Kylie Cantrall's Arc

Chapter 16 of 78

The notepad was still open on the bed when Kylie's security app buzzed on the nightstand. She picked it up. A camera on the west fence had flagged motion above the tree line. She opened the feed and saw it: a small drone hovering past the second-floor windows, red light blinking, lens angled at the house. "Get down," Kylie said. She swept the puppy off the bed and pulled Arianna to the floor. "Drone. West side. If it films you through a window, your name is on every site by morning." Arianna crouched against the frame. "Before your mom even lands." "Before anything." Kylie's hands were already moving. She killed the bedroom lamp. She dragged the curtain across the glass. The room went dim red from the bed's canopy light. "Stay low. Move to the hall." They crawled out and shut the door. Kylie's brain sorted options the way she sorted setlists. Call security: too slow, and she didn't trust the log. Call her assistant: no. Call the police: a report meant a paper trail. The drone was still circling. She could hear the thin whine of it now through the upstairs window. She pulled Arianna into the guest bath, the one room with no exterior glass. "Stay here. Lock it. I'll handle it." "Handle it how?" "I'm going to give it what it wants." Kylie went to her closet and grabbed the red velvet box off the shelf — the second necklace she'd bought for Arianna, still wrapped, still ribboned. She grabbed a robe of her own and pulled the hood up. In the hallway mirror she looked like any dark-haired girl holding a gift. She walked downstairs, flipped on every light in the front rooms, and stepped out onto the porch. She held the ribboned box up toward the sky, opened it, lifted the gold heart pendant into the porch light, and smiled the smile she used on red carpets. She turned it slowly so the lens could read it. The drone stopped circling. It hovered, close, greedy. Kylie counted to ten. Then she closed the box, blew a kiss, and went back inside. She locked the door and ran upstairs. "It's leaving," she said through the bathroom door. "Come out." Arianna opened it. "What did you do?" "I gave them a story. Kylie Cantrall, home alone, mystery necklace, teasing a new song. It'll be the headline by six a.m. Nobody will be looking for a second girl in the window. Not tonight." "And tomorrow?" "Tomorrow my mom lands and the label sees the photo and calls me first, not you." Kylie set the closed box on the dresser. Her hand was shaking. "I bought us one night. That's all I could buy." Arianna took her hand. The puppy pressed against their ankles. Downstairs, the porch light was still burning, feeding the empty sky a lie.