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Adrien’s question jars me back to the present.

Kyan doesn’t answer, but sure enough, there’s someone standing there, waiting by his gate, a suitcase at their feet.

In the darkness, it’s impossible to tell the person’s gender—let alone if we recognize them.

Something about it feels wrong, off. Maybe it’s the shock still coursing through my veins, but I’m not up for any more surprises tonight.

Kyan slows the car, rolls down the window. “Can I help you?”

“I think you can,” the stranger replies.

And then the shoe drops, just as Declan voices my exact thought.

“What are you doing here?”

I freeze, my muscles locked in the backseat as I see him lean into the window, the light of the dashboard illuminating his round face and sandy hair.

“That’s no way to greet an old friend, now, is it?”

“Josh!” Ellery squeals. “You said you weren’t coming!”

He rubs his hand over the two-day stubble covering his cleft chin, his expression sheepish. “Ta-da.”

“Well get in, get in,” Kyan encourages. “It’s just a short drive up to the house.”

As the three of us contort ourselves to make room for him in the backseat, limbs brushing against limbs, bones jabbing bones, a heavy anxiety settles in my lungs like dust.

Josh smiles at me across the others. I don’t return it, hoping he can read the question in my eyes.

“Ellery said you had a work conflict,” I say. I don’t mention that he told me this himself when we discussed the reunion. How it made me feel better for initially declining Ellery’s invitation. The others don’t need to know that we still talk. Especially Declan.

“I worked around it. I couldn’t turn down a chance to see you all again. Plus, I wanted to help with the investigation.”

“Are you going to talk with the police?” Adrien asks.

“Already did. My flight got in earlier this afternoon, and I took an Uber directly from the airport to the AFP office. Figured I would surprise you guys, but I’ve been sitting here for the better part of an hour. Surprise is on me, I guess.” He gives a little chuckle. “Where were you anyway?”

The silence, warmed by Josh’s joviality, now ices back over.

“It’s a long story,” Adrien says from the front seat. “Why don’t we wait until we’re inside?”

***

We’ve settled back on the patio. Kyan’s started the electric fireplace—an entirely infeasible fixture for a Sydney balcony overlooking the beach, especially given how hot it is, but in complement with his pristine white furniture, it gives the evening a chic, cozy vibe.

The story the five of us relay to Josh about Hari, however, sits in stark contrast.

“She’s really…dead?” Josh’s disbelief reflects my own. Hari was always such a presence in our group. The second-in-line leader, the big sister all of us wanted.

“Yeah,” Ellery responds solemnly. “But that’s not all…”

She recounts to Josh our conversation in Hari’s apartment.

“But that’s kind of a stretch isn’t it?” Josh responds. “I mean it certainly makes more sense that she shot up herself and overdosed. As tragic as that would be.”

“Did Villanueva mention to you that she thinks we’re the main suspects in Phoebe’s death?” I ask.

He pauses for a second. “Yeah, but I think that’s ridiculous. I mean there were plenty of locals back in Jagged Rock. Any one of them could have killed Phoebe. For any kind of reason. And Hari’s death could just be a horrible coincidence. We know each other, guys.”

I want to believe him; I do. But we don’t know each other, not really. None of them could ever imagine what I did back then.

“It’s not just us, though,” Ellery chimes in. “Nick Gould was with us back then too. And Hari apparently still talked to him. She had a photo of the two of them in her apartment.”

“Wow, Nick Gould,” Josh muses. “God, I haven’t thought about that guy in years. But yeah, now that I think about it, he really had it in for Phoebe. Ever since that first day at orientation, but especially after Tomas…”

The name hangs in the air, the brief burst of joyful nostalgia curdling back into grief.

“Nick was really angry the night she disappeared.” My tone is serious once again.

“He was our teacher,” Declan says. “Would he really have killed her just because she was an irritating student? I mean, he taught Kyan, and he lived to tell the tale.”

The joke falls flat.

“Does anyone know what happened to him? Does he still work at Hamilton?” Josh asks.

We all shake our heads. It’s not like any of us are Facebook friends with him.

Adrien pulls out her phone, and within minutes, she glances up at us, a victorious glean in her eye.

“Found him. Looks like he stopped teaching in 2018. Online property records shows that he’s the full owner of a ranch in”—she squints at her screen—“a town called Rollowong.”

