‘And you’re Mia Thomas,’ I reply. ‘Long time.’ An awkward silence hangs between us and, as always, I can’t resist the need to fill it. ‘I just got back to town yesterday.’

  Across the road, Edwina Harris' laugh rings out again as she sits at one of the outdoor tables in the Sweetie’s courtyard.

  ‘You here to write a story about the girls?’ Mia asks as we turn to watch the women chatting.

  Their bright jackets and flawless hair suddenly make me feel like a drab little field mouse. I glance down at my beige knit sweater and worn jeans, embarrassed at my lame attempt to run off and become someone I’m not.

  ‘Not exactly. Mum thought Britt could use some support. Not sure I’m the right person for it though.’

  Mia nods. ‘Losing Lilly is a lot for her to deal with.’

  Her remark surprises me. ‘Do you know my sister well?’

  ‘No, we’ve only spoken once or twice. Koda and I were the ones who found Lilly. He’s a search and rescue dog. We were assigned to the case when she went missing.’

  ‘Oh, that would be a difficult thing to get out of your mind.’ I glance back over at the reporters drinking their coffee. ‘I guess the media has been on your case then, asking questions about it?’

  ‘Our policy says I’m not allowed to speak to the media, so no. Besides, finding Lilly’s body was enough to rattle me. I don’t think I have it in me to deal with reporters as well… no offence.’

  ‘Oh, no, none taken,’ I say with a casual swipe of my hand. ‘I’m not here for that.’

  Despite my sudden bout of imposter syndrome, it quickly occurs to me that Mia is an untapped resource. She found Lilly’s body. If I could get her to talk, I’d be way ahead of everyone else. Edwina and Marcia might be real journos, but they’re not third-generation Wildlings. It’s the one thing I have in my favour.

  ‘Mia, I don’t want to be nosy, but you look like you’ve been crying,’ I begin. ‘Since my sister still won’t talk to me, maybe I could offer you a shoulder instead?’

  She looks away, clearly embarrassed.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replies, refocusing her attention on gathering up her dog’s lead. ‘Just… you know, life stuff.’

  ‘I imagine it must have been hard on you, finding Lilly like that. Small town like this, we all know each other, even when we don’t.’

  She nods and glances at her dog. It looks back at her, and the connection between them is clear to see.

  ‘I… ah, yeah… it’s a tricky one,’ she says eventually. ‘And now, Hazel.’

  ‘You found Hazel as well?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t me,’ she says, maybe a little too quickly. ‘I don’t know who found her. Have they said anything more about it on the news?’

  I shake my head and continue to study her. The way she’s shifting her weight and pulling at her fingernails. If she was the one who found Hazel, why lie about it? A tingle of excitement runs through me. So far, the media hasn’t reported a cause of death for Hazel. All I’ve heard on the grapevine is that it looked like she fell and hit her head. But if Mia found her body, she would have seen her injuries. She’d know if something more sinister had taken place. Maybe that’s why they’re taking so long to confirm what happened. Maybe it wasn’t an accident after all.

  ‘There hasn’t been any new information reported that I know of,’ I tell her. ‘It must be hard for her family, still not knowing for certain how she died.’

  ‘It would be,’ Mia replies. ‘The whole thing is terrible.’

  I agree and think about my next words carefully. I have to do this just right. ‘Well, it was nice seeing you, and thanks for chatting with my sister,’ I tell her. ‘For what it’s worth, I appreciate that at least she’s had you to talk to. All we can do now is hope they find whoever is responsible.’

  I turn as though I’m about to leave, like I care little about her response, all the while praying she responds from her heart instead of her head. Come on, Mia, give me something to work with.

  ‘I hope so, too,’ she says.

  And there it is.

  Despite a pathologist's report showing Lilly died of exposure, and radio silence on Hazel Smith’s cause of death, Mia has just confirmed what she doesn’t want to say – that she thinks someone is responsible for at least one of the deaths. In my book, that means there’s every possibility the sleepy town of Wildling has become home to a murderer.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Britt

  ‘HERE,’ Luke says, handing me a blister pack of Valium. ‘That’s it for a while. If I take any more, Dad’s going to notice.’

