His three friends came out of the store. The one with the gray eyes lit up a cigarette, ignoring a no-smoking sign by the fuel pumps, and sucked in the smoke like a starving man getting a long-awaited meal. The other two triumphantly removed a selection of candy from under their shirts as they scrambled into the cab next to Jenny. They’d obviously stolen their stash without Rick noticing. Jenny was stuck in the middle. The driver sat next to her and the other two boys sat between her and the front passenger door. I could tell that she wasn’t happy about being boxed in.

The one with gray eyes jumped into the back with me, staring into space as he sucked on his cigarette. Through the glass partition, I saw the two boys in front swigging from a half-empty liquor bottle as they turned on the truck engine and drove out of the gas station. One of them offered Jenny a sip directly from the bottle. She shook her head.

When we reached the road, we made a turn so fast that I catapulted against the truck, bruising my shoulder so painfully that I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from crying. The boy with the gray eyes helped me up. He told me to hold tight on to the side of the truck so I wouldn’t hurt myself again.

“Please tell him to drive slower,” I pleaded.

“I’ll tell him first chance I get. What’s your name?” he asked, trying to distract me.

“Hannah,” I answered. “What’s your name?”

“Bobby,” he said.

We stopped abruptly by the one-way bridge. We had to wait for two cars and a pickup to cross over before it was our turn. While we waited, Bobby jumped down and spoke to the driver. I don’t know what he said. They were arguing about something. He didn’t return to the truck. He walked off back toward the gas station, smoking his cigarette. A couple of times he turned around, like he was unsure about something. But he kept walking anyway. I watched him disappear in a cloud of dust as we drove off, across the bridge and up the hill toward my house.

We drove so fast that my knuckles were white from holding the side of the truck so tight. My hair was blowing across my face. I couldn’t see a thing. When we came around a turn, the truck slowed down. I was relieved to see the square smudge of our white house and the faint red of our rusty roof set among the pine trees. I expected we’d be dropped off by our front door, or at least at the start of the dirt driveway that led to our house from the main road. Instead, the truck pulled up on the main road, halfway up the hill. We still had to cross the field to get home.

“You can get out now,” the driver shouted through the partially open window. I tossed out the beach bag and jumped down. I walked over to the passenger door of the cab and waited for Jenny to get out.

She was trapped between them in the middle of the cab. She couldn’t get out unless either the driver or the other passengers climbed out first. Nobody made any attempt to move. Jenny sat stiffly as they drank from the liquor bottle, passing it to each other over her lap. It was starting to rain heavily and I was getting drenched.

I knocked on the passenger window. The boy sitting right next to it rolled down the window, leaving a narrow gap.

“Your sister says she wants to go fishing with us,” he shouted over the blustering engine. I choked from the foul stench of liquor on his breath, which wafted in my face through the narrow gap.

“Jenny hates fishing,” I said.

“I reckon by the time we’re done teaching her, fishing is going to be her favorite sport.” He smirked. “She’ll be home soon.”

With a screech, the truck sped off in the opposite direction from the sea.

18

Rachel

The radio station receptionist who’d greeted Rachel hours earlier when she’d arrived had long gone when she emerged from the soundproof room after recording the podcast. The overhead office lights were off. The only people around were recording the evening program inside a studio with a red “On Air” sign illuminated above the closed doors.

Rachel let herself out of the building. It was early evening and she was exhausted. The cumulative effects of four to five hours’ sleep each night were taking a toll. She was well aware that she needed to break the unhealthy pattern she’d fallen into since arriving in Neapolis. Too little sleep, too much fast food on the run. No regular exercise. Back home she ran four mornings a week. Since arriving in Neapolis, she hadn’t done a single proper run unless sprinting across the park to visit the City Hall archive counted as a workout.

