“I think . . .” Mia’s eyes unfocused, her lips pulling back into something between disgust and pity. “Well, the logical reasoning was that she didn’t want the death tied to her immediately. She wanted to play us longer.”

“If the body was identified as Peter, she would have been our main suspect because he’d just been her artist in residence,” Izzy followed. “The game wouldn’t have been nearly as fun for her.”

“Yeah.”

They sat with that for a minute before Izzy shifted. “You were going to say something else.”

Mia bit her lip.

“You said, ‘I think,’ but then switched gears,” Izzy pressed.

Sighing, Mia looked back over at Izzy. “You know, I asked her what her buttons were. The ones she said everyone had, the ones she could push to manipulate people.”

The smile. The smugness that so clearly lived in the deep marrow of her bones. “I don’t even want to guess.”

“She said . . .” Mia paused, the slow, steady beeping of the heart monitor filling the silence as she swallowed hard enough for her throat to ripple with it. “She said, ‘Boredom.’”

The word sat sour and rotting against Izzy’s tongue as she repeated it. “Boredom.”

“To be honest, I think part of the mixed identities was for, as they say, shits and giggles,” Mia said. “For the dramatics. The fact that I could recognize Peter was probably just icing on the cake.”

Izzy shook her head, but not in disagreement. A bored sociopath on an island alone could tangle herself in all sorts of webs just to see if she could get free of them.

“Actually, they might not have even sent me,” Mia said slowly. “Murdoch knew the broad facts of what happened when I was younger, knew the Bell family was involved. She might not have risked having me on the case if it was that closely tied to Lacey.”

“So she calls up Sammy once the body is found . . . ,” Izzy said.

Mia’s eyes were on the window, distant. “Sammy.”

Sighing, Izzy scrubbed a hand over her face. “I’m sorry, he was definitely involved.”

“I figured.”

“Yeah.” Izzy tried to be gentle, though the blow probably paled in comparison to everything else Mia had found out. “Apparently, Lacey looked him up when he went to college on the mainland. He was kind of a part of your friend group, and she really seemed to fixate on you guys.”

“Who would have guessed a budding sociopath would have been dropped like a lit match into our particular powder keg.”

“You guys did not catch a break on that one,” Izzy agreed. “Anyway, they dated a bit a few years back, and then, uh, ‘reconnected’ over the summer.”

“When Ellen said he started getting distant.”

“Exactly.” Izzy sighed. “He seems a little baffled by his own behavior, to be honest.”

The beeping from the heart monitor kicked up a notch. Neither of them acknowledged it.