Kyan raises an eyebrow in her direction. “That was quick.”

“I’m a defense attorney. Digging up dirt on people is part of the job,” she says with a half smile, but it still sends a shiver down my spine. What could she find on me?

“Rollowong,” Declan repeats, his brogue making the town sound even more foreign. “I remember that name. Wasn’t it close to Jagged Rock?”

Adrien’s back on her phone. “Looks like it’s just outside it actually.”

Nick Gould went back to where Phoebe was killed.

I think of all those crime shows I used to watch with my mother, when the plot was pure entertainment, not something that could actually happen to me.

In them, the police were always talking about how perpetrators went back to the scene of the crime, to relive their experience. Is that what Nick has been doing?

“Interesting,” Kyan says, “that Hari still kept in touch with him even though he moved so far away.”

“Wow,” Adrien says, her finger still scrolling on her phone. “There’s this Reddit thread all about him. It says he got fired from Hamilton, that he attacked a student.”

Kyan leans closer to Adrien, reads over her shoulder.

“Attacked?” I ask.

Kyan nods. “Says he lost his shit on some kid, hit him so badly that the student ended up in the ICU.”

We all sit with that information for a moment. If Nick lost control on a student once, what’s stopping him from having done it before?

“Maybe we could go there and talk to him,” Josh proposes.

No.

The word skitters around my head.

Apparently, my expression isn’t the only one radiating disgust.

“Whoa, okay,” Josh says, raising his hand as he looks around the group. I immediately try to fix my face. “It was just a suggestion.”

“We should just leave it to the police,” Adrien says.

“I don’t know,” Ellery says slowly, as if warming to the idea. “Josh kind of has a point. I mean, the AFP made it pretty clear that we’re their main suspects.”

I think back to Villanueva’s proclamation. How she’s focusing the investigation on those of us who participated in the Adventure Abroad program.

“Did they mention Nick Gould to any of you during our interviews?” I ask, a thought budding.

The others shake their heads.

“This is the Australian Federal Police, though,” Declan says. “It’s not like we’re dealing with the Jagged Rock cops who couldn’t solve a crime if the perpetrator break-danced in front of them. The AFP are the real deal. I’m sure they’ll investigate Nick too.”

But I’m not. Especially if they don’t have reason to suspect Hari’s overdose wasn’t an accident.

And I start reconsidering. Maybe going back to Jagged Rock isn’t the worst idea. If Nick really is behind this—if he killed Phoebe and Hari—and we can prove it, it will take any suspicion off me once and for all. My name would be cleared.

Apparently I’m not the only one thinking about it.

“It could be nice, actually.” Ellery says. “A way to memorialize the reunion. Maybe we could even swing through Jagged Rock. See if the place has changed at all. I didn’t plan anything for tomorrow anyway, since I didn’t know how long the police interviews would take.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like we can just hop on over to Rollowong,” Kyan says. “It’s about a twenty-hour drive from here.”

“But there are flights, aren’t there?” I say, thinking back to our hazy bus ride into Jagged Rock all those years ago. I distinctly remember passing an airport at some point.

Adrien’s on her phone again. “There’s an airport a few towns over from Rollowong. Looks like it’s a forty-minute drive from Nick’s address. But I don’t have any particular desire to either see Jagged Rock or talk to Nick, let alone fly halfway across the country to do it.”

Unlike Adrien, I’m convinced now. Hope glows in me at the chance of pegging Nick for this crime. Of making it all okay. Of moving on with my life.

“I think we owe it to Phoebe.” The words are out of my mouth before I can reconsider.

“None of us were very good friends to her back then. And we should have been there for Hari, with everything she’s gone through the last few years.

Maybe this is our chance to make up for it.

Even if Nick didn’t…you know…maybe he knows something that can help us.

Something we could pass on to the police. ”

The others don’t say anything, the shame for how we all acted back then draping over us like the night’s thick humidity. The only one wearing an expression other than guilt is Adrien. Her gray eyes flash but she remains thankfully quiet.

“She’s right.” The support comes from the last person I’d expect. When I look over, Declan shoots me a warm smile.

“Ugh, fine,” Kyan says eventually. “But we’ll fly in and out. Make this trip as short as possible so we can be back by happy hour tomorrow. What do you guys say?”

Everyone nods, some more eagerly than others. I take a sip of my wine, but the thought clings to my throat.

We’re going back.