Page 60 of Begin Again

Bennett shrugs, completely unfazed. “It’s one of my many talents.”

I blink. My brain is short-circuiting. The charming guy from the cafe is not only Theo’s long-lost cousin but also a hacker. And he didn’t come here for some fake blog—he came here to investigate his family?

Theo runs a hand through his hair, clearly still grappling with the whole situation. “The TL;DR of it all is he found out his dad died, he still doesn’t know who his mother is, and we’re cousins.”

Bennett nods, his expression grim. “And considering how things have been going around here, I figured I should stick around. Looks like I was right.”

Silence smothers the room.

The air feels thick—like we’re all waiting for the ground to crack open beneath us, for some unseen force to make sense of what we just learned. My gaze flickers to Theo, his jaw tight, his eyes clouded with emotion he doesn’t reveal.

Without thinking, I reach out under the table, brushing my fingers lightly against his hand. Just enough to let him know I’m here, that he isn’t alone in this.

His fingers press back, a brief but steadying touch.

One thing is certain: tonight’s meeting just got a hell of a lot more interesting.

But the moment shatters when Bennett speaks again, his tone brisk. “With that out of the way, let’s get to it.”

We gather in the living room, the coffee table between us piled with notebooks, printouts, and mugs of steaming coffee. My fingers tighten around my mug, the heat grounding me as my mind spins from everything we just learned.

Bennett isn’t just some passing traveler, and he isn’t writing a damn travel blog. He’s Theo’s cousin, and he’s been digging into his family’s past because he thinks the story doesn’t add up. My stomach twists at the thought. How many lies have been circling this town? How many secrets are buried under the surface, just waiting to be uncovered? How many of those center around Theo’s family?

Orion clears his throat, snapping my attention back to the present. His posture shifts into full business mode, the tension sharpening the air.

“Let me just start at the beginning, then we’ll go from there. I was going through all the records the department has on Theo when I noticed a detail in his statement given to police the night his parents died.”

I glance at him, watching as his grip tightens on his coffee mug.

Orion’s voice is calm, measured— too measured. “You said your mom was screaming before you hit the patch of black ice. You told officers that she was trying to shake your dad and get control of the wheel because he, and I quote, ‘fell asleep’. Do you remember that?”

Theo looks like someone just reached into his chest and pulled the thread loose. His voice is distant, almost hollow. “I honestly don’t know anymore. I remember telling the police something and they would tell me I was misremembering because of the trauma of the night.”

Orion exhales, nodding like he was expecting that answer. “Misremembering or not that’s why we’re here today. I looked into their autopsies and noticed the coroner found hydrocyanic acid in his stomach. Internally, he had brain hypoxia, which would have caused him to lose consciousness while he was driving.”

A strange, uneasy pressure builds in my chest.

Hydrocyanic acid. That sounds familiar. Too familiar.

I swallow hard and say the first thing that comes to mind. “Not everyone has a fancy college degree, Orion. Care to clue the rest of us in on what that means?”

He does that annoying little brother thing where he speaks to me like I’m a child. “It means that it was a cyanide-related compound in his system that caused his brain to swell, then it made him pass out.”

My blood runs cold.

Cyanide.

I glance at Theo. His fingers are white-knuckled around his mug, but he doesn’t say anything, almost like he already knew.

Orion continues, “Your parents were cremated so we aren’t able to exhume them so we move to the next bit of information we have. George’s death. It was the evening after his and Aubrey’s wedding, they were on their honeymoon. Somehow a ski instructor was so hungover, or potentially intoxicated that he skied directly into a tree. It was ruled as an accident and even though they did an autopsy and found hydrocyanic acid in his system that was somehow looked over and eventually ruled an accident. He was also eventually cremated.

“Then more recently we have Gabe’s murder. He also had hydrocyanic acid in his system. The working theory is that he vomited so hard that he lost his balance and tripped. When he fell forward he was too weak to catch himself and he hit his head and lost consciousness leading to his coma and then his death.

“All we have from all of these murders is a theory and the physical reports. Everyone was cremated so we can’t do additional testing to see how they were poisoned with the cyanide.”

Morgan exhales sharply, adding to Orion’s point. “We’re between a rock and a hard place if we can’t prove that they were poisoned.”

I nod, gripping my mug a little tighter. That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Proof. Without it, everything we know—everything we suspect—is just smoke in the wind.

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