“Not just someone,” Lily told me, removing the contents of her box and cradling it reverently in one hand. “The White Gloves.”

LABOR DAY, 3:19 A.M.

“Are you sure that’s how we ended up at the bottom of this hole, Sawyer?”

“Trust me. You were unconscious, but I held on just long enough to see the person responsible.”

“Maybe it was an accident?”

“How do you accidentally drug someone, Sadie-Grace?”

“Accidentally… on purpose?”

FOURTEEN WEEKS
(AND THREE DAYS) EARLIER

CHAPTER 4

Lily refused to enlighten me as to who or what the White Gloves were until she could be certain that we wouldn’t be overheard. At the lake, that apparently meant hitting the water. Within five minutes, the two of us were swimsuit-clad and Jet Ski–bound. We made our way down to the dock.

And Lily’s father.

After more than a month of playing this game, seeing J.D. Easterling shouldn’t have hit me so hard. I shouldn’t have cared that he was in full-on Dad Mode, puttering around the dock and getting way too much pleasure out of power-washing everything in the near vicinity, including and especially the boats.

“How are my favorite girls doing?” he called out. “Making your escape already?”

Don’t say a word, I told myself. Don’t think about it. Think about the White Gloves. Think about the snake and rose on that pin. Don’t even look at him. Look at the boats.

There were two of them, one a speedboat and one that Lily would have insisted wasn’t a yacht.

“Sawyer’s never ridden a Jet Ski.” Beside me, Lily was talking. “Think we could take out Thing One and Thing Two before the weekend traffic hits the water?”

I took a step toward the boats, telling myself that it was only natural that I would be curious, natural that I would focus on reading the name on the back of the larger boat, rather than joining the conversation between Lily and her father.

Our father.

“I have noticed, Daughter, that when you preface a statement with ‘Sawyer has never . . .’ you’re usually up to something.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing, Daddy.”

The back-and-forth between them was so easy, so natural. There was no ignoring that.

“What say you, Niece?” J.D. turned toward me. “Ready to brave the ocean deep?”

This wasn’t the ocean, and I wasn’t his niece.

“I think I can handle it,” I said, spotting the Jet Skis on the far side of the dock. I started toward them in hopes of ending this conversation before Lily caught on to the fact that something was off. I’d done a good job of avoiding her dad for the past few weeks. He’d been pulling late nights at work and had made more than one trip up here to check on the boats.

Think about that. Don’t think about . . .