“No. Jesus, Cat, he’s so nice. I can no more imagine him tearing apart my apartment than I can you doing it.”

“There you go. Haven’t you always said that you trust your gut?”

She tapped her manicured fingers together in thought. “You’ve known Max longer than I have, Cat. Can you imagine him doing something like this?”

A person never forgets camp.

“No,” I said firmly, curling my bare nails into my palms. “Just talk to him. There has to be a reasonable explanation for this.”

“TELL ME THERE’S a reasonable explanation for this,” I hissed on the phone to Max. He had started calling me almost as soon as Audrey had, but I waited to return his call until Audrey had retreated to the bathroom with a glass of wine and a jar of my best bath salts.

“I’ve been calling—”

“I know,” I interrupted. “Audrey’s here, and she told me what happened.”

“Then you know more than I do,” he said, his voice distraught. “What’s going on?”

“She found your little photo collection.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Max? Did you hear me?” I drew a breath and closed my eyes. “Please tell me this is all a misunderstanding. Please tell me you didn’t take those photos.”

“I didn’t take those photos,” he said quietly.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because liars always assume everyone else is lying,” he suggested, a nasty undercurrent to his voice.

“What?” I gasped.

“Cat, I didn’t take those photos,” he said emphatically. “Does Audrey think I did?”

“She thinks that you took them, and, more than that, she thinks you’ve been stalking her. She thinks you’re the one who’s been terrorizing her.”

“Oh God,” he murmured. “That’s not true. Let me talk to her.”

“I don’t think she wants to talk to you.”

“Please, Cat,” he said desperately. “I have to talk to her. Please.”

I sighed. “I’ll tell her you want to talk to her, but I’m not promising anything.”

“Please, Cat,” he said again. Then his voice hardened as he added, “It’s what’s best for us. For all of us.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE AUDREY

I sat at an otherwise empty communal table at Columbia Brews, my hands cupping an almond milk latte I was too nervous to drink. I kept my eyes on the door, and my stomach jumped every time a blond man walked in. I almost got up and left four separate times, unable to believe I’d let Cat talk me into meeting with Max. She was so certain those photos were innocent. What do you have to lose by talking to him? she’d asked. Just talk to him, and you’ll know whether he’s telling the truth or not.

I knew Cat was referencing my sixth sense for judging character. I was rarely wrong. Sophomore year in high school, for example, my friends all said I was crazy when I turned down an invitation to senior prom with Bobby Kendall, indisputably the best-looking and most sought-after boy in our whole school, simply because I had a “bad feeling”—but then Bobby Kendall drove himself and his date into a tree after a post-prom party. And then there was the time I told Izzy I was getting a bad vibe from the cute guy she’d met on the Q train; she soon discovered his apartment was filled with taxidermied rats.