Lucy opens her mouth and shuts it again, and then nods. “Sorry,” she says in that charming, half-apologetic tone that puts people at their ease. “I didn’t want to get Gus in trouble.”

  The two women don’t look mollified, exactly, but Veronica does ruffle Gus’s hair before they move on without us.

  As soon as they’ve disappeared up the hill, Gus looks back at me.

  “You can come out, Nelson,” he says a little roughly.

  My stomach twists.

  We haven’t been friends, haven’t talked in years. But hearing that familiar voice—and knowing he just covered for me—makes my breath hitch strangely in my throat.

  I step out, staring at him and then up at the house.

  The mansion looms through the twisted branches, distant and imposing at the top of the hill. The lawn that slopes toward the house is well groomed, the grass close-cropped, vicious in its perfection.

  A pool, still covered for the winter, stretches out behind the house, and then wooden steps lead up to a deck high above the ground with covered lawn chairs and a grill. Beyond all of that is a greenhouse, and then past that a mosaic path winds its way toward a gazebo. The path leads on past the gazebo into the forest.

  Even when I was friends with Gus, I was never invited into the big house. The pool, though—he snuck me in there a few times before we were enemies.

  This house has seen some shit, Gus used to say.

  And it may be nice and shiny and well kept, but it’s old and I think Gus might be right, about just this one thing. He was wrong about literally everything else, but he was right about this.

  Lucy is flushed and wide-eyed, her red hair even more tousled than it was when she fell off my bike. “Hi,” she says.

  “What the hell is going on?” I glare at her.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, okay, but when was I supposed to tell you?”

  “Right away?” I snap.

  “Does anyone want to tell me what’s going on?” Gus snaps. “Why are you both lurking around the woods?”

  “You didn’t have to cover for me,” I mutter, knowing I’m being an ass about this and not caring.

  My fingers find the cuff bracelet Dad gave me. It was both something to fidget with when I got overwhelmed and a tangible reminder he was with me and I’d be okay; something that sometimes helped when I was ready to snap at someone I shouldn’t.

  “Yeah, I did,” Gus says irritably.

  As I get closer, I realize his eyes are red and a little puffy.

  “Gus,” I say hesitantly.

  “Don’t,” he says. “I was out here because my house is a fucking prison, and if I have to look at any of them for a single second longer, I’ll lose it. What are you doing out here?”

  I exchange a glance with Lucy.

  “Well, my mom told me not to come back here,” Lucy says, sliding a bit so she’s standing closer to me than to Gus. “So I wasn’t planning on just walking in the front door. She’s also on her way here with the sheriff, because she’s helping with the investigation, so we have to look around quick or we are—”

  “Fucked,” I finish for her.

  She blushes.

  “I…You’re investigating?” Gus narrows his eyes at both of us. “Who are you, Sherlock Fucking Holmes?”

  “My mom’s a private investigator,” Lucy says hotly, and then reddens again. “I mean, I know you know that. But I’m actually just trying to…to learn a little more about her. She and I aren’t super close.” She shoots me a hesitant look, as if expecting me to give her more shit for not knowing where her mom is from.

  “You know why I’m here,” I tell Gus tightly.

  He ducks his head. “I’m sorry they questioned your mom,” he says in a small voice. “I didn’t—I’ll help you, okay? Something bad happened to—to my grandpa and me—”

  He chokes on the rest of the words, and because Lucy is a better person than I am, she reaches out and places a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently.

  “Of course you can help,” she says kindly. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine what this is like for you.”

  If Dad was here, he’d be kind, too, maybe even pull Gus into a big hug. He’d give me that look, the one that says play nice, but he’s not here, he’s not, and even if it’s not Gus’s fault specifically, it was his family that did it.

  So I stay where I am, and I keep hold of my anger because it’s the only thing that’s been keeping me on my feet all these years.

  “Okay,” I say finally. “Fine. We can work together. But if you—”

  “Audrey.” Lucy puts her hand on my arm, too, her touch warm, cutting off the stream of sharp, unkind words I had ready for Gus.

