Chapter Thirteen
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hunter’s social media is as obnoxious as I expected.
Half the photos of him are shirtless. The other half he’s decked out in overpriced jeans and hoodies, high-end designers tagged in every post. There are no photos of Solina on his page, though I didn’t expect there to be. Guys who earn their following on half-naked photos with hundreds of girls in the comments begging for them to slide into their DMs don’t just casually post their girlfriends.
There are no girls on his account, really. Not even a mom or a sister. Just endless photos of him on beaches and rooftops. Shallow glimpses into a glamorous life.
He posted the day Solina died. A posed shot of him leaning against an electric-blue snowboard, with a snowboarder emoji as the caption. Very original. His neon-orange puffer jacket seems tacky to me, but a quick Google search reveals it’s worth almost five grand. Guess you can’t buy taste.
My stomach drops when I realize the post is geotagged in the Alps, all the adrenaline from finding a lead draining like sand through an hourglass.
Until I remember that morning in the chapel, the way Poppy teased Hunter for what he’d posted that day. I scroll back up to the top of his account, quickly finding the shirtless beachside “thirst trap” he posted that morning to the tune of three thousand likes and two hundred comments. Geotagged in the Maldives even though he was here.
He knows how to cover his tracks.
What I need is to get into his phone. Go through his texts, his photos, his calls. Find something that puts him in Luster that night. Rich kids are careless, but not enough to leave their phones and laptops hanging around where anyone can swipe them.
But a drunk rich kid might be.
Going to a party with Hunter in the middle of the woods is risky, but it’s the perfect opportunity to lead him toward a mistake. He’s already begging Gabe for drugs, and who knows how many drinks he’ll knock back. I’ll stick close to the crowds. Hold my ground if he tries to get me alone. Keep my fingers wrapped around the handle of the blade, push him off if he so much as holds me too tight.
After class I head straight for the library. I’ve got four hours to kill until I meet up with Poppy and might as well put them to good use. Public spaces are safe spaces. No one is going to try anything when I’m in the direct view of a security camera and a handful of guards who look like retired Navy SEALs.
I use my time wisely, snagging one of the free computers in a lab off the entrance. Once I’m sure the room is empty, I chase as many leads as I can. Even with someone as high-profile as Hunter, there’s only so much you can find on the internet. Brief mentions of him in articles about his father and the family business he’ll surely run one day. Photos of him and his mother at soulless charity events. Nothing useful or substantial.
A quick search through Solina’s Kingswood email doesn’t yield much either. Except that she hasn’t taken bio since her freshman year. No emails or mentions of an apprenticeship even in her deleted folder either, a confirmation of the hunch I already had. She lied about needing to come back early. Obviously, at some point she changed her mind and didn’t want to come back at all, but the question remains: why lie?
With Hunter’s socials giving me a decent lead, I decide to comb through Poppy’s and Gabe’s too. Poppy’s account is as glossy and polished as Hunter’s, but with twice the photos and three times the glamour. Her holding yoga poses in front of dozens of sunsets and beaches and waterfalls—snapshots from the yoga retreats she’s led across the world. Most recently in Bali. A handful of brand endorsements for protein powders and celebrity-branded athleisure. No surprise, she’s done some modeling on the side. Editorial shoots for smaller, but well-respected fashion magazines. Last year she walked in New York Fashion Week, and Milan the year before. She’s everything you expect a Kingswood student to be: beautiful, wealthy, and well-traveled. While her family isn’t as high-profile as Hunter’s, it only takes a little bit of searching to find out more about the Washingtons. Her dad, a real estate developer, used his own modest wealth to build an empire that catapulted him into the top 1 percent within just a few years of graduating from Harvard with his MBA. Her mom, a lawyer, came from more humble beginnings, but quickly skyrocketed to the top of the payroll as one of the most respected attorneys in “big law.”
Gabe, on the other hand, is harder to pin down. His account is locked, and based on the post count he probably doesn’t use it much anyway. He’s not a public persona the way Hunter and Poppy are—no articles about him or his family to comb through. Besides an announcement on the Kingswood site about Dean Hughes’s appointment, I have nothing new to go off of.
