Chapter Twenty
Eden
I stared at Troy for a moment, my eyes wide.
“No,” I finally managed to get out. “This has to be wrong.”
Surely my eyes were deceiving me; there was no way that Blair could be the saboteur. We’d had our problems in the past with my discovery of her lie about Troy’s letter, but that didn’t mean she was completely crazy or vindictive, and we’d moved on from that issue. Or at least I thought we had.
Not only that, she’d been the target of the saboteur’s spitefulness in the past. She’d had her hair products tampered with, and her hair had almost been ruined with bleach. She wouldn’t do that to herself…would she?
“It’s right there on the screen. Technology doesn’t lie,” Troy said. “She was in the kitchen for about three minutes that evening.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” I said, shaking my head. “She was targeted! Why would she target herself?”
Troy raised an eyebrow. “Maybe she did it to make herself look innocent. After all, we haven’t suspected her at all this whole time, because we saw her as being one of the victims. Also, think about it. Having her hair bleached in chunks wasn’t that bad. Sure, she was upset, but it was a very easy fix, right? All we had to do was get the hair and makeup crew to dye it back to brown and put some conditioning crap in it, and it was all fine.”
My shoulders slumped, and I shook my head again. “Why would she do this? She doesn’t want to win the show, at least not badly enough to do something like sabotage other people in such awful ways.”
“Well, maybe she’s innocent. I guess there could be another reason for her being in the kitchen that night.”
“She’s always been very concerned with her diet; always trying to stay as skinny as possible. I suppose there’s a chance she went in there to speak to the chefs about how healthy and low-calorie the food was,” I said.
“Ask them.”
I contacted the kitchen crew via walkie-talkie again, and a few minutes later, I had my answer. No one remembered seeing or speaking to Blair in the kitchen that night at all.
Troy leaned back and put his hands behind his head as he stretched out. “Well, there you go. If no one saw her or spoke to her, then she must’ve been sneaking around in there. And why else would she do that?”
I shook my head. I still couldn’t believe it was Blair. “What if she went in there looking for someone to ask about the food, and she simply couldn’t find anyone? She wasn’t in there for long.”
Troy reached over and stroked my hand. “Eden, I know she’s your friend, and you want to defend her, but I think we’re out of excuses. It’s her. It has to be.”
“You don’t know that!” I said hotly. “That video doesn’t really prove anything other than that she went into the kitchen that night. So did Cailin.”
“Yes, and we’ve already proved that Cailin couldn’t have done it,” Troy said gently. He paused for a moment before continuing. “Eden, how well do you really know Blair these days? I know you two were close in high school, but that was a long time ago. How often do you even see her?”
“I guess we try to catch up every few months. It’s hard when we live in different cities.”
“So you only see her a few times a year, then,” he said. I nodded, and he went on. “Look, I know it’s hard to think about, but maybe you don’t know her as well as you thought you did, at least not anymore. Look how long she hid the whole letter thing from you.”
“That was different. She had a reason for that, and she was really remorseful for doing it.”
“Or so she says,” he replied. “Whose idea was it for her to be on the show, anyway?”
“Mine,” I replied indignantly. “I thought it would be good for her.”
“Are you sure it was really your idea, though? Think about it carefully.”
I hesitated. “Well…whenever we spoke about work in the past, she did talk a lot about how her business was failing and how she would love it if she had a chance to promote herself like the Stud contestants get to. But it was definitely my idea to recruit her as a contestant. She never asked.”
“Sounds like she planted the seed for the idea in your head. Common manipulation tactic. I mean, who knows, Eden? Maybe everything she says or does is just a manipulative game.”
I sighed and sat down, my whole body slumping. He was right. I just didn’t want to admit that my friend could’ve been behind all these awful sabotage attempts this entire time, and I didn’t want to admit that I could’ve been so blind as to not notice the sort of person she could’ve turned into over the years.
“You’re right,” I said softly. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s not your fault. You’re a good person, Eden, and you want to believe that other people are mostly good, especially those you’re close to. It’s much easier to think that the saboteur is someone you barely know, because then it’s easier to comprehend how they could be capable of such horrible things.”
I sighed and nodded. “I’ll call Candice and tell her what we’ve found. I’d tell Glenn, but he went into town with the rest of the crew.”