  “Yeah,” Gus says. “Sure, Nelson, I know. Do you want inside the house, then? We can look in my aunt’s office. Oh, also, you should know. My dad is back in town. Got back the night G—my grandpa died.”

  Lucy nods slowly, but I feel the jolt of it in my stomach.

  Curtis Anselm was the black sheep of the family, leaving his son behind when he went off to go his own way, playing in a shitty band that toured on Pierce Anselm’s money until Pierce got sick of his shit and threatened to disinherit him, and then toured on money Curtis found—well, the stories change every time they’re told. Some say the money was from selling drugs, some say it was stolen from Pierce, but he was too prideful to send the cops after his own kid. Some, of course, say it was just the child support money he got from his ex-wife before he gave up custody of his son completely.

  Either way: Now he’s back.

  “Yes,” I say. “Let’s go inside.”

  Gus gets us in the back door, punching in a code, but leaning his shoulder over it so that I can’t see. He doesn’t take any such precautions with Lucy, who he allows to stand next to him as he enters the numbers.

  He leads us down a long hallway. “Offices first?” he asks. “We’ll have to be quiet. Blake can hear just about anything, and she won’t want anyone snooping in here.”

  I don’t know what we’re looking for, or what we’ll find, but it’s a place to start. It’s something, and without Mom I don’t have anything at all, so I have to try.

  “Third floor,” Lucy answers too loudly, chewing her lip a little.

  “You’re loud,” I hiss at her as we tiptoe down the wide hallway. “I hope you know how to interrogate people, or find clues, because you are shit at the stealth part of detective work.”

  The proud smile on her face does not falter for a moment. There’s a warmth to her, and I draw closer to her as if she is the sun, as if being pulled into her orbit will somehow make the cold in my chest disappear.

  It can’t, of course.

  Not after Friday night.

  But she makes me forget, at least.

  And I like that.

  “We could also check in Blake’s room?” Lucy asks as we trail behind Gus. I marvel at her daring.

  How can someone be afraid of so many things—even my damn bike—but break into the Anselm mansion as if she has never heard of fear?

  But maybe it’s just that she doesn’t know to fear these people. Maybe her mom didn’t warn her, or maybe she’s safe because of her connection to the Anselms. Maybe she’s not the kind of girl they’d level a gun at if they saw her in the woods outside their house.

  Maybe she’s not a girl like me.

  When my eyes adjust to the dim light, I realize we’ve found ourselves in a long room with stadium seating. A massive screen is mounted on the wall, and speakers tower on either side of the room.

  I let out a low whistle. “You have your own movie theater?”

  Lucy glances back at me. She seems less overwhelmed by the riches than I am.

  Maybe her fancy detective mom can afford this kind of thing. Maybe this opulence doesn’t shock them.

  But this room is bigger than my entire home.

  Gus doesn’t look back at all, just pauses at the door to check that we don’t have any company.

  I keep moving, tiptoeing toward the door at the opposite end, though I think my feet would be soundless on the soft carpet regardless.

  How much would it cost, to build and furnish just this one room? A year of my mom’s salary? Two?

  Anger tightens my shoulders, and I hurry to catch up with Lucy and Gus.

  It isn’t just.

  Nothing about this is just.

  The only justice we got was Pierce Anselm’s death.

  But the rest of the Anselm family, they get to keep living in this splendor while the rest of us suffer. While our dads die. While we struggle through, choosing between peanut butter and corn flakes at the grocery store, picking up extra hours at work while bills pile up.

  And the Anselms could help, they could help this whole town, and they choose not to. They choose to stay up on this well-groomed hill, inside their fancy security gates, and none of it ever, ever trickles down to us.

  And that won’t change.

  Not unless we do something about them ourselves.

  “Come on,” Lucy whispers, pulling me back to the moment. She and Gus are both looking at me strangely.

  And she might be here to solve a murder, like she said, because Lucy Preston’s life has been entangled with the Anselms since before she was born. Because she needs to understand them to understand what happened.

