I Swear by Lane Davis Page A

shards.
    Katherine and Krista jumped about four feet off the couches, Brad leaped to his feet, and Josh pressed himself up against the wall next to the window Macie was standing in front of. Finally, there was silence in the room. Beth didn’t even dare to sniff.
    “Good.” Macie smiled. “Now that I have your attention, I’m going to give you all the strategy you need.”
    She walked slowly to the middle of the two couches and stared at Beth.
    “Beth, honey, do you know what time it is?”
    Beth frowned, then looked down at her phone.
    “Four thirty,” she said.
    “Wrong answer,” Macie said, flinging a finger toward the ceiling. “The first thing you learn about spinning is to control the conversation. Control the information.”
    Without looking back over her shoulder, she pointed at Josh. “Josh! Do you know what time it is?”
    We all turned to look at him.
    A slow smirk crept across his face. “Yes,” he answered. We waited for him to tell her the time.
    He didn’t. Instead, he folded his arms with a self-satisfied grin.
    “Excellent,” said Macie with a smile at Beth. “Someone has been watching their Law and Order .” She knelt down on the floor in front of Beth, taking Beth’s face in both hands.
    “Beth, honey, when you walk into that room with that lawyer friend of Katherine’s dad, you’re going to answer questions as vaguely as possible. You’re going to answer exactly what they ask, not what they want to know.”
    She stood up and walked toward the door. “That goes for everyone. If they ask you if you sent this Facebook message, you don’t remember, you can’t say for sure, it was a long time ago, it was an inside joke, everyone knew it wasn’t serious.”
    She looked at each one of us in turn. “Got it?”
    The silence was thick. “We aren’t the bad guys here,” Macie said. “We are the scapegoats. Leslie’s parents want someone to blame. We’re going to make sure they don’t have to look any farther than the bathroom mirror.”
    “Macie?” We heard Mr. Merrick in the hallway, then he was at the door.
    “Yes, Senator?” Macie said with her on-camera charm.
    Her dad poked his head into the media room. “Hey, guys.” He grinned. “Everything okay up here? Thought I heard something fall off a shelf.”
    I jumped up and started picking up the pieces of snow globe. “Oh, we had a little snow globe accident.” I laughed.
    “Well, thank God.” Mr. Merrick chuckled. “Woke me up. Bored outta my mind down there.”
    There was something about his smile that wasn’t right.
    “You kids are gonna be fine,” he said. “Katherine, your dad’s partner is a genius. You’ve all got nothing to worry about. You’ll be ready to go.”
    “We were discussing a little strategy of our own.” Macie smiled. “Meet you at the car in five?”
    “Sure thing,” he said. He raised two fingers to make a V , then flashed us his trademark campaign smile and walked back down the hallway.
    “Give them nothing,” Macie said softly. “Meeting adjourned.”
    Katherine was out the door before anyone else, followed by Beth, then Krista. Josh pecked me on the cheek. “Thanks for hosting, Jills. Tell your brother I said hi.”
    Brad grabbed his hand like he was shaking it, making sure his arm was between them when they hugged, in that weird way straight guys hug. “Good to see you, bro,” he said. “Let’s hang soon.”
    When Josh was gone, Brad headed into the bathroom off my bedroom. “Gotta pee,” he said.
    “Thanks for the information.” Macie sighed.
    When he closed the door, she turned to look at me.
    “What’s up?” she asked.
    “I’m worried,” I said.
    “Why?” she asked.
    “Jake has a subpoena too.”
    “Of course he does,” she said. “He was the last person to talk to her alive.”
    “But it’s not only that,” I explained. “I think he’s going to tell them everything. I mean, he was the closest thing Leslie had to a friend. What do we do if he brings