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“Let me....Please let me finish.” Sucking in a breath and swiping at her tears, Zara lowered her voice. “The detective asked Cooper if he’d heard from Ethan since the night of the party. I know he hasn’t. He was worried the first few days because when Ethan goes missing, bad shit happens. It’s not the first-time allegations of assault have swirled around him. As the weeks passed and he didn’t show up, Cooper confessed he hoped he’d messed with the wrong person and had finally been dealt with. He hoped he was gone so he couldn’t hurt anyone else.”
Stepping closer to us, she braved my wrath and removed her sunglasses, revealing bloodshot eyes. “Cooper knows how much I love you, Nee. He’s had front-row seats to my mourning over you, so when the cop asked him again if he’d heard from Ethan, I dashed outside and went to his side. He hugged me like Aslan is hugging you now and, in that moment, I knew Cooper chose me. He might’ve tolerated that sociopath, but he chose me over him. And you know what he did?”
Neri began shaking in my hold.
I squeezed her closer, sticking us together with pool water and skin.
“What?” she whispered. “What did he do?”
“He lied,” Zara breathed ever so quietly. “He lied to the police and said he’d heard from Ethan the day after the party. That Ethan hopped on a plane for Borneo, ready to disappear into the jungles of Malaysia before starting his O.E.”
“But that’s not tru—”
I pinched Neri. Hard.
She wasn’t supposed to know what wasn’t true. She wasn’t supposed to know a damn thing.
Zara glanced at me, her eyebrows drawn, her eyes hiding secrets I didn’t like.
Why is she looking at me like that?
Neri licked her lips, anxiety rippling down her spine, infecting me. “I mean...how is that lying? Ethan could very well be overseas—”
“I think he’s under the sea,” Zara whispered.
I turned ice cold. “H-How would you know that?”
“Because a few days after he went missing, when he didn’t return to grab his stuff to catch his flight back to Adelaide, Cooper managed to get his service provider to tell him where Ethan’s last phone location was.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I hissed under my breath, borrowing a well-used Australian curse. No other words were vicious enough for the rip-roaring terror inside me.
I was going to jail.
No matter what Neri had told the police last night, if Ethan’s friend could figure out his last location, I was fucked.
“His phone pinged in the middle of Trinity Bay before it went dark,” Zara said, throwing a furtive look at the kitchen window behind us. “I guess...I came here to tell you, Nee, that...I know I failed you as a friend. I know I hurt you unforgivably. And I know you’ll curse me until the end of your days for not hearing you screaming. But...I wanted you to know that I did my best to fix this. Cooper’s pretty savvy with tech and managed to clone Ethan’s phone with his number and all the stuff in his cloud. There’s software that you can use to plug in a phone number, and it pings that location all over the world, leading anyone searching for it on a wild goose chase.”
My ears pricked.
My panic paused.
Is that truly possible?
Zara’s face blanched. “I made the mistake of scrolling through Ethan’s content and...” She shook her head. “Let’s just say, I hope to God he’s dead because the images on there? The sick shit he was into? The dead animals that I’m pretty sure he murdered and mutilated—?”
Wiping her mouth, she stood taller and locked eyes with Neri. “Whoever Ethan pissed off did the world a favour by making him disappear, and as far as Cooper and I are concerned, we will do whatever it takes to ensure the police believe Ethan is off living his best life far, far away.”
Her brown eyes locked onto mine again, pinning me to the spot. I never thought Zara was anything more than an easy-going girl. A girl who’d somehow befriended Neri thanks to the convenience of school, but as our eyes tangled and my nape prickled, I wondered, just briefly, if the reason Zara and Neri were friends was because they had a lot more in common than I thought.
A knowing kind of similarity. An otherworldly connection to things not many people could sense.
Sudden fear crawled up my spine.
Could Zara know?
Had I left evidence behind when I’d knocked Ethan out?
Fuck...are there cameras?
