Devlin’s house smelled like charcoal. All the first-floor windows and doors were wide open. Dressed in gym shorts and a t-shirt, he ushered smoke out onto the deck with a dish towel.

“Something sure smells good,” I drawled, eyeing him with amusement.

“Hilarious,” Devlin said dryly. But I noticed the way his gaze lingered just for a second on the scoop neck of my tank top. “Grab a towel and help me.”

I pulled a rooster towel out of the drawer and fanned from the front door until the smoke dissipated.

“What’s for dinner?” I asked, strolling back into the kitchen where blackened pieces of some kind of meat smoldered like coals.

“It’s Jonah’s fault,” Devlin said. “His handwriting is illegible.”

“Awh. Jonah’s teaching you to cook?”

He swung an arm around the wrecked, smoky kitchen. “Obviously it’s not working.”

I laid my hand on his arm, pleased at the muscles that bunched under my touch. “Maybe we should just face facts that neither one of us belongs in a kitchen.”

“I refuse to accept that,” he announced, giving me a perfunctory kiss on the forehead.

I poked my nose into the covered bowl on the island and found a yellow-ish potato salad. I plucked a potato cube out and popped it into my mouth. It was inexplicably crunchy. I swallowed hard.

Devlin seemed tense, a little moody. I could relate.

Nothing between us had been normal since that day at my father’s house. I’d stashed the sweater in a kitchen cabinet and tried to pretend it didn’t exist. In the middle of the night, I’d had a moment of pure insanity and wondered what would happen if I just threw it out. But I couldn’t do it. I knew I had to take it to the police. I had to pull the plug on my own life as I knew it, and it sucked.

Everything in my life had frozen at that moment. I couldn’t move forward in my father’s house knowing that there could be other evidence tying him to Callie. I couldn’t just enjoy my time with Devlin while he was here because the closer we got, the deeper he’d get dragged for this. But I wasn’t going to break. I wasn’t going to be selfish and spill my guts to him dragging him and his newly repaired reputation into this mess.

I needed to do what needed to be done. And I just wanted a few more days with him.

Devlin shoved the take-out menus at me. “Take your pick,” he said.

Our fingers brushed, and I felt that electric zing swim through my blood. It had been selfish of me to continue seeing him while he was here.

“You know, Scarlett, if you need help all you have to do is ask.”

I frowned. “I think I can pick take-out just fine on my own.”

He eyed me and rubbed a hand over his beard. God, I hoped he’d keep the beard even after he moved back. “You have friends who’d be willing to help you.”

I felt a tingle crawl up the back of my neck. He was talking like he knew something.

The take-out menus fell through my limp fingers, and I bent to pick them up. The front door opened and shut.

“It smells like someone set the house on fire,” Jonah announced, strolling into the kitchen.

“I blame you,” Devlin said.

“I wasn’t even here,” he argued.

“He’s blaming your handwriting, and let’s just skip ahead to the part where we all decide what kind of take-out we’re orderin’,” I suggested.

Jonah pulled out a stool and plopped down to study the menus. It’s not like he hadn’t memorized them already. There were three places in town that did decent take-out, and we’d eaten them all in a rotation for the past few weeks.

“While you’re both here,” Jonah said, studying the pizza menu like it was the most fascinating novel in the world. “I’m thinking it might be time for me to head home.”

“What do you mean home?” I demanded. I knew I hadn’t been making much time for Jonah the past week since the “discovery.” But I wasn’t ready to let my new brother go because, odds were, he wouldn’t come back.

“I’ve been here long enough. I’m getting antsy. I’d like to get back to work and let everyone else get back to their routines.”

“But you can’t go!” I noticed Devlin take a step back, his face a mask of hurt, and then it was gone. I plowed on. “Jonah, we just met. You can’t just pack up and go home. Don’t you want to stay and… and…”

“Be part of the family, the community,” Devlin said flatly.

“Yeah! That!” I agreed, pointing at him.

Jonah looked at Devlin, and they telegraphed something between them. “Listen, I think I’m going to go for a drive,” Devlin announced. “Why don’t you two stay and talk?”

He picked up his keys and was gone before I could say another word.

“Well, what in the hell was that all about?” I asked when the front door shut soundly behind him.

“Scarlett. Seriously?” Jonah looked at me with disapproval.

“What? What’s wrong with everybody all of the sudden?”

“You begged me to stay because you’re not done getting to know me in front of the guy you told to go home without you.”

“But that’s different! You’re my brother,” I argued.

Jonah shook his head. “Did you ask Devlin to stay?”

“Why in the heck would Devlin stay here? He’s got his career path all planned out. He’s worked for it his whole life. He’s not gonna give all that up for some redneck girl in some backwoods town.”

Jonah opened the fridge and pulled out a beer. “I guess you’ll never know the answer if you can’t ask the question.”

I sputtered after him as he strolled out of the room, beer in hand.

“I guess I’ll just make myself dinner then,” I said to the empty room. With Devlin gone to sulk and Jonah judging me, I figured it was safer and kinder back at my house. I’d make a sandwich and then figure out if I should go to Cass or straight to her daddy. Maybe I could beg them not to tell anyone until after Devlin went home?

My stomach flip-flopped on itself as I ducked out the back door and scurried down the stairs.

Maybe I should call my brothers first? Then we could provide a united front. I hurried through the woods. I’d fucked up, keeping the sweater this long. Callie’s family deserved answers, even if we were the ones to pay the price for them.

