“No,” I whispered, my heart hammering as it found its way up my neck and into the back of my throat. “No. No. No.” This was more confabulation, another false memory, one my mind had conjured up, stitching my faulty knowledge and random fears into a sick movie. What I’d seen couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be.

I threw the vacuum hose out of the car. It took three attempts before my fingers obeyed my brain, and I fired up the engine. Time continued to work against me. Thick and suffocating, slow as treacle. A second stretched to a minute, a minute to a decade. Although I drove well over the speed limit, only slowing down as I passed Keenan’s house, where the driveway was filled with cop cars, it seemed to take a thousand years to get back to the house, where I abandoned the car in the driveway, rushed through the front door and bolted up the stairs.

My chest threatened to implode when I got to my bedroom and stood perfectly still as I saw the metal bed frame, which now represented everything I’d been afraid of, everything I’d convinced myself I wasn’t. I walked over and put a finger on the bottom left bed knob. How easy would it be to convince myself I was wrong? How difficult would it be to walk away, out of the house, out of Newdale, and disappear? I’d done it before. I could do it again. Except...I needed to know. I had to be sure.

I turned the knob, heard it squeak beneath my fingers as it loosened. Two turns, three, four and five. The knob ended up in my hand, revealing a small space in the leg of the bed frame. I peered inside...and there it was. Celine’s butterfly pendant. The one I’d given her one summer’s day. The necklace she never took off.

I let out a moan as my legs gave way and I sank to the floor, the realization of what I’d done pulling me down like a drowning man. Because I knew. Everything I’d feared, everything I’d tried to run from, but couldn’t escape. I knew.

I was a murderer.

33

MAYA

I knew Lily would come snooping. I’d banked on it. It’s why I’d sent Ash to the garage as early as possible so she’d think we’d already gone, and the reason I’d hidden in the tree line behind the house, a little off to the side so I could see the driveway. I’d even left the spare key for her, and I’d been right to, because not half an hour after Ash had driven off, the nosy little bitch sneaked through the woods and into my house.