“I had a hunch.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, agitation emanating from his posture. “Something is off about your friends. Have you noticed?”

“What do you mean?” I press, shifting in my seat to angle myself toward him, listening to the downpour hammer on the hood of his car.

“They’re hiding something,” Mason says, before looking at me squarely. “I overheard them talking about you.”

My fingers tangle themselves together anxiously. “I got into a fight with Damien that night,” I confess. “He was really upset. I have no doubt in my mind he was telling them about it.”

“It wasn’t that.”

“You’re scaring me,” I say again.

“That might be a good thing.”

“Mason, just tell me.”

He hesitates, an uneasy expression on his face. “They said they were worried about you remembering the truth.” A chill runs down my spine. “And that they’re going to make sure you don’t.”

“The truth about what?”

“I don’t know,” he says, searching my face. “That’s all I heard.”

Letting out a breathy laugh, I turn away from him and look out at the poorly lit street. It suddenly seems a lot more threatening than it did only moments ago, despite the fact that my house is only a few steps away. “Well, that could be anything,” I reason. “Right?”

“It could be,” he offers. “But it doesn’t sound good.”

“Anything can sound bad out of context.”

“Alina,” he says. “Do you really believe that?”

I don’t say anything, and he seems to accept that as an answer.

“There’s something in my gut telling me there’s more to your accident than what everyone has been told,” he finishes. “Have you felt it too?”

In my periphery, it feels like branches are creeping steadily closer to the car, but when I blink, they disappear.

Yes.

I begin to feel lightheaded. “This cop keeps questioning me. I thought it was weird, but . . .”

“Something isn’t right,” he reiterates.

“Hold on,” I say, lifting a hand, feeling my eyebrows pull together tightly. “Are you seriously trying to say that my friends had something to do with it? What reason do they have to do something like this?”

When he doesn’t immediately deny my claim, it deepens my feeling of dread. Distantly, I hear a peal of thunder, and it sets my teeth on edge.

The lights from the houses on the opposite side of the street illuminate Mason’s face, and he swallows visibly, taking the time to consider his words before answering. I feel a flicker of doubt.

Mason suddenly dropped back into my life after years of being absent from it, and though some of that was my own doing, could that mean he has ulterior motives?

All the more reason not to trust him.

A motion light snaps to life outside my window as a cat saunters by, and it causes me to startle, heart pounding.