I broke through the woods into my yard, and I saw the police cruiser in my driveway. Cassidy was leaning against the hood in her uniform. I’d seen her in uniform about ten thousand times. Hell, I’d even seen her arrest people. Once it was even me. But I’d never felt nervous being around Cop Cass before now.

“Evenin’, Scarlett,” she said.

She fucking knew. “Bowie’s got a damn big mouth where you’re concerned,” I said flatly. I couldn’t believe my own brother had gone behind my back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said mildly, pushing away from the car. “But I do know you have something that you want to tell me.”

Cassidy wasn’t usually such a good liar. I’d deal with Bowie and his head-up-his-ass crush later.

I sighed. There was no turning back now. “Come on in then.”

Cassidy followed me inside. She’d been in my home hundreds of times. We’d giggled drunkenly over men and eaten way too many pizzas and dozens of wings under this roof. We’d guzzled beers and sunned ourselves on the dock. And now I was about to confess to withholding evidence. A crime. I’d looked it up online.

“Are you mad?” I asked.

“Hell yes, I’m mad! I’m mad that you didn’t tell me, Scar. What the hell were you thinking?”

I scrubbed my hands over my face. “Are you asking as a cop or my best friend?”

In answer, she smacked me on the back of the head. “What do you think, jackass?”

I gave a weak laugh. “I found it, and it took me a few minutes to put it together. I knew it was hers, but I didn’t realize she’d gone missing in it, and when I did...” I took a breath and shook my head. “I just wanted to get Dev as far away from that sweater as I could.”

“He wouldn’t have turned you in, idiot.”

“I know that. But he’d want to get involved, and he’s running for re-election next year. That wouldn’t be an option if he were tangled up with the daughter of a potential... whatever you’re going to say Daddy is. It’s one thing to date me. I think we could have made it work. But there’s no way Dev’s career would survive a murder investigation.”

“Even if your daddy had something to do with it—which I’m not saying he did—you had nothing to do with it. None of you did.”

“Yeah, but we’re the ones left. We’re the ones who’d be gossiped about half to death. We’re the ones who’d have the media on our front steps. I can’t ask Devlin to stand by me through all that.”

“He would,” Cassidy pointed out bluntly.

“I know he would. And I’m not asking him to do that.”

“Because you love him.”

I didn’t want to talk about me loving or not loving Devlin when what we really needed to talk about was in a freezer bag in the cabinet.

“Let’s get this part over with,” I said. I opened the cabinet door and pulled out the bag.

Cassidy handled it with care. “Jesus. I didn’t quite believe it until right this second,” she confessed.

“It’s not that we didn’t trust you, Cass. I just didn’t want to drag you into this mess... yet. If it makes you feel better, Bowie wanted to drag you in right away.” And apparently he’d gone scampering next door with a guilty conscience and hearts in his eyes.

Cassidy grunted, not appeased, and I didn’t blame her. If she would have kept something like this from me, I’d be good and pissed. But now wasn’t the time for apologies. It was the time for truth.

“There’s stains splattered on it,” I said, jerking my chin toward the sweater. “I didn’t notice them, but Jameson did.”

“Hmm,” Cassidy said.

I could see her cop wheels turning.

“Who all’s handled this?” she asked.

I winced. “Just me without the bag. Bowie and Jameson with the bag.”

“Why not invite the Bootleg High School football team to play keep away with it?” Cassidy was snarky when she was pissed. “I’m gonna need you to take me to where you found it,” she said.

I nodded. “FYI, we didn’t touch anything else in the house after I found this.”

“At least you did one thing sorta right,” Cassidy sighed. “That’s why we bring these things to law enforcement immediately. We find things the average person doesn’t. Forensics and all that.” She flopped down in a chair. “Jesus, I remember the night she disappeared. I remember my daddy getting the call the next morning that she never came home. I remember watching her walk away from the lake wearing this exact sweater.”

“Brings it all back,” I agreed.

“Did you know this is why I went into law enforcement?” Cassidy asked.

“I had no idea. I thought you wanted to be like your daddy,” I told her.

“That was part of it. But I remember the need for answers, you know? Someone out there knows exactly what happened to Callie. And I want to know too. Her family deserves answers. Hell, I think we all deserve answers.”

“Was my daddy ever a suspect in the case?” I asked.

Cassidy shrugged. “Just about every adult in Bootleg was interviewed within forty-eight hours of Callie’s disappearance,” she said. “I pulled the files. Jonah showed up at the police station the next morning and offered to help organize a search party. My daddy did an informal interview on the spot. Jonah was alibied by your mama. None of you kids were home that night.”

“We were all at Gibson’s,” I said.

“I remember calling your house as soon as Daddy got the news. Your daddy answered and said y’all were at Gibson’s.”

At least my father had been home that morning. That was one answer. I’d been wracking my brain trying to recall the specifics of a day twelve years ago. Parts of it were burned into my brain like a brand. The rest was like trying to remember what I ate for breakfast on a Tuesday a decade ago.

“Now look, Scarlett. You’re gonna need an attorney. Someone who can stand between you and us and you and the media.”

“I’m not asking Devlin,” I railed.

“I’m not asking you to ask Devlin,” she snapped back. “I’m telling you to get a lawyer.”

“Dang it, Cass! That’s gonna eat into my savings,” I groaned. I’d planned to start scouting for another rental property this fall and have it ready for renters by next spring.

“Price you pay for being an asshole who doesn’t trust her friends and boyfriend, if you ask me.”