“I don’t get why he did it,” Mia said. “Why he’d agree to switch their IDs, why he’d go along with it at all?”

“My guess?” Izzy debated actually saying it. She wondered how much of her was just trying to make Mia feel better about her friend. She wondered if it mattered that that was her motivation. When Mia nodded, she made her decision to continue. “For some reason he was in too deep with her to come clean to you completely, so he thought the best course of action to get you off the island was to kind of go along with her plan at first.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well,” Izzy said, drawing the word out, still piecing together the idea that, until she’d put voice to it, had been half-baked at best. “In his interrogation, he swore to us he was trying to protect you. Do you remember when we first saw the body?”

“He leaned toward suicide,” Mia said. “When we asked. He leaned toward suicide.”

“Right.” Izzy nodded. It had made her doubt him, doubt Mia, too. She hadn’t been wrong to do so, apparently. “I think in his own way he was just trying to close the case, get you out of there before it all went to hell.”

Mia huffed out a breath. “Yeah, he did a shit job of that.”

“Well, he was still dealing with Lacey.” Izzy wasn’t trying to defend him, wouldn’t ever try. But Izzy also couldn’t forget that, even if it had been for only a few moments, she herself had not been completely immune to Lacey’s manipulation. And Sammy had been exposed to it a lot longer. “Lacey really knew how to zero in on things, you know. People’s most vulnerable instincts.”

Mia met her eyes, must have heard the self-recrimination in Izzy’s voice. “She played everyone. Not just you.”

“Yeah,” Izzy said, but it didn’t feel like an agreement. She should have known better. That night at the bar, Lacey had orchestrated the whole scene. Drawing on the napkin, the smoking argument with the bartender, even, a ploy to cement Izzy as an ally. The flirting. The fear when the door slammed, the big eyes when she promised she wasn’t worth saving. Izzy could only imagine the ease with which she’d swayed anyone who hadn’t already been suspicious of everyone.

“I’m not fishing for absolution,” Izzy said, even though it was something she wanted desperately. “But I can picture Lacey slowly putting thoughts in Robert’s head, you know? Before she took him. Maybe she even convinced him Peter was crazy.” Izzy paused. “Monroe’s pregnancy.”

“Making Robert think Jimmy was the father,” Mia followed her easily. “There wasn’t anything in the interview about it. Jimmy said he didn’t say anything to make the reporter think that.”