“You’re right, I’m not dumb. But if you think Mr. Tanner hasn’t found a way to get that footage deleted—”

Irons spun the wheel of the car. The Mercedes fishtailed as it turned its way back to Bentley.

A silent hour later, Irons slid to a halt outside the dark Staler house, idled with one foot on the brake and said, “Don’t do this, Reynolds. Please. If you get out of this car you’re on your own.”

Jamal tried to smile. “Thank you for the ride.”

Irons said nothing. The moment Jamal stepped out onto the cracked sidewalk, Mr. Irons’s Benz pulled away with a roar.

Jamal Reynolds, he thought to himself. You are a fucking idiot.

He started up the overgrown lawn toward the dark house, shivering in his leather jacket despite the warmth of the night. Before Jamal could make it to the front door, KT called from the backyard. “Around here.”

There was something broken in his voice.

Jamal found him seated alone in a lawn chair in the middle of the yard, staring at the eerie hook of moon that hung above them. It illuminated the awful bruise on KT’s cheek, the backpack at his feet, the phone in his lap.

“They let you out,” KT said.

“I’m on the run.”

“You ran the wrong way.”

Jamal couldn’t remember the last time they’d talked like this, just the two of them, Dylan nowhere to be seen. It might have been never.

“Kimbra’s in trouble, man.”

“We’re all in trouble.”

“I know you two didn’t just go to the coast on those weekends you wasn’t here. I know you went to that party first. You tried to act like it wasn’t real that one time you saw me listening to you and D but you can’t fool me.”

KT snorted. “Oh no, sir, nobody could ever fool you.”

Jamal refused to be distracted. “I know that’s where y’all was going the night Dylan died, after the game. And I think Kimbra knows that too. I tried to stop her asking questions but—”

“It’s not my fault it’s awake now.”

Jamal blinked. “Awake? What’s awake?”

“I know what you want me to do.” KT’s eyes grew wide, the bruise bulging as a nerve worked in his jaw. “They’d kill me if I went out there again. They’d kill all of us.”

“I think Kimbra might have learned something about that party. I think somebody’s going to hurt her to keep her quiet.”

“And you think you can stop it?” KT said. He started to laugh.

Jamal struck him, hard, on his bruised cheek. He grabbed the legs of KT’s chair and wrenched it out from under him, spilling him into the grass. He kicked KT in the ass.

“All that time I knew you were getting yourself in trouble with those other guys and I didn’t say shit!” Jamal shouted. “I didn’t want to get in your business. But now my best friend is dead, your girlfriend’s in trouble and someone in this fucking town is trying to put me on death row. So you and me are going to fix this. Now.”