  I nod and stuff the pills into the pocket of my denim jacket. We’re sitting on the aluminium grandstand down at the footy oval, and all I want to do is get this over with. It was a long shift at the servo, the afternoon wind is arctic, and I just want to go home.

  ‘What’s up with you lately?’ he asks. ‘It’s not like you to be on it this hard. You all good?’

  ‘Am I all good?’ I repeat, turning to face him. ‘Are you kidding me?’

  ‘Well, are you? Least I care enough to ask.’

  I stare at him and wonder what the hell I was thinking ever letting this numbnuts touch me. Am I all good? My best friend is dead, and he’s asking something that stupid.

  ‘No, Luke, I’m not all good,’ I say with a shake of my head. ‘What a stupid question.’ Why can’t he be a grown-up? I think to myself. Why can’t he be more like Bryce?

  ‘Well, geez,’ he shouts, throwing up his hands. ‘Sorry for even asking. Sorry for even giving a shit!’

  ‘Settle down. What’s your problem?’

  He doesn’t answer, and instead turns away and links his fingers behind his head. There’s skin off his knuckles, and the outline of a bruise forming.

  ‘What happened to your hand?’

  He quickly unlinks his fingers and shoves his hands back into the pockets of his worn-out cargo pants. ‘Nothing, just… frustrated, I guess.’

  ‘How’s the other guy?’ I say it with a smirk, but he doesn’t return my attempt to make peace.

  ‘Nah, it was just the wall at home. Dad says I gotta pay for the stuff to fix it now. Arsehole.’

  I nod and stare out over the field. ‘You’ve been weird since Lilly died.’

  From the corner of my eye, I see him turn to look at me. ‘Am I supposed to just act like I don’t give a shit? I thought out of everyone, you’d get it, Britt. We were all friends.’

  Anger crawls up the back of my throat, and it takes every ounce of willpower not to scream at him. Lilly and I were soulmates. He was nothing to her. How dare he measure his loss against mine? Against the sadness that has seeped into every part of me. But as I try to find the words, something about the slump of his shoulders forms a question mark in my mind.

  ‘Is that all you were?’

  ‘Is what all we were?’

  ‘Friends. Were you and Lilly just friends?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  I shift my body to face him. ‘Like I said, ever since it happened, you’ve been acting different.’

  ‘Different how? Because I’m sad she’s dead?’

  ‘No… I don’t know,’ I say with a shrug. ‘Just different.’

  He scuffs the toe of his sneaker against the step and sniffs, digging his hands deeper into his pockets.

  ‘Are you going to answer me?’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Just tell me. Did anything ever happen between the two of you?’

  Without answering, he pulls himself up and begins climbing down off the grandstand.

  ‘Luke?’

  ‘What do you want to hear, Britt? Shit.’

  I don’t care if Luke slept with someone else. It’s not like I love him, but would Lilly do that? Sleep with him behind my back? I get up and follow him down, the gaps forcing me to take each step one at a time.

  ‘Say it,’ I demand when I eventually reach the ground.

  ‘No.’

  I push him in the chest with both hands, and he stumbles back. ‘What the hell, Britt?’

  ‘Say it!’

  ‘Say what? That I screwed Lilly? So what? It was once. Now she’s dead, and it’s weird.’

  ‘When?’ My hands curl into fists at my sides.

  ‘I don’t know. Whenever.’

  I stare at him, and suddenly every part of him annoys me. His messy hair and pointy nose. His tall, lanky frame and the way his shoulders are always stooped like the branch of a weeping willow. ‘Tell me when, Luke, or I swear to Christ... Was it while we’ve been seeing each other?’

  ‘Like you care,’ he quips. ‘You want to screw someone else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh,’ he shouts, turning in a circle, his arms out. ‘You really think I don’t know you’re gagging to root Stanton?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t.’

