Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
LUKE
The auditorium is already filling up. Students have packed into rows of blue velvet seats, all of them whispering and texting. A lot of times you have to drag students to these things. Not this time. Everyone is here to find out if people’s suspicions are right.
Everyone knows something is up. You don’t have to be smart to put together that Coach Murphy is missing, and then the cops were digging body parts out of the lake.
I don’t let go of Madeline’s hand once we find our seats. I’m not leaving her side—not today, not after everything. Georgia squeezes in next to her.
“You see her?” Madeline whispers. She doesn’t have to say her name for me to know who she is talking about.
I scan the faces and then spot her. I give a slight nod to show Madeline. Lana is in the front row, wearing black like she’s going to the funeral after this. Performative bullshit. Teachers are lined along the walls, trying to look calm.
Bennett walks on stage, and everyone falls silent without him having to order everyone to do so a few times.
“I’m sorry to call everyone here last second, but this could no longer wait.” His voice is steady. “As many of you have been speculating, you are correct. The body found at the lake belongs to Coach Murphy.”
The crowd erupts. Bennett raises his hand for quiet so he can continue.
“Her death was not an accident. It’s being investigated as a murder.” A few loud sobs fill the space. “We’ve brought in extra counselors for anyone who needs to talk. Classes are suspended until Wednesday. I urge you all to be patient and to let the authorities do their work.”
A uniformed cop walks up the side stairs and onto the stage. He leans in and whispers something in Bennett’s ear.
I see it. The micro-expression my brother tries to hide—his jaw tightening, his eyes flicking to the left, toward the dorms. He nods once, sharply, and the cop walks off.
Something’s happening, and it’s happening right now.
“That’s all for now. I urge you to speak to the counselors,” Bennett says, his voice slightly off. “You’re dismissed.”
The crowd surges toward the exits, everyone talking in hushed tones to one another.
Madeline tightens her grip on my hand. “Something’s up?
” I love how she’s already reading me so well.
This must be that couple bullshit I hear people talk about, but maybe it’s not bullshit after all.
I might have rolled my eyes at that shit before because I didn’t understand how two people could be so close.
“Yeah.” I pull her to me, my arm around her shoulders as we move with the crowd. We round the corner toward the dorms and stop short.
Police cars. Three of them, lights flashing silently against the brick. Officers everywhere, some with gloves on, going in and out of rooms.
“Oh God,” Georgia breathes beside us. We hurry into the building and quickly realize they’re on the male seniors’ floor.
“They can just search rooms?” Madeline whispers when we make it to my room’s floor.
“Yes, it’s not our property.” Then I see what door they are going in and out of. “Shit,” I mutter.
“What?” Madeline gets a panicked expression.
“That’s my and Grant’s room.” In fact, where is his ass? He’s always up in my face, but he hadn’t made it to the assembly. An officer steps out of the room, my brother behind him. He’s holding a bag that has red tape on the top of it. That’s when I see what’s inside it.
The glint of plastic and metal. Coach Murphy’s school ID. The one she wore on a lanyard every day. The one we found in the boathouse.
Grant follows the officer out, stone-faced. Unreadable. That’s my MO, not Grant’s. Georgia lets out a small gasp.
“Grant?” Madeline steps forward, but I put my hand on her arm, keeping her close.
“This is bullshit,” Grant says, his tone flat.
He looks at me but gives nothing away. He’s not fighting because fighting means explaining.
Explaining means telling them we were all at the boathouse that night.
We saw a dead body and said nothing. It means exposing all of us.
So either he cares about us enough to get arrested or he’s guilty and did it right in front of our faces.
They cuff him. Grant doesn’t resist, doesn’t struggle. He just looks at me one more time, a silent message passing between us—keep her safe.
Then they haul him away.
Madeline grabs my arm, her fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “Luke, they just—they can’t—he didn’t—”
“I know,” I say, watching them lead Grant down the hallway, keeping Madeline tucked against my side.
“Luke.” Bennett’s voice cuts through the chaos. He’s walking toward us with two officers flanking him, and his face is that careful blank mask he uses when he’s about to do something he hates. “We need to talk. All three of you.”
Madeline stiffens. “We didn’t do anything.”
“I know,” Bennett says, and I catch the slight softening when he looks at her, the acknowledgment that she’s Paislee’s sister. “But you’ve been spending time with Grant. The police have questions.”
They lead us to Bennett’s office, not the interrogation room, which is something, but the message is clear. We’re not free to leave.
Inside are two cops. One cop, a woman with hard eyes and a notebook, is standing by the bookshelf. The other is Sheriff Brinks, someone I have a love-hate relationship with. He loves to fuck with me, and I hate his fucking ass.
“Grant wouldn’t kill Coach Murphy.” I say it before anyone because it’s fucking ridiculous. “He’s nice.” Good description, Luke. I’m really selling this.
