Frustrating as it was, the dead ends gave Mia something to focus on apart from the burning, acidic knot that had pulsed beneath her breastbone ever since Gina Murdoch, Rockport’s police chief, had handed over the Twist case, eyes dark and watchful as Mia took the file.

Mia’s thumb found her scar once more, a weak attempt at self-soothing.

“Do you think it was murder or suicide?” Izzy asked.

Mia’s mind tripped, caught in the past for half a heartbeat, her nail digging into the skin at her wrist. “What?”

“Twist.” Izzy bounced beside Mia, her voice distant and considering, seemingly oblivious of the stumble. “I mean, if it looks like a suicide, swims like a suicide, quacks like a suicide . . .”

She waved her hand to fill in the rest. Then it was suicide.

Dropping her hands so that she could rest her forearms on the ferry’s railing, Mia stared down at the dark water that lapped at the bow.

They’d had this conversation already but always ended up in the same place. Still, Mia was willing to go through it again. Sometimes the repetition helped.

“Gunshot through the soft palate’s not exactly common for homicides.”

“Right.” Izzy touched her nose, pointed at Mia, and then cursed, shoving her hands back into her pockets. “But, the ocean.”

The ocean. That part niggled at Mia, burrowing under her skin, an annoyance she couldn’t ignore. And, God, did she want to ignore it.

If Twist had killed himself, as it looked like on first glance, they could easily wrap up the case, fill out the proper forms, do their due diligence—and then get the hell off St. Lucy’s before Mia had to deal with all the reasons she’d left in the first place.

Suicide. That’s all it would take, a simple ruling. Her body leaned into it with an eagerness Mia couldn’t trust.

But. The ocean.

“How’d he end up there?” Mia whispered, as though if she said it quietly enough maybe the question would go away, maybe Izzy would forget that little detail, maybe Mia would.

“In a thin undershirt and trousers,” Izzy filled in, because of course she remembered her lines to this particular conversation. It was this discrepancy that punched a hole in their beautifully constructed suicide theory.

Maybe Twist had been drunk enough to explain the lack of proper clothing. Alcohol wasn’t called a liquor jacket by college kids everywhere for no reason. But if he had been planning on shooting himself, wouldn’t he have just stayed inside the cabin? Why would he have gone outside in the cold anyway?