“You have to go somewhere, Jamal. He’s going to do something crazy.”

At the sight of the bruises, Jamal slung his bag over his shoulder with a strange cold calm. Fine, he thought. Running seemed to be working fine for KT. Bentley could keep its dreams and its nightmares. Jamal had never much liked it here anyway.

Only when he reached the parking lot did Jamal remember that his Explorer was still at the auto shop—the trip to Bethany’s place this weekend had finally overtaxed his SUV’s spotty alternator and the part was, of course, on back order.

He started dialing his mother out of habit. He stopped. What would he say? Can you drive me to the airport and buy me a ticket to Colombia? Why, he wondered now, had he never thought to get a passport?

A moment later he heard the sirens, saw the flashing lights flying down the highway. The cars headed straight for him. Some distant sense of self-preservation made Jamal replace the phone in his pocket so no one could imagine it was a gun.

He supposed, in the end, he had dug this hole himself.

CLARK

Ten minutes earlier, Clark had been on her way to the station, so jittery she could barely drive. She and Joel hadn’t even bothered trying to sleep the night before. They’d stayed up comparing notes over the phone, and by the time Joel had finished telling her his side of Dylan’s story Clark’s tired mind had been kicked into overdrive.

“They were gay,” Joel had said, and Clark had sunk into her chair.

Dylan had set up Bethany with Jamal because he hadn’t slept with her in months. It made a sort of sense to Clark. Bethany, Joel said, had had suspicions about Dylan for years, had wondered if Dylan might not be something the girl called “bisexual-ish,” but, last May, Dylan had come to her and said he couldn’t pretend anymore: he loved her, but he was hopelessly, “totally gay.”

“I have to tread so careful around here, Star.”

“And Troy?” she’d asked.

The line went silent. Joel finally said, “You mean you never guessed about all those afternoons?”

“Was that the only reason you dated me? To get near my brother?” She was surprised to hear how coolly she asked it. How little it had even upset her to consider the question. Maybe it was all the rum.

“I don’t think so. I’d had a crush on him for ages but—Listen, can we talk about this later?”

“Did Troy take those pictures of you?”

“No.”

“Was he the other man at the park? The one that got away?”

Joel had hesitated, but Clark had been willing to wait all night for his answer. The identity of “the other man” had long been a subject of speculation in Bentley. Deputy Grissom, the officer who’d arrested Joel, had stated repeatedly that Joel had been “in the act” when he was discovered but the other man involved had escaped before Grissom could get a good look at him.