Lucas knew exactly where to find Jack Whitman.

Hannah told him Jack played both football and basketball before she’d taken off down the hall.

Lucas flashed back to his conversation with Connor, the manager of the JV team. Classes had just ended, which meant players would be suiting up and heading to the gym for practice.

He walked in that direction.

Jack Whitman wasn’t hard to find. Lucas recognized him right away. He was tall, easily one of the tallest kids on the team, and carried himself with the confidence most good-looking high school kids did. He swaggered a little on the court, dribbling the ball casually as he talked to one of his buddies.

Lucas surveyed the gym and didn’t see any coaches. He had a couple minutes, max, so he trotted out onto the court.

Jack gave him a dismissive glance. He was even better looking up close. Short blond hair, green eyes, a smooth complexion that most teens would kill for.

“Jack Whitman?”

Jack eyed him, trying to keep his curiosity from showing. “Maybe. Who wants to know?”

Lucas stuck his hand out for the second time in ten minutes. Jack stopped dribbling and offered his own hand. His grip was firm.

“Lucas.”

Jack arched his brows. “No last name? What are you, Drake or something?

“Drake?”

Jack laughed and looked knowingly at his friend. “Dude doesn’t even know who Drake is.”

His friend, slightly shorter, with longer brown hair and matching brown eyes, snickered.

Lucas clenched his jaw. He wasn’t in the mood for more high school bullshit. He stared down the kid, which was a little hard to do considering Jack had a good four inches on him. Bulk and muscle, though? Not so much. But height-wise, he practically towered over Lucas.

“Tell me about Noah.”

Jack cocked his head. “What?”

“Noah Dans.”

“What would I know about that loser? Besides the fact that he offed himself.”

The friend snickered again.

“Hey, smartass.” Lucas’s tone was sharp. “You wrote in his yearbook.”

Jack bounced the ball slowly, his hand connecting with the moving ball even though his eyes were still locked on Lucas. “So what?”

“So it sounded like you were a friend.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

Lucas shot his hand out and knocked the ball across the court. “I’m the guy standing in front of you asking a question, dammit.”

Jack’s expression hardened, his eyes like ice. “We weren’t friends.”

“No? Why did you sign his yearbook, then?” Lucas whipped out his phone and showed Jack the picture of his inscription.

Jack smiled, a cruel one that only served to further fuel Lucas’s irritation with the kid.

“I was just messing with him,” Jack said. “You wanna know how many times he texted or snapped me last summer, looking to hang out? At least twenty. Even when I never answered back, he just kept sending me texts. Pathetic.”

Lucas’s arm twitched, and he had to make a concerted effort to keep his hand at his side so he wouldn’t lash out and punch the kid in the face.

Hannah Sears was right.

Jack Whitman was an asshole.

Lucas took a deep, steadying breath, trying to stay calm. He’d never been very good at that part of his job. “You know anything about how he died?”

Jack glanced at his friend. They both were smirking.

“He offed himself, man,” Jack said. “What else is there to know?”

“Do you know how?” Lucas demanded.

“Nope. And I don’t give a shit. One less loser at this school, as far as I’m concerned.”

Lucas grabbed Jack’s jersey and yanked him close. The kid might’ve had a few inches on him, but he was no match for Lucas’s strength. Or his anger.

“A kid is dead, asshole,” Lucas seethed. “And you may have played a part in that. You think this is a fucking joke?”

Fear flitted through Jack’s eyes. “Hey, man, I was just kidding.”

Lucas didn’t loosen his hold on him, and Jack licked his lips nervously. His friend looked like his feet were cemented to the floor, and the other players who’d arrived early to practice had drifted to the far side of the court, anxious to avoid getting involved in whatever was going down.

“Noah died with a rope around his neck,” Lucas said, his voice deadly soft. “Swinging from his closet door. His mom found him.” He stared at Jack, who was looking at him, wide-eyed. “Tell me what part of that you find funny.”

Jack licked his lips again. “None of it, man. Look, I’m sorry. I was kidding, alright?”

Lucas forced his fingers to unclench and the jersey slipped out of his grasp.

Jack immediately sprang back. He still looked scared, but he managed a half-scowl.

“I’m not done with you,” Lucas told him.

