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It isn't the gradual unease I've been carrying since Serena failed to answer the first call, or even the cold dread that settled in when I recognized Cebastian's car. This is something uglier, something that burns through every unreasonable explanation I’ve been manufacturing and leaves nothing behind but the facts. Serena photographed Cebastian's car at two fourteen. She hasn't contacted anyone since. Cebastian has a connection to this case he deliberately kept from me, his father appears on the recording Casey made shortly before she disappeared, and Serena is currently alone somewhere with information Cebastian has spent years pretending has nothing to do with him.
When I try to call again, my hand is shaking badly enough that I hit the wrong part of the screen the first time. I swear, correct it, and press the phone so hard against my ear that the edge bites into my skin. The ringing seems impossibly loud in the room.
The call goes to voicemail.
“Fuck.” I hang up and immediately open Serena's messages, staring at the last thing I sent her. Delivered. Still unread. “Fuck!”
“Call Evan,” Tamsin says.
Simon is already doing it.
I start pacing because standing still has become impossible. Three steps toward the door, turn, three back toward the bed. Faun tracks me from my mother's arms, his enormous ears swiveling every time I change direction. My thoughts are moving too quickly to hold on to any of them. Cebastian knows where we're staying. He knows Serena is involved. He knows what we've found because I've spent the last week feeding him pieces of the investigation every time he demanded an update. Every conversation I dismissed as him being a controlling asshole rearranges itself in my head now, each question now carrying a different weight.
What do they know?
Who has access?
How close are you?
I told him.
Maybe not everything. Never everything. But enough.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” I drag both hands over my face. “I've been giving him information.”
“You didn't know,” Simon says.
“I should have.”
“How?” Tamsin turns on me so sharply that I stop pacing. “How exactly were you supposed to know your producer was connected to a seventeen-year-old murder?”
I don't have an answer, but that doesn't stop me from trying to manufacture one. Every missed sign is obvious now because hindsight is a sadistic fucking thing. Cebastian pushing me toward this case. Cebastian demanding updates. Cebastian wanting access, names, progress, anything usable. I thought he wanted an episode.
In reality, he wanted to know how close we were getting.
Tamsin is still staring at her phone. “She sent this from the ridge. We know where she was at two fourteen, so we start there. Police can search the trail, the road below it, the property—”
“They'll find the car tracks,” Simon adds. “Maybe cameras somewhere on the road. Traffic lights, businesses, houses. Something.”
“It's Stillwater,” Tamsin snaps. “There are barely fucking traffic lights.”
They're talking faster now, building possibilities on top of one another, and I try to follow them. I really fucking try. Search the ridge. Trace the car. Find cameras. Call Evan. Call Mara. Every option requires time, and time is the only thing I can think about.
Because I've done this before.
Hundreds of hours spent studying the stupid decisions people make after committing crimes. The patterns they don't realize are patterns because they feel natural from the inside. Offenders return to places they know. They choose locations that have worked before. Familiar roads. Familiar buildings. Familiar exits. They convince themselves repetition is strategy because the first time didn't get them caught.
There is a place Cebastian knows. A place tied to this case that has been sitting empty for years. Somewhere isolated enough that nobody would see a car parked nearby, close enough to the river that noise disappears beneath rushing water. Somewhere connected to his childhood, to Casey, to all the shit he thought he'd left buried here.
Tamsin nervously chews her thumb nail. “Even if we know he took her, how the fuck are we supposed to find where he took her?”
The answer is already there. “I know exactly where they are.”
29
CAUSE AND MANNER
SERENA
