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Heavy breaths cause her chest to heave up and down against mine, her pupils wild, blown out, and furious as she realizes every single escape route has been systematically shut down.

“Tell me what the fuck happened to Noah.” I lean down until my face is inches from hers, my gaze burning into her soul. “And leave out the bullshit part about you ‘looking out for the little guy.’ Because now that you know who I am, Harmony... you know I’ll know if you’re fucking lying to me.”

The air leaves her lungs in a sharp gasp. The fight in her body fractures, the sheer, crushing weight of my physical dominance and the secrets of her past finally breaking through her defensive wall.

“It was... it was the ‘last ride,’” she stammers out, choking on the words.

“Explain it.” I press my chest closer to hers, trapping her completely against the beam.

“It’s a game!” Tears of panic finally brim in the corners of her eyes. “A stupid, cruel high school game! When someone stepped out of line... or was seen on Halloween walking alone on Blackwood Highway, the seniors would take them out to the dirt roads. They’d take their phone, take their shoes, and leave them in a deserted area miles from town. Just to scare them! To make them walk back in the dark so they’d learn to keep their mouths shut!”

“Not seniors, Harmony. Just you and your fucked up friends,” I snarl.

“Yes.” Her voice shakes as she bobs her head up and down.

My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache. “And Noah? Why did you give Noah ‘the last ride’?”

Harmony swallows hard, a single tear spilling over her golden-brown cheek.

“To keep him from telling anyone about my secret. About my affair with Marcus. Noah saw us together in Marcus’s car behind the gym. There were pictures. He was going to go to the principal. He was going to ruin everything.”

A cold, horrifying realization detonates inside my brain. The memory hits me like a freight train, tearing through fifteen years of agonizing questions.

The phone call.

The night Noah died, my cheap flip-phone had buzzed in the dark bedroom of my father’s house. Noah had been breathless, his voice trembling over the static-filled line as he told me he had found out a secret about Harmony—something dark, something wrong.

Then his voicemail came a few hours later, saying he was standing on the side of Blackwood Highway in the pouring rain, and that he was walking home in the dark. Not an hour later, a car struck him on the asphalt, killing him instantly and leaving his body in the ditch. So the police report said.

He didn’t just stumble onto Blackwood Highway. He was abandoned there. By her.

I always knew she had something to do with Noah’s death, but hearing the details of her involvement unlocks something inside of me.

The need to know if it was Noah’s death that caused the change in her.

I stare at Harmony, my pulse hammering a slow, heavy, and lethal rhythm against my ribs. The firelight dances across her terrified, beautiful face, illuminating the subtle, microscopic shifts in her expression.

I know her. I’ve watched her, studied her, and obsessively traced her life for fifteen long years.

At this very moment, as I peer into the depths of her panicked eyes, a grim and frightening truth sinks deep into my gut.

She’s still lying.

There’s more to that night. There’s a darker, bloodier layer to the story that she’s desperately trying to keep buried beneath the surface.

I lower my head, sliding my mouth over to the shell of her ear, my fingers tightening in the fabric of her sweater until the threads begin to pop.

“You left him out there in the dark. You gave him ‘the last ride’ to protect your little secret. But you’re still holding back on me, pretty girl.”

I draw back slightly to gaze into her wide, petrified eyes, allowing the complete, unrestrained extent of my wicked plans to emerge from the darkness.

Her confession will be mine.

“If I find out you had a hand in putting him in the ground…” I murmur, my thumb coming up to drag slowly across her trembling bottom lip, “...I won’t just pin you to the earth, Harmony. I’ll cut the lies out of your throat, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left of you to bury.”

Fifteen

Death is On My Heels