I wonder what Lena has told them. “They were probably just trying to needle you,” I say.

“There were other questions too…” He pauses, takes a long swallow of his beer.

I get a bottle of wine and a glass, sit at the table with him and pour it.

“They asked about Nicole Wallace and the other girl who was murdered.”

“They asked you about them?”

He shakes his head. “They were asking about the murdered girls and Greg.”

I stare into my glass. I don’t even want to think about it. That would make my insane teenage infatuation even more twisted than it was. I feel the same childish surge of frustration I felt back then: if only Max had liked me back, if only Bella hadn’t flirted with him, making him blind to anyone but her, if only…then I never would have felt so stupidly lonely that hanging out with a man my father’s age turned into something that never should have been.

“But what’s the connection? He’s dead. He was murdered himself, wasn’t he?”

“It’s the timing, I think. Of course there was never anything to suggest it was him back then, but he disappeared and the murders stopped. And now he’s turned up dead.”

“So what do they think happened?”

He looks at me and there’s a question in his eyes. “I think they’re wondering if another girl fought back and won.”

I breathe in and hold on to the breath until I’m dizzy. I close my eyes and Bella is there, leaves in her hair, blood on her face.

Tell him, she whispers, and I shake my head, black spots appearing before my eyes.

Tell him? Tell him what? That I did go there, alone, at night? That he might have been a serial killer and I tried to kiss him and how, even now, with this new knowledge, I feel not relief that I got away unscathed, but the same sting of humiliation at his rejection? That’s what made me say all those things to Bella. She was so mad, so angry. Oh God, he could have been a serial killer and I gave her a reason to go after him.

THEN

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

October 2007

It’s raining and I pull my hood up, hunch my shoulders, and walk faster. It’s that drizzling, clinging rain and it creeps under my hood and soaks my face. I slow down when I get to the village. There’s a man with a microphone, another man with a camera behind him, and they’re talking to Bella and her friend Caitlin. I stop a few feet away and try to listen in but the man with the microphone spots me and turns around.

“Would you like to be interviewed about the missing girl?”

“What?”