Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
This can’t possibly be happening. But the longer I look at JT’s dead body, the realer it becomes. How could I miss this? How
has everyone missed that Easton Beaumont is a complete psychopath? There are always red flags raised on people like him. There’s a pattern.
Like being a mean kid or hurting animals.
Nate’s guinea pigs.
I look up at him. “You killed Nate’s pets, didn’t you?”
He looks shocked. At first he seems scandalized I would think he’d hurt an animal, but then he says, “Wow, you aren’t as stupid
as you look.”
“And your teacher with the anaphylactic shock?”
“That was more of a happy accident. I snatched the EpiPen from her bag. She’s the one who ate something with nuts in it.”
Blood pounds in my ears. It was Easton this whole time. He opened the door and disabled the doorbell—probably to toy with
me. He was there when Marcus told me to put the paint away, and waited until everyone was asleep to go back down and throw
it on the car. He did the same when the gas was left on. The hydrangeas. And he was in the kitchen alone when Miles showed
up; that’s when he put the glass in the Watergate salad.
Not everything needs to be about the investigation. That’s what he overheard a few nights before the party. He always knew I wasn’t Nate, and maybe for a while he was okay with
me pretending. But that all changed when he heard me talking with Miles.
Valencia had sent him to get me, and to put the recycling bin out for pickup. He must have taken the glass out of it that
night. That’s the glass he put in the Watergate salad.
Maybe to keep me from talking. Maybe to put more suspicion on me. Everything escalating slowly, and the whole time I thought
it was Marcus.
“How many people have you killed?” My hands are trembling. All I want to do is run, but I can’t move. Paralyzed by terror.
It’s like Easton is a wild animal, and I don’t want to make any sudden movements to set him off.
He grins. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
I’m not sure I would. Because now I know he killed Nate and JT and also had something to do with his teacher’s death. He didn’t
even care if his grandmother died, which means he’s definitely going to kill me.
I have no idea why it took me this long to realize it. Or why I’m not running. I stand, slowly, so as not to startle him.
“Don’t run,” he says. He knows exactly what I’m about to do. But I have no other choice, so I bolt in the direction of the
car.
I shouldn’t look back. I should run, as fast as I can.
But I do look back, and he’s there. Running after me. He has something in his hand—I can’t make it out but I think it might
be a knife.
I turn toward the trees, hoping I can lose him if I duck into the forest.
His hands clasp onto my shoulder and he pushes me. I run right into a tree, knocking the wind out of myself.
Easton pushes my head against the bark.
Something sharp stabs me in the back of the neck and I scream.
“Shut up!” He pushes me again, hard. Tears blur my vision, and sobs try to rack my body but I can’t catch my breath. Easton
pulls whatever is stabbing me out of my neck and I cry out. “I said shut up.”
He holds it in front of me. It’s not a knife; it’s a syringe.
“What is that?” I ask. “Did you poison me?”
He huffs. “Stop being so goddamned dramatic.” He loosens his grip on my hair but keeps me pinned against the tree. “It’s something
that will knock you out if I use it.” He changes his grip to show me the needle, and though he did stab me with it, he didn’t inject whatever is inside.
“I stole it from Mom’s office today. You’d think she’d be less trusting given the things she’s been through, but she left
me alone in there for the better part of an hour.”
If he’s telling the truth, it’s some kind of drug to put people out if they’re getting serious dental work done.
“I’m not going to kill you. That would look strange, my best friend and my brother having accidents on the same night, don’t you think?”
I don’t answer.
“So I’m going to let you go,” he says. “But if you try to run again, I’ll catch up with you and stick this in your throat.
” He looks at the needle in his hand. “And, honestly, I can’t be sure I have the dosage right, so it might kill you anyway.
Then I’ll have to leave you up here with a needle sticking out of your arm, and when they finally do a DNA test, everyone will think you’re a junkie who came up here to get high with JT, who fell off a cliff. Or maybe you pushed him.”
Easton pushes me hard against the tree. “I have contingencies for my contingencies. So don’t run.” He waits until I nod, then
lets me go. I put my hand up to my neck where he stabbed me, and a little bead of blood smears against my fingers.
“Relax,” he says, putting a plastic cover on the tip of the needle. Then adds with a grin, “It’s just a little prick.” He
walks back to the top of the clearing and stands over JT’s body, gazing down at it. “You have as much to lose as I do, by
the way.”
“How?” I try to keep my eyes on Easton, but JT’s dead, blank stare keeps drawing me back to him.
“You’ve got a cushy life here. I assume the homeless thing is true, right?” He looks back at me. “You had to be pretty desperate
to plan this whole farce. Unless . . . is your real family a bunch of immoral con artists, too?”