  But me?

  Maybe I’m here to prove to the world that Pierce Anselm and the rest of his family deserved exactly what they got.

  We tiptoe to the end of the hallway, Gus at the lead. At the end is a balcony opening over the lower floor—the main floor, which I can see from here is a wide, empty space with tall, arched bay windows. Beside the little alcove where we crouch is a spiral staircase leading down to the living room.

  Lucy and I creep forward, our bodies pressed against the wall, until we’re as close to the edge as we dare.

  “This is a bad idea,” Lucy whispers to me.

  “We should use the back stairs,” Gus whispers back.

  I shoot her an exasperated look, but my heart is thundering in my chest. “Come on, Sundress.” I jerk my head to the left, ignoring Gus completely. “Let’s take these stairs.”

  Lucy follows, her body pressed close to mine. It’s an instinctive thing for her, I think, like she’s scared and if she stands closer to me, so close we’re almost touching, she feels a little less scared.

  So I let her.

  Once we’re safely out of the hallway and on the stairs to the third floor, Lucy lets out her breath in a whoosh of air. “Do you know Blake?” she asks me.

  “Everyone knows Blake.”

  “She’s scary.” Lucy shivers a little. “I think—I think she had a gun. When they were in the woods. She reached for her hip. My mom does that when she’s scared.”

  “She does,” Gus says softly.

  “You thought she had a gun and you decided to stomp on out there and say hello?” I whirl around, so sharply that Lucy trips on her own feet and falls against me hard. I hold her up by her forearm, my fingers digging into her skin. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Well,” Lucy says, flushing again. “It seemed like a good idea at the time? I thought she probably wouldn’t shoot me?”

  “Probably?” I let her go, and she nearly falls again, though this time she rights herself on the banister. “Come on. We have offices to search.” I shoot a look at Gus, who is looking at us both strangely.

  When we reach the third floor, a long hallway stretches out in front of us. To our right is a bathroom, ornate and wide. There is a bathtub and a shower, and this isn’t even the primary bathroom. The next room is a sunlit space facing south, with plants hanging. There is another sofa and more bookshelves and a grand piano.

  There’s another grand piano in their living room on the main floor, of course.

  Because who doesn’t need one grand piano for their living room and one for their private parlor?

  The next two rooms are clearly offices, opposite each other. On each mahogany door is a tasteful little sign, one that says HIS, one that says HERS.

  “We can split up?” Lucy suggests.

  “That’s exactly what they say in horror movies,” I tell her. “Then they die.”

  She shudders. “I thought I was morbid.”

  “You’re both morbid,” Gus mutters. “I can get us into my aunt’s office. She’s the only one with a passcode on her door.” He turns away from us, stopping at a door at the end of the hall and hunching over the keypad.

  “What are we looking for?” Lucy asks in a hushed voice.

  “Blood,” I tell her.

  She lets out a small sound that is half whimper, half hysterical giggle, and then immediately shoots a guilty look at Gus.

  I don’t wait for Blake’s office. Instead, I shove open Pierce’s door. His office is bigger than our whole trailer. His desk is large, made out of dark wood, and there’s an empty leather swivel chair behind it. A cup of fancy pens with his name on it. A laptop, which is—

  Open.

  “Check the laptop,” I tell Lucy.

  There are long floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in here, all filled with books. There are mostly law books, and a few of the insufferable businessman self-help books about how you, too, can become a millionaire if you just work hard and already have rich parents and a million dollars. But there is one set of shelves with thriller novels from top to bottom.

  Mom would love a space like this. Dad, too.

  But instead, Mom and I got the trailer and Dad got the cemetery.

  I slam my fist down onto his stupid desk. The mahogany—or what the fuck ever it’s made of—hurts my hand.

  “What happened to quiet?” Lucy snaps. “You’re gonna get us caught.”

  Gus enters the room then, eyes wide. “I thought we were going into Blake’s office,” he says snappishly. “My grandpa didn’t even do any work in here. It was mostly Blake and Grandma running all the business stuff.”