Candice arrived a few minutes later, and she watched the footage with narrowed eyes. She didn’t question why Troy was here with me; she probably assumed that he happened to be in the media room by coincidence.
When the video was over, she turned to look at me. “Sorry, but this doesn’t really prove anything. It looks bad, and you’re probably right, but we can’t boot her off the show for that alone. It’s not hard evidence.”
God, I was sick of hearing that.
“Troy could cut her in the next elimination, right?” I said.
Candice looked at Troy and nodded. “Sure, he can cut whoever he wants. But the next elimination ceremony isn’t for ten days. If we want her gone before then, then we need solid proof for the show lawyers, like actually catching her red-handed.”
“Wait...I’ve got an idea,” I said as a plan slowly formed in my mind. “We’ll need to go into town to buy some very specific stuff for tomorrow night’s date filming, though.”
Candice winked. “Well, it’s lucky that we’ve still got the rest of the day off then, isn’t it?”
***
“Tonight has been so wonderful, Blair. I’ve had a really great time, and honestly, I think I can see you going all the way to the end with me.”
Troy looked into Blair’s eyes as he spoke, and Glenn silently commanded the film crew to zoom in and capture the moment. Blair had been scheduled to have a one-on-one date with Troy this evening as part of this week’s episode, and we’d taken the chance to enact my plan.
“I’ve had a great time, too,” Blair replied, steadying herself on the rocking canoe they were sitting in.
They weren’t actually out in the lake at all—the canoe was positioned on a machine that sat in a small pool and simulated the gentle rocking it would experience out on the water, so that the crew could get up close and personal during the ‘date’ without any risk of water damage to any equipment.
Troy smiled and took Blair’s hand. “I actually have a little surprise for you. It’s just a small gesture, but I thought it was cute, and I thought of you when I saw it.”
“Oh?”
He reached into a gift bag that he’d left on the cramped floor of the canoe, and he smiled beatifically as he pulled out a teddy bear.
“When I was a kid, I used to have a bear that looked just like this one. I always felt like he was watching over me and protecting me whenever my life got hard,” he said.
“I know you had a difficult childhood,” Blair cut in, nodding emphatically.
“Yeah. It was rough. Anyway, you’ve been having a hard time with finding love these last few years, among other issues, so I thought I’d give you your own bear. He can sit on your nightstand and watch over you. It’s totally lame, I know. I just thought it would be nice,” Troy said, giving her his best attempt at an embarrassed grin.
God, he was good.
“It’s adorable!” Blair cooed. “I love it. I’ll put him beside my bed as soon as we get back!”
“Cut!” Glenn called out. “We need to fix Blair’s makeup a bit. She’s looking too shiny. But that’s fantastic work so far, everyone. Really nice touch bringing up your shitty childhood in such a cute way, Troy. Really tugs on the heartstrings; our viewers will eat it up. Whose idea was it?”
“Eden’s,” Candice said. “She thought it would work well.”
She winked at me, and I smiled at her. So far, things had gone perfectly to plan. Blair had accepted the gift and gushed all over it like we thought she would, now that Troy had told her she might go all the way to the end of the show, and she obviously didn’t suspect anything about the gift itself at all.
Of course, the bear wasn’t just any old bear. It was a nanny cam bear that Candice and I had managed to find in a small electronics store in town, and anything it filmed would be transmitted wirelessly to my laptop. We’d have a perfect view of Blair’s bedroom and everything she did it in when she thought she was alone, and we were bound to spot something incriminating if she was truly our saboteur.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
“Good job, Eden,” Glenn said before turning his attention back to the fake boat. “Oh, for the love of god…the canoe is going to tip right over on that thing. Get out, both of you!”
Troy climbed out of the canoe along with Blair, and he made an ‘OK’ sign with his thumb and forefinger as he looked at me with a questioning expression in his eyes. I nodded and mouthed ‘you did great’ before turning my attention towards Candice, who was nudging me.
“That went well,” she said. “But I know she’s your friend, so I hope it’s not her.”
I swallowed hard, part of me hoping for the same thing. Maybe this was all a big misunderstanding, and Blair was completely innocent.
All I could really do was wait and see.