“No one is going to say anything,” he added, like a promise.
I felt a lump in my throat. Felt the memory of Charlotte’s hand squeeze my shoulder, Preston chuck me under the chin, Chase lean against the gate beside me. “What happened to her? Did the police say anything?”
“No one knows. Maybe it was the alcohol. She was drinking so much she could barely stand. Tina said she had thrown up. And she was lying on her back…” His words trailed off, and I saw her there, head tipped back, the red glow of the fireworks reflecting on her exposed skin—
“And none of us checked,” I said.
“Harper,” he said, gentle and close, like he was propped up on one elbow beside me in bed. I closed my eyes, thinking how easy it would be to slide back into this. “Don’t do this to yourself. You’re a really good person, and you did all you could for her.”
But I hadn’t. I’d needed her gone. Told her she was a terrible fucking person. Wanted her far away and out of my life, never to return.
“What did she say to you down by the lake?” I asked, thinking that whatever she’d confided to him there were the last words she’d ever spoken.
“Nothing really,” he said, but I was picturing his arms wrapped around her, the way her body had folded into his. “She was drunk, and sad, and not really making any sense.”
“Shit,” I said, hearing the catch in my voice.
He sighed. “I’ll come by tonight, okay? Help you go through her things? I’ll even bring dinner.”
The silence was messing with my thoughts—a buzzing in my head I couldn’t contain, an emptiness that only seemed to expand. But Ruby’s things were already packed up, and I’d ended things with Mac. I didn’t want to go back. “I’m doing that now,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”
The doorbell rang, jarring me back to the present. “I gotta go,” I said before hanging up.
From my spot on the couch, I opened the laptop to see who was out there. A man I didn’t know stood on my porch, looking up at the camera—staring back.
* * *
I KNEW THEY’D BE coming.
The police had taken our statements the previous night when we were all out there, in the street. They’d looked at the angle of the houses, the corners of the clubhouse, asking if there was any footage.
But it was Margo who shook her head. Who explained it was a policy not to record at the pool, where we were half-dressed. Who shared that none of the houses on the street had a good angle anyway.
The group of officers from the Lake Hollow Police Department scanned the crowd of us, and we stared back, wide-eyed and silent. Every one of us understanding: She had died in plain sight, with no one noticing, in the one place there were no cameras, with no witnesses.
How very different from what the police had experienced after the Truetts’ deaths. Where everyone here was a witness with something to say, something to share, something to prove.
So I was not surprised to see a man on my front step now. This man, so obviously part of the investigation with his gray button-down and black tie, regardless of the soaring temperature and humidity. This was where Ruby had been staying, and I’d told them as much last night.
When I opened the door, I tried to place him from the sea of faces last night. But he seemed out of place, a stranger. Last time, Chase Colby had been part of the investigating team—to put people at ease, we thought. But also, as we learned, to gain access. To share what he learned on the message board, send the detectives our way. To save the recordings we’d posted from our security cameras and forward them to his superiors.
“Ms. Nash?” the man said, rocking back on his heels. “I’m Jay Locke, a special agent with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. We’re with the state police. Can I have a moment of your time?” He looked to be about my father’s age, silver hair streaking through the brown, a weathered face, sharp blue eyes.
“Yes, I’m Harper.” I opened the door farther, but he lingered on the front porch. His shoes were a shiny black, unmarred, and a dark car with tinted windows was parked behind him at the curb.
He smiled. Then he leaned backward and jabbed a finger at the camera over my door, angled at the porch. “That record whenever there’s movement?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s a webcam. I can sign in to see who’s on my porch when someone rings the bell, but not much else.”
He nodded, then crossed the threshold, his shoes echoing on the hardwood. “Seems to be the preferred method of security around here. Several of your neighbors said the same about theirs.”
I didn’t know why he wanted access to my camera or anyone else’s. Ruby hadn’t left the pool last night. I pictured her again, lowered to the ground by Tina and Paul, and ran my hands over my arms, chasing away the chill.
Agent Locke extended his hand my way in a half-hearted gesture. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should’ve led with that. I’m really sorry for your loss.”
I nodded, unsure what to say. I didn’t deserve any condolences, wasn’t sure her loss could be mine to grieve. The sharp sting of her death, exacerbated by the guilt that I could have prevented it—and something worse: the muted, whispered relief that she was gone.
“So, Ruby Fletcher was your roommate.” He said it as a statement, though it looked like he was waiting for me to answer.
“She was staying with me,” I clarified. Roommate implied an agreement, not that someone had taken up residence in your house with or without your consent. “Do you know what happened to her?” I asked. Mac had mentioned the alcohol, but I didn’t know why an agent from the state police would be in my house, asking about camera footage.
“We’re waiting on the autopsy report,” he said. “In the meantime, I was hoping you might have some more insight about last night, as her roommate.”
“Sorry, I really don’t. I wasn’t there when…” My gaze drifted out the front window, my words trailing off.
“Okay, so let me just make sure I’ve got it all down right,” he said, pulling my attention back. “The guys last night got your statement, I know, but we like to do our own legwork at the BCI. So you left the party pretty early.”
