Except for a single track of boot prints leading into the trees.

She thought about the trek out to the reporter’s cabin, thought about the feeling of eyes on their back.

Jimmy had sunk deeper into the darkness that crawled ever closer with each passing minute.

But when he turned back to Mia, it was fear she read on his face.

“Were you sleeping with Monroe, Jimmy?” Mia asked, as tempered as possible.

He flinched with his whole body, a visible, shocked recoil. “What.”

It wasn’t even a question, the way he said it, just an emotion wrenched from his belly.

Mia didn’t move, didn’t react. Just waited.

“Jesus, no.” Jimmy rolled his shoulders like he was trying to shake off the suggestion. “No, never. I’m not . . .”

He trailed off, still looking down, his head twitching sporadically like he had no control over it.

“I don’t even know what to say,” he mumbled, the words slurring behind thick lips only to get caught in his beard. “Why would you think that?”

The fear was gone when he looked up, and again Mia struggled to adjust to the patterns of the interview. She’d thought he’d been afraid of what they were about to accuse him of. But clearly she’d missed something.

“It was in the reporter’s notes,” she answered, going with honesty. “What did you say to him?”

Jimmy blinked, slow and confused, his gaze unfocused. “Nothing. I said nothing.”

“You must have said something,” Mia pressed. She thought back to Theo’s message.

Ar w mb (v1). Affair with Monroe Bell (victim one). The message had been underlined and starred in the reporter’s journal.

“I barely knew the girl,” Jimmy said now, back to tugging at his beard. The tapping had resumed, but it was steady, more a thoughtful beat than anything else. “Talked to her once or twice in town, maybe.”

He could be lying. It was in his blood to do so. But he was also easy to read. Too easy, one part of her whispered, while the other thought about all she knew of Jimmy. He wasn’t particularly clever or manipulative. His tics were numerous and varied—the tapping being the most obvious, but his fingers betrayed his thoughts as well as they pulled at his beard. If it had just been one thing, she might have thought he was doing it to throw her off. But his movements were natural and reactive.

Probably he was hiding something. But just not what they had thought when coming in. So why had the reporter walked away with the impression that Jimmy was sleeping with Monroe?

Then something slid into place. “What about Bix?”

And there. There was his sore spot. He didn’t blanch, not like before when she’d asked about Monroe. This was more subtle. A hitched breath. White knuckles on a clenched fist. A tongue darting out to the corner of his mouth.