“I thought he nicked his ear. Grant, I mean.”

Brent shrugs, like it’s a minor detail. “Look. I’m telling you this because I actually give a shit. My grandpa was a farmer, and my dad loved absolutely nothing besides his .44 and his fishing rod. No one cares more about Barrens than I do.” He shakes his head, picks over his omelet. “Gallagher’s an anarchist looking for a reason. A conspiracy theorist. He’ll take potshots at anything—literally. But he’s misfired big this time. Optimal’s clean. We’ve had plenty of audits and passed them all. Flying colors.”

“But Optimal did settle a case—” I begin.

He interrupts me. “That was back in Tennessee.”

I don’t blink. “They’ve had plenty of bad press. Rumors of violations across the board—corruption, getting in bed with local politicians, paying people to look the other way.”

“Bad press isn’t a legal statute,” he says. “And rumors aren’t evidence. Every company has bad press, Abby, and you know it.” It’s a deft redirection, and he might actually believe it.

I decide to go all in—if we’re going to remove the weeds, might as well get down to the roots. “I’ve been looking back at the Mitchell case.” I watch his reaction carefully, but he barely blinks. “You were with Kaycee back then. You must have an opinion.”

“Opinion.” He repeats the word as if I’ve just asked him for money. “I don’t have an opinion. They made it up. It was typical Kaycee: act first, think never. She was so desperate for attention. I felt bad for her.”

I don’t like how easy it was for Kaycee to slip away, and how willingly everyone in Barrens let her go—even if she was lying. Especially if she was lying.

“Have you talked to her?” I ask.

“No. She didn’t even tell me she was leaving. I had no idea.”

“So you didn’t talk to her at all after she left?” Brent and Kaycee were together for nearly two years, which in high school is an eternity. And yet when she left, it was as if she stepped out of her old life completely, like shrugging out of a coat.

“Misha talked to her, once or twice,” he says vaguely. His smile, this time, is very thin. “She made it obvious that her goal was to avoid speaking to any of us.”

“Didn’t she say why?” I ask. “I never understood what she was after. Why did she lie about being sick?”

He shakes his head and his voice turns unexpectedly hard. “I thought you were here to look at Optimal. Don’t tell me you’re a detective, too.”

“She was Senior Queen. She painted her whole body for graduation.” I remember our last day of school seeing a comet-streak of paint left by her hand against the wall when she stumbled. Even sick, she had to be painted and worshipped. “She didn’t seem like she was on the verge of running away.”

He folds his napkin carefully. When he looks up, he seems exhausted. “Everything she did was an act. Not just the getting sick but…other things, too.” He stares into the distance. “I don’t think she ever said a single thing that wasn’t a lie.”