What Lies in the Woods(99)

“She had a head injury,” I said. “And you left her alone. At night. In the woods.”

His expression was contorted with misery. He kept touching me—holding my hands, resting his palms against my arms. Like if he could keep hold of me, I could save him from this. “Only for a few minutes. I needed to calm down. I thought she would, too. But when I went back I couldn’t find her. I searched for her, I did. But she was gone. I told myself that she’d hitched a ride. When she didn’t come back, I tried to convince myself that she was living her life. Somewhere far away. Somewhere she could be happy.”

“But she didn’t hitch a ride,” I whispered. “She stumbled around in the woods, bleeding into her brain. Pressure building up. She tried to find a place to rest. To get out of the rain. She was so tired, and she just wanted to sleep. So she did. But she never woke up.”

He sank down into a crouch, his hands laced behind his head. “I didn’t even know she was dead, Naomi. Not for sure. I thought she’d show up the next day. Call me a dumbass like she always did. And then when I realized, it was too late to say anything. It would have looked like I did something. It was easier to keep quiet.”

“I understand,” I said, because I did. I understood the weight of a secret, and the urge to bury yourself beneath it.

I knelt down in front of him. I touched his face lightly, fingertips brushing over his stubble, and his eyes closed briefly, a sigh slipping out of him.

“I’ve been over that night a million times. I know that if I’d done something different, she might still be here. But none of it was done with intent. I was defending myself, and things just got out of control. She basically did it to herself. You can understand, though, how bad it would be if this came out. I can’t prove that I didn’t mean to hurt her. I could lose everything. Gabriella, the kids—they can’t know about this.” He looked at me desperately.

I nodded. “Jessi’s death was an accident.”

“Yes,” he said, as if relieved I understood.

“But Liv’s wasn’t,” I said, ragged as a scream but so soft I could barely hear my own voice over the hiss of the rain. He pulled his hands from mine. He stepped back, his face settling into a hard kind of sorrow. His hand went to his back, lifting up the edge of his jacket. The jacket he’d never offered to me, as I shivered in the rain.

He took the gun from his waistband.

It looked like the one Mitch bought me. Nine-millimeter, I thought. Close enough to the Barneses’ gun that you couldn’t tell the difference just from the wounds they left. And they’d never recovered the bullet.

My fear was cold and still, the surface of a lake in winter. I could sink forever under it, all sound and sense distant. Shudders racked my body, and I couldn’t look anywhere but the perfectly round, perfectly black barrel of the gun. I tried to take a breath. All that came was a short, shallow gasp.

“It wasn’t me,” Cody said. “Stahl’s son—he must have found out that you lied.”

“It wasn’t Ethan. He wanted his father in prison,” I said. “And how exactly do you know he found out we lied? Who told you that? It was Liv. Wasn’t it?”

Cody looked down at the gun like he wasn’t sure what it was. “You think you know what happened, but you don’t,” he said.

“You didn’t mean for it to happen.” Echoing again and again and again. Because nothing was our faults; the universe conspired against us, weaving tight the threads of fate. I’d known the names of the Fates once: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. How could I remember that, when I’d forgotten so much?

“I only wanted to talk to her,” he said hoarsely. “But she wouldn’t listen to me. She wouldn’t—she attacked me. I was only defending myself.”

“Unarmed? Half your size?”

“She would have destroyed my whole life,” he said, voice strangled. “I was just trying to find a way out. That’s all I’ve been doing, all along.”

“Was it you in the woods?” I asked him.

“I thought you might lead me to Jessi. I wasn’t going to hurt you. I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, but he sounded like he was trying to convince himself of it as much as me.

“Then let me go,” I said, one last futile thrash of hope as the snare’s wire tightened. I want to live, I realized, even as survival became impossible. For the first time I wanted more than to outrun the pain, but it had come too late. Even if Cody didn’t realize it yet.

“I can’t,” he said. He half lifted the gun. Not pointing it at me yet. “Sit down, Naomi. We’re going to stay here. We’re going to wait.”

“Wait for what?” I spat out, but he only shook his head and gestured with the gun. I walked three steps to the base of a tree and sat on a protruding root, my back against the rough bark. He kept half an eye on me, half on the way we’d come.

We didn’t have to wait long before a figure appeared among the trees, walking toward us.

It was Cass.





What the hell are you doing, Cody?” Cass demanded.

I opened my mouth to warn her, to tell her he had a gun—but she could see that herself. He made no effort to conceal it. He didn’t point it at her, either.

He’d been expecting her. And she had been expecting this.