Page 22

Claire

Now

“Claire!” Nick Gould yells through the window, his car keeping perfect pace with me as I try to flee. “I just want to talk.”

I refuse to turn. Instead, I swing my arms harder. Sweat forms at my hairline and my breath burns in my lungs.

“I didn’t kill Phoebe…or Hari. But I made mistakes. And I regret them every day.”

I don’t know if it’s the words or the grief-stricken tone, but something makes me stop.

I’m panting, one hand on my knee, the other wiping the sweat from my forehead, when I finally make eye contact with him.

“There’s no way I’m getting in that car with you,” I say.

He gives me a small sad smile, just enough for his moustache to twitch. “No need.”

***

A bell dings as we enter, Nick graciously holding the door open for me, as if that will undo what he’s done. I agreed to hear his explanation so long as we talked somewhere public. As I looked at the building he’d proposed, a flush of nostalgia washed through me.

It’s still the tallest building on the street.

Situated on a corner and spanning nearly a block in width, it takes up three full stories, the second of which is bordered by a lattice-fenced terrace.

But its age is evident from the exterior.

Segments of the terrace have worn away over the years, leaving portions of the ledge exposed; its once bright salmon-pink paint is chipped and peeling; and a single sign—once vibrant gold but now faded into a dusty yellow—hangs over the doorway, labeling the building as The Royal Hotel I had pegged him for a beer guy—and the man grabs an old-fashioned-looking bottle from a hidden cooler.

I know I should keep my wits about me, but after everything that’s happened today, I can’t help but crave a way to blur the fear, the grief, the confusion. To dull everything.

“Rum and Coke, please,” I say as I take a seat, the ripped plastic of the stool biting through my jeans.

Once the man deposits it in front of me, he lingers for a second, evidently picking up on the weird energy between Nick and me.

“I’ll be over there doing some cleaning up if you need me,” he says eventually, giving me a long look before heading to the corner of the room, in clear sight. I smile over at him as he picks up a broom to sweep the immaculate floor, and gratitude floods through me.

“So,” Nick says with an awkward clearing of his throat. “Yous all think I killed them. Hari and Phoebe.”

The statement is a harsh slap of reality, and for a moment, I find myself speechless.

“I didn’t.” His voice is hard, obstinate, and I regain some composure.

“Well, you certainly have a funny way of proving that. Threatening us with a loaded rifle and then trapping me in the mine.”

I expect him to explain it away, but Nick’s eyes grow wide.

“I didn’t trap you in the mine,” he says, voice clear.

“Okay.” I force a harsh laugh. “What would you call it then?”

“I’ve been trying to talk to you alone since you left my ranch yesterday.

That’s why I came to the Inn this morning.

I asked Randy at the front desk where you went—which was an altogether unpleasant experience I got no interest in repeating—and he said you’d gone out for a walk.

So I went out back, tried to find ya. Almost made it all the way out to the mine, but I never saw hide nor hair of ya, so I turned back and went home.

Figured I’d try again later, and here we are.

I don’t know nothing about you being trapped in that mine.

You shouldn’t be playing around out there though, it ain’t safe. ”

Suspicion swirls in my gut. Why should I trust this man, after everything?

“Why did you want to talk to me and not the others?”

He sighs, and his shoulders slump. “I know how close you and Phoebe were, at least at the beginning of the program. You two did everything together those first few weeks.”

His words let loose an unsolicited flurry of memories.

Phoebe doing my makeup that first day in Sydney, the two of us sitting on her bed after a night out, drunkenly giggling about Kyan and Declan, Phoebe grabbing my hand and pulling me down the main boulevard in Cairns, running so fast that the wind slapped against our faces.

But I also hear his unspoken implication. How far apart we drifted in those final two weeks.

“I thought of anyone in the group, she might have told you what I did to her.”

I think back to my conversation with Villanueva. Phoebe’s pregnancy.

“You raped her,” I say coldly.

And it all makes sense. Maybe she threatened to tell, to expose him for who he really is, and that’s why he killed her.

And now he’s been trying to pick off the rest of us to keep his secrets, starting with Hari.

I feel my blood run cold as the puzzle pieces fit together, and I begin to stand, but his hand reaches out, grabbing for my arm.

Nick coughs, puts his hand down. “God, sorry,” he says. “But rape ?” He whispers the word, looking around as if someone may overhear, and indeed, the worker is looking straight at us, no longer trying to hide his eavesdropping. “I didn’t rape Phoebe. I’d never do that. I’m not that type of person.”

“Then what did you do to her?”

“I… Let me back up to the beginning; this is all coming out wrong.” He sighs deeply, stretching out his hands as if he’s settling in to tell a long storied tale. “I wasn’t in a great headspace during that program. I was…in recovery.”

“For?” I prompt.

“Alcohol and opiates. I thought I had it in check for the most part, but one day I showed up to teach a class still high and drunk from the night before. Some students reported me to Hamilton administration. They couldn’t prove it, but it was the wake-up call I needed.

I started AA and NA meetings, but I needed more than that.

Individualized therapy. Alcoholism runs in my veins—my father and pretty much every generation of my family before him was glued to the bottle.

I vowed to kick it, end the cycle and all that.

“But treatment ain’t always cheap. Australia does a good job with helping addicts, but the state doesn’t cover everything.

I needed money, so I signed up to lead the Adventure Abroad program.

In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best idea to be leading a group of kids through a month of boozing, but at the time I didn’t really have any other options.

