Page 101 of What Lies in the Woods

I touched my cheek, the side of my face twisted in a permanent grimace. He dropped his eyes.

“She wanted to tell you. There were many times when she wanted to tell everyone the truth and face the consequences,” Kimiko said. “Eight years ago, when she tried to kill herself, she said that she was tired of lying.”

I’m tired of lying.Why did that sound familiar?

“I hurt Naomi,” Kimiko said, Liv’s voice an echo on her lips. She stared into the distance, her hand holding her cardigan shut at her chest. “It was the only thing she said for almost three days.”

“Liv was basically catatonic at the hospital,” Marcus added. “They were both covered in blood. There was so much blood.” He looked pale at the memory.

Silence settled between us. It lingered, long enough for the conversation to wither, for any sense of connection between us to vanish, until each of us in that room was truly, utterly, alone.

“Naomi, what are you going to do?” Kimiko asked.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have an answer. I gave the marmalade cat one last scratch behind the ears, and I walked out, leaving them to their grief and guilt and fear.

I had reached the end. Or my end, at least. I couldn’t do this by myself anymore. I didn’t even know what I was searching for, why I’d thought that the answers I found would bring me some kind of peace. So Jim was a killer and Liv had almost become one, and there was notruthin any of that. Only sorrow.

The time for keeping secrets was over. I couldn’t hold off any longer—I needed to go to the police. I had to tell them everything.

But I couldn’t just walk in there. Not when it was the mayor I was accusing of murdering a girl—never mind the fact that I’d lied all these years and sent a man to prison for the wrong crime. I had no idea what kind of consequences I was facing. I needed help, and there was no one left to help me.

No—that wasn’t true.

Cody Benham’s business card was in my glove box. I cast around blindly for a minute before I remembered that my phone was long gone, thanks to Jessup Consulting. Instead, I drove until I found a pay phone at the edge of town, next to a bulletin board warning about keeping food where bears could get at it. I dialed the number with shaking hands. He picked up on the second ring with a distracted hello.

“Cody.” I gulped against a rising surge of panic.

“Naomi? What’s wrong?” he asked, voice sharp with concern.

“At the station, you said that you could help me find a lawyer,” I said. I braced myself, forcing the words out. “Well, I think I could really useone right about now.” I bit back a hysterical laugh and dug a thumbnail into my wrist.

“Are you in trouble?” Cody asked, low and serious.

“I don’t know. I don’t—” My voice broke off in a sob. “I’m not sure where to even start answering that question.”

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he said, quiet and steady. “Where are you?”

“I don’t know. I…” I forced myself to focus, look around. “I’m near the Anderson loop trail, I think.”

“Good. All right, stay put. I’m going to come to you. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, relief flooding through me. I leaned my forehead against the pay phone’s housing.

“We’ll figure this out,” he promised. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I’ll be here.”

The rain had blurred the world outside the car to an indistinct haze of green by the time the SUV pulled up beside me. I clambered out and went over to the passenger side, sliding into the seat next to Cody. “Thanks for meeting me,” I said quietly.

“I would have invited you over to the house, but Gabriella is in bed with a headache and a backache and a number of other aches that are all somehow my fault,” Cody said. I chuckled like I was in on the joke, but right now domestic bliss seemed more of a fanciful daydream than the goddesses and unicorns of my childhood. “You sounded pretty rough on the phone. What’s going on?”

I hunched over, wishing that I’d thought to change into something more substantial than a cotton dress. I couldn’t answer at first, but he just put a hand on my shoulder.

“You said you need a lawyer,” Cody pressed gently. “Is this about Liv?”

“It’s hard to know where to begin,” I said. A bird, rendered into a streak of brown by the rainy windows, flashed past. “I keep thinkingit started that summer, but it was earlier than that. It didn’t even start with me.”

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