Reyes, the tortured soul who truly understood her—who might be strong enough to save her from herself.

Reyes, the damaged man who used women the way she used men—and who might just pull her into his despair as well as her own.

She couldn’t possibly know the difference. Not in two days’ time. And not with all that had happened.

She found her mother’s car where she’d parked it the day before. She wasn’t sure where she was going. Not back to Hastings. Not home.

She checked her phone and the texts that had been piling up. Three from her father—all with the same message. When are you coming home? Come home, sweetheart. Where are you—you need to come home.

One from Evan. Did you find her? What’s happening?

It was the final one from her father that provided the most distraction. Edith Moore is Edith Bickman. Moore is her boyfriend’s name. Probably used it to hide the fact that she worked at the bar in Hastings four years ago. And Kurt Kent did time for drug offense. Two bad apples. Scam. Also—Mrs. Urbansky said she did not give out your number to anyone. Another lie! Call me or answer your phone!

She had two missed calls and voicemails from him as well. She responded with a text. I’m fine. Will call soon.

But was she fine? Drinking and sleeping with strangers again. Infusing her reckless actions with meaning that might be pure fiction?

We are the same . . .

How could he say that when they’d just met? How could she have believed it. And yet it had felt so real. She wanted it to be real, even now, as the doubt crept in.

She sat in her mother’s car. Smelled her smell, which was fading more every day. She turned on the ignition and closed her eyes. The list of loose ends—what was on it now? Edith Moore—or Bickman—and her plot with Kurt Kent, her father’s PI was looking into that. But what about the lie she’d told about getting Nic’s cell phone number from Mrs. Urbansky? It had been Reyes who’d put those words in her mouth. She remembered that now. Maybe he’d assumed it, and then she jumped on board, not having a better answer.

Her mother had not been at that house. No one had, and it was a long shot anyone had been there the night of the storm. Next, Watkins and the truck—but Reyes said he was going back to find him. Her father and his affair, and the stop he’d made at the gas station in West Cornwall. She should call him, ask him for the truth, for once. But he had already lied to her about the handwriting analysis.