Someone set it up to look like Charles killed his wife. Someone wrote the journal, kept it hidden in the back of a closet just in case anyone went looking for a bad guy to blame.

Those girls were all scared. That’s what Jimmy Roarke had said.

But why did he think that?

Bruises.

A thumbprint blue-and-green splotch on a pale, delicate arm.

“Jesus,” Izzy breathed out, staring, unseeing, out the windshield. Her pulse, a pounding beneath her ribs, almost painful.

Lacey Bell.

The girl’s fear had never been anything obvious, had always been subtle. That’s why Izzy had trusted it.

That first interview. Her sweater had slipped up, offering a glimpse that had been so quick it was over between one blink and the next.

The first seed planted?

Later, when Izzy had run into her at the bar, she’d done it again. Jumped when the door slammed. She’d flushed and ducked out, with a believable embarrassment of someone who knew abuse, knew how to hide it.

Then there’d been the cutoff remarks about Charles, never fully formed, never truly bitter, but hinting at a strict father who had a heavy hand.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Izzy slammed her palm against the steering wheel as every little moment stood out in sharp relief.

Lacey had been the one to tell them Monroe was having an affair in the first place. Nothing concrete, no. That would have been too blatant. Just an impression, a suggestion. Give them enough information to be reliable, not enough to actually figure anything out.

God, the bar. The scene at the bar had been played beautifully even before her fake fear. That napkin, the quick sketch of Monroe as a seductress in training. The sly grin. The pauses and downcast eyes.

Monroe wasn’t mean . . . She wasn’t.

An insistence that hadn’t even needed to be made if it wasn’t true, which Lacey would know. It put the idea that Monroe was mean, manipulative, the kind of person who treated others like playthings into Izzy’s head even as Lacey denied it.

All of the little dots, dropped seemingly at random, to create a picture of a girl. And it was all lies.

She hadn’t stopped at Monroe, either.

I hope I didn’t make you think anything bad about Mia.

That had been too brash, too much. Lacey had been slipping. An off note in an otherwise smooth concerto.

At the time, Izzy had paused but had written it off as jealousy of Mia. Maybe resentment for her surviving instead of Monroe.

But it was just another seed. She was setting something up.

What?

I hope I didn’t make you think anything bad about Mia.

Just like with her assertion that Monroe wasn’t mean, Lacey was putting the thought into Izzy’s head even as she denied it, knowing it would stick there, fester, sour and oozing and begging to be noticed.