What Lies in the Woods(101)

“You blackmailed him.”

She rolled her eyes. “You make it sound like some mustache-twirling villain thing. I just reminded him that he owed me and my dad for not saying anything. If you want to get anywhere in life, sometimes you have to get people to do things they don’t want to, and it helps to have leverage. I learned that a long time ago.”

“You warned Cody that Liv knew it was Jessi.”

“I didn’t think he’d kill her. I thought he’d get a fucking lawyer or something,” Cass hissed.

“Bullshit,” I said. “You’re smarter than that.”

Her lip trembled. “I didn’t hurt Liv. I wouldn’t.”

“Then why tell him at all?”

“Don’t you think he deserved to know that Liv was about to blow up his life for no reason?” Cass asked. “After everything he’s done for you? You’re so determined to believe the worst of people. I didn’t realize what he was going to do until he called me again. After she was dead. He threatened me, Naomi. He said if I didn’t help him cover it up—” Her eyes welled with tears, and her voice choked off.

She’d planted the suicide note. A note she’d held on to, just in case. Like the photograph of her father and Jessi, and everything else in that box of horrors. Cass had used the gate code, gone into the house while Kimiko slept, left the note, taken the gun so that she could make it look like Liv had used it to kill herself.

She’d put in the code at 4:47. It would have taken too long to get up to the pond and back; it would have been daylight by then. There might have been early-morning hikers. She hadn’t been able to plant the gun until after the police had searched the pond. She’d raced to the lodge instead, providing herself with an alibi—fudged a bit, maybe, thanks to whatever dirt she had on Percy.

That was why they hadn’t found the gun at first. It wasn’t there to find. But then Bishop and I had refused to let it go. When had she decided she had to plant it? After I called Cody about Jessi?

“When you helped me look for her, you already knew she was dead,” I said. “You pretended to think it would all turn out okay. You knew she was at the pond, and you let me go up there alone. You tried to convince me to stop digging. God, that eulogy at her funeral—it was all bullshit. It was all a lie.”

“It wasn’t a lie. Liv was my best friend,” Cass said. “But what could I do? She was already dead. Cody was ready to tell everyone that we were in on it together. I had to protect myself.”

I swallowed a laugh. “You should have left it alone. If you’d never helped Cody, it would have been fine, but you wanted to be the mastermind, didn’t you? Collecting your blackmail. Pulling everyone’s strings. But you’re kind of shitty at it, as it turns out.”

Her hand whipped out so fast I could barely flinch before her nails were sinking into my cheek, gouging at the knot of scar tissue and raking down to my jaw. I fell backward against the tree trunk with a yelp of pain and clapped my hand to my cheek, feeling a hot trickle of blood beneath my fingers. She looked at me with vicious contempt.

Cody came striding over, looking alarmed. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Cass stood, panting slightly between her teeth, the only sign that anything was wrong. Her shoulders straightened. “There’s no way around this, Cody. She’s never going to keep quiet. But if we hide the body, it’ll look like she took off.”

Cody flinched. I just turned her words over in my mind, marveling at the way she skipped so neatly over that transition. No mention of killing me. From alive to a body, like it was a process they could have nothing to do with.

“People will look for her,” he said.

“Some,” she allowed. “But Marcus Barnes called me right before you did. She left his place completely wrecked and acting erratic. Covered in dirt. People will believe that she took off.”

“Marcus Barnes? What does he know?” He looked at me. “What did you tell him?”

“It wasn’t about that,” Cass said. “She found out…” She hesitated, like it was painful for her to say. “Liv was the one who stabbed her when we were kids. Had some kind of psychotic break and attacked her.”

I thought of all the time Cass had spent with me, after the attack. At the hospital and after. How she’d taken care of being our voice, telling the story again and again to anyone who asked. Taking control of the narrative. And of us.

“What?” Cody said, clearly shocked. I felt a petty surge of pleasure that I wasn’t the only one getting blindsided. “That’s what Liv meant when she said you lied about Stahl.”

“It makes sense that Naomi would be freaked out and take off after finding that out,” Cass said, sounding satisfied.

“We can’t just kill her,” Cody said, voice strained. “I can’t—”

“You know we have to. It’s that, or you go to prison, and that baby of yours is in college before you get to see her except on the other side of Plexiglas.” She sighed. “You don’t have to actually do it. I don’t mind.” She held out her hand for the gun.

Cody stared at her. Looked at me. I was past pleading. I met his eyes and tried to keep myself from shaking. He dropped his eyes and handed off the gun. Cass checked it expertly to ensure it was loaded.