But Jack, free from Lucas’s grip, had already started across the court to retrieve the ball Lucas had knocked out of his hands.

Lucas watched him for a minute, until a heavyset middle-aged man appeared, whistle poised in his mouth and clipboard in his hand. Connor, the kid from the other day, was on his heels, his nose buried in his own clipboard.

“I am not done with you,” Lucas repeated under his breath as he spun and stalked out of the gym.

Jack Whitman was the kind of kid who gave high school jocks a bad name. Cocky, arrogant, completely full of himself, and with zero respect for anyone. Based on what he’d said about Noah, he was also a first-class bully.

But still, despite all this, Lucas had a hard time trying to connect him to Noah’s death. The kid had been genuinely uninterested in Noah’s suicide, hadn’t even flinched or blinked when Lucas mentioned his name. There were tells he could usually spot: eyes shifting away, flushed skin, a nervous tic that hadn’t been there before. Jack had exhibited none of these.

Lucas made his way back down the hall, heading toward the computer science room, his original destination. He focused on his breathing, trying to get his temper under control.

Jack could’ve just been a good actor, he thought. Maybe he was as big of a star on the stage as he purportedly was on the court and on the field. But Lucas had his doubts. His intuition was still telling him that this kid wasn’t lying. Especially because he hadn’t bothered to lie about what a shithead thing he’d done to Noah.

Lucas found the classroom he was looking for and peeked inside. A man in a checkered button-down was sitting at a desk, his eyes focused on the laptop he was furiously typing away at.

Lucas knocked once on the doorframe and the man looked up. He was probably in his early thirties, with balding brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His facial hair was thick, both a moustache and beard, and Lucas thought it was probably to compensate for the lack of coverage on his scalp.

“Can I help you?” the man asked.

“You’re Mr. Ripley?”

The man nodded. “Dean. Dean Ripley.” His fingers had gone silent on the keyboard.

“Name’s Lucas McGowan.” He stepped inside the classroom. “I’m actually here on behalf of the Dans family.”

Dean’s expression clouded. “Oh?”

Lucas took another step closer. He glanced around the room. It was pretty sparse as far as classrooms went. No posters on the white walls, just an industrial clock that ticked loudly in the silence. There were no desks in the room, only long tables pushed against the walls, the surfaces covered with computers positioned a few feet apart. Colorful cords snaked behind the tables, creating a labyrinth of wires. Lucas wondered how they weren’t a safety hazard.

“You had Noah in your computer science class, right?”

“I did.”

“Good student?”

Dean hesitated.

“Great knowledge of computers,” he finally said. “Abysmal effort.”

Lucas nodded. “More interested in playing video games than the science behind them?”

Dean shrugged. “No idea. He wasn’t a very talkative kid.”

Lucas felt a stab of disappointment. He’d hoped this might be the teacher Noah had opened up to…if there had been one, that is.

“So you didn’t know him well?”

“Not at all,” Dean admitted. He adjusted his glasses, pushing them back on to the bridge of his nose. “He wasn’t a bad kid, wasn’t disruptive. He showed up for class on time, and he turned in his assignments. But it was always minimal effort.”

Lucas knew what he was talking about. He’d been that kid through much of his own high school career, more focused on hockey and getting ice time than any classes he was being forced to take.

“You said you were here on behalf of the family,” Dean said. “You an uncle or something?”

“No. A family friend.”

He nodded. “I was sorry to hear about what happened. I wish I would’ve known he was struggling.”

“No outward signs?”

Dean shook his head.

Lucas tried not to let his disappointment show. He didn’t know what he’d been hoping for, but it wasn’t this.

“Thanks for your time, man,” he said to the teacher. “Sorry to interrupt.”

The man waved his hand. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

Lucas left the classroom and reached for his phone so he could pull the schedule up again. Noah’s English class was nearby, just one hallway over. M. Coates was listed as the teacher, and he wondered if he or she would still be there. The school required all teachers to keep office hours, but some opted to do them in the morning.

He found the English class, peeked through the open door and saw a woman with her back turned to him. She was loading books and folders into an oversized book bag. He cleared his throat and she turned around, a stack of folders still in her hand.

They both froze.

“Lucas.”

