Forty-Two
Once I finish telling Miles everything, he sits silently, a look of horror on his face. He’d heard about JT’s death—apparently JT has a younger brother who is in Miles’s class and word spread pretty quickly. But he thought it was an accident like everyone else did.
“We have to tell the police,” Miles says.
“They won’t believe us. All it will do is show that I’m a fraud and can’t be trusted.”
“We have to dosomething! Dude, I knew there was something off about him. But I thought he was traumatized from losing his brother, I didn’t think he was a complete psychopath.”
“Well, he is. And he threatened you and your family. I didn’t want to tell you because I was scared he’d hurt you all.”
Miles shakes his head. “He’d do it anyway.” Then he grabs my hand and squeezes it. “I’m glad you told me. At least now I can keep a better eye out. But we do need to tell someone. Maybe if we get you out of town first, I can go to the police. I’ll tell them it’s a hunch.”
“Without proof, they’re going to have to investigate on their own. And Easton will know you said something. He’ll figure it out.”
“But he can’t make a move on us while the police are watching him.”
“He’s patient. He’ll wait years if he has to.”
“Shit.” Miles jumps up and starts pacing the room, chewing his lip. It makes me smile because I know he’s thinking. So I watch him. “We have to find something on him. He was ten, he couldn’t have gotten away with it so easily. So let’s start there. He’s ten, he kills his brother. Then what?”
“He has to hide the body. The police never found it, so it’s gotta be somewhere.”
“He wasn’t old enough to drive, and it would’ve looked mighty suspicious if he was pulling his brother’s dead body down the street in a wagon.” Miles snaps his fingers. “The bay! He must have tied him to a cinder block or filled his pockets with rocks and thrown him out there.”
“Didn’t they do a search when they thought he drowned?”
He nods. “You’re right, they did. They were out there for days.” Miles plops down in his desk chair. “He had to have had help. If you thought it was Marcus before, my money is on him.”
I bite my lip so I don’t smile. We’re talking dark stuff, but Miles agreeing with me gives me a slight sense of validation. “So where would Marcus take a body? You’re the true crime aficionado—”
“Nut.” Miles smirks at me and I can’t help but smile back.
“Right. So if an adult did help him and they knew they had to hide a body, what did they do?”
“Bury it somewhere. But bodies turn up eventually. Property development or animals dig them up. Sometimes weather will do it.”
And if a body hasn’t been found yet, we aren’t going to stumble upon it now. We don’t even knowwhereEaston killed Nate. He could have walked up to where he killed JT and thrown him over the cliff. But then theyfoundJT’s body. Sure, his Jeep being parked up there probably helped, but they would eventually have found Nate there sometime over the past ten years.
Easton said that was where Marcus used to take them to watch fireworks, so maybe Marcus would have been smart enough not to take the body there.
But if Marcus hid the body, it means we’ll never find it. He’s a criminal defense attorney; he knows how important a body is to a case.
So instead I try to think like Easton. He’s always several steps ahead... and he wouldn’twantMarcus’s help. He’d want to do it alone. Not want—hewoulddo it alone. Because he thinks he’s so much smarter than everyone else. It would be something he’d want to keep from his family, to prove how much better he is than them.
His own secret.
I gasp.
My whole body tingles, starting with my cheeks as the blood rushes to them, then slowly out to my extremities. He would absolutely do it on his own. But Easton would also have a plan. He said he fantasized about it for months.
“What?” Miles asks.
He didn’t kill Nate at the house because even Easton knows his limitations. He told the police he was with JT, and his parents believed him because he wasn’t home.
“The island,” I finally say.
Easton got his brother to paddle out to the island in a kayak. To their fort. He killed him there and left the body. The secret fort even his parents didn’t know about. And then, ten years later, when he was playing a new game, he decided to take me out there and show it to me. To show me he knows I’m not his bother. To flaunt how smart he is by showing me exactly where he hid the real Nate’s body.