As she crossed the road to her car, Rachel saw a letter fluttering on her windshield. She sighed. She was getting tired of Hannah’s games. Rachel tossed the letter onto the front passenger seat and put on her seat belt. She had no intention of hastily tearing the envelope open and reading the letter from behind the steering wheel as she’d done at the highway rest stop. It was time to try a new tack. To show no interest in Hannah’s letters. Perhaps that was the way to draw Hannah out so they could meet, and talk in person, rather than play this cat-and-mouse game—the purpose of which Rachel couldn’t begin to fathom.

Pete was right. The podcast needed to be Rachel’s sole focus. There wasn’t time to investigate Jenny Stills’s death. Maybe, Rachel thought, once the trial was over she’d stay in Neapolis for a few days longer and see what she could find out. In the meantime, she needed to give all her attention to the podcast. The last thing she needed was a distraction. There was too much at stake.

Rachel drove toward the hotel, where she’d planned to eat dinner at the lobby cafe while reading her files on the Blair family. Pete had managed to swing her an interview with Greg, Scott Blair’s father. She wanted to read all his press interviews again before she met him and his wife the next day. Rachel glanced at Hannah’s letter on the seat next to her. She was tempted to read it, but she couldn’t allow herself to be drawn in again. She didn’t have time to be Hannah’s savior, or Jenny’s avenger. She briefly considered tearing it up and tossing the pieces out of the window.

Rachel made it two blocks before pulling her car to an abrupt stop on the side of the road. She put on her hazard lights and ripped open the letter. When she was done reading Hannah’s wavy, sometimes barely legible handwriting, she tossed the pages back onto the front passenger seat and restarted the car engine.

Instinctively, Rachel made a furious U-turn and headed south in the direction of the Old Mill Road gas station. Rachel wondered if Rick still worked there and, if he did, if he remembered the driver and passengers of the pickup truck Hannah described in her letter. Rachel got the impression that the truck and its rowdy crew had been regulars at his gas station.

As Rachel drove down the coastal road, she spotted the Morrison’s Point jetty, a gray outline against a darkening sky. Again without thinking it through, Rachel turned off the road and into the beach parking lot. She pulled her car to a stop facing the ocean. It was twilight. Rachel figured she had enough time to quickly go down to the jetty to see if the sign warning swimmers not to jump into the water had been erected, just as the newspaper article she’d read at the archive said.

The evening coastal winds were so strong that Rachel struggled to get out of her car. As she walked across the beach, sand blew into her face, hitting her skin like pinpricks. Rachel spotted the sign. It was hung on a rusted pole stuck into a thick lump of concrete on the shoreline, just out of reach of the waves. Its faded warning to swimmers looked decades old. She hadn’t noticed it the last time she was there, but then, she hadn’t been looking for it.

Rachel stepped onto the jetty. It was unsteady under her feet. She had to hold the rail as she walked, pummeled by the wind and stung by salt sprays from unruly waves. The foamy water looked opaque in the waning light.

When Rachel reached the inscription that Hannah had carved in the timber, she squatted down to read it again: In loving memory of Jenny Stills, who was viciously murdered here when she was just 16. Justice will be done.

Rachel didn’t hear the jetty creak behind her over the loud rush of wind. Nor did she notice the looming outline of a man emerge from the dark behind her.

“Who are you?” His sudden, angry voice shocked Rachel to her feet.

She swung around to confront the intruder but was immediately blinded by a flashlight beam shining directly into her eyes. From what Rachel could make out, he was a heavyset man dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt soaked with sweat so strong she could smell it. His arms and neck were covered in tattoos, and the left side of his face was crisscrossed by the angry ridges of knife scars.

“I asked you a question,” he growled, stepping toward her. Rachel instinctively moved back until her spine was pressed into the timber rail. He pointed his flashlight down to where Rachel had been squatting and moved the beam across the inscription as he read it. He paused the light over the words viciously murdered.

“What do you know about this?” he asked.

“Not much,” said Rachel. “I heard she drowned here. Hit her head on some rocks when she jumped off the jetty.”