Page 71 of No Place Left to Hide

I shake my head. She doesn’t get it. “No, it wasn’t like that. I didn’twantto kill Claire. It was the only way to get rid of her.”

“You went to her funeral! You went to school! You continued making fun of her family for being cheap, knowing damn well you killed their daughter!”

“You would have done the same thing!”

“No, I wouldn’t! Claire didn’t deserve to die just because she was getting on your goddamned nerves!”

My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “It was more than that and you know it! She was never going to let me be happy. She was determined to bring down my whole family, and she had to be stopped. Itriedto do it another way. I thought getting Mr. Heck fired would solve the problem but even that wasn’t enough—”

“You got Mr. Heck fired?” Jena asks, her voice full of venom.

“Well, not me personally. My dad did. But he had it coming. My dad said he was always putting his responsibilities on other people, and my dad did twice the work. It wasn’t fair. If anyone was going to make partner, it should have been the person busting their ass. So, when I asked him to help me get rid of Claire, he planted a little evidence, and voilà. Mr. Heck got fired, Claire left school, she dumped Dylan, and everything was right in the world.”

I didn’t think she could look any more horrified, but she does. “They lost their house. Her dad lost his career—he was disbarred. Claire wastop of our class, and you took all that away from her so that you could haveDylan?”

When she says it like that…it sounds shallow. “It wasn’t just about him…”

“But itwasabout him. Every five minutes at that party, Claire was either saying you didn’t have a chance with him, flirting with him, orinterrupting your time with the boy of your dreams. Tell me she didn’t die so you could have a chance with a boy.”

“Fuck you, Jena. He asked me to prom!”

She laughs, and it’s the bitterest, harshest sound I’ve ever heard. “You’re a total fucking psychopath, aren’t you?”

Before she can respond, my phone rings through the Bluetooth.

12:14 a.m.

INCOMING CALL: MOM

We’re back in service.

Twenty-Nine

Before

September 2nd

Claire Heck is dead.

The gravity of my situation really starts to sink in. She was last seen at my party. Half the student body watched us brawl on the deck. And now she’s sinking to the bottom of the lake.

My mind flips through all that could happen next. The police will have to be called. They won’t necessarily go straight to murder—it’s believable that she could have died in the boat accident—but if they find out I was drinking when I drove into the sandbar, I’m fucked.

I’ll get kicked out of Waldorf for the drinking alone. My mom could even lose her job at the school. My dad could lose his judge nomination and, depending on how bad the press gets, maybe his spot at the firm too. The other partners won’t want to look complicit in a scandal. Nobody wants to be connected to someone whose daughter killed a classmate, no matter how justified.

If this gets out, we’ll be no better off than the Heck family.

I grip the back of the boat with shaking fingers as I spiral. Theice-cold lake slips away and all I can see are handcuffs and interrogation rooms. Headlines. Fallout. Ugly orange jumpsuits, or worse…khaki.

Oh god.

What did I do?

How do I fix this?

Do I hide the boat? Pretend it never happened?

I scan the shore. A couple vacation homes are lit up on the far, far side, and two more on the opposite end from our property. Nobody’s particularly close, but the boat will be easy to spot come morning. This lake isn’tthatbig. There’s no way to hide a whole boat without sinking it, and I have no idea how to do that.

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