  I ignore him and sweep the room from one end to the other, my steps slow, my eyes on the carpet. The room is immaculate from the neatly dusted bookshelves to the tidy desk to the smooth hardwood floors. Beneath his swivel chair is a tastefully simple rug.

  “Anything on the laptop?” I ask her.

  Lucy shakes her head, avoiding Gus’s look of annoyance. “I could get in if I had an install disk to bypass the password,” she says. “But I don’t think we have the time for that. What would we be looking for on his computer, anyway?”

  I take a deep breath. I don’t know her well enough to tell her about the Post-it note summoning me to the theme park, about the texts that said, I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know. I don’t know her nearly well enough for that, and I’m definitely not about to tell Gus that.

  But I think Pierce might have been about to tell me the truth about what happened to my dad.

  “I don’t know,” I lie.

  She steps away from the computer, and I flatten the rug for her so she doesn’t trip.

  Lucy looks up at me, a hint of a smile tugging at her lips. “Thanks,” she says. “Me and rugs, we don’t always get along.”

  “Veronica’s office next?” I ask. My eyes drop to the rug again.

  “Hang on,” Lucy says. “The rug.”

  There’s a tag on the edge of it, like it’s brand-new. “Probably to protect the hardwood?”

  “I don’t know,” Gus says uncertainly. “Can there be a clue in a rug?” He looks skeptical. “We could—”

  But Lucy has a light in her eyes, and she moves the office chair back and flips the rug up.

  Beneath it is a dark red stain, darker than the wood.

  “Oh no,” Lucy says. “Oh no, no, no—”

  I lunge forward, press my hand over her mouth. “Shh, shh,” I whisper. “I got you. Shh.” I move her gently backward, my hand firm on her shoulder. “I’m gonna take a picture, okay? For evidence? Don’t look. Don’t look if you don’t want to.”

  “Oh god.” Gus, too, looks as if he’s about to throw up. “No. No.”

  He turns and nearly runs from the room, his feet thumping on the hardwood floor as he leaves us behind. I do feel for him now, despite myself. Anselm or not, it was pain I saw in his face, and horror so deep he couldn’t stay here a moment longer.

  And Lucy hasn’t seen death before, like I have. She didn’t see Pierce fall from the ride. Didn’t see him break when he hit the ground.

  She didn’t watch her dad die in front of her.

  So I take the picture of the bloodstained floor and then kick the rug back into place. Shove the phone into my pocket, just as Lucy says in a high, shaky voice—

  “Oh. Hi, Mom.”

  “Lucy?” Katy is standing in the doorway, her eyes flashing. “What the hell are you doing here? Who is—Oh. You’re Langley’s kid.”

  Audrey’s eyes snap to Mom’s. “You must be Katy Preston.”

  “Yes,” she says icily. “Both of you are coming with me now.”

  Audrey laughs recklessly, harsh and loud. The sound chills me. And also excites me, just a little bit. Like if Audrey looked at me and said something wild like, Let’s run, I’d take her hand and do it, consequences be damned.

  “Why would I do that?” Audrey demands.

  Katy levels a glare at both of us. “Because I won’t tell the Anselm women you’re here,” she says. “And because I can bring you to your mom.”

  “Katy,” I say hesitantly. “Katy, this is Audrey? I…made a friend. And also, the Anselms might know anyway? Because Gus was here?”

  “I talked to Gus,” she says. “He was panicking just now, ran out of here and down the stairs and came to get me. He said I needed to get both of you out of here right away, and I agree. With me, both of you. Now.”

  Katy stalks down the hallway, and I grab Audrey’s hand, tug her after me.

  “We’ll come back,” I whisper in her ear. “I promise.”

  “Where’s my mom?” Audrey snaps.

  It’s not that Audrey has been the most approachable or gentle today with me, not by any means, but the way she changes when there’s an adult in the room is truly incredible. She is all hard edges, demanding answers and shooting daggers with her eyes.

 

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