THAT AFTERNOON, SENECA hefted her suitcase onto the bed of her new room at the Reeds Hotel. The sheets smelled fresh, and there wasn’t a single cat or crotch-sniffing dog to be found—little details that should’ve made her happy if her stomach wasn’t shredded to ribbons and her mind wasn’t swimming with questions. It was unclear whether people had hightailed it out of Avignon because of Chelsea’s disappearance or the news of Jeff’s death, but all four of them were able to score their own hotel rooms—no more sharing. But the privacy was no longer welcome for Seneca. As soon as she shut her door, she started to tremble. The room was too empty. Too quiet. The gauzy curtains fluttered, and she jumped. She checked under the bed and in the closets just to make sure Brett wasn’t there.
Then she sat down on the bed and unfolded the latest note from Brett in her hands. That weird little poem. What did it mean? It spoke about meeting Chelsea somewhere—so where had Brett and Chelsea first laid eyes on each other? At a party? In a parking lot? At the beach? The poem said caramel syrup—so maybe an ice cream place? They’d piled into Maddox’s Jeep and cruised every ice cream joint up and down Avignon, but they’d found nothing. Or maybe it was a Fourth of July reference with red, white, and awesome? They’d called J.T., Kona from the surf shop, Alistair, and even Amanda Iverson, Gabriel’s boss from the rental company the press had hounded that morning. Mrs. Iverson didn’t answer. Nor did Jeff’s brother. When Kona spoke, he said, “Are we sure Gabriel’s to blame in all this? I mean, he’s so…chill.”
Seneca had resisted explaining to Kona that Brett was many things, but chill definitely wasn’t one of them.
She sat down at the room’s little table, wondering if the message was encoded. Cryptograms? Rearranging the first and last letters of each word? Shifting the phrase several letters forward? An hour into her work, her phone bleated. It was the alarm she diligently set to check in with her father. She stared at it for a moment, trying to muster up the energy. Part of her wished she were home with her dad, curled up on the couch. Safe. Ignorant.
She dialed him, and her father answered on the second ring. He was in his office, she could tell—his voice echoed in the high-ceilinged room. “How are you?” he asked.
“Fine,” Seneca lied. “The weather’s great. Aerin and I took a paddle-boarding lesson.”
“Ah, they didn’t offer paddle-boarding when we vacationed there,” her father said. Seneca’s heart broke at the trust in his voice. Then he cleared his throat. “Listen, I’ve seen on the news that there’s some trouble there—some kid jumped to his death?”
She tensed her shoulders. Here we go. “Yeah, I heard about that, too,” she said carefully. “Off a balcony at some party? Is that what they’re saying on the news?”
“I don’t know.” She heard a voice in the background, and her father paused to murmur something. “Just promise me you’re being careful,” he said.
“I am. I swear.” She dug her nails into the comforter.
“You coming home soon?”
“Tomorrow,” she whispered. “I’ll definitely leave tomorrow afternoon.” If Brett didn’t kill her first.
Then her father hung up. Just like that. She could sense he was worried about her…but he was trying to give her some independence. Lying made her feel dirty and ashamed. It’ll be worth it, she told herself. But would they ever find Brett? What if this was a dead end?
All of a sudden, she felt panicked. She stood, stepped into the hall, and walked to the room three doors down. It took Maddox a few moments to appear after she knocked. “Seneca?” His eyes widened at her expression. “Are you okay?”
“I can’t figure it out, Maddox. We’re going to lose.”
“Don’t say that,” Maddox scolded. “You can’t give up.”
Seneca stared at him. “But I have no idea what Brett means, and we’re running out of time.”
“Hey,” Maddox said softly. “We’re going to get him, Seneca. I can feel it.”
But Seneca wasn’t so sure. She sat on his bed and tried to think, but all she could feel was the panic hammering at her. It was as though all her fears and worries and shame had been contained inside a shaken-up bottle and someone suddenly undid the cap. She was overflowing, out of control.
But no. She couldn’t lose control. That was what Brett wanted. She sat up and took a deep breath. Maddox was watching her carefully. She couldn’t imagine what she looked like. But suddenly, it didn’t matter. Maddox was seeing her at her absolute worst, puffy-eyed, a total wreck, and it was…well, maybe not okay, but not totally horrible.
