Beth sighs. “I never planned to hurt your sister.”
Behind Beth, Emma grits her teeth and reaches for the flare gun, but it’s several inches out of reach. I keep my gaze on Beth.
“I was looking for Courtney along the riverbank,” Beth continues. “And I found her, jogging along the tree line on the other side of the Sol Duc. I called for her, but she acted like she couldn’t hear me. Downstream, there was a fallen tree that went nearly the whole way across the river. I used it to get across. I was out of breath by the time I caught up to her. I told Courtney she had to come back. But she refused. She marched away from me, barely keeping her balance after tripping over a large rock. She told me there was a cougar on the other side of the river. That it followed her until she finally raised a stick over her head and threw a rock at it. Then she pointed across the river and said, ‘I saw Palmer.’”
Keeping her gun trained on Russell, Beth shifts her gaze, her eyes boring into mine. “She said you had to have seen the cougar coming after her. But instead of coming back to help her, you left her for dead. Courtney’s eyes flamed with fury when she whipped around. She was planning to press charges against you, saying she’d send you to jail for manslaughter.” Beth smirks. “I told her she meant prison—not jail—and that you can’t press charges for manslaughter if you’re still alive.” Beth shakes her head. “Courtney could be so stupid sometimes.” Her gaze skirts back to Russell, whose jaw is clenched. “No offense.”
He glares at Beth, his eyes burning with an unyielding fury.
“Anyway—” Beth swipes her free hand through the air. “I told Courtney I thought she was making the whole thing up. If Courtneyhadseen a cougar, it wouldn’t have left her alone. She was easy prey.” A faint smile reaches Beth’s lips. “Then Courtney narrowed her green eyes at me, saying ‘Well, then I hope that cougar eats Palmer alive.’ At that point, I was exasperated,” Beth continues, returning her gaze to mine. “I told her to stop lying, and Courtney looked as though I’d slapped her.” Beth’s voice morphs to a high, mocking tone. “‘I almost died, Beth.’”
Beth’s imitation of Courtney makes my blood run cold.
“Then, she sneered,” Beth adds. “She said, ‘You think I’m making that up, but you believed my brother could actually be in love with you?’ I asked her why she always had to be such a bitch. But Courtney wasn’t listening. She’d caught her sweatshirt on a low-hanging branch, going on about how she always stuck up for me and was so kind to let me hang out with her even though I was”—Beth makes air quotes with her hand not holding the gun—“such a nerd.” Beth’s face contorts in loathing, her gaze unflinching from mine.
Her eyes are hard, staring with a fierce, silent intensity. Even though she’s looking at me, I get the sense she’s not seeing me but Courtney.
“I pulled out the pocketknife Courtney gave me and told her to hold still. She was flailing her arm, making it worse. I lifted the blade toward the branch and asked why it was so hard for her to believeher brother could’ve been in love with me.” Beth turns to Russell. “Courtney threw her head back and said, ‘Do you seriously think my brother would ever like a girl like you?’ So judgy. Then she laughed.”
There’s a distant look in Beth’s eyes, like she’s physically here, but her mind is back in the Olympic National Park, reliving the moment. She scrunches up her nose as her expression turns painful. “A deep, throaty cackle. Just like she’d laughed when we got to her upstairs bedroom that night when I threw my arms around you. When she told me it was all a prank.”
Emma grunts on the deck floor, but Beth doesn’t turn around.
My gaze flicks to Emma and the blood pooling on the deck beneath her chest. Her eyes flutter closed. She needs pressure on her bullet wound or she’s not going to make it. In the distant waters beyond the stern, the cruise ship is now directly behind us.
“Courtney’s eyes bulged with disbelief when I stabbed her the first time,” Beth adds, as if relieving her conscience. A slight smile forms on one side of her mouth as she stares at Russell. “Like she didn’t think I had it in me. She tried to push me away—and to run—but her sweatshirt was still caught on that tree.” Beth shakes her head. “And her screaming only angered me more. Then, the branch snapped, and Courtney stumbled toward the river. I stabbed her in the neck to shut her up. Then I kept stabbing. The next thing I knew, we’d both fallen in the water. Courtney had stopped moving when the current pulled us downstream.”
Russell bows his head without saying a word. I assess the woman standing before me that I’ve known as my best friend since I was five. All this time, she knew what happened to Courtney. Because she was the one who killed her.
I inch along the bench seat, closer to the flare gun on the deck floor as Beth directs her gaze toward me.
“Courtney was face down in the water, and the current moved her body along faster than mine. Then I heard you, Palmer. Calling my name on the other side of the river.” She shakes her head as if recallinga normal, nonmurderous memory. “I was afraid you might see her. So, I stuck the knife back into my pocket and called out to you, acting like I was getting pulled under so all of your attention would be on me.”
I swallow, thinking how close I must’ve been to Courtney when I went into the river to save Beth.She was right there.She might’ve even still been alive. If I had seen her, I might’ve been able to save her. Instead, I’d saved Beth.
Behind Beth, Emma goes still. The flare gun rests against the foot of the table, well out of my reach. If I lunge for it, Beth would have plenty of time to shoot me before I can set it off.
“I had no intention of getting stuck underwater beneath that log, though,” Beth adds. “For a second, I thought it might be my karma after what I’d done to Courtney.” She smiles, locking eyes with me. “But then you saved me.”
Vomit rises to the back of my throat.
“I’m sorry you’ve blamed yourself for Courtney’s death all these years. But I couldn’t tell you the truth.”
Until now.She’s planning to kill us all. In the distance, the ship cruises past us.
“Beth,” I coax. “Please don’t do this. You’ll never get away with it. Think of all your accomplishments. All you’ll be losing. Your appointment to university president. And how you want to run for Senate. It’s what you wanted your whole life.”
“That’s exactly why I can’t let you live. With all of you gone, there will be no one to refute my story. How Russell came aboard under a fake name, on a killing spree to avenge his sister’s death. Especially when I produce Courtney’s diary, minus those specific pages about me. It will show his motive to kill all of us.”
“You planned this?” I ask her, readying myself to dive for the flare.
“Of course not!” She cocks her head to the side. “I’m not a psychopath, Palmer.”
“Then why’d you kill Nojan? And Gigi?”
“I recognized Russell immediately when we came aboard and knew, given his fake name, that he was here to uncover what happened to Courtney. I saw him talking to Gigi alone on our first night at sea. He knew I had the most motive of all of us to kill Courtney. I didn’t know what he’d told her, but I couldn’t risk it. It was dark that night when I came on deck. I thought Nojan was Russell. He was kneeling near the side, his head down, tying a knot, so I pushed him and cut his tether with my pocketknife.” Beth lifts the gun toward Russell’s head. “Then, I found his logbook near the helm. When I checked the entries, I realized Nojan had been the one on watch, not Russell. So, I turned the battery banks off to buy myself some time to correct my mistake.”
I strain to recall Beth getting up that night but remember the Dramamine she’d given me. I’d been out cold.
