash drive—it was a recording device.

Thirty-Nine

Mia had been bugged.

For how long and by whom was the question—and her suspected answer made her want to rip everything in sight to shreds.

Keep calm.

She dropped the recorder, put her head between her knees and forced herself to breathe.

“Mia, what’s going on?”

Aunt Misty was still on the phone.

“I have to go. I’ll call you later,” she managed.

She grabbed a pillow and threw it against the wall, then locked her hands around a paperweight, sighted her target—a vase of fragrant red roses on the writing desk—and paused with her arm in mid-air.

Tearing up the Coopers’ guest room would only make her look crazy to Samuels.

But searching it, carefully, might provide the evidence she needed to prove it was Isaiah who’d put the note on her car, Isaiah who’d been tracking her and listening in on her private conversations.

He was the only one who could’ve seen her bury those keys.

And if he’d put a tracker on her car and a bug in her purse, he wouldn’t have stopped there. In her online search of spy shops, she’d learned about all kinds of dirty tricks people play on one another, and unless she was dead wrong about Isaiah… unless she was completely off base… then somewhere in this room she’d find a secret camera. One that would almost certainly be overlooked by an unsuspecting guest, but might be easily spotted by someone with her guard up, someone who had spent several hours educating herself online about covert surveillance, someone like her.

And it wouldn’t require turning over tables or ripping out drawers. There were favorite places to hide miniature cameras.

So start looking.

There was no clock in the room, but there were several framed photos of San Diego on the walls.

That seemed the most likely place to her.

Mia closed the drapes in hopes of making it easier to spot a glowing lens. Then, taking her time, she carefully inspected each picture frame.

No luck.

Maybe embedded in a doorknob.

Mia got down on her knees, first peering into the knobs on either side of the bathroom door, and then the door that opened from the hall into the bedroom.

Where else?

The overhead light was