The hush was not welcoming, though. It wasn’t the pause after a sigh of relief. It was the breath that was bated while watching prey scamper from predator. It was the silence right before a kill.

Mia kept running.

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY

IZZY

“It’s not what you think,” Cash told Izzy, as he closed the front door behind them. “I was at the lighthouse. But I didn’t hurt them.”

Izzy pressed her palm to where her headache throbbed, vicious in its relentlessness.

“You have one chance to tell me everything,” Izzy gritted out. “And then I’m arresting you on obstruction charges.”

Cash smiled sadly when she opened her eyes. “You guys keep forgetting I’m a lawyer.”

“You really want to test me right now?” Izzy asked, and his face slipped back into an impassive mask once more.

“I was grounded that night, like I told you,” Cash started without preamble. “But I snuck out. The window in my bathroom is right above the back porch’s roof. It wasn’t hard. I think Dad even knew I was going.”

“Okay.”

“Lacey had told me to meet them all at the lighthouse. I was . . .” He sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. “Hesitant. If you can imagine. I’d punched Ash earlier.”

“But you went anyway?”

“I got there too early. No one else had showed yet,” Cash went on. “I went up to the tower—there’s some grating up there. Sat and watched the sunset.”

“Can we stick to the pertinent details here, Bishop?” Izzy rolled her finger in a get this moving gesture.

Cash sighed. “Asher and Mia showed up first. They didn’t see me, and I didn’t go down. They could be weird sometimes.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know,” Cash said, but he wasn’t meeting her gaze. “Think it screwed both of them up.”

“What did?”

“Us. Me and Mia.” Cash shrugged. “Asher and Monroe. Mia always said she wasn’t jealous, but . . .”

If the question even had to be asked, there had probably been truth to it.

“Anyway, Monroe showed up after a while. They talked a bit, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.” Cash shoved his hands in his pockets, rocked on his heels, and stared at a spot just beyond Izzy’s shoulder. “I just remember not wanting to be there, wanting to be home again.”

“Did anyone else come in?” Lacey. Did Lacey come in?

“No, just them,” Cash said, and she didn’t know if she believed him. Or if he thought it was the truth.

But Lacey must have been there at some point. If Izzy was right about her.

“When did you realize something was wrong?”

Cash pressed his lips together before taking a deep breath. “It went quiet. I’d never felt that kind of quiet before.”

“What kind?”