AERIN KELLY LAY on a chaise on the top deck of a sixty-six-foot yacht named That’s Amore in the middle of Newport Bay. She was pretending to sleep, but the guy she was hanging out with, Pierce, kept fiddling with the strings of her plaid bikini bottom, and it was distracting.
“Babe.” Even though it wasn’t yet noon, Pierce’s breath smelled like beer. “Babe. I need you. Now.”
“Mmm.” Aerin opened one eye. Pierce was shirtless, showing off the rock-hard abs he’d perfected working out with his personal trainer, Jules. His hair stood up in peaks, and he wore aviator sunglasses with green-tinted lenses he’d special-ordered. Pierce was always getting things custom-made. He thought buying anything off the rack was pedestrian.
“Good, you’re awake.” Pierce passed her a bottle of sunscreen. “Can you put more lotion on my back?”
“Can’t your friends do it?” Aerin groaned.
Pierce grinned at her. “I like it better when you rub me down.”
Aerin begrudgingly squirted SPF onto her palm and kneaded the spot between his shoulder blades. “Thanks,” Pierce said. He gave her a kiss, then traipsed off to find his friends.
Aerin flopped back onto the chair and tried to find her Zen again. It really was a perfect day—the Newport air was warm but not too hot, the mansions that peppered the coast gleamed like diamonds, and she was aboard the largest yacht on the harbor.
Helena would approve.
She flinched. It was like her sister was a commercial jingle playing on auto loop in her brain. Aerin didn’t want to think about Helena. She certainly didn’t want to imagine her here. She was still so angry with her. Helena had lied to her, had chosen to run away with an older man and leave her family behind without a word. Aerin still loved her sister, but sometimes she wondered if she ever knew her at all.
And did Aerin even know what actually happened to Helena? The world accepted that Marissa Ingram had killed her, but Seneca Frazier’s theory about Brett Grady gave Aerin pause. Aerin didn’t want to believe it. Marissa’s motive was neat, tidy, and logical, while the idea that Brett—whom she had almost kissed—had done it was nonsensical, irrational, and terrifying. How could her sister have even met Brett Grady?
Aerin jumped to her feet. A change of scenery always helped when her thoughts tumbled down this particular rabbit hole. On the lower deck, Pierce and his buddies, Weston and James, were opening beers. She walked down to them, plucked the open Anchor Steam from Pierce’s hand, chugged it, and handed it back with a wink. “Sorry,” she said, wiping her mouth. “I needed that.”
Pierce’s grin was delightfully scandalized. “Babe, you can steal my beer anytime.” He loved that Aerin was a little crazy. He’d told her so when they’d met at a party in Paris, where Aerin’s parents had sent her on a pity trip after Marissa Ingram’s arrest instead of actually talking through things. Her parents had made a lot of promises after it all went down, including spending more time together and going to family therapy, but it had taken them only a few weeks to slip back to their old ways.
Instead of working through her grief in Paris, Aerin maxed out her credit card at Chanel, buying treats for kids she barely knew. She went to seedy dance clubs, drank champagne straight from the bottle, and staggered home alone through dodgy neighborhoods in the middle of the night.
And on that trip, instead of facing the possibility that Brett Grady might actually be Helena’s killer, Aerin agreed to travel to Nice with a guy she’d just met. On Pierce’s private plane, she sloppily made out with him, then did some body shots of Patrón, then rinse and repeat. The first thing she did at Pierce’s family’s villa was drunkenly strip, sprint to the swimming pool, and slip on the slick stones, practically cracking her head open.
Was she acting out? Sure. Laden with baggage? She’d break an airport scale. Absolutely aware of it? Of course. But what was she supposed to do? Go to therapy? Rebond with her estranged parents? Write a college essay about how she was a survivor? Cue burst of sarcastic laughter.
The alcohol zooming through her bloodstream began to soothe her frenetic brain, but she could still hear the jackhammer inside her, thudding and splintering. Move. Do something. She marched to the cockpit and plopped down on the plush leather seat. “Mind if I take us for a cruise?” she called to the boys.
“Go for it,” West yelled back.
Aerin pressed the lever that powered the engine. The boat jolted to life, skimming past water-skiers, a pleasure cruiser with Newport Ferry Tours emblazoned on its side, and a medium-sized yacht with a half-naked couple entwined on the prow. Her hair flapped in the wind, and she relished the rushing air on her face. She pushed the lever forward. The boat zoomed faster. Whitecaps lapped against the hull. She felt so powerful. She pressed the lever forward again and let out a wild yell that matched the roar of the motor.
“Yeah!” West called out, pumping his fist.
Aerin clipped a buoy and sent it skittering across the surface of the water. The lighthouse was ahead, and she focused on it. What would it feel like to crash the boat into its rocky shoreline? Would the boat be ruined? Would they catapult overboard? Would they die?
Would she see Helena if she did?
“This is awesome!” Pierce screamed.
But something began to shift inside her. Aerin noticed how hard she was gripping the steering wheel. Her heart was pounding, and she was out of breath. The adrenaline high had vanished, and now she just felt…drained. Messed-up.
She steered away from the lighthouse, slowed down, and slid off the captain’s chair. “Why’d you stop?” Pierce called from his perch.
“Because we almost crashed,” Aerin said shakily. She stared at her hands, suddenly not quite recognizing them as hers. “I almost crashed.”
The boys just laughed, like she’d made a joke. She hurried down the stairs into the cabin. It was dark and cool, and she sank into the leather booth in the elegantly appointed dining room and took a few deep breaths, trying not to cry.
“Babe?”
Pierce stood on the stairs, a concerned look on his face. Aerin felt a lump in her throat. Maybe he was more perceptive than she thought. And maybe, just maybe, she was finally ready to talk about what was going on. But as her eyes adjusted, she noticed he was holding something. It was the bottle of Banana Boat. He turned around and pointed to his lower back. “You missed a spot. I’m getting burned.”
Aerin wanted to hurl the bottle at him, but she found herself squirting lotion into her palm. What did she expect? She and Pierce didn’t have that kind of relationship. They didn’t have any kind of relationship, really. As she rubbed it into his muscles, she felt a pang for Thomas Grove, the cop she’d met while investigating Helena’s death. Thomas would have noticed she was slowly going crazy. Thomas would have wanted to know why she’d almost smashed a million-dollar boat to pieces.
Wrong, Aerin thought. She wasn’t even speaking to Thomas anymore. He’d quit the police force and gone to college in New York City shortly after Marissa Ingram’s arrest, when Aerin needed him most. He was probably having a great time right now. Aerin probably never entered his thoughts.
Something buzzed. Aerin’s gaze flicked to the granite bar, where she’d deposited the large cream-colored leather Chanel satchel Pierce had bought for her in France. Something was buzzing inside it. She dug her phone out of the smooth silk pocket. Seneca had sent her a text. You need to look at this.
She opened the accompanying link. The headline caught her eye. Chelsea Dawson, 21, Disappears in Avignon, New Jersey. Next to the story was an image of a girl in a see-through blue dress. Aerin stared at the girl’s blue eyes, her white-blond hair, the dimple on her left cheek. Aerin’s blood turned ice-cold.
She looked exactly like Helena.