I never found out who sent me the envelope full of photographs that finally set me on a path to understanding the truth. But I suspect Misha might have had something to do with it, just as I suspect it was Misha who tried to run me off the road, though I doubt I’ll ever know whether she was finally sick of covering for Brent, whether she’d simply realized that he would never love her in the way she kept hoping he would, or whether she simply thought she could get me out of the way, even if it meant implicating herself. All I know is that she has been cooperating with the federal investigation into the nature of the Optimal Scholarships and the abuse perpetuated in their name. Maybe she’s cooperating in an attempt to redeem herself. Maybe it’s just an attempt to reduce her sentence, although, given the number of girls affected, it’s unlikely she will ever leave prison again.

And then, of course, there is Kaycee’s murder, and the charges related to it. Now that Brent’s dead, Misha will stand trial, alone.

I almost—almost—feel sorry for her.

An awkward silence stretches between Condor and me—uncharacteristic, since we’ve spent weeks talking, eating dinner together almost every night, bonding over the strange and sudden bubble of publicity that made us into a makeshift family. It’s funny: through all of this, we fell into an easy intimacy, the kind of friendship I’ve always craved and have had only intermittently with Joe.

I’m not ready to leave him, or Hannah, or even Barrens.

But I have to.

We both know I don’t belong in Barrens. Condor has his whole life here; I have my little sterile condo waiting for me in Chicago. Who knows? Maybe I’ll hang a photo or two. Maybe I’ll make Joe buy me dollar oysters. Maybe I’ll let him buy me dollar oysters for a year, with a big side of groveling—he’s promised he owes me a lifetime supply.

Maybe I’ll finally get through my inbox, and all the new complaints, environmental reports, and potential new cases awaiting my attention. You want a clean world, someone’s got to filter out the crap.

Good thing I’ve gotten used to getting my hands dirty.

I clear my throat. “She seems so much better,” I say.

When he smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Kids are amazing, aren’t they? Resilient as hell.”

I flip through the book of drawings again. She’s actually very good—she has a talent that reminds me of Kaycee’s at her age. “Not a spot of blood,” I say.

“No loose body parts, either,” Condor says dryly. After that night on the reservoir, Hannah couldn’t stop drawing the terrible things she had seen: flames and blood, a body broken on the deck of a foundering boat.

It was Hannah I saw in the woods, Hannah who in my exhaustion and terror I’d mistaken for Kaycee as a child. The crack I heard just before going under was a gunshot: a single rifle shot, aimed from the shoreline one hundred feet away at a target moving fast in a motorboat.