He forced a smile. The woman standing in front of him was the same woman who had hit on him three weeks earlier while he played pool at Shorty’s. She’d watched him finish a game before challenging him to one of her own. She’d drained a couple of beers during their match and had made it clear exactly what she’d wanted to happen after they finished.

“Mariah.” His smile strained his facial muscles. “I didn’t know you taught here.”

He didn’t know much of anything about her, really, except that she wore mint-flavored lip gloss and that her hands tended to roam freely when she kissed someone. He’d found that out firsthand when they’d said goodbye at the tavern.

“It’s why I moved to Aspen Falls,” she told him. “Joanna Klein left mid-year. Her husband was reserves but got called up. They moved to Florida.”

“And you’ve been here how long?”

She brushed a lock of brown hair off her shoulders. “A couple of months now.” She smiled expectantly. “So, what brings you here?”

Not you, he thought.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t attractive. She was. Any fool could see that. Her hair was as lush and thick as her curves, and her almond-shaped eyes were sexy as hell. She was flirty, fun…there was nothing off-putting about her. But Lucas just wasn’t interested. He’d felt nothing, zero chemistry, when she’d pulled him in for a hot and heavy goodbye kiss that night at Shorty’s, when she’d run her hand down his stomach, trailing her fingers against the rough fabric of his jeans, and whispered, “Come home with me tonight.”

He’d come up with some excuse—he couldn’t remember what—and had extricated himself as gently and as quickly as he could from her embrace.

And he hadn’t given her a second’s thought since.

He glanced at her again. Yeah, definitely not interested. She wasn’t petite enough. Blonde enough. Sassy enough.

Lucas cleared his throat. “I’m actually here about a student of yours. A former student.”

Mariah wrinkled her nose. “A former student? But I’ve only been here a couple of months.”

“Noah Dans.”

Her expression immediately sobered. “Oh.”

“He was in your class, right?”

Her eyes immediately welled with tears and she cast her head downward. She gave him a feeble nod. “Yes.”

“How well did you know him?” Lucas asked.

“Not very.” She sat down on her desk. Her book bag was still next to her, the folders still in her hands.

“Was he a good student?”

“He did his work,” she said. “Not terribly motivated, but what high schooler in regular English class is? The kids who like English take the advanced classes, you know?”

He couldn’t argue with her there.

“Did you ever see anything that led you to think he might be depressed? Anxious?” He paused. “Or that he was being bullied somehow?”

Mariah thought for a moment, tapping her long fingernails against the desk. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing that comes to mind, anyway. His journal entries were a little dark, but nothing I didn’t see from other kids, too.”

“Dark?” Lucas raised a brow. “How so?”

She shrugged. “Just the themes.”

She was being maddeningly evasive, but he didn’t think it was on purpose.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Typical teen angst, I guess. But you have to remember everything this generation is dealing with, what they’re growing up with. Skyrocketing college costs. Gun violence. Health care uncertainties. Climate change. I know most adults don’t think kids worry about this stuff, but they do. They are the future, and when the future looks this bleak, they notice. And then journal about it.”

It made sense. “So his were more generic worries and concerns, not necessarily personal ones?”

“For the most part,” she said.

But there was something in the way she said this that made Lucas cast a sharp glance in her direction.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

“There’s something else,” he said. “Something you’re not telling me.”

A tear slipped down her cheek. It must’ve surprised her, because her eyes widened and she hurriedly wiped it away.

“I don’t know that it’s my place to say,” she murmured.

Lucas pressed his lips together. He needed to find a way to make her talk.

He crossed the room so he was next to her and, ignoring the voice in his head that screamed at him that he was going to hell, he put his arm around Mariah’s shoulder and brought her in against his chest. He kissed the top of her head and tried not to notice how good her hair smelled.

“Tell me,” he whispered, his breath blowing hot against her scalp.

She sighed as his fingers caressed her shoulder.

“What do you know about Noah?” he asked.

She shuddered. “Not about Noah.” Her voice was quiet. “About Lindsay.”

Lucas forced his hand to stay on her shoulder, concentrating hard so he wouldn’t clench his fingers. “Lindsay?”

“Lindsay Hopkins.”

His hand stilled. “Who is Lindsay Hopkins?”

“Yeah. Who is Lindsay Hopkins?” A voice echoed his question from the doorway. A familiar voice that he was not expecting to find at Aspen Falls High.