I’d been lucky, in the end. After half a decade and a slew of jobs, which took me from Syracuse to Philadelphia, Baltimore to Washington, an old school friend who owned a sports shop in Ocean City offered me a job. When she’d sold the place, I’d met Mike while watching the sunrise, and joined Beach Body. Not long after, I’d moved to Brookmount, putting more distance between me and the hordes of tourists, and changed my last name to Reid, which had been my grandmother’s. I never got my art degree, but I had met Jack. The irony that it had been in a bar and he’d given me a false name wasn’t lost on me, and maybe it was penance, not only for my past, but also because I’d never shared my secrets with him. If I had, perhaps things would’ve turned out differently. Maybe he’d have had the courage to confide in me.

As I finished my story, Heron said, “And Jack knew nothing of this?”

“No,” I whispered. “I was too ashamed.”

“Maybe you were running another scam together,” Stevens said, flipping to bad-cop mode, which was starting to seriously piss me off. “Maybe Whitmarsh was involved, too. Perhaps it wasn’t working for you anymore and you decided you could do it on your own, or at least without Jack. Make more money that way.”

“Enough,” I shouted, and they raised their eyebrows in unison. “I don’t know anyone called Whitmarsh, Jack and I weren’t running any kind of scam and I’d never hurt him.”

“You need to calm down,” Stevens said. “You’re not doing yourself any favors here.”

My jaw clenched. When they’d arrived, I’d considered telling them about the library book and my conversation with Maya. No way would I do so now. They’d turn things around, they couldn’t be trusted, and I’d be damned if I’d let them do to Jack what they were trying to do to me, especially when he wasn’t here to defend himself.

“I did my time,” I said. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I didn’t know him then.”

Heron nodded, smiled that sympathetic smile of hers again, thinking she’d get me to open up that way. Not a chance in hell. “Lily, perhaps—”

I cut her off by raising my voice again. “Tell me about the boat.”

“We can’t comment at this point,” Stevens said.

“Why?” I snapped. “Because of your ridiculous theory it was me?”

Heron quietly said, “You do understand if you ran into Jack—”