After following a few more leads to dead ends, I move on to something more productive—googling answers to the stack of homework I’ve built up in just a single day. If I’m lucky, I’ll be gone by Monday, proof in hand and a knife in Hunter’s gut. But there’s no guarantee. And as much as staring at equations and rambling questions about metaphors and similes makes me want to tear my hair out, I can’t get caught off guard. Not again.
The job’s made a lot easier once Tiffany gets off work. Answers to the worksheets and equation packets slowly trickle in one by one after she’s left the library for the day.
But the answers don’t come for free.
My phone rings for the fourth time that afternoon as I make my way across campus back to Kincaid. I made a decent enough dent in the pile of work that I should be able to finish by Monday, if need be. And I still need to find an outfit for tonight’s bonfire before heading to Poppy’s.
I glance over my shoulder at the group of girls walking behind me, recognizing one of them from my history class. For the fourth time, I send the call to voicemail. A new text comes in seconds later.
if you don’t call me back in the next five minutes I’m coming over there with a gun that I do NOT know how to use
Should’ve seen that coming.
Walking past the front entrance to Kincaid, I head for the outdoor seating area in the back of the building. Once the snow starts to thaw, people will probably come here to study or hang between classes, but for now, no one wants to sit on the frozen yard furniture. My fingers sting from the harsh bite of the cold within the few seconds it takes to unlock my phone, already going numb as I hold it up to my ear.
Tiffany picks up on the second ring.
“When I agreed to let you go on this mission, I told you to call me every day. That means every. Day. ”
The sound of her voice is comforting, even when she’s scolding me. Which, I realize once I hear the hurt in her voice, I definitely deserve.
“I know, I’m sorry,” I mumble, guilt weighing heavily on my shoulders. “It’s just … a lot here. Keeping up with everything.” Pretending to be her sits on my lips, but I shake myself off before I can say it. Admitting the truth out loud, even when I’m alone, doesn’t feel safe here.
“Oh, but you’ve had time to send me all the homework you need me to do for you.”
Another hit to the gut. “I’m sorry, Tiff,” I say again, but it still doesn’t feel like enough.
Tiffany says nothing, so neither do I. The cold slices through my fingers with each breeze, and I only have a few more minutes before I’ll have to tuck them into my pocket or risk frostbite. But I stay there and wait for her.
She lets out a sigh, and I can almost see her pinching the bridge of her nose as she says, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I hesitate, unsure what to say next. “Are you?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Her usual teasing doesn’t land the way it normally does—losing its airy fluffiness when she’s still too mad at me to say things without bite. “Did you find anything yet?” she asks, switching up the tenor of her voice this time. She must’ve noticed the bite too.
“I think so …” I inhale sharply at the thought of the bruises, Hunter’s lips against mine. “Solina had this boyfriend, Hunter—”
“The guy with the speedboat?” Tiffany interrupts. Figures I wasn’t the only one Solina had shown her crush off to.
“Probably,” I mumble.
I’ve never seen Hunter on a speedboat, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had one. At a school where the Notable Alumni list is the longest section of their Wikipedia page, it’s obvious that most kids here are loaded. My research at the library confirmed my theory that Hunter’s got the kind of money that blows even other Kingswood students out of the water. The Sinclairs are as old-school as money can get. Oil, mainly. So long as he doesn’t screw up, Hunter’s set to inherit a corporation that’ll skyrocket his net worth to the eight figures before he can legally drink.
No wonder the people here part for him like the sea.
“She didn’t mention anything about him to you, right?” I ask. “That she was dating him?”
“No. At least I don’t think so …” Tiffany pauses, as if to run through her memories. “Do you think he’s the one that did it?”
It’s strange to hear her voice so meek, so quiet. So unlike the thunderbolt of a person I know.
“I think so,” I say, even though every part of me wants to say it was him. But I still don’t have the smoking gun. As impulsive as everything about this is, I can still be careful. As careful as he was. “Can you look into someone for me?”
