Brent’s right. I am an idiot.
I close my eyes. The boat rocks with a wave, then falls still again. Rise and drop. Kaycee had left the collar as a clue, or as a cry for help—but not to prove to me that she killed Chestnut. It was, I see now, a kind of insurance. If something bad happened, she could be sure I would wonder about the collar and why she’d left it for me. She hoped that I would spot the connection. The common factor—between Chestnut and her.
Both poisoned.
But that day in the hall, I unwittingly revealed to Misha that Kaycee had begun to suspect someone was trying to kill her the same way Chestnut had been killed—with poison. Misha must have been in a panic. If Kaycee had left a clue for me, some loser she hadn’t spoken to in years, who else had she told—and what, exactly, did she know?
“That night in the woods,” I choke out. “When you kissed me…”
“Couldn’t have you getting too close to the water,” he says matter-of-factly. “She made a lot of noise as she was going down. I could have sworn she was dead before we loaded her into the boat, but I guess I was kind of in a rush.”
She won’t stay down.
We have to make sure she’s not breathing.
I remember now. Why couldn’t I remember before? I’d convinced myself my own memories were suspect. I’d convinced myself to ignore the terrible suspicion that something was very wrong in the woods that night.
He moves toward me. When he leans down, I can smell the sourness of his breath. For a terrible second, I think he is going to kiss me again. And now it’s too late—too late to get free, too late to escape, to survive. “But I did always think you were cute. In a pathetic kind of way.”
He seizes my wrists and I shout—an instinct, a useless one.
Too late, I see he has a knife.
“I’ve always liked the broken ones, I guess.” He brings the knife to my wrists. With one clean sweep, he frees me.
Chapter Forty-Three
I aim a punch, but Brent swats my hand away easily, almost amused. He examines my wrists, keeping a grip on me so tight it brings tears to my eyes.
“Good,” he says. “No marks.”
He releases me again and stands, folding up the knife and returning it to his pocket. I haul myself up to sit but have no time to launch into the water. Almost immediately, he straddles me, leaning his full weight on my chest, catching my wrists again with one hand when I try and push him off.
“It’s important there are no marks.” He seems almost as if he’s reciting the words. His weight on my chest is crushing. I can hardly breathe. “It’s important that you drown.”
I spit directly in his face. He jerks back, just an inch, and then the wind shifts slightly in my favor and sends another ripple across the reservoir. The boat rocks and he rocks with it. To keep from toppling over, he releases me and steadies himself against the deck. Just for a second, he has to shift his weight forward, rising onto his knees, giving me space to move.
A second is all I need. I drive both my knees hard at his groin, catching him with just enough force to knock him off balance. Instinct curls him up and I twist out from underneath him, clawing for the side of the boat. He launches at me, grabbing my ankles as I hook an arm over the side of the boat, dragging me backward so I crack my jaw against the deck and taste blood in my mouth.
“Bitch.” He flips me over onto my back and slams me down again, sending a shockwave of pain through my body. For a second, everything goes white and I have the strangest memory of my mother. It was the winter before she died; she was still well enough to move around, and my father had made a fire pit in the back, clearing a drift of snow, so that she could have s’mores for her birthday.
The fire was so high at first that we couldn’t get close. We’d stood back, waiting for it to calm, as my dad used a piece of steel tubing to spread the logs apart.
Isn’t it amazing? my mom had said, pointing to the very center of the fire, where it was blue. All of that burning, just because it wants to breathe.
In my memory, her hand is very cool, and it’s clear what she’s really saying: if I don’t fight, I’m going to die.
The pain ebbs. Brent has a rag in one hand. I catch a whiff of chemical scent. Chloroform, or gasoline.
I wrench my head to the side, gasping for clean air, fumbling for something, anything, I can use as a weapon, striking out with my fists, my legs, writhing and twisting, on the slickness of the deck.
He tries to shove the rag into my mouth but I cough it out. I slither away from him. But he’s too strong, and I’m too tired. I’m a fish, lashing out in its last moments still tethered to a hook.
The fish hook.
I’d forgotten the fish hook and lure Condor made for me, still nestled in cloth in my front pocket.
I tug the zipper open just as Brent clamps the rag, wet with chemicals, tight to my face. Instantly, I’m blind; the acrid scent takes over, gagging, the rag suffocating.
And just before I slip entirely, I swing with the fish hook latched between my fingers.
Brent screams and draws back. Oxygen floods my lungs, drives off the darkness, brings the world back into focus. Something warm hits my face. Blood. I’ve slashed him just below the eye, a gaping, ragged cut.
I scrabble backward and the hook spins out of my grip. Before I can find it he gets his hands around my throat—no longer worried about marks. He crushes my windpipe in his fist.
I feel along the filth of vomit and blood until the fish hook bites back in response.
This time I aim more carefully.
His eye makes a slight popping sound, like a grape bursting, when I drive the metal through it.
Chapter Forty-Four
I tumble over the side of the boat and plunge beneath the surface of the water. Even then I can hear him screaming. My ankles are still bound, and my clothes are so heavy I nearly don’t make it up for a breath. I struggle out of my father’s vest and let it drop. But I can’t get my ankles free, not with my fingers half-numb and my body still heavy with drugs.
When I surface, I see the bonfire blazing in the distance, and not a single person standing there to watch. Like I thought. No point in screaming. The stereo is blasting “Sweet Caroline.” I’ve always hated that song.
Brent has stopped screaming. I can’t see him at all. The boat rocks on the wind-ruffled water, its silhouette dark against the sleek reflection of the moon in the water.
I slip under the water again and come up coughing. I try to fumble off my shoes but this takes me under again. Each time it’s harder to break through to the oxygen above, so I give up.