“No, no, it’s fine.” He waves us off. “Just…bad memories.”

“Thanks for talking to us.”

Matt nods and walks us to the door. “See you around.” He smiles, but his eyes aren’t in it. The door shuts behind us, and I hear the sound of the bolt sliding into place as we head to the stairs.

“Well, what do you think?” Trev asks when we get to the truck.

“He’s tall enough to be the killer,” I say, stepping up into the cab. I fasten my seat belt and turn the key in the ignition. “I know he has guns. Adam goes hunting with him all the time.”

“Just about every guy has a gun around here,” Trev points out as I back out into the street. “I have a gun.”

“You have your dad’s old pistol. Have you ever even shot it?”

“Sure. It’d be stupid to have a gun I didn’t know how to use. I taught Mina, too.”

“When was this?” I don’t remember Mina ever mentioning it.

“When you were in Portland. She asked me to. She…” Trev frowns. “She asked me right around Christmas.”

“When she was getting the threats.”

“So why didn’t she take it with her that night?” Trev asks, and there’s this angry note in his voice that makes me flinch. “She knew where it was, how to use it. She could’ve protected herself.”

“She didn’t bring the gun because she didn’t suspect whoever she was meeting,” I say.

We slow to a halt at the stoplight at the end of the street, and out of the corner of my eye, I can see a muscle in Trev’s jaw twitching. It’s eating at him, that Mina knew she was in enough danger to want to learn how to shoot but had kept her secrets too long.

“Matt doesn’t think much of Detective James,” I say, because I hate how well Trev can blame himself. I need to steer him away from this.

“Neither do you,” Trev points out.

I roll my eyes. “That’s because Detective James gets an idea in his head and won’t budge from it. How much progress has he made in all these months chasing after nonexistent drug leads? If he’d done his job the first time, Mina wouldn’t have had to go after the guy who took Jackie. He’s failed to catch the same killer twice. That’s his fault, too.”

“Look, I’m pissed at him, too, but eventually, we’ll take all of this stuff to him. We’ll have to get along.”

“He’s an ass.”

“Well, let’s say that Matt is responsible,” Trev says. “What’s his motivation for getting rid of Jackie?”

I flip the turn signal at the stop sign, looking both ways. “Did they fight?”

“Sometimes. I think she was pissed he was smoking so much pot. She was trying for a scholarship so her parents wouldn’t have to pay for college. Spent a lot of time working out, running drills, studying so her grades were good enough. She wanted him to keep up.”

I raise an eyebrow. “So, what—he kills her ’cause she’s bugging him about weed?”

“Maybe it was an accident,” Trev says. “She disappeared out on Clear Creek; that’s getting into the woods. Maybe they went hiking or they were fighting and she fell?”

“Then why wouldn’t he just call the rangers and tell them it was an accident? Accidents happen in the Siskiyous all the time. No, someone took Jackie and killed her and probably dumped her somewhere. That’s why no one’s ever found her body.”

“This is so messed up,” Trev says under his breath.

“I know,” I say. We sit in silence for a long moment. “You still up for going to talk to Jack Dennings?”

“I can’t let you go alone,” he says, which isn’t really an answer, but I’ll take it.

“Then get my phone out. I have the directions on it.”

We’re quiet on the drive to Jack Dennings’s place out in Irving Falls. Trev fiddles with the radio, finding an old-school country station, and Merle Haggard’s worn voice fills the cab of the truck as I focus on the road.

I don’t know what to say to him when it’s about normal stuff. So I keep quiet and roll down the window, trying to get some relief from the heat, but the hot air blasts me, blowing my hair back in my face. The truck’s AC has been broken for as long as I can remember, and though it’s not even noon, it’s in the triple digits already. Sweat collects at the small of my back, and I pull my hair off my neck with one hand, slinging it over my shoulder.

He watches me out of the corner of his eye. I pretend not to notice. It’s easier.

The air cools as we keep driving. Climbing up and out of the valley, we’re surrounded by mountains on both sides, thick with pines, the houses set in the far reaches of the woods where privacy is paramount. About twenty miles ahead is the waterfall the town is named for, but Jack ­Dennings lives on the outskirts, a real backwoods sort of man.