I knew it was going to be hard, so that’s why I brought along Hari.

I taught her in my Australian history class. She was one of my best students.

“Everything was fine at first. I mean yous all were a handful, of course. I tried to leave ya alone as much as possible, especially when the bottles came out. That’s where Hari took over.”

Thinking back, I realize Nick was never around when we were drinking. And whenever we would wake up hungover—which in all honesty, was pretty much every day—he would greet us with an annoyed remark.

“I was on edge from the very beginning. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I walked up to that first day at orientation. And when Phoebe asked that question, that…sexual one, it just set me off. I had her stay after, and I just lit into her. When she tried to give it back, I lost control, grabbed her. Hard. I got no excuse,” he rushes, seeing my reaction. “I was just… I was struggling.”

Emotion breaks through his last few words, and he lowers his head so I can’t see his eyes. For the first time ever, I find myself sympathizing with this giant of a man.

“She didn’t tell you?” he asks.

I shake my head. All she said about being late to the bus that first day was that there was some administration error, something missing from her paperwork that she had to fix with Nick. What else didn’t she tell me?

“I was so ashamed that I avoided her for most of the trip,” he says after a pause. “But Lord, she had a way of getting under my skin.”

I stare at him.

“I didn’t kill her. I wouldn’t. But I can understand how she could have driven someone to murder.”

The memory flicks through my brain like a warped film reel.

The sight of Phoebe, the Outback stars illuminating her like a spotlight, head tipped back, mouth in a lascivious circle.

And it floods back, the rage that injected every inch of my body as I watched her. A pure hatred I had never felt before.

“But what about the rest of it?” I say, forcing the memory from my mind. “Adrien said you were fired from Hamilton because of a confrontation with a student.”

Nick looks down at the glass soda bottle in his hands.

“I carried around a lot of guilt after that trip. I was the teacher, the guide. It was my responsibility to keep yous safe. Maybe if I’d done something different…

None of that is an excuse, but when I got back to Hamilton, things just seemed wrong.

By some grace of God, the school still didn’t fire me, but they put me on probation, and everyone knew what’d happened on that trip.

Everyone had thoughts, opinions, judgments.

Hari tried to help me the best she could, but I…

I relapsed. And the worst part was that I took Hari down with me.

“She started using and we…well, we enabled each other. Things got dark, and I lost my grip on reality. The students could tell something was going on, of course. One day, a kid got pissed off. I can’t blame him, I wasn’t teaching him anything; class had turned into a waste of time.

But he made some offhand comment about Tomas.

And I just… I lost it. Just like with Phoebe after orientation, but this time I couldn’t stop myself.

I punched him over and over. Didn’t stop until a group ’a students pulled me off.

“That was the last straw for Hamilton, as it should have been. In fact, they should have cut the cord years before that. That was my rock bottom. I realized I had to change.

“I left Sydney, moved back to my family’s farm in Rollowong.

My dad was long dead by then, and Mum was sick.

I took care ’a her, got back to my roots, left all temptation behind.

I tried to convince Hari to come with me, to get clean and start over, but she refused.

We still talked, but I should’a stayed. I should’a done more. ”

He bows his head again.

“When yous showed up at the ranch, I was in shock. It was like my past had caught up with me. When I heard about Hari, I…” Emotion breaks into his voice, and he stops for a moment. “And then the implication that I killed her and Phoebe. I just… It was too much.

“I spent last night tryin’ to process it all. I called my sponsor. Our program is all about forgiveness—forgivin’ ourselves, seeking forgiveness from those we hurt. So I knew what I had to do. I figured since you were closest to Phoebe, you were the one I needed to explain things to, to apologize.”

“So you didn’t trap me in the mine?”

I need to hear him confirm it, one more time.

“No. I wouldn’t do that. Plus, what the hell would I have had to gain from it?”

“Did you see anyone around? Someone was in there, in the shaft. I went in to take a look and they ran out, shoved me down the stairs, and slammed the door.”

Nick shakes his head. “With the mine all dug up now, there are a million different hiding places out there. Whoever did it could have been anywhere.”

I sigh, disappointment settling in my chest.

“Listen, Claire, as you may have noticed, your group isn’t all that well-liked here in Jagged Rock.

After the accident with Tomas, the college put the Adventure Abroad program on hiatus.

I got the news our last day here. They’ve never operated it again since.

The money that we brought in during the few days our program spent here may not have seemed like a lot for us, but for some of the businesses here, it kept the doors open. ”

He looks around at the dust clinging to the bottles behind the bar and the empty tables that line the room.

“Things were supposed to change. A big hotel company was gonna build a five-star resort out here. Y’know, one where city folk could feel like they were roughing it with Egyptian cotton sheets and spas and all that crap.

They started excavating already; that’s why the mine’s all dug up.

Was supposed to be on the land owned by Randy’s family.

But when they discovered Phoebe’s remains last week, they pulled out. Bad publicity, they said.”

My mind flashes back to the rage in Randy’s eyes earlier this morning.

“Look,” Nick says, pushing himself to a standing position so that he towers over me. “I’m sorry for all of this, and everything you had to go through. I hope you find what you’re looking for. But there are people out here who aren’t going to take kindly to you trying to dredge everything back up.”

He throws a wad of cash down on the counter to cover our drinks.

“Just be careful, Claire.”

The warning rings loudly in my ears even after Nick has exited the hotel.