“Don’t even think about it.” Kendall steps toward me, making me flinch. “Move. Now.”
I take a step, trying not to look at my ex-boyfriend, ex–best friend, dying or dead on the ground. He was trying to say something just before he passed out.
He was trying to warn me.
“Addie, I swear to God, I will shoot you if you do not walk the way I tell you to,” Kendall says tightly. “Move.”
With one last look at Jeremy’s inert form, I take a step forward, and then another. I don’t know how I’m doing it. Walking away from him. Moving, with a gun pointed at my back, by someone I thought was—if not my friend—someone I at least thought I could trust.
“Are you going to shoot me?” My voice sounds funny in my ears, too breathy. The sky is no longer gray, but a bright white, unearthly. I can’t hear anything in the woods, no insects, no birds, no animals. There’s nothing out here except Kendall and me.
“That depends on whether or not you jump.”
I look back. Her face is still in that tight, concentrated look I’ve never seen before.
“Why?” I’m surprised at how calm I sound. I touch Fiona’s necklace, realize I’m getting Jeremy’s blood on it.
“I was supposed to be getting away with this.” The padding of our feet on dirt. “But things don’t always go as planned. I wasn’t as careful as I thought. So I need a scapegoat.”
I.
Kendall did this. She did it alone.
“Seth had nothing to do with this,” I say softly.
She laughs. “No.”
A wave of shame goes over me. Seth. He was on my side this whole time. Maybe if I’d never doubted him, I wouldn’t be here right now.
About to be killed. By the same person who killed my sister.
“Honestly? I’d have loved to throw Seth under the bus. But my family would never stand for that. It could never be one of us.”
It clicks into place. “Me. You’re going to say it was me. And I—”
“Couldn’t live with your guilt any longer. Correct.”
My mind is spinning wildly. I need to figure a way out of this. But also—I need to know why.
“Why Fiona?” I ask. “She was your friend. Why would you kill her?”
Kendall frowns. “She wasn’t innocent in all of this.”
“So tell me.” I need to know, and I need to keep her talking. Maybe if she’s distracted enough—if I can buy myself enough time…“What did she do? Why did you kill her? Why did you kill your own brother—” It comes to me. “You were the one who had us shot at in the woods? Seth’s car—the picture of Davy—that was all you?”
“The car was because I didn’t want you talking to Caleb,” she says. “It was stupid of me to mention him to you. But I thought Seth already knew. I had no idea what Thatcher might have told him last year. So I messed with Seth’s car the night before you left. He didn’t know I was home; he thought I’d already left for the city. But since I was one of the only ones who knew where you were headed, I was afraid that made Seth suspicious of me. So I guided us to the ravine that night we were all together. I’d hired someone to shoot at us while we did. It worked. Seth started trusting me. Telling me things.”
“What things?”
“How worried he got when you began distancing yourself. And how he was pretty sure you’d found something in the old tree house and weren’t telling him about it.”
I exhale. I thought I’d fooled him—but he knew me better than that.
“So you were afraid, what—I’d found Fiona’s journal?”
“No. I have Fiona’s journal. I took it from your house the night she died.”
I turn to stare at her, but she prods me forward again.
“The night you killed her.” She still hasn’t told me why.
“I was afraid of what would be in it. Fiona’s phone I stole just yesterday, right after I dropped Marion off at your house. She and Davy were busy making out and didn’t even notice when I slipped into your room. I was looking for the phone you and Seth were using, to see if there was anything he wasn’t telling me. It was very lucky I found that phone instead—next to the piece of paper with the password on it.”
I curse myself for being so stupid. Not just leaving it in there, unprotected, but leaving that paper, too.
But I’m still confused. “So it wasn’t Seth’s father sending those texts to Fiona?”
I twist my head around and see her mouth go up at one corner. “You weren’t far off, you know. You and Seth were actually pretty good little detectives. Fiona didn’t get a scholarship. She did find herself a wealthy patron. But it wasn’t Seth’s father. It was mine.”
“Your father.” Thatcher Montgomery Sr.
“Correct.” She gestures with the gun. “Keep moving.”
I do, swallowing. I don’t hear anyone, but we have to be getting close—
“Davy and Marion,” I say suddenly. “What if they see you? What if—”
“They’re not here. I said that to get you here.”