Micah sighs, long and loud. “You’re starting to wear on my nerves, Charlotte. It was Jax. Why else would Paul run off to Balsam Bluff if not to protect him?”

An excellent question. One I haven’t figured out the answer to yet.

“It wasn’t me.” Jax’s voice carries over the water from our left, and I almost collapse in relief. I whip around and so does Micah, aiming his gun into the darkness. He swivels from bush to tree to rocky patch, finally settling on a dark smudge behind a tuft of tall grass.

Batty Jax, and he’s holding a rifle.

“But I gotta say, man, bravo. Killing that girl, setting things up to make it look like me or Paul. Didn’t matter to you which one of us took the fall. So long as you and your dad could pretend you had nothing to do with any of it.”

Micah rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t lower his gun. “Oh, Jesus, not you, too. Why does everybody think that I killed her?”

“Process of elimination. If it wasn’t Paul or me, it had to have been you. You’re the only one left.”

In between the words, a distant and ghostly wail carries across the wind and water.

Sirens.

If Micah notices, he doesn’t let on. “Her coat was in your cabin, dumbass. Charlotte saw you wearing her scarf.”

“Yeah, because Sienna gave them to me. She didn’t want me to be cold.”

Micah laughs, a sharp, angry sound. “Right. Next you’re going to say that wasn’t your necklace she was waving around town. That she—”

“I told her the truth!” Jax stabs the rifle in Micah’s direction, his shout echoing over the water. “When she showed me that necklace, I confessed. I told her we were wasted. That for some reason I will never understand, we piled into Bobby’s car. That I was the idiot who drove us into the cove. She recorded the whole thing. I talked to her for hours and you know what? It was a goddamn relief to finally tell somebody.”

There’s a long, stunned silence. Jax’s face is a shadow, just two white eyes glaring down the barrel of his gun.

Micah sputters. “You stupid, demented, pathetic asshole. What the hell were you thinking? Do you know what the penalty is for manslaughter? There’s no statute of limitations on that shit.”

Jax spreads his free arm wide. “Look at me, man. I’ve already lost everything I ever cared about. I’m already living in hell. I’m pretty sure jail can’t be worse than this.” He drops his arm, his tone flat and final. “It’s over, Micah. I’m done.”