We gather in the living room, the coffee table between us piled with notebooks, printouts, and mugs of steaming coffee. My fingers tighten around my mug, the heat grounding me as my mind spins from everything we just learned.

Bennett isn’t just some passing traveler, and he isn’t writing a damn travel blog. He’s Theo’s cousin, and he’s been digging into his family’s past because he thinks the story doesn’t add up. My stomach twists at the thought. How many lies have been circling this town? How many secrets are buried under the surface, just waiting to be uncovered? How many of those center around Theo’s family?

Orion clears his throat, snapping my attention back to the present. His posture shifts into full business mode, the tension sharpening the air.

“Let me just start at the beginning, then we’ll go from there. I was going through all the records the department has on Theo when I noticed a detail in his statement given to police the night his parents died.”

I glance at him, watching as his grip tightens on his coffee mug.

Orion’s voice is calm, measured— too measured. “You said your mom was screaming before you hit the patch of black ice. You told officers that she was trying to shake your dad and get control of the wheel because he, and I quote, ‘fell asleep’. Do you remember that?”

Theo looks like someone just reached into his chest and pulled the thread loose. His voice is distant, almost hollow. “I honestly don’t know anymore. I remember telling the police something and they would tell me I was misremembering because of the trauma of the night.”

Orion exhales, nodding like he was expecting that answer. “Misremembering or not that’s why we’re here today. I looked into their autopsies and noticed the coroner found hydrocyanic acid in his stomach. Internally, he had brain hypoxia, which would have caused him to lose consciousness while he was driving.”

A strange, uneasy pressure builds in my chest.

Hydrocyanic acid. That sounds familiar. Too familiar.

I swallow hard and say the first thing that comes to mind. “Not everyone has a fancy college degree, Orion. Care to clue the rest of us in on what that means?”

He does that annoying little brother thing where he speaks to me like I’m a child. “It means that it was a cyanide-related compound in his system that caused his brain to swell, then it made him pass out.”

My blood runs cold.

Cyanide.

I glance at Theo. His fingers are white-knuckled around his mug, but he doesn’t say anything, almost like he already knew.