Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
I’m already peeling off my shirt and grabbing my kit to go clean up. I’m drenched in sweat and covered in grass and whatever else I fell in. I smell rancid.
“No. We need to talk now,” RJ says grimly. He hits a key on his keyboard, then gestures to one of his monitors. “Watch.”
“Watch what?” I ask irritably, as a monochrome video begins to play on the screen.
“Just fucking watch.”
For a few seconds, I don’t understand what I’m looking at. Only RJ’s intense attention on me suggests I keep watching.
Then I see it.
The car blurring across the screen. Those taillights still haunt my nightmares, their glow painting the forest and turning the lake’s surface a shiny crimson.
I stand there and watch in real time, my breath a revving engine between my ears, as a couple of minutes later a figure runs from the scene in a hooded sweatshirt, sopping wet, face concealed and turned away from the camera.
The image damn near knocks me over. A gut-punch that reverberates through my limbs and settles into my bones. The shaking sets in and it doesn’t relent.
Without a word, RJ fast-forwards the video until we see me dash through the frame, running toward the lake.
My lungs seize, no oxygen reaching them as the memories of that night crash into me.
Casey wasn’t screaming. There were no pleas for help. If she wasn’t knocked unconscious by the initial impact, she was already succumbing to shock. Or the drugs, maybe. Whatever it was, I didn’t know when I ran into the lake and swam out to the car. I saw her eyes fighting to stay open. How they locked with mine before her head lolled and her body went limp. Blood dripping down her face from a head wound. I remember how fast my heart was beating as I wrestled, with every shred of strength I could muster, against the bitter cold water to pry the passenger’s door open.
It was when I reached across Casey’s half-submerged body to release her seat belt that I saw it. And my mind went blank. Until that moment, I was only concerned with getting her out.
But then I spotted Gabe’s jacket snagged on the parking brake, the pocket seam ripped, as if he’d torn out of it to escape.
Suddenly, a collision of thoughts sent shrapnel flying through my head. And in the noise, a silent moment of clarity struck me like getting smacked across the face.
I took the jacket. Clutched it under my arm while I pulled Casey from the car.
Even soaking wet, she was so light. Frail. Or maybe it was adrenaline. I barely felt the muddy bottom swallowing my shoes as I trudged to shore with her in my arms. Her face was pale in the ruddy darkness when I laid her down.
Everything came quickly to me after that. I searched for pockets in Casey’s dress and found her phone, which was miraculously still working despite getting wet. I texted Sloane where to find her. Casey was unconscious, but breathing and stable. She was out of danger, and it would only be minutes before help arrived.
Before I left, I whispered to her. Told her I was sorry but that she was safe now. Her sister was on her way, and everything would be all right. Because of course I couldn’t stay. I didn’t have any answers to what had transpired there, only that my best friend since kindergarten had apparently left Casey to drown. I had to find Gabe and talk to him. Figure out what the hell had gone wrong and why he’d done it. There had to be an explanation.
But I never got one.
Gabe vanished that night. By morning he’d already been shipped off to military school, and no one would answer my calls. To this day, we haven’t spoken. And he has no idea I’m the one who covered for him.
Or, hell, maybe he has a hunch. After all, nobody’s gone out there to interrogate him, right? Gabe’s smart enough to know that means the cops don’t have him in their sights, and if he knows that much, then he must suspect I’m the one who had his back. Same way he had mine in sophomore year when I needed it. From the moment we met, Gabe has been my ride or die.
And I’m his.
RJ abruptly stops the video. I snap out of my own head to see him staring at me in betrayal and accusation. Nothing less than I deserve, I guess. And even though I’ve known for a long time this day was coming, I thought by now I’d have some answers.
Instead, I’m as clueless as the rest of them and well over my head in guilt and lies.
“You get now why I’m having kind of a problem lately,” RJ says with a tone so flat yet severe, I’m more than a little concerned what he might do next. “What were you even doing there?”