Page 53

Claire

Now

The vents whir as air pulses into the car, but it makes no difference. Sweat pools beneath my legs, clings to my underarms.

Josh hums nonchalantly as he drives. I consider the phone in my pocket, not Phoebe’s, but my own.

I turned it off when I first left the Raven Inn, concerned that the AFP may have some way to trace it.

It seemed like a clever idea at the time, but now I’m kicking myself for not seeing this little jaunt with Josh for what it is—an abduction.

And as I think through it, the signs were there.

The way he never wanted to talk about our time in Australia—an aversion that I embraced as a welcome relief.

The way he changed his mind so abruptly about coming back here without giving me any warning.

And how could I be so blind not to recognize the alarm bells blaring when he arrived at the Inn this morning?

I’m disgusted at how wrong I was about everything, how eager I was to blame Phoebe’s murder on the others. First Kyan and Adrien, then Ellery, and then… I can’t bear to even think his name.

I still don’t understand why Declan had Phoebe’s phone, but he clearly didn’t kill her.

It was Josh.

I steal a glance over at him, his fingers clenched tightly around the steering wheel, his jaw set. He must feel my gaze on him because he turns, his face contorting into a smile.

He extends one hand, places it on my leg. I try to leave it there, but his touch burns, and I can’t help but recoil.

And that’s when everything changes.

His smile slips, disappears, and a coldness filters into his face like a brisk wind.

“You know.” He returns his gaze to the road. His voice is matter of fact, as if he’s recognizing something incontrovertible. Which somehow makes everything all that much worse. “How did you find out?”

I consider bluffing, claiming I have no idea what he’s talking about. But I know there’s no use.

“Phoebe’s phone. She left me a video. She said it was you.”

One side of his lip turns upward in something that falls between a smirk and a snarl. “That damn phone. Where was it?”

I sit quietly, unable to speak.

“I can’t tell you how long I looked for it that night. It was the one loose end I could never tie up. It’s the reason I came back after all.”

His admission hits me harder than I would expect. Despite the sweat that’s suctioned my T-shirt to my skin, my arms break out in goose bumps, a feverish chill invading the car.

“But why?” I manage. The two words carry so many questions I want to ask but can’t seem to formulate.

He barks out a laugh that sends my spine rigid.

“I thought you’d have put it all together by now, running around here playing detective like you’ve been.” A vein in his neck throbs as he stares straight ahead. While his attention is on the road, I sneak a look at the car door.

Just as I expected, it’s locked.

“Anyway, you already know. She got pregnant.”

Despite everything, the statement slides into my heart like a cold knife. God, Phoebe must have been terrified, pregnant with this horrible person’s child inside of her, thousands of miles from home, completely alone.

“You know, I went to school with Phoebe and her brother,” Josh says unprompted. “He was a couple grades ahead of me, but we were close, played football together. He was like a hero to me. The whole team was devastated when he died. It was so sudden, so much potential wasted.”

I feel my jaw slacken with this news. I remember the way Josh talked about his friend who had died in a car accident. That was Phoebe’s brother. The one she told me about the last night I ever saw her. The monster who abused her.

But she never told me what happened to him.

“That’s why I got with her in the first place,” Josh continues. “She intrigued me, the little sister of one of my idols.”

I want to cover my ears, to drown out the animosity, the coldness in his voice. But his words are like a drug I can’t kick.

“We hooked up a few times in the Whitsundays. I made her promise she wouldn’t tell anyone.

” He lets out a humorless laugh. “One night, I confronted her about her brother’s death.

He crashed when Phoebe was in the car. The police could never figure out how he’d just run off the road.

He wasn’t drunk, there wasn’t anything on the street that would have blocked their way.

Phoebe told them he swerved to avoid a deer, but at that time of year, they aren’t all that common.

She must have yanked the wheel out from under him as he was driving, ran the car right off the road,” Josh says, and instantly, his joking demeanor crystallizes into anger.

