“So did I,” Brandon breathed.
Logan swallowed and closed her eyes. She remembered the Brandon from her dreams—the one who buried her, who spoke in a voice as deep as an ocean, whose eyes shone dark and glossy like an oil slick. She remembered the Brandon who couldn’t look at her in Tulsa. The one so full of anger it choked her.
“Was it you?”
Brandon lifted his face from his hands. His eyes were foggy with tears. His hands shook, hovering in front of him in a silent question. The gray morning light crept in through his drawn blinds, painting his face sickly and pale. “Logan…”
“Me and Dad weren’t here when Tristan went missing. He didn’t do it. But you were already here.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“Everyone thinks you did it.”
Brandon’s brow furrowed. “You think I killed those kids?”
“Did you?”
“You know me. We’re family.”
Logan sucked in a ragged breath. “I don’t know you.”
Brandon stood, but not as though he meant to come after her. He looked out the motel window and shook his head. “I can’t explain it to you. Please trust me.”
She couldn’t. She wondered if she ever had.
“I have to … I have to make sure Ashley is okay,” Logan said. She plucked the keys to the minivan from Brandon’s bedside table.
“Logan,” Brandon said, quiet as a breeze. “I promise we’ll explain everything when this is over. I promise. We’ll be okay again.”
She doubted they had ever been okay in the first place. Brandon stood behind her, lips parted like he had a thousand more words tucked under his tongue. Like he wanted to let it all spill out into the silence between them.
But he said nothing.
Logan stepped out into the morning and closed the door behind her.
* * *
For the thousandth time since coming to Snakebite, Logan was suffocating. She pushed down her rising panic attack and drove across town. The morning was petrichor and musk, rain fighting to split from the gray clouds overhead. Snakebite was unsettlingly quiet as though it were already in mourning. The minivan tore down Barton Ranch’s gravel driveway, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.
The Ford was parked in the driveway, spattered with mud and dirt. Logan stormed past it to the back of the house. The windows were shut, blinds drawn, and for a moment Logan hoped no one was home.
She sucked in a sharp breath and knocked on Ashley’s window.
Nothing.
Logan knocked again. Her heart hammered in her chest because Ashley was all she had left. The wind from the lake was biting as the slate gray sky.
She slammed her fist against the window again.
The window tore open. Ashley pushed her curtains aside and then they were face-to-face. Ashley’s eyes were red rimmed with tears. Her expression wasn’t grief, it was anger. She leaned out the window, fingers clenched on the windowsill.
“Are you okay?” Logan asked.
“What are you doing here?” Ashley snapped. “Go home.”
Logan blinked. “I’m sorry about Bug. I just wanted to…”
Ashley’s eyes narrowed. Through the window, her bedroom floor was littered with clothes and blankets. Her bulletin board was stripped bare, and pictures of Bug, Fran, and Tristan were scattered across the room. The cool wind fluttered Ashley’s curtains against her arms.
“What happened?” Logan asked.