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Do I? Not about what I need to do next—I have a feeling Cooper’s left instructions as detailed as they are overwhelming—but why?

Why leave me in charge of anything?

Why now?

“He said if you have questions, I can…” The lawyer sifts through the pages, distracted.

“Did he say why?”

He searches my face, maybe gauging how much information to disclose. Whatever he sees gives him the go-ahead. “Cooper wanted no loose ends. Said you’d understand that.”

The room seems to breathe around me, expanding and contracting in slow waves, and the inn resurfaces in my mind—Cooper’s dark form stretched across the cliffs like a shadow.

The lawyer slides a stack of papers toward me. “If you need time…”

And there’s that word again: time.

“I’ll take these with me,” I say.

He nods, gathers the rest of Cooper’s plans into neat piles. “It is important to him,” he adds softly, “that it is you, who manages everything.”

The air wrestles free from my lungs like it’s been commanded to exit under duress.

Twenty Six

Past

The courtroom is suffocating. I’ve been here many times over for many different cases, yet this time the walls press in, the fluorescent lights buzz overhead, and my heartbeat pounds in my ears like a war drum. I sit stiffly in the witness box, hands clasped in my lap to keep them from shaking.

Cooper is here.

Seated at the defense table, dressed in a suit that doesn’t quite fit the way it used to. He looks different—thinner, paler—but his presence is still overwhelming. That same quiet intensity, the same piercing blue eyes that once burned into mine.

He’s watching me.

I try not to look at him, but the weight of his gaze is unbearable. It drags me in, suffocates me, and suddenly, I can’t breathe.

I’m called to testify.

My legs feel weak as I rise, stepping forward. The room tilts, my vision narrows. Cooper hasn’t stopped looking at me, and it’s like he’s reaching for me without moving an inch.

I swallow hard, forcing myself to focus on the questions being thrown my way.

“Yes, Cooper Burick was my patient.”

“Yes, he was in therapy for voyeuristic tendencies.”

“Yes, he mentioned watching people.”

“But he never disclosed where he was doing it.”

That part is true.

The lie—the omission—festers in my gut like rot.

Because I did suspect. And then he confirmed without saying as much. Just acknowledging my show for him. The way he slipped out of bed late at night. The way the walls at the Ocean Voyeur always seemed to breathe.

But I say nothing of that.