I pull free, looking Elliott in the eye. He steps back, increasing the space between us. “What?” he asks. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing,” I say. “Forget about it.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s just...”
“What?”
“What do you mean bywe, Elliott? What have you been keeping from me?”
Elliott’s gaze darts to the police officer. He squints in the sunlight before lowering his eyes back to mine. He says, his voice colder than before, “Is this about the blood on my shoes again?” I don’t say, watching as he inhales, as he blows out a noisy breath. “I told you. It was probably mine. I probably cut myself with the fishing line.”
I shift in place, trying to slow my breath.
Because he didn’t. He didn’t tell me that. The first time I asked him about the blood on his shoes, he said it was from bleeding the fish.
His story’s changing.
Elliott steps closer, closing the gap between us. He wags his finger at me and says, “To be clear, I didn’t actually meanwe, Court. I meantyou. I was trying not to make you feel bad for lying to me. You told me you were going to get milk, and then you go and almost get yourself killed.Youneed to start being honest withme.”
Maybe he means that.
Or maybe he’s deflecting blame.
He says, “All you had to say was yes, that you promise not to keep things from me anymore. You didn’t have to turn it into a whole thing.”
I wonder if I did that, if I turned nothing into something.
Elliott starts to walk away, to close the liftgate. “Listen, before we go in,” I say.
“What?” he asks, his movements jerky as he jabs at the button on the back of the car. “What now?”
I hesitate at first, but then say, “There’s something else I have to tell you, something Detective Evans told me. It’s about Wyatt. The Benadryl.”
Elliott pulls his eyes together, trenches forming between them.
“What about it?” he asks.
“He didn’t take it like he said he did.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because they searched the cottage. There was no Benadryl there. Not a bottle of it and not pills. I think...” I say, my mouth dry. “I think that Wyatt was lying about taking Benadryl.”
“Why would he lie about that?” Elliott asks, but the answer comes to him just as soon as he does, and his posture stiffens, straightening. Without the Benadryl, Wyatt would have heard people screaming. He would have heard Emily and Nolan begging and fighting for their lives. He would have heard Nolanbeing beaten to death just outside his bedroom door, the heavy, deadened sound of the bat striking human flesh and bone. He would have woken up at the sound of it, maybe risen from bed and gone to the door, laid his hand on the handle, opened it.
“What do you think Wyatt is keeping from us?” I ask. “What did he see?”
“I don’t know, I—” Elliott starts to say, but he stops all of a sudden, his words evaporating into air. His eyes lift, looking past me.
I spin around. I follow Elliott’s gaze to see Wyatt, standing in the open door beside Mae.
“Are you talking about me?”
Reese
The new girl and her family check in to the resort the next afternoon. I’m at the lodge with Cass and Mae when it happens, when I see her walk in with her dark brown hair, her flawless skin and the kind of smile that actually turns heads. There is grace in the way she walks, and I’d bet my life that back home—wherever home is for her—she’s popular, has a lot of friends, is captain of the volleyball team and is the kind of girl that every guy wants and that every girl wants to be.
