Page 31

Claire

Now

“Like I told Miss Claire, we stopped operating this place as a hotel several years back. There just wasn’t the demand for it. But we still have the rooms and furniture. They’re livable, but definitely not five-star accommodations,” Luke says in apology as he leads us into the lobby of the Royal.

As we stood in the Inn’s parking lot, trying to figure out our next move, I remembered the business card in my pocket from the drinks I’d had with Nick earlier.

I’d called the number listed below The Royal Hotel & Bar logo, and Luke picked up on the first ring.

When I told him our predicament, he didn’t hesitate to offer up the hotel for us to spend the night, even picked us up in his beat-up hatchback.

“I think you’re forgetting that we just came from the Raven Inn,” Josh says, with a smile that I find nearly unimaginable at this point. “As long as you don’t go assaulting any of us, I’m pretty confident you’ll exceed our expectations.”

Luke laughs, a shimmery sound incongruous with the events of the last hour.

“Well, we only have three rooms, so you’ll have to bunk up.

” He distributes a key to Ellery, who wraps her arm around Adrien, another to Josh to share with Declan, and one to me.

“I would offer to help you with your bags, but it looks like you all travel pretty light.” He gestures to our lack of luggage.

“We didn’t plan on coming back here,” I begin to explain, but I’m stopped by Adrien’s steely voice.

“We shouldn’t have come back. We should never have gone to Rollowong to see Nick. That was a stupid idea.”

I’m surprised to see the cold rage burning in Adrien’s eyes beneath her swollen lids.

Before this afternoon, I’ve never seen this side of her.

She’s always been poised, collected, but now it’s like something’s snapped.

She seems one push away from losing control.

I don’t plan to respond, not wanting to be the person that pushes her over the edge, but she keeps going.

“This is your fault,” she spits, pointing at me. “You wanted to come find Nick, to dredge up everything that happened a decade ago. So we could help Phoebe , of all people.” She says her name as if I suggested trying to help a terrorist. “She was the last person who deserved our help.”

“That’s not fair,” I say as calmly as possible, but even I can hear the slight waver in my voice. “Phoebe was a good friend to us.” I turn back to Luke, as if he’ll understand.

Adrien coughs out a bitter laugh. “That’s hilarious.”

This ignites something in me. What would Adrien know? The only time she spent around Phoebe was when she was trying to draw Kyan’s attention away from her. “She was a good friend if you treated her like she was an actual person. If you hadn’t—”

“Shut. Up.” Adrien growls. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then tell me!” My voice arches.

“She ruined my life.” Adrien’s tone is calm now, measured, rendering my sudden outburst all the more hysterical. I flinch, realizing how I must look. “And she ruined Kyan’s life.”

“Oh come on,” I say. “She tried to give you a laxative, not ruin your life.”

Adrien shakes her head, her voice poisonous. “You were always so blind. So goddamn na?ve. It was right under your nose.”

I think of the rage I saw in her and Kyan in the video I’d watched of them earlier this afternoon. Phoebe had done something awful to them, beyond her ridiculous prank in Cairns and shoving Adrien in the bathroom in the Whitsundays. Was it awful enough to push Adrien over the edge?

“Where were you the morning we realized Phoebe was gone?”

“Where was I?” Adrien’s forehead crinkles as if I’m asking something completely ridiculous, but I notice a flash in her eye. “At the Inn, I guess. I don’t remember. It was ten years ago.”

“You weren’t. You weren’t there that morning. Neither was Kyan. You didn’t get there until the afternoon.”

I remember that morning vividly. I didn’t sleep once I got back to the Inn the night before. Shock and desperation flooded through my veins. And more than anything: shame.

I could still feel that knife in my hand, the anger boiling just under my skin.

I could feel my fingers grasped around Phoebe’s hair.

I lay there, in our two-person room that was now too big for one, and I thought through how I’d ruined everything.

How nothing would ever be the same again.

I lay there until the sun poked through my window, illuminating the empty bed across from me, where Phoebe should have been.

I kept waiting for a knock on the door, for someone to shout accusations at me, for the police to swarm in and collect me.

They never came.

Eventually, I forced myself up, made my way downstairs, bracing for the pandemonium I was about to encounter.

But everything was normal. Everyone just assumed Phoebe was still asleep in our room.

The dichotomy was unbelievable. I had just done the worst thing I’d ever done in my life, and the rest of the world didn’t even notice.

It wasn’t until later, once I reported to Nick Gould that Phoebe hadn’t come home the previous night, that anything seemed to change.

We started a search. Casual at first. Just me, Nick, Ellery, Declan, Hari, and Josh. More like a walkabout through the Inn’s sprawling grounds. We didn’t find anything of course.

It wasn’t until we got back to the Inn that afternoon, after Nick called the Jagged Rock Police to report a missing person, that Kyan and Adrien returned to the Inn.

I remember spotting them from the window of the lobby, strolling hand in hand up the walkway, as if they had no concern whatsoever for Phoebe, and of course they didn’t.

But more than anything, I remember the smile on Adrien’s face.

It wasn’t her typical smile. It carried a hint of something that I’m just now identifying. Victory.

She fumbles now. “We were there. You must be misremembering.”

I’m about to retort, but Josh beats me to it.