I nodded, a beat behind, realizing his statement was really a question and he was waiting for me to fill in the blanks. I heard the echo of Mac’s words, promising that no one had said anything about our fight. “Yes, I was tired,” I said, trying to appear at ease, standing several feet apart from this stranger in the foyer of my home.
He was watching me closely. “And where was she when you last saw her?”
I flinched. “On that lounge chair. The same chair. During the fireworks, I saw her there.”
His gaze also went to the front window, eyes narrowing slightly, lines in his skin radiating outward. “How did you find out something had happened to her?”
“We have a neighborhood watch. Margo Wellman saw her after everyone was gone. Still lying there.”
She’d been the one to tell the police last night. Her voice wavering, breath coming too fast, hands shaking. She said she’d seen Ruby lying on the lounge chair on the pool deck as she circled past on her first walk-through. Went to get Paul to tell Ruby to move. Didn’t want to approach on her own. It was Paul who said something was wrong with Ruby. Who called 911 and told Margo to get help.
Agent Locke continued. “Yes, I heard about the neighbor on watch. She mentioned running to get someone else for help—Tina Monahan?”
“Yes, Tina is a nurse. Two doors that way.” I jutted my thumb to the left.
“Makes sense, then, that Margo would stop here on the way back. With you being Ruby’s roommate.”
I nodded, not sure what he expected me to contribute. I was one of the first to leave the party—it was the only thing people seemed sure of. Last night, no one could agree who was the last to leave. Everyone took their things when the fireworks ended, then they scattered.
No one noticed Ruby? A question directed at the crowd last night.
A shrug. A glance passing from one to the other. Until Charlotte cleared her throat. We had been doing our best to ignore that she was there…
Agent Locke walked closer to the window, peering out, though the only thing visible was his car in the road and then the trees in the distance. “Do you know what she was drinking?” he asked.
And there it was, what Mac had been implying. A vast consumption of alcohol. I wondered if our neighborhood would be liable, since she’d died on our shared property. If I would be liable, since she was seen as my guest.
“She made sangria for the party,” I said. “But I don’t know.”
Agent Locke let the silence stretch between us until the discomfort became something physical, like the tension between me and Ruby in this house, growing until one of us had to break it.
“There was a lot of press around her release,” he said. “We’re trying to trace Ruby’s path since she’d been out, and since she’d been staying with you, we thought you might be able to help.”
But it was clear now how little Ruby had confided in me. “Ask her lawyer,” I said. “I think they’ve been in contact.”
“Blair Bowman, right. Thing is, she’s had a hard time keeping track of her. Said Ruby hadn’t been returning her calls. The last time they spoke was after some news program that she’d been on.”
I ran my hand across my neck, felt a wave of heat flush through me. Ruby had lied about needing my car to meet her. Of course she’d lied. Preston had seen my car on campus. And Chase believed she’d been here—that she’d tried to get into his house. What the hell had she been up to?
“Her lawyer didn’t even know where she was staying.” He stepped farther into the house. “Can I take a look at her things?”
“You can have them,” I said. They were already in a suitcase. I’d searched the room myself—there was nothing there.
Agent Locke followed me up the steps, through the loft, to Ruby’s room. I gestured to her suitcase on the other side of the room, but I remained at the entrance. The agent went in alone, moving slowly through the room, leaving large shoe prints in the carpet.
Koda leaped from the foot of the bed as the agent bent to look through the luggage. Agent Locke jolted as the cat darted from the room, giving me a wide berth as well.
“Jesus,” he said, hand to heart. Then, peering closer, “Is all of this new?”
“Yes,” I said. “She showed up without anything.”
He sighed, hands on his knees, pushing himself back to standing. He took one last glance around the room. “Looks like she wasn’t planning to stay long.”
I watched as he stepped to the side, peering into the bathroom. And I held my breath, willing him not to look up. The money, tucked out of sight.
“She didn’t tell me what she was planning,” I said as he exited her room. And that, at least, was the truth.
Back downstairs, he handed me his card before leaving, in case I thought of anything else. I closed the door behind him and retreated from the window just as he turned around to look back. I watched him from the laptop on my couch as he opened his car door with one long glance in each direction, up and down the street. As if calculating something. And then I watched him sit in his car, unmoving, for five minutes. Then ten. Until I thought my video feed had frozen. I was on my way back to the front window to check when I finally heard the sound of the engine pulling away.
And then I grabbed my keys, locking up behind me. I knew what they were doing from the last time. They were making a time line. Sliding us all into place. They wanted to know what Ruby had been up to since her release, wanted to piece together her movements—and so did I. They must’ve been wondering—like all of us in the neighborhood of Hollow’s Edge—why she’d come here at all. Why she’d come to me.
I knew why no one was going to say anything about the fight, and it wasn’t just because they were protecting me. It was because of what Ruby had implied with her thinly veiled accusations. A crime I didn’t commit, she’d said.
