She is not well.I had to find a way out of here. I had to get away from her.
“Emily would have hated you for stealing their money. She would have hated the way they look at you.”
“So you decided to get rid of me,” I said, stalling for time. “For Emily.”
Rebecca stared at me. “No.”
“You knew about the tunnels, and somehow, you told Drake…”
“No,”Rebecca insisted. “Avery, I wouldn’t do that.”
“You said it yourself. Emily would have wanted me gone.”
“I’mnotEmily.” The words were guttural.
“Then what were you apologizing for?” I asked.
Rebecca swallowed. “Mr. Hawthorne told me about the tunnels one summer when I was little. He showed me all the entrances, said I deserved something that was just mine. A secret. I come down here when I need to get away—sometimes when I’m visiting my grandparents, but since Emily died, things are pretty awful at home, so sometimes I enter from the outside.”
I waited. “And?”
“The night of the shooting, I saw someone else in the tunnels. I didn’t say anything, because Emily wouldn’t have wanted me to. I owed her, Avery. After what I did—I owed her.”
“Who did you see?” I asked. She didn’t answer. “Drake?”
Rebecca met my eyes. “He wasn’t alone.”
“Who else was there?” I waited.Nothing.“Rebecca, who else was in the tunnel with Drake?”
Who would Emily have wanted her to protect?
“One of the boys?” I asked, feeling like the ground was crumbling beneath me.
“No,” Rebecca said quietly. “Their mother.”
CHAPTER 86
Skye?” I tried to wrap my mind around that. She’d never seemed like a threat, the way Zara had. Passive-aggressive, sure, and petty. But violent?
We’re all friends here, aren’t we?I could hear her declaring.I make it a policy to befriend everyone who steals my birthright.
I could see her holding out a glass of champagne and telling me to drink.
“Skye was down here with Drake the night of the shooting,” I said, making myself confront the implications head-on. “She gave him access to the estate, probably even pointed him toward the Black Wood.”
Toward me.
“I should have told someone,” Rebecca said softly. “After the shooting, as soon as I realized what I’d seen—I should have spoken up.”
“Yes.” That word was razor sharp—and spoken by someone other than me. “You should have.” Overhead, Grayson stepped into view.
Rebecca turned to face him. “It was your mother, Gray. Icouldn’t—”
“You could have told me,” Grayson said quietly. “I would have taken care of it, Bex.”
I doubted Grayson’s method oftaking care of itwould have involved turning his mother over to the police.
“Drake tried again,” I said, glaring daggers at Rebecca. “You know that, right? He tried to run us off the road. He could have killed me—and Alisa and Oren andThea.”