  ‘Only ’cause he doesn’t want you.’ He shoves his hands back into his pockets and kicks at the grass.

  ‘Prick,’ I swear. ‘Tell me when and stop trying to turn it around.’

  ‘I don’t know. Like two or three months ago, maybe?’

  His answer sends prickles of disbelief across my cheeks. Two or three months ago.

  ‘Was it you?’

  ‘Was what me?’

  Freezing wind whips my hair into my eyes as I study every twitch of his face, every flinch of his body. ‘Was it you who got her pregnant?’

  ‘What?’ He takes two steps back as his mouth falls open. Until this moment, I’ve never seen someone’s face change colour before my eyes. ‘Lilly was pregnant?’

  Luke is a lot of things, but he’s never going to grace the silver screen for his acting abilities. He didn’t know about the baby.

  ‘Yeah,’ I tell him. ‘Three months.’

  He swallows and looks away. ‘Are you saying…’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘On the day she died, she said she was going to see the father,’ I tell him. ‘Did you see her?’

  When he doesn’t answer, my heart skips a beat. A tear slips over his cheek, and suddenly it hits me. ‘Jesus, Luke – you loved her.’

  He shakes his head but won’t look at me. ‘It wasn’t me, Britt. She never came to see me that night.’

  I sigh and let my head fall back. ‘What are you even doing with me if you were in love with my best friend?’

  He slowly backs up and folds himself down onto the first step of the grandstand. Without warning, he drops his head into his hands and begins to sob.

  All I can do is stand and watch as I simultaneously split into parts. The part of me that’s furious he did it and wonders why her and not me, even though I don’t love him either. The part that feels betrayed by my best friend. The part that’s angry because now I can never ask her why she did it, and the part that feels sorry for him because despite what she did to me, I love her, too.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he manages between breaths. ‘It was a shit thing to do. I just never thought I had a chance with her until that day.’

  ‘Right,’ I reply. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘She wanted nothing to do with me after that one time. I knew she liked someone else. She wouldn’t say who though.’

  I try to find a place in my head and heart where I can pack this moment away and never think of it again. I stare out over the field unable to look at him any longer. ‘So, who do you think it was?’

  ‘Who do I think what was?’

  ‘The person she liked.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  I shake my head and push my hair back, embarrassed to realise that maybe I didn’t know as much as I thought about the girl who was supposed to be my best friend.

  For a moment, Luke goes somewhere in his head as he stares up at the sky like he’s trying to remember something.

  ‘Luke? What is it?’

  He snaps back and nods his head. ‘Now I get it.’

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘I saw her that afternoon. I was…’ He holds my gaze a moment, then shrugs like he can’t be bothered trying anymore. ‘Screw it. I was following her, all right? She was being distant. Wouldn’t answer my texts, call me back, nothing. I thought maybe it was just one of her head games to try and keep me on my toes. You know what she was like, always needing to try and control everything and everyone. So, I followed her to see what was going on.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she went to the cop shop. I thought she was going in, but then she pulled out her phone and it looked like she was texting someone. About fifteen minutes later, she got picked up.’

  ‘Got picked up?’ I step in closer. ‘Picked up by who?’

  He hesitates and my heart races so hard I can hear it thumping in my ears.

  After a long, deep breath, Luke steadies himself and says, ‘Jack Stanton.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  WILDLING Police Station is a squat, drab building, more like a tired old house than a place of authority. The blue sign above the door is worn and faded. Some of the bricks are chipped, and the windows are dusty. It’s been twelve years since I stepped inside, but as I push open the front door, bile rises in the back of my throat and instantly I’m a teenager again.

  Inside, it still smells the same. The musty scent of old files and mildew hits me first, followed by a faint whiff of burnt toast curling in from the kitchenette out the back.

  Koda nudges my leg with his nose, and I look down at him. His brown eyes are soft and quiet, an anchor when my world feels like it’s tilting. I run my fingers through his fur, grounding myself in the rise and fall of his breath. I can get through this. I have to.

  ‘Hello? Is anyone here?’

