“It wasn’t pretty, okay?” Blake said. “Does it make you happy to know that?”

“Was she alive when you left her?”

“Will you just go get the phone already? That’s kind of more urgent than all of these questions. Okay?”

I stared at him. I tried to read his face. His words. Was he telling the truth?

“Go. Will you?” he said. “Just go.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Blake waited outside while I went in and downloaded everything from Jennifer’s phone onto my laptop. While the information transferred, I silently cursed myself for taking the phone out of Jennifer’s house at all, let alone bringing it back to my home. My only hope was that it was so early in the investigation, that Jennifer’s body had been discovered such a short time ago, that the police hadn’t yet started looking for the missing phone. They’d be processing the crime scene and examining the physical evidence there.

For all I knew, they were finding my fingerprints somewhere I forgot I’d touched in the house. But I couldn’t worry about that either.

Blake had called me an idiot. Was he right?

When the information was transferred, I disconnected the phone from my laptop and started back outside. But before I reached the door, Amanda called to me from the top of the stairs.

“Ryan?”

I froze for a second. I slipped Jennifer’s phone back into my pocket and walked over to the bottom of the stairs. Amanda stood at the top, her hair in slight disarray because she’d been asleep. She squinted into the light where I stood.

“What are you doing down there? Are you coming to bed soon?”

“Yeah, soon. I got caught up looking at the Heights Facebook group. Someone else saw someone in their backyard, so I was reading about that.”

“I heard voices. Who were you talking to?”

I couldn’t lie to her again. I couldn’t just stand there in my own house and lie about every damn thing I was doing. I couldn’t do it.

“It’s Blake,” I said. “He came by. Don’t worry. He’s standing outside.”

“What is he here for?”

“He wanted to talk to me about the wedding.”

“This late?”

I shrugged. “You know how he is. Don’t worry. He’s leaving now.”

“Look, I don’t care if he comes in.”

“He’s not coming in. He’s going. Okay? And then I’m coming up to bed.”

“Is he inviting us to the wedding?” she asked. “Find out about that.”

“You’d go to his wedding?”

“You heard what I said earlier about moving on. And Sam . . . you know, I miss her friendship. We were starting to get pretty close. I’m just saying . . . let the past stay in the past, you know?”

“That sounds like a really good idea. Just go back to sleep. I’ll be there soon.”