Page 92 of What Lies in the Woods

I shook my head. I didn’t know what the hell Cass was doing with this stuff, but the implications of it were clear. Big Jim had been sleeping with Jessi.

I’d been focused on Oscar—his jealousy, his rage. But jealousy wasn’t the only thing that could drive a man to kill. She’d told Oscar she was going to start a new life with her lover. Which meant she’d thought Big Jim would leave his wife for her. He was going to take her away from this small town and give her everything she dreamed of. Because that’s what you tell your pretty mistress before you get bored with her.

But maybe she pushes. She asks for a deadline. She tells him to step up, or she’ll tell his wife, she’ll telleveryone. So things get heated.Maybe it’s an accident, maybe it’s on purpose, but either way she ends up dead.

Oscar kills her out of jealousy, or Big Jim kills her out of self-preservation. Whichever one of them does it, though, he has to cover it up. He takes her into the woods, shoves her in a hole where she won’t be found.

Except that we found her. The Greens were always in those woods. Hiking, hunting, drinking. What if one of them saw me climbing up out of the Grotto that day, and realized I knew?

Would he have known the others were with me? Liv and Cass had had a sleepover the night before, at Liv’s house, but I couldn’t go because I had a cold. He wouldn’t necessarily have assumed that we’d met up. He might have thought I was alone, or he might not have thought at all—just panicked.

So Cass covers for her brother, or she covers for her father—and either way the result is the same.

I took the paper from my pocket, my finger bumping against the earring case that held Persephone’s bone, and unfolded it. The image of the name change paperwork was pasted in below an email I’d barely glanced at. JustHere’s the paperwork you were asking about.The content didn’t tell me anything. But the email was from [email protected]. Jessup Consulting, Security & Investigations.

They were working for Jim Green. He was the one who’d sent that man to follow me, to break into my hotel room. Protecting his son? Or himself?

I shoved everything back into the box and closed the lid.

Cass had known about Jessi Walker. Had she made the connection to Persephone? Was that why she was so insistent that Liv let it go? She was trying to warn us off because she knew what her father would do if he found out.

Or else she was the one who had told him what Liv knew.

I had to get out of here. I grabbed the box, tucking it under my arm, and made for the front door.

At the bottom of the stairs, I heard a floorboard creak behind me. I turned, meeting Oscar’s eyes. He held a beer in one hand, his arms crossed. We looked at each other. I wondered for a moment if he would stop me. Cass had told him to keep an eye on me, after all. Making sure I was okay definitely didn’t include letting me run off unannounced. But he only nodded once, and turned away. Done with me.

I fled.

There was only one place left for me to go. I parked beside the old Chevy and walked woodenly to the door. I stood on the step, mind blank, paralyzed by the decision of whether to knock or walk in.

The door opened before I could decide one way or the other, and Dad looked at me with his usual blend of scorn and amusement, like it was a big joke I’d wound up back on his porch. Which I guess it was.

“You look like shit,” he informed me. “What are you doing crying in a fancy dress?”

“It was Liv’s funeral today,” I said.

“That’s Tuesday.”

“It is Tuesday. Can I come in?”

“Not like I can stop you,” he said, and walked back inside, leaving the door hanging open. I stepped in. Couldn’t bring myself to close the door and shut off my escape route.

“You need something?” he asked.

“No. I just— There’s nowhere else to go,” I said. My throat felt scratchy, and my eyes were puffy, though I hadn’t actually cried.

“That’s obvious enough, since there’s no way you’d come here otherwise,” he said, grumbling, but then he stopped and narrowed his eyes at me. “What the hell happened to you?”

I pressed my lips together and shook my head.

“Are those bruises? Did that pretty boy hurt you?” he asked, and I barked a laugh that turned into a strangled sob.

“I don’t even know where to start with that,” I said. My grip tightened on the box. “I need to look through some of my old things.”

“Go ahead,” he said, gesturing toward the back hall. “It’s just how you left it.”

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