It had sounded like a defense at first, like she’d said to the police when they’d come to my door: Tell them, Harper, tell them I didn’t do it—
I’d thought she had come here for revenge, and maybe that was true. But twisted inside that motive was something else at the heart, fueling it.
She’d come here to prove her innocence.
That’s what she was implying as her eyes skated over all of us last night.
She’d come back to prove that someone else was guilty.
CHAPTER 17
RUBY HAD BEEN ON campus. With my car. With my keys.
Chase thought she’d been trying to get inside his house, too, in the days when we thought she’d been gone.
Which meant she was looking for something. And there was one place I could go to start tracing her path.
Campus remained eerily empty, the July Fourth holiday bleeding into the long weekend. At the staff entrance, I passed the security center building, the electric vehicles all lined up in a row, unused. Every lot I passed was empty, the wind whipping up the brittle leaves, scattered across the narrow road.
When I pulled into the lot behind my building, I half expected to see the white car again under the oak tree, but mine was the only car here. Maybe even on the entire campus, judging from the drive in.
Before entering the building, I peered through the glass panel beside the back door, but the motion lights remained off. I paused at the entrance when I stepped inside, taking it all in—trying to see things as Ruby might. This place where she once gave student tours, and joined me for lunch, and asked for advice, and smiled when Aidan stopped by to say hi.
Everything about her, a deception.
The lights flicked on one by one as I moved deeper inside. I moved fast, using my key for my office, imagining Ruby doing the same days earlier. How compliant I must’ve seemed to her. How easily manipulated. Ruby in my house; Ruby in my car; Ruby in my place of work—
Was there any part of my life she hadn’t tainted?
Standing in the glass doorway to my private office, I tried to look for signs of her. But everything looked exactly as I thought I’d left it the week before. Only my mug on the blue bookshelf was off-center—HELLO THERE! now barely visible—but that had been my doing, when I’d watered the plant.
My desk was covered with files on prospective students and meeting notes and interdepartment communications. I kept nothing personal or private here. Nothing that would be of interest to Ruby. What would she have been here for if not for me? What did she think she would possibly find here? Evidence that I was not equipped to do my job? Proof that I did not measure up to Brandon Truett?
There was nothing else here except for a plant on the verge of dehydration and a closet full of junk: the detritus left behind from when Brandon Truett worked here. I couldn’t think of a reason that would interest her, but I crossed the room, throwing open that closet door for the first time in months.
It was empty.
My breath left me in a quick gust. The closet was completely, totally, empty—except for a faintly stale scent, from disuse and uncirculated air. The file box where I’d stored the remnants from Brandon’s desk, the photo of him and Fiona—all gone.
It had been so long since I’d looked in here that I couldn’t say for sure. Couldn’t tell whether the contents had disappeared sometime in the previous year, with Anna at reception, or the janitor, or someone with an attachment to Brandon Truett—or Ruby.
Absences were harder to find. Negatives harder to prove. To know for sure that it wasn’t someone else, over the last year, who had gone through here and cleaned things out. To take the leap that it must’ve been Ruby.
But she’d definitely been here.
I remembered her expression when I had caught her outside on my way home with Mac—when I told her I’d been to work. The quick frown. The worry. Had she been concerned that I’d noticed what she’d done?
If that was true, then Ruby Fletcher believed th
ere was something worth finding in Brandon’s things. More important: She knew that the Truetts’ deaths had not been solved with her conviction. Her words at the party were not empty threats. And she believed that, here, she might find some proof.
I pictured her again, the moment she arrived at the party last night—the knowing looks she gave everyone; the way she flaunted her presence; the things she said: that we had somehow conspired against her. That she knew what each of us had done.
It seemed like maybe she had found that proof after all. A note he’d scribbled in a margin, maybe. A photo slipped behind another in the photo frame. Something that had eluded meaning when we were all so focused on Ruby. Something out of my grasp still.
But whatever she’d taken from this closet must exist.
Whatever she’d uncovered must be able to be found.
* * *
SHE’D HIDDEN THINGS, YES, distrusting all of us who had wronged her. But there were only so many places she could keep things close by.
All of them in Hollow’s Edge.
There were barely any signs of life outside by the time I returned home. No one running, or watering the grass, or talking out front. The pool was abandoned, with a black and red sign out front that I couldn’t read but which must’ve declared the premises closed. I wondered if there were guidelines in the bylaws for this.
As I passed Charlotte’s house, her front door opened. Chase slipped out, jogging down the steps, then paused on the sidewalk as he noticed me pulling into my driveway.
My mind was already three steps ahead, thinking through where Ruby might’ve left a box of Brandon’s things that I hadn’t yet uncovered—the bathroom cabinet, under my old tarp in the garage—so it took me a moment to realize Chase was waiting for me, standing in the Truett yard.
“What’s going on?” I called, meeting him halfway, the overgrown grass itching my ankles.
“I tried your house a few minutes ago. Just missed you,” he said, like we were friends. How death could alter everything, swing you from enemies to allies or the other way around. “Has someone from the BCI been by to talk to you?”
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