“She was never at that party,” Regan continued. “She never saw those kids. She never touched that Bronco. She never stole that bike. She is in Cabo with her mother.”
The word mother cracked something open in the room.
Regan didn’t seem to notice.
Or maybe she noticed and didn’t care.
Hacker’s jaw tightened. “I’ll build the trail. Tickets, hotel, location noise, posts scheduled, receipts. I’ll make it airtight.”
Nate muttered beside me, “Airtight is doing a lot of work.”
Regan’s eyes snapped to him.
He shut up.
Smart man.
I wasn’t as smart.
“You really think that’s going to work?” I asked.
Every head turned toward me.
Edge came down another step.
Slowly.
“What did you say?”
I should have shut my mouth.
I didn’t.
Because I had seen the scene. I had seen the phones. I had seen the kids. I had seen enough modern messes to know old-school cleanup didn’t work the way it used to. Not when every rich kid had video, every parent had lawyers, and every story could be online before the fire trucks finished hosing down the cars.
“I said, do you think that’s going to work?” I repeated. “Because everyone saw her face.”
Regan came down the stairs now, one step at a time, grief giving her spine a hard, brutal shape.
“The kids were drunk,” she said.
I held her gaze. “Yes.”
“Drugged.”
“Probably.”
“Hallucinating.”
“Some of them.”
“They were screaming about ghosts,” she snapped. “About curses. About Mandy. About things none of them understand. None of those kids could pass a drug test right now if their trust funds depended on it.”
“That helps,” I said.
“My daughter didn’t do anything.”
The room went so still I heard a floorboard settle.
