They drove past a strip of luxury homes on the gated estate where the Blair family home was located in its own compound. There was extra security detail at the entrance. Rachel presumed it was to keep away the protesters who jeered at Scott Blair every day when he came into court.

Detective Cooper veered off the main road five miles later. He turned down a narrow road filled with potholes that ran inland around a peninsula. At one point, the road came close enough to the cliff that Rachel could see waves crashing against boulders in the ocean as they drove by. The area was wild and uninhabited. It was hard to imagine anyone living there—let alone Mitch Alkins. Rachel shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She eyed her door. It was locked. The window was shut, too. It was all operated by the central locking system on the driver’s control panel.

Rachel became even more unsettled a few miles later as they took the right fork of a gravel road that cut through a dense forested area. The bumpy road was so narrow that bushes brushed against the car. The road finally widened to reveal a Jeep parked in a small clearing.

“Where are we?” Rachel asked hesitantly as she climbed out of the car into the silent solitariness of the remote scrub.

“Follow me,” Detective Cooper said, leading her down a crude path hewn between overgrown bushes. Rachel swallowed hard, trying not to show how vulnerable she felt being taken to such an unexpectedly isolated place. As she walked through the brush, she thought to herself that it felt like a place where the Mafia would take someone to execute them and dump the body in a shallow grave. Rachel stopped walking the moment she saw the view between the gap in the trees.

Below them was a breathtaking beach in its own cove. Overlooking it was a house made of timber and mirrored glass that reflected its surroundings of ocean and forest.

“That’s Mitch’s house,” said Detective Cooper. He walked down the sloping pathway toward the house perched on the edge of a cliff. Rachel followed behind.

Mitch Alkins was standing by the steel rails on the balcony, looking out to sea. He wore jeans and a navy button-down shirt that flapped in the wind.

“I’m not supposed to talk with journalists about the trial,” Alkins told Rachel when she reached him. “The last thing I need is to be accused of colluding with an influential podcaster. So I’m not talking with you. This conversation isn’t happening. Do you understand?”

“Absolutely,” she said, turning around to look for Detective Cooper. Through the enormous glass windows of the house, she could see him walking through the minimalist living room down a floating staircase until he disappeared out of sight.

“You’ve been trying to talk to me for days. What did you want to discuss?” Alkins asked, his eyes fixed out on the blue expanse of sea.

“Jenny Stills. Do you remember her?”

“Of course I remember her,” he said. “Jenny was my first crush.”

“How old were you then?” she asked.

“I must have been around fourteen, fifteen. Jenny was two years below me at school. I spent what felt like years trying to pluck up the courage to talk with her. Eventually I did. We became friendly. Sometimes we’d hang out together at the beach. I still didn’t have the courage to ask her out, though.”

“What happened to Jenny the summer she died?” Rachel asked.

She found herself staring at her own reflection in the lenses of Alkins’s sunglasses as he turned away from the view to face her. He looked angry at her impertinence, but there was another emotion on his face. Rachel’s throat tightened in fear as it dawned on her that it was guilt.

“I know that you leave flowers for her every year. Asking her to forgive you,” Rachel said. “What terrible thing did you do all those years ago that you want Jenny to forgive?”

“You’re asking if I killed Jenny?”

Rachel swallowed hard and nodded. Mitch Alkins was a formidable man at the best of times. A man who was never lost for words. His stormy expression told Rachel that she had one hell of a nerve interrogating him. Yet he said nothing as he turned away and stared out to sea.

“Did you hurt Jenny Stills?” Rachel prompted.

“The answer is yes,” he admitted finally. “I did hurt Jenny.”

Rachel’s heart pounded as she realized that she was in perilous territory. She looked down at the precipice, more aware than ever before of the steep drop from the balcony where she stood to the bottom of the cliff.

“We had the beginning of something beautiful and I destroyed it with my stupidity. I heard rumors that she was sleeping around. That she’d sleep with any boy who asked her. So I figured I’d try my luck. It wasn’t rape. It didn’t get that far. But I think my one-track mind that night devastated her, nevertheless. Does that answer your question?”

Rachel nodded. Her mouth was dry. “You’re the boy that she met at the beach that summer. You took her out on a date. Pizza, I think.”

“Yes,” he said. “How do you know about that?”

“Hannah, her sister, wrote about it in a letter that she sent me. She didn’t know your name, but she clearly remembered the night you came to take Jenny on a date. She says you brought a bunch of wildflowers to give Jenny, but you were embarrassed and dropped the flowers on the ground before you went inside.”

“I was stupid and selfish and so influenced by rumors and my own hormones that I didn’t realize I was destroying something precious. Maybe I broke Jenny’s heart that night. But I never hurt her physically.”

“So who did it?” Rachel asked. “Who killed Jenny Stills?”

“They said she drowned herself,” said Alkins.

“Do you really believe that?”

“There was no reason to doubt it. Anyway, I wasn’t here when she died. I was so disgusted with myself and the way that I’d treated Jenny that I went to stay with my granddad up north be fore starting college,” he said. “Why are you so interested in Jenny Stills? That was a lifetime ago.”

“I think that Jenny was murdered,” said Rachel. “And I may have some evidence. I need your help. I need a copy of Jenny’s autopsy report and I’d like to speak to the cops who handled the investigation. I don’t have access to that information. You do.”

“I’ll make some calls and get you whatever information you need,” he said. “If it’s true that Jenny Stills was killed then I’ll reopen the case. I let her down once. I won’t do it again.”

On the beach below, Detective Cooper was scrambling over rocks as he walked to a short pier where a motorboat was tethered. He jumped into the boat, released the ropes, and turned on the engine. They watched in silence as he steered the boat into the sea, bouncing so high off incoming waves that it looked as if he might get airborne.

“The coast here is deceptive,” Alkins murmured as he watched the motorboat cutting through the water. “One minute, it looks placid. The next, a storm sweeps in. People die in the water around here all the time. The coastline is a graveyard of sunken ships and memorials to the dead. Us locals learn from the time we’re young to read the mood of the ocean, but even we get it wrong sometimes.”

“I keep forgetting that you grew up here,” said Rachel. “Are you enjoying being back?”

“I don’t know if ‘enjoy’ is the right word. It’s where I belong. I always intended to come back someday, but I ended up doing it sooner than I’d planned.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s certainly a strange career change,” said Rachel. “You were a highly sought-after defense attorney. You were making a fortune. Why make the switch and become a prosecutor and then move back to what is really a backwater town?”

“Because I sleep better at night,” answered Alkins as he watched his cousin stop the motorboat and lean over the side to check a net in the water. “Nick’s checking some lines. He’ll return in a few minutes and take you back to your hotel. I have to get on with my work for the trial next week.”

“The trial might end on Monday,” Rachel reminded him.

“I’m hoping that Kelly will come through. Otherwise”—he sighed—“you may well be right.”

“So you think that Scott might get acquitted, too,” said Rachel, reading between the lines of his comment. “If Scott Blair gets off unpunished, it would be devastating for Kelly.”

“For Kelly and for many other rape victims,” Alkins said. “There’s not a lot I can do. We need her testimony. Without it, we don’t have much of a case.”

His voice sounded exhausted, yet there was also a thread of steely determination that suggested he wouldn’t give up so easily. He turned to face her. “I asked Nick to bring you here because I have a favor to ask,” he said. “I spent most of last evening at the Moores’ home, trying to get Kelly’s parents to understand that without their daughter’s testimony, the case is lost. Except I couldn’t get through to them. They’re completely unrealistic about our chances of winning without Kelly’s testimony. They told me they’re confident the jury will convict regardless of whether Kelly testifies.”