“This is it,” I say, slowing down at the life-size iron turkey nailed on top of the wooden mailbox. We weave through the thickets of digger pines and barbed wire fencing that line the dirt road, and it twists and turns for a few miles before we come across the house, set far back in the taller trees. It’s a simple little one-story rancher, stretched out low on the hilly terrain.

Trev and I get out of the truck and walk up to the door to knock. Dogs bark frantically inside, but there’s no answer. After a minute, Trev steps back and shades his eyes against the sun. He gestures to the old two-tone Ford parked underneath an oak tree. “Maybe he’s around back?”

I follow him, a foot behind as we circle around the house. There’s a neat vegetable garden with sunflowers planted around the border, and beyond that a huge chain-link enclosure, brimming with lush green plants.

Then I hear it.

A click.

It’s familiar.

Dread surges through me. I’m blocking Trev. Maybe I can save him, like I should’ve saved her.

I spin around, instinctually, toward the noise, and for the second time in my life, I’m looking down the barrel of a gun.

50

FOUR MONTHS AGO (SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD)

Detective James is tall, at least six and a half feet, with slick dark hair and a worn plaid shirt. He sits on my mom’s red couch, and the cup of coffee looks tiny in his large hands.

My mom places her hand on my shoulder. “Sophie, this is ­Detective James. He has some questions for you.”

I’m ready to answer them. He’s safe. He’s police. If I just tell the truth, everything will be fine. He’s going to find her killer.

I have to repeat it a few times in my head before I can venture further into the room.

“Hi,” I say. “Do you want me to sit?” I ask.

“Hello, Sophie.” He stands up briefly to shake my hand and nods, short and clipped. His face is grim, like he’s seen it all and then some.

I sit down in my dad’s armchair across from the couch, folding my good leg underneath me. I stretch out my bad one, the flex brace on my knee only letting me get so far. My mom hovers in the doorway, arms folded, her eyes on the detective. I can hear Dad moving around in the kitchen, staying close so he can eavesdrop.

Detective James pulls out a notepad. “Sophie, can you tell me who attacked you and Mina?”

“No. He was wearing a mask.”

“You’d never seen him before?”

I frown. Did he not hear me? “I don’t know. He was wearing a ski mask.”

“But it was a man?”

“Yes. He was tall. Over six feet. That’s really all I can tell you about him. He had a big coat on; I’m not sure if he was heavy or thin.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Not at first. He…” I can feel my face scrunching as I try to think, and it pulls sharply on the stitches swirling across my forehead, ending at my hairline. “He said something. After he hit me. Right before I passed out, I heard him. He said something to Mina.”

“And what was that?” Detective James asks.

I have to think about it, pick it apart through the tumult of fear and pain and panic that had surged through me in that moment. “He said, ‘I warned you.’”

The detective scribbles something down on his notepad. “Had someone been threatening Mina? Had she been fighting with someone? Having problems with anyone?”

“I don’t know…I don’t think so. I—”

“Why don’t you tell me why you girls were out at Booker’s Point?” he interrupts. “Your mom says that you told her you were going to a friend’s place—Amber Vernon—but Booker’s Point is a good thirty miles away from her house.”

“We were going to Amber’s,” I say. “But Mina had to take a detour to the Point. She was meeting someone for a story.”

“A story?”

“She has an internship at the Beacon.” I stop, my lips pressing together tightly. “Had,” I correct myself. “She had an internship.”

“She didn’t tell you who she was meeting?” The skeptical note in his voice makes my mother bristle, the lawyer coming out in her face.

“No. She wouldn’t tell me. She said she didn’t want to jinx it. She was excited, though. It was important to her.”

“Okay,” Detective James says. For almost a minute, he’s silent, writing on his notepad. Then he looks up, and my mouth goes dry at the look on his face—someone zeroing in for the kill. “Booker’s Point is well known as the place to go for drug deals,” he says. “It would be understandable, for someone with your history, to return to bad habits.”

“We weren’t out there for a drug deal,” I say. “Test me again. Go get me a cup right now to pee in. I don’t care what anyone’s saying. Kyle’s lying. Mina was meeting someone for a story. Ask her super­visor at the paper what she was working on. Ask the newspaper staff. Go through her computer. That’s where you’ll find your killer.”

“And the drugs in your jacket?” Detective James asks. “Were those part of Mina’s story, too? Or did they just appear out of nowhere?”