“With pleasure,” she replies.
If anyone’s going to track someone down using the internet alone, it’ll be Tiffany. All she needs is a first name and a vague description and she can give you a list of their socials, their full name, and maybe even their address, within twenty minutes. If she ever decides to give up on the library, the FBI would be a very solid option for her.
“Isabella Tucker. She went by Izzy.”
Our squeaky kitchen drawer rattles in the background. She must be writing this down. “What’s her deal?”
“Girl who lived on Solina’s floor and dropped out over the break. She might know something about what happened between Sol and Hunter.”
I’d tried to research Izzy on my own, but all I could find was an address in Seattle and an inactive Kingswood email address. The phone number listed in her file from Charlisa’s office went straight to voicemail each time I tried it, but even if she had answered, I’m not sure what I could’ve said to get her to open up. With a super common name and nothing else to work with, all I came up with was dead end after dead end.
A pause while Tiffany fumbles for something on the other line. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“And do we still have that camera Dede left at our place? The door one?” I add. Hopefully it’s still where we left it: sitting in the garage collecting dust. After Dede caught his first wife cheating thanks to the motion-activated camera he’d attached to his front door, he wanted it out of his sight for good. We always said we’d set it up someday, but no one unexpected ever showed up at our door. Our place wasn’t worth robbing.
“We do … Why?” Tiffany asks with a clear note of skepticism.
I give a noncommittal hum, already knowing how she’d react if she knew what my plan was. “Just a precaution. Do you think you could mail it to me?”
It’s vague enough that Tiffany doesn’t protest—I knew she wouldn’t if she thought it was something that might keep me safe. “Fine,” she mutters. “I’ll send it out tomorrow morning.”
“Overnight shipping?”
“Do I look like I’m made of money?” she snaps.
“Please,” I plead, so quickly I almost cut her off. “I’ll send you the money for it, promise.” I don’t have much, but I don’t need to be precious anymore. Why bother stretching myself thin when I have nothing to save for? No scholarship, no books, no third mouth to feed. Fifty bucks won’t kill me.
It might even save me.
Tiffany grumbles something that sounds like another “Fine” before trailing off. We sit in silence, me with the wind roaring in the background and the din of the TV in hers. I want to ask her what she’s making for dinner, if Dede cursed out the produce delivery guy again, if they finally fixed the coffee machine in the library staff room, but the mundaneness of our before feels shallow in comparison to what we are now.
I’d give anything to go back to the before. To shifts at the diner and arguing with Tiffany about who forgot to defrost the chicken. The thought of coming home to her, to the shadow of our old lives, makes the tips of my fingers warm. But reality locks the chill in, that I might not come back. And even if I did, we wouldn’t be those same people.
“Stay safe, Lu. Send me your location so I can know where you are, just in case. And call me. Okay?” Tiffany’s voice cracks this time, wavering after she inhales sharply and whispers, “I love you.”
A sob bubbles up inside me, and I push it back down as quickly as it forms. I’ve opened the dam once—opening it twice means no going back. There’s no way I’ll be able to shake it off if I open myself up again, no way the wound will heal enough to let me go even a second without thinking about everything we’ve lost.
“I love you too,” I gasp out, releasing the breath I’d held to keep in the tears.
Four words that never feel like enough for someone like Tiffany. Not family by blood, but so much more. After we left ours, we learned that home can be a person, not a place. Solina. Tiffany. Dede. Hearts and voices that make somewhere as barren as Luster feel like the place you’re meant to be.
“Talk to you soon?” She phrases it as a question, even though we both know it’s not.
“Talk to you soon,” I echo.
After we hang up, I linger on her contact card, staring at her name and the selfie of us she’d insisted I use, wishing she was here so I could hug her until the tremor fades from her voice. I send her my location, pushing away thoughts of what would’ve happened if I’d made Solina do the same. It doesn’t matter now.
Tiffany’s reply is instant.
Thank you.