If Mia hadn’t been looking for something off in the picture, she would have missed the couple in the background. They were more shadows than anything else, limbs catching the flash at just the wrong angle, faces obscured by smudged ink and time. But Mia recognized the pair easily.

Monroe and Cash.

And just on the edge of the picture stood Asher, watching them. Neon slid across his features, throwing him into sharp relief against the general blurriness of the scene. Everything about his stance screamed anger, from the fists at his side to the tension in his shoulders.

There they were, all five of them, just weeks before Monroe’s and Asher’s apparent suicides, and Mia’s apparent attempt, caught in a tableau of teenage jealousy, ignorance, and lust. The waves of each were so strong they crashed into Mia’s chest, catching along the throbbing pulse of her ulcer, slipping acid into the edges of the pain.

Mia had been naive to think they’d been carefree that summer up until that night. The silvery, thin lines of emotion that connected them were all but visible in the photo.

She slipped her finger into the plastic pocket and wrested the picture out into the present. Here. This is what she’d been overlooking with all the pregnancy rumors, the older men, the mysterious artist.

The five of them, the way their lives had touched, intersected, and then blown apart.

Trying to strip away the noise of the past few days, Mia hunched over until her nose was almost brushing the picture, as if getting closer and closer and closer would help her see the answer that lay beneath the glossy patina.

At the center of it was Cash, always Cash. The one who hadn’t been there that night at the lighthouse. The one whom Izzy hadn’t liked or trusted. The one who’d lied about talking to the reporter, the one who’d cried and made her think he was better than that first quick impression she’d gotten of him at the bar. The one who was talking about the Bells. The one who was dating a woman with bruises on her arms.

What was lacking was a motive. Not for the reporter’s death—that she could explain. But for Monroe and Asher, and even Mia.

It was the loop she kept getting stuck in.

Her phone vibrated in her jeans, just as she leaned back away from the picture in frustration. She scrambled for it, even as she realized the one quick ping was just a text, not a call.

Mia breathed out in relief when she saw Izzy’s name.

The happiness curdled when she read the text.

They’re all lying. The artist was the body in the bay. Get the hell out of there, Hart.