“Your friend Grant,” the woman says. “He’s got a record.”
“What?” Georgia’s voice cracks.
The cop flips open her notebook. “He has anger issues.”
I think of Grant’s hands and how controlled he usually is. How he never loses his temper, never raises his voice. He’s the calmest guy I know.
“That doesn’t mean he killed anyone,” I say. If that were the case, I would have a pile of bodies around here.
“We have footage from the security camera.” Sheriff Brinks steps forward with a tablet in hand. The fuck? If they have footage, they should be asking a whole lot of other shit.
Sheriff Brinks shows us the iPad.
It’s grainy, black and white, timestamped 4:17 a.m. The night after we saw the body. A figure walks up to the boathouse door and goes inside. Stays for twelve minutes, then comes back out.
The figure is wearing a hoodie, head down, but when he turns—just for a second—the camera catches his face.
Grant. Even with how shitty the footage is, there’s no denying it’s him.
Oh fuck. Grant, what have you done? Why the hell did he go back there?
“That’s not—” I start.
“That’s Grant Harrison entering what we believe to be the crime scene at four in the morning.”
Madeline goes pale. “Where is that?” She acts, playing dumb.
“It’s the boathouse on the Monroe property,” Sheriff Brinks tells her.
Madeline’s brows pull together. “That time stamp and date. That’s the same night; a ton of us were there. There was a giant party. Where is the rest of the footage? There has to be more.”
“It’s a motion-activated camera,” the woman says.
“Yeah, and? People were everywhere. It should have shown more.”
“This is all they said showed up that night, so the party must not have ventured that far down.” He closes out the iPad. Or they hadn’t handed it over. Caleb. I’m going to be all over your ass when I get out of here. That’s his family’s home, which means he provided them with the footage.
“Maybe he forgot something,” Georgia whispers, her voice barely audible.
“Or maybe he was cleaning up evidence he missed the first time,” Sheriff Brinks says, not sounding annoyed.
I shake my head. “No. Grant wouldn’t—he’s not—he’s the most controlled guy I know. He doesn’t panic. He doesn’t—”
“Then explain this.” The female cop slides a photo across Bennett’s desk.
It’s Paul. Or rather, Paul’s face. I pick it up. “Are you saying Grant did this?”
“He did,” my brother confirms. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Madeline and Georgia share a look.
Paul is bruised, bloody, and has one eye swollen shut. The photo is dated the day after the boathouse.
“Your calm, collected friend,” she says, “beat the living shit out of another student the day after the Murphy was murdered.”
We could tell them. Tell them everything. About the boathouse, the body, and what we saw. But then we’re all complicit. I’m sure we’d get hit with tampering with evidence or hindering an investigation. Who the hell knows what they’ll come up with trying to scare the shit out of us so we talk more.
“I don’t know anything,” I say. “And I sure as fuck don’t talk to the police.”
The cops exchange looks. The female one closes her notebook with a snap.
“Fine. You’re free to go. For now.” She fixes me with a stare. “But if you’re protecting him, if you’re lying to cover for a murderer, you’ll go down with him. Think about that.” She pauses, but I know there is more. “You have a temper too, don’t you? How close were you and Grant?”
“That’s enough.” My brother steps in. “If you want to question Luke, you’ll do it with a lawyer present.”
“I can already tell you she’s going to tell you to go fuck yourselves.”
“Luke.” My brother stares at me, wanting me to shut the fuck up.
“We’ll be in touch” is all they say before leaving the office.
Bennett braces his hands on his desk, looking exhausted.
“Luke,” he says quietly. “If you know something...”
“I don’t,” I lie, and I hate how easily it comes out.
Madeline’s hand finds mine. Her fingers are ice-cold.
“We should go,” she whispers.
“I have a couple of calls I have to make, but this conversation isn’t over.” We all just nod. I’d rather not say shit. I don’t need to rack up more lies to my brother. Things have started to shift for us.
We walk out of Bennett’s office, past the students still gathered in the halls, past the whispers and the stares. Everyone knows Grant was escorted out, and we were questioned. That shit will spread like wildfire. By tomorrow, everyone will think we had something to do with it.
Madeline stops in the hallway, turning to face me. Her eyes are wide and scared, but there’s determination. Damn, my girl has fucking grit.
“We need to talk to Emily,” she says. “Now. Before they decide we’re suspects too.”
I nod. “Yeah. We do.” It’s our one good lead. She holds a piece of the puzzle we need to solve who really did this. The key to Grant’s freedom.
But as we head for the exit, I can’t shake the image of Grant’s face on that camera. Calm. Purposeful. He was walking into the boathouse at four a.m. like he had business there.
And I wonder—how well do I really know my new friend?