It’s colder than ice in my grasp and the pain—oh God, the pain is nauseating. It rolls through me in Technicolor waves, sending stars across my vision with every beat of my heart. Josh snags my foot, and I’m down, knees hitting the snow and pain spiking like I’ve been stabbed all over again.

I feel my vision going gray but I will not pass out. I will not. I kick with both feet, catching him in the jaw with the heel of my right boot. He flops back and slides a few feet down.

Go. Go now. Go fast.

I crawl away while Josh groans on the ground. Rise to my feet even as my pulse throbs in the wound, a frantic, agonizing rhythm that blurs my vision. I walk anyway, dragging my legs up and up and up as fast as I can.

Josh is still groaning. I hear him shifting in the snow. But he’s not getting up. Not yet. I use every muscle I have and every muscle I don’t. I heave myself one eager step at a time until I’m at the guardrail, and haul myself over. Dark drops spatter the snow as I retrace my own tracks to the car. Whimpering. Crying.

Kayla is gone. No sign of her either direction, but Harper meets me halfway across the road. Brecken is behind her, and it’s clear they’ve been looking for me.

It’s also clear that Harper is terrified.

My breath is ragged and fast. The knife drops into the snow, a gruesome splash of red against the pristine white. Harper’s eyes drag to that bloody blade and then to my face.

She raises her shovel high.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Stay back,” Harper says.

“Harper, no,” I say. I can barely get out the words. The pain and my breathlessness steal half of everything I want to say. “Josh—it’s Josh—no crutches… There are letters.”

“Where’s Kayla?” she asks. “Where is Josh?”

I point, feeling sick and dizzy. “Down. Down there.”

But Kayla isn’t down there. She’s gone. God, why did she help Josh? How could she? And when?

No.

The gas station. I remember them talking. They were alone, and she was sick then. Feeling terrible. But she got better. He must have given her a little then. More at the bar. He dangled her along because he knew the one and only thing she cared about. He’d planned it that way.

“Did you push them?” Brecken asks. “God, Mira, what did you do?”

I shake my head vigorously. Too vigorously. My head swims and I droop, propping my good hand on my leg. Harper tightens her grip on the shovel.

“Letters,” I pant out. “Look at the letters. Trunk.”

I hear Brecken’s swift steps retreating to the car. I stand upright and stumble. Harper swings the shovel forward a little in warning.