  I’m not the same person I was back then, I tell myself. I can do this. I can prove to Jason and Will that I’m not crazy.

  ‘Well, well,’ Herm mutters as he comes around the corner, his fingers wrapped around a coffee mug with the words World’s Okayest Cop written across the front. I look at it and bite my tongue to stop from saying what comes to mind. ‘Can’t say I ever expected to see you in here again, Mia.’ He puts the mug down and loops his thumbs through his belt. His hips tilt forward as he rocks back on his heels. ‘What can I do for you?’

  I count to three in my head, willing myself not to fall apart. ‘I know what you did to Lilly.’

  Herm raises an eyebrow, pretending not to understand, but I catch a flicker of recognition in his eyes. He shifts his weight and strokes what looks like the beginnings of a moustache. ‘Do you just?’

  I nod and step in closer to Koda. A single bead of sweat trickles along my lower back. My insides are trembling, and I swear that if I were to glance down at my feet, I’d see the battered-up trainers I wore as a teenager instead of my grown-up boots. ‘You’re not going to get away with this,’ I manage. ‘What you did to me… and to Lilly, is not okay.’

  He nods to himself and then stares past me out toward the street. ‘As I recall, Mia, it was more than okay at the time. In fact…’ He sets his gaze back onto me and moves in closer, the scent of stale coffee and sweat drifting across my face. ‘… if I’m not mistaken, you used to enjoy coming here. Quite a lot, as I remember it.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ I step back, the old floorboards creaking beneath my feet. ‘I was just a kid.’

  He grins at me, but his eyes are flat and dull. ‘Tell you what. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You and Lilly both got exactly what you wanted. Now, you can tell yourself as many little fairy stories as you like, but at the end of the day, you never said no, did you? You never told anyone. You never fought me. You enjoyed yourself, and that’s okay. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

  I swallow the lump in my throat and reach down, desperately feeling for Koda’s ear. When my fingers find his fur, I quickly hold on, trying to steady myself. ‘I hated it. You know that.’

  ‘Did you though?’ He steps in even closer, and although my mind screams at me to run, I'm frozen to the spot.

  This whole place reeks of things left to fester and rot. His breath touches my cheek, and I feel the first tremble of my jaw.

  ‘See,’ he whispers into my ear, ‘even now, you don’t run, Mia. Even now, you still want it.’

  ‘You killed Lilly because she was pregnant,’ I whisper, pushing through my fear. ‘And Hazel. I know what you did.’

  Herm immediately pulls back and glares at me, his face darkening. His eyes flick to Koda, realising for the first time that I’m not completely alone.

  For a long moment, we just stare at each other, the air between us thick and still.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ he asks eventually. ‘If Lilly was pregnant, that’s news to me, and extremely unlikely since I had a vasectomy a long time ago.’ He pauses to let his words sink in. ‘She was in love with me. She came here willingly, maybe not at first, but in the end, I had to tell her to stop or people would start to notice. She was upset about it, sure, but there were no hard feelings, and I certainly didn’t kill her.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  But he smiles and shakes his head. ‘Nope, that’s a fact. And as for Hazel, can’t say I ever met her.’

  I gather the courage to search his eyes, desperate to see some hint that he’s lying, but he just stares back, daring me to question him.

  ‘Then you’re covering for Jack,’ I say. ‘One of you killed those girls.’

  He laughs out loud and once again rocks back on his heels. ‘You think Jack’s a murderer? Do you really think he’d risk everything he’s built over trash like Lilly and some Aboriginal girl?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘You know what I think? I think you went out onto Jack’s property, even after I told you not to, and found that girl’s body. You carried out an illegal search. I could have your credentials, Mia, but I won’t,’ he says, finally turning away and walking back to his desk. ‘Do you know why? Because you’re clearly unstable. You need help, and haven’t I always been there for you?’

  ‘I don’t want your help,’ I tell him, blood pounding in my ears. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  He nods slowly and reaches for the phone. ‘Everything is going to be fine, all right, Mia?’