“She basically admitted it to me. I wanted to wring her neck right then and there, but I controlled myself. I stayed away from her after that. I didn’t trust myself with what I would do if I was around her.

And then, that last night in Jagged Rock, I came back to my room and found a note shoved under the door.

Just sitting there, half in the hallway so anyone could have seen it.

She never had any regard for anyone else, that cunt. ”

The word catches me off guard, the bitterness of it swelling throughout the car.

“What did it say?” My voice is nearly a whisper.

“Said she was pregnant and keeping it. All the anger I felt for her kind of, like, bubbled up in me, and the world went red. I went off to find her. I was looking everywhere at the Inn, but she wasn’t there.

So, I went outside. God, I don’t know how far I walked, but then I heard her.

Walking with a damn smile on her face. Like she was happy.

“To be honest, I was just planning on talking to her.

Telling her she needed to get rid of the thing.

There is no world where I would have a child with her.

But she was so fucking obstinate. And then she just took off running, like we were playing a damn game. She was the one who started it, really.

“I looked for her for what felt like hours. And just when I was ready to give up, to wait until the morning to confront her, I heard her whispering.”

I think of the video I just saw on Phoebe’s phone. The one she must have recorded for me. To protect me. That’s what killed her.

The guilt once again sticks in my stomach, sharp as a dagger.

“I followed the sound, and I found her hunched over that phone. I expected her to be scared, dragging me on this cat and mouse game across the entire fucking desert, but when she looked up at me, it was like she was asking for a fight.”

I remember the defiant gaze Phoebe could level at someone in an instant. The one I was on the receiving end of so many times, and somewhere deep in my stomach, buried beneath the fear and panic, I feel a bloom of something different. Pride.

“I snapped. I had my room key from the Inn in my pocket. You know how heavy that shit was.” I think back to my earlier suspicions. Declan was right, the murder weapon was the room key, but it wasn’t Ellery’s. It belonged to Josh.

And the memory slaps me. Things were quite chaotic as we checked into the Inn.

Seven students, plus Hari and Nick Gould, all vying for their preferred rooms. Ellery was assigned to a single, but I remember Kyan striking deals with everyone to rearrange, so that he and Adrien could have a room together, with full privacy, something that irked Phoebe to no end.

Somehow, among all the room shuffling, Josh must have ended up in the single room meant for Ellery. Room 11.

“Before I even realized what I was doing,” Josh continues, “I brought the thing down on her head. The damn phone must have fallen out of her hands. When I went back there later, I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

I don’t say anything. I can’t. My vocal cords are so tight that if I make a sound, they might snap in two.

“But anyway, you know how she was,” he continues. “We talked about it, remember?” His eyes dart to me. There’s something I’ve never seen in them before, something crazed, wild. And for a moment I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“That first night we reunited in Chicago, remember?” I cringe, remembering what I said after a few margaritas.

“You told me that you caught her fucking Declan just totally out in the open. Said how much it hurt you, how selfish she was. Never did trust that guy.” He tsks, a sound that grinds my teeth together as shame flashes hot on my face.

“Really, I did you a favor getting rid of her. Figured you’d be grateful. ”

It’s the small shrug he gives at the end of that sentence that does it. The carelessness of the gesture that tips my emotions from shock and terror to a fiery rage I haven’t felt since the night I stumbled upon Declan and Phoebe with their limbs locked.

“You did me a favor by murdering my friend?” My fingers fold in on themselves, my nails digging deep into the flesh of my palms. “By dumping her in a mine?”

“The mine ended up being a great hiding place, didn’t it?

” He chuckles, a sound that runs like kerosene through my veins.

“Shit, they didn’t end up finding her for a decade.

In all honesty, it was a split-second decision to shove her in there.

That mine has done me a world of favors now that I think about it.

Helped me out with you the other day too. ”

The flashback rocks through the car. The body slamming into me, shoving me down the stairs, the door to the mine slamming shut, the air growing thin around me.

Nick Gould wasn’t lying after all. It wasn’t him who trapped me in there. It was Josh.