Page 70 of No Place Left to Hide

She slaps at the water with her other hand, hyperventilating as her mouth keeps slipping beneath the waves and washing her chin clean of blood.

Like I said, pathetic.

She yanks my arm, trying to keep her head above water at my expense, and gasps, “Brooke. Help.” Her mouth dips under, and back up again. “I can’t swim.”

“Now’s a great time to learn.” I kick her away from me to swim toward the boat, but I only get a few feet away before I feel a hand on my ankle and I’m yanked back. My face goes under the surface and water goes up my nose and burns through my nostrils.

I snort it out and whirl on her, kicking her hand off. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

She gulps another mouthful of air. Her eyes are so wide with fear they’re basically all whites. “Help me.Please.”

I blink at her pitiful face. Something clicks into place like a key in a lock, and I’m done in a way I can’t even explain. A dull emptiness spreads through my entire body. It’s always going to be this, for the rest of my life. I’ll always be trying to stay ahead, and Claire Heck will always be there dragging me back down.

Enough.

I grab her by the arm and yank her close.

There’s a flash of relief in her eyes as she clings to me.

I smile, placing my hands on her shoulders. “Sorry, Claire. Goodwins don’t save lives.”

Before her surprise can register, I press down on her shoulders and shove her beneath the water. Claire thrashes around, grabbing at my legs, but I wrap them around her torso and hold her there. She claws at me, tugging me under with her, but I’m closer to the surface than she is. I breathe when I can, watching the bubbles from her scream drift to the surface when my head crests the top of the water.

It turns out, drowning takes a while.

Eventually, the thrashing slows. Her movements get weaker.

The bubbles trail off and the surface of the water stills.

Her clawed hands loosen and drop away from my thighs, my dress.

The lake goes eerily silent. I kick her further down and float at the surface for a second, letting the weightlessness of this moment sink into my very bones.

I’mfinallyfree.

Twenty-Eight

Now

My grip tightens on the steering wheel as the highway straightens out and my control snaps. “Maybe I didn’t have a choice. Did you consider that? If Claire came for you the way she came for me, you would have done the same fucking thing. She crashed my party. Caused a fight with her stupid fucking game.Punchedme in the face. Refused to leave. Said she planted drugs in the house and threatened to get me arrested. Do you have any idea what kind of damage that would have done to my family?

“Not to mention everything she did to me while she was still at Waldorf, or the lines she crossed with Dylan.MyDylan. What else could I have done? How else was I supposed to stop her from ruining my life?” I’m half yelling and half wishing for her to understand the position I was in. “I had to kill her. It was the only way to make it stop.”

I glance over at her, expecting sympathy, but Jena stares at me like I’m holding a knife to her throat. Her eyes are the size of baseballs, and she leans away from me, against the door. “You…what?”

I face the road again. It’s a miles-long straightaway. There’s nothing but barren fields on either side of us, and pitch-black skies above, speckled with stars. But I don’t see fields, I see bubbles. I hear Claire’s gurgles for help, see the relief on her face when she thought I was going to help her back to the boat. Discomfort worms its way through my insides. So I do what I’ve done for the last six months—I shove it all the way down and slam a lid over it like it never existed. I can’t go back and change what happened, even if I wanted to. There’s no sense in letting something as trivial as guilt stand in my way. Not when I have so much to lose.

She deserved it anyway.

“All I had to do was hold her under a few minutes. She was basically dead already. I just finished the job. If anything it was a mercy killing.”

Jena sucks in a sharp breath. “You didn’t.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t this what the whole night has been about? Getting me to admit what I did to Claire?Nowyou want to act like you’re shocked?”

“I thought you crashed the boat and covered up your part in the accident,” she shouts at me. “I saw you two struggling for the wheel, you took control, we crashed, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up the next morning on the boat alone.

“I thought you were lying about being on the boat to avoid being charged with her accidental death while you were drinking and driving! I thought you and your dad came up with some story about Claire stealing the boat after you went home to make sure your family didn’t take any of the heat. I didn’t think that you actually held herunder. How could you do that and go on living a normal life? You planned her fuckingcandlelight vigil! Do you even have a soul?”

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