“No. I was homeless.” I have no intention of telling him I’m gay. If he really is killing people for fun, he doesn’t need
another reason to hate me.
“Which means you ran away. Or were kicked out.” He points at me with a thin finger. “Gay. Which explains you and Miles hanging
out all the time. Is he your boyfriend?”
No. He might hurt Miles. Especially now that he knows we’ve been investigating his family. Our conclusion may have been wrong, but with a little more research we might have figured it out. I shake my head. “He’s one of Nate’s friends. I’m trying to look as much like him as I can.”
Easton stares at me like he’s trying to figure out if I’m lying. Then maybe he realizes there’s more important things to think
about, because he looks back at JT.
“Well, listen,” he says. “You’ve been playing your game for a few weeks—”
“This isn’t a game.”
He frowns. “It isn’t? Are you sure about that? Because I’m pretty sure I’m winning.”
Easton has been playing a game. And I might have only just learned that I’ve been a part of it, but he’s right. I’m losing. He walks
over to the bench, where JT’s vape dropped after Easton hit him.
Tears stream down my face and I wipe them away. “You’re sick. What’s your plan when people find his body?”
Easton bends over and uses his own shirt to wipe the vape off, then, still holding it in his T-shirt-wrapped hand, puts it
back into JT’s hand, closing his fingers around it. Then he reaches into JT’s pockets and takes the orange inhaler, tucking
it into the back pocket of his own jeans.
“JT used to go up there to get stoned, Officer,” he says in a sad voice.
He puts his hands under JT’s body and pushes it toward the cliff.
“Stop!” I yell.
He ignores me and pushes again, JT’s limbs flopping over the side. “We went to see him, but he was smoking, and I didn’t want my little brother around that. So we left and went to get ice cream.”
The ice cream shop where our phones are. And where he paid with a card. Even if there aren’t security cameras at the ice cream
stand, he has a paper trail. Contingencies for his contingencies.
“I guess he lost his balance and fell.” He pushes again and the rest of JT slides over the side and out of sight. Easton looks
down after the body.
“What about the rock you bludgeoned him with? Your fingerprints are all over it and so is his blood.” His blood is also soaking
into the ground as we speak.
“And now it’s submerged in the bay.” He points down the cliff. “And looks like rain.” The thunder rumbles again like it’s
agreeing with him. “So even if it stopped somewhere on the ground down there and they want to dust every rock for prints,
the prints they do find will be garbage. The rain will wash away or dilute most of the blood up here. And our cell phones will never even ping
off that tower over there.” He points in the distance, where, against the thunderclouds, a red light flashes atop a metal
tower. He planned all of this.
Easton takes a few steps toward me.
“Honestly, I’m not worried. I learned a lot when I killed Nate—primarily, how dumb cops are. Murderers are found because they
make mistakes. I don’t make mistakes.”
Criminals are also found because their own hubris convinces them they don’t mess up. I’m sure there have been plenty of murderers
whose only slipup was thinking they didn’t make mistakes.
“I had a plan for Nate,” Easton continues.
“I thought out every possible angle. But I was a kid back then, and I didn’t take into consideration that even smart adults are more stupid than I was.
Did you know the local cops didn’t even contact the FBI and ask for help?
They didn’t get involved until a friend of Dad’s put him in contact with Grant. ”
My face burns with embarrassment. I don’t know how I missed any of this. He fooled me.
“Once the FBI was involved, they got the resources to search the bay but found nothing.”
There it is. If I can direct the police to Nate’s body, I can come clean and tell them what I’ve been doing, and that Easton
was the murderer.
“What did you do with it?”
Easton smiles and shakes his head. “Nice try. No, we aren’t going to worry about Nate’s body anymore because Nate’s here!”
He brushes my shoulders off. “Alive and well and on the road to recovery. For now. See, I’m going to let you keep up this
charade because I feel like we’re all in too deep now. You can stay and pretend to be Nate. But you’re not going to be talking
with Miles anymore. No more investigation. No stupid fucking podcast. And when you do finally leave, I want you to leave a
note explaining you weren’t Nate.”
I nod. “I was going to do that anyway.”
“Sure you were. What, after finding out who really killed my brother? Or were you hoping that finding his killer would help
Mommy and Daddy not be mad at you for manipulating them?”
I don’t say anything.
Rain starts to fall in small drops.
Easton looks back toward the edge of the cliff. “Guess Dad’s going to have to find someone else to buy weed from,” Easton
says. Then he heads for the car. “Come on. We need to pick up our phones. And there’s something else I want to go over with
you.”
He walks to the car and I follow him. Because I don’t know what else to do. Easton has thought so far ahead for so long. And
now I’m trapped.