Page 15 of The Engagement Party

No harm. No questions.

Until she picked the guy no one expected. The young man who everyone believed murdered her.

Chapter Twelve

Sierra

Esme.Sierra had blocked the name, tried to tuck it back in a dark corner of her mind and never think of it. She always feared using it, saying it in any context, would make it more likely she’d accidentally launch the name into the middle of a conversation with Mitch and shut him down forever.

She never asked him for more information about his mother and what happened. Sierra didn’t have to when there were thousands of online links, videos, and true crime podcasts that spelled out every painful detail. But, standing there now, Sierra couldn’t manufacture a logical connection between the woman’s name and that body. Not one that made sense... or maybe she didn’t want to let her brain make the obvious leap.

She stared at the man who occupied so much of her thoughts and tried to find a verbal path forward. “Your mother’s name—”

“That tattoo belongs to Tyler Edwards,” Mitch said.

She knew that name, too. It haunted Mitch and anyone who loved him, and she stood at the head of that line. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Have you seen the tattoo before?” Ruthie asked Will.

He nodded. “In a video.”

“What does all of this mean?” The stiff way Ruthie held her body signaled her frustration. “Could someone . . . you guys all seem to—”

“We should go inside,” Cassie said. “I feel exposed out here.”

Ruthie let out an exasperated huff. “What are you talking about?”

Cassie gestured toward the house. “We’ll go in and—”

“No.” Sierra’s thoughts jumbled and crashed together. She had questions and ached to clear the confusion, but Cassie’s serious lawyer voice had ticked Sierra right off. “There’s a dead man in a car. We’re not going anywhere but off this island. Now. We can swim for all I care.”

Alex frowned. “Then what?”

“Sierra, you know what finding him here, with me, means. Even without that note, I’m screwed.” The flat affect lingered in Mitch’s voice, and his face, usually tan due to his hours in the sun, stayed a chalky gray color.

Ruthie raised her hand. “Explain it to me.”

Sierra talked right over her. Every word directed at Mitch, begging him to listen and leave. “I’ve been with you the whole time since we left Boston. We drove here with Cassie and Alex. You have an alibi.” Sierra looked to Alex for an assist. “Tell him.”

Instead, he shrugged. “It’s all pretty convenient. The circumstances look suspicious.”

More lawyer bullshit. Sierra never had an anti-attorney thing until right this second. “How can you say that?”

“That doesn’t mean he thinks Mitch did anything. He’s being realistic,” Cassie insisted.

“Stop!” Ruthie’s yell echoed across the calm water. “Couldone of you please explain why Mitch knows the dead guy in the trunk?”

Will reached for her. “Hon, come here.”

She shrunk back from him. “Don’t call me cute names. Don’t ask me to be calm. This is horrifying. There’s blood and a body, and you’re all acting like this is something we should workshop and study all the angles of before reporting it.”

“No one is doing that,” Alex said.

Sierra understood the wild, trapped-in-hell look in Ruthie’s eyes and the pleading in her voice. The conversation started rolling and sounding packaged as it inched further from the point.

“Tyler and I were best friends growing up. We lived on the same street, almost since birth, and did everything together. Running around. Bikes. He was always at our house because his mom was a nurse and worked these long shifts, so he’d stay over.” Mitch took in a huge gulp of air. “My mother was his eighth-grade teacher.”

Sierra wanted to stop him, help him, figure out a way to heal him. She hadn’t succeeded in doing any of that during the six years they’d known each other. Today, in this moment, she was as far from reaching those goals as she’d ever been.

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