“Actually, Claire is right. You weren’t there that morning,” he says slowly, as if it just dawned on him. “You both didn’t get back until after we’d already gone out looking for Phoebe.”

A flush appears along Adrien’s refined cheekbones, and I can’t tell whether it’s from frustration or embarrassment at being caught in her lie.

“I mean, like I said, it was ten years ago. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t keep a diary of exactly where I was on every day in every decade. We were probably out for a walk or out to breakfast or something. We certainly weren’t killing Phoebe if that’s what you’re implying.”

She grabs the key from Ellery. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a way that we can get to the hospital. At least one of us is interested in making sure Kyan survives.” She doesn’t stick around for a response, storming up the stairs that jut off the lobby.

“Well, that was something,” Josh says, apparently trying to lighten the mood.

No one responds. Instead, Ellery jogs up the stairs after Adrien.

“Come on,” Luke says, “I’ll show you all where your rooms are.” He steals a glance back at the bar. “Unless you’d prefer to grab a drink first. Feel free to help yourselves. God knows you could probably use it.”

“I’m going to go upstairs and call the hospital. See if there’s any way they’ll give us an update on Kyan’s condition,” Josh says.

Declan and I exchange a look. This is perfect. It will give us a chance to talk through everything that’s come to light in the last few hours.

***

“What did Phoebe do that ruined Adrien and Kyan’s lives?” I muse, staring into the amber liquid Declan’s poured in the glasses in front of us.

“I have no idea,” he responds. “But whatever it was, I bet it happened the night she went missing, given how angry the two of them looked in that video.”

“I think they may have killed her,” I whisper, barely loud enough for myself to hear, let alone Declan. But it’s as if he can tell what I’m thinking, just like he used to.

“No. There’s no way. They couldn’t have. Plus, Nick…”

“I’m not so sure anymore that Nick was responsible. He wasn’t the person that trapped me in the mine.”

Declan raises his eyebrows. I give him a brief summary of our earlier conversation.

“Wow,” Declan says, once I’ve finished. “And you believed him?”

“I did, surprisingly,” I say. “And I think you would have too. He was genuinely remorseful.”

Declan gives a slight laugh. “Well, who would have thought.”

“But you saw Kyan and Adrien on that video,” I say turning back to my first point. “If they had found her that night in the state they were in, they may have been angry enough to hit her, to use something and smash it over her head.”

“But maybe they didn’t,” Declan protests. “Find her, I mean. Maybe someone else got to her first.”

Declan’s gaze is fixed squarely on the glass in front of him. I take in the boyish freckles that still dot his face, the long chestnut curls that seem incapable of being tamed. I want to trust him completely, I do. I want to tell him everything, but something holds me back.

My mind flits back to our first time here in Jagged Rock.

Up until then, I had been living on cloud nine.

Declan and I had fallen easily into a relationship.

We spent virtually every waking minute together, and all the others too, sleeping curled tightly in his arms on his hostel bed while Tomas was kind enough to bunk with Ellery.

It was everything I had ever wanted in a relationship, yet something I never even hoped for.

Back home, guys didn’t even seem to notice me.

And why would they? I was a quiet, introverted college student who lived with her mother and never went out.

But here, in Australia, I was someone different.

I channeled the confidence Phoebe had in those first few weeks, until it felt almost vampiric, as if I was draining her of her charm and extroversion as she retreated inward.

I wasn’t the best friend to her in those days. I know that.

Once Declan and I finally got together, our relationship pretty much consumed me.

All the time, attention, and affection I once had for Phoebe I now directed at him.

And then on top of it, she kept doing all that strange stuff to Adrien.

First, that attempt at switching her pills, and then shoving Adrien in the bathroom in the Whitsundays in a drunken haze, the account of which Adrien repeated constantly to all of us.

I should have known then that there was something wrong, but instead of asking Phoebe about it, making sure she was okay, I distanced myself.

I didn’t want the others—especially Declan—to associate me with her erratic behavior.

I didn’t want to be blamed for her mistakes.

It was selfish, and the thought of it now twists my stomach.

“You two doing okay?”

Luke’s voice startles me from my memories.

“Grand,” Declan says, raising his glass. “Care to join us?”

“I never turn down a drink,” Luke says, pulling up a stool as Declan pours another glass of whiskey and hands it to him.

“So, how are you two holding up after everything that happened?”

I notice my glass trembles slightly as I raise it to my lips. “A little shaken, but as good as can be expected I guess.”

“Who do you think did it?”

Luke’s question hits me with full force. Who, indeed? If I’m right, and whoever killed Phoebe is picking the rest of us off one by one, then my hypothesis that Kyan and Adrien were behind her death wouldn’t make sense. But who else could it be? And why?

Declan answers first. “No bloody idea.”

Luke sighs, takes another sip. “Can I ask you something?” He pauses as we nod. “What did Adrien mean about your friend, the one who died? She said she was a horrible person. What did she do?”

Where to even begin?

Declan looks over at me, a question in his eyes. Are we really going to tell him?

But I think of everything Luke has done for us, welcoming us into his hotel, letting us stay for free.

He deserves to know.

I take a deep breath, force myself to say the words, to revisit that night.

“She thinks Phoebe killed our other friend. Tomas.”