“You’re right,” she said. “You have to be right. We’ll find him.” She ducked her head. “Sorry about the freak-out.”
“No problem,” Maddox said gently. His throat caught. “I never mind you freaking out.”
Seneca hid a smile, sadly remembering their talk at the party. It felt like a million years ago. Pushing the desire away, she unfolded Brett’s note again and studied it as though seeing it for the first time. “Is this something Brett had said to us, once? Something buried in Chelsea’s Instagram? What does he mean a spot over the eye? Did he punch Chelsea?”
“I don’t think we can rule anything out,” Maddox said. “Aerin and Madison are looking through her Instagram now, to make sure.”
She carried the note over to Maddox’s little table by the window and sat down. Maddox rolled off the bed and pulled back the drapes, revealing a brilliantly blue late-afternoon sky. “When was the last time you ate, Seneca? We should get dinner. There’s a restaurant in the hotel.”
Seneca shook her head. “Just bring me up something. I don’t want to stop working.”
What seemed like moments later, he was returning with a plastic bag of takeout. “Thanks,” Seneca murmured, barely glancing at the cartons. She tapped her pencil to the note—she’d begun rearranging the letters, finding anagrams. The note contained the words sneered, whitened, smote. Meaning…what?
For a while, the only sounds in the room were Maddox’s utensils clicking. He sat next to her and studied the note as he ate, but then he stood and announced he felt brain-dead and was going for a run. “Sometimes it clears my head,” he said. “Helps me see things from a new angle.”
The sun set out the big windows. The door clicked; Maddox returned, sweaty and breathing hard. He disappeared into the bathroom, and soon Seneca heard the shower.
Anagrams were making no sense; Seneca crossed them out and decided to take a different tack…but what? Aerin, Madison, and Thomas stopped in, saying they’d made no headway and were going to bed. Seneca stared at the dark sky, her chest throbbing. They’d wasted a whole day. What weren’t they seeing? What had they missed?
Maddox emerged from the shower and sat on the edge of the bed. “Stay here as long as you like.”
Seneca glanced up at him, feeling grateful. Maddox seemed to understand she didn’t want to go back to her room without her having to explain it. “Thanks,” she said softly.
She bent over the letter. The TV hummed at low volume, but she barely registered the stream of programs that played. She thought of Brett’s letter to Maddox. Brett’s demeanor when they’d first met in Dexby. The conversation they’d had outside the Dexby Rec Center after Seneca caught Maddox and his track coach together. The look on Brett’s face at the Easter Bunny party when he’d discovered that Aerin liked Thomas Grove, who’d saved them from Marissa Ingram. She paused on that memory—Brett had been so crushed. He’d left before Seneca had gotten the chance to ask if he was okay. The next morning, when Seneca began to connect the dots and realize something was seriously up with Brett, she’d tried to reach out to him, but his number had been disconnected.
When she lifted her head again, the little clock on the bedside stand said it was 2:03 a.m. She glanced at the bed. Maddox was turned away from her, his chest rising softly, his toes sticking out from under the covers. She considered going back to her own room for a split second before deciding it wasn’t an option.
She shifted onto his mattress. After some hesitation, she slid one foot under the covers and then another. She lay on the very edge of the bed, but that was so uncomfortable, and she was so tired. So she stretched out a little. Her hand hit his. Maddox might have been asleep, but his finger instinctively curled around hers anyway. Seneca froze, not knowing what to do. Their entwined fingers felt good. Right.
It was dark in the room, peaceful. She closed her eyes and tried to let sleep wash over her. Perhaps an answer would come to her in the morning. But just as she was sliding into oblivion, her eyes popped open, and she sat straight up. The letters in the clue, rearranged, revealed a word she hadn’t thought of before. Mother.
Red, white, and awesome: a bull’s-eye. A spot over the eye: the dog mascot. Even caramel syrup: They used that in Starbucks drinks sometimes. Maybe Brett wasn’t talking about Chelsea when he said I met her, and it was love. Thought she thought so, too. He was talking about Seneca’s mother.
He was sending them to Target.