“Ho-ly. Shit,” Kevin said.
Then we all heard a footstep in the hallway.
“Rory?” Tristan’s voice said.
“Tristan, don’t,” Krista said.
But he’d already stepped into the room. His eyes focused on the pile of coins, and his face went slack.
“Tristan?” I said blearily.
“What the hell is going on?” Joaquin demanded.
Slowly, Tristan tilted up his chin. He gave me a long look. The depths of his beautiful blue eyes swirled with shock, with pain, with fear—and with guilt.
I felt something jagged slice through my heart, and my knees started to buckle.
Then he turned around and ran.
I stood at the very back of the cave, a flashlight stuck into the ground at my feet, shining up at his name.
TRISTAN SEVARDES (PARRISH) 1766.
He’d made me believe that he loved me, that he was willing to change everything for me, but it had all been a ruse to throw me off the scent. He and Nadia had been together all along. That confrontation between them on the night we first kissed had been for show. He’d been lying to me from day one. Setting me up to take the fall.
I was so stupid. So very, very stupid.
The wind outside shifted, howling through the mouth of the cave. I shivered inside my heavy sweatshirt and hugged it closer to my sides. I was never going to trust anyone ever again. I was never going to allow myself to love. Clearly, I had no sense of people, no ability to judge character, no clue what was going on in anyone else’s mind.
“Rory?”
Joaquin’s voice echoed through the cave, surrounding me, filling me with a whisper of hope.
“Back here,” I called out.
His flashlight beam darted across the wall, illuminating colorful snatches of names, a riot of letters and numbers. I wondered if Tristan had been here that night, when I’d come here to find his name. If he’d hidden from me in the shadows. If he’d left that tally behind in his haste to get away from me. Bile rose up in my throat at the millionth realization of how stupid I’d been.
Never again. Never.
After a moment, Joaquin and Krista appeared. I’d left them just over an hour ago, but they both looked as if they’d been marooned somewhere for days. Krista’s white T-shirt had a streak of dirt across the front, and Joaquin’s forehead had gone red with sunburn. They were out of breath as they stopped behind me.
“What’re you doing?” Krista asked, eyeing the open can of red paint at
my feet, the paintbrush handle sticking out the top.
“I realized I never added my name to the wall,” I told her coolly. I wouldn’t let my voice betray my emotions. Once I started letting my emotions pour out, they would drown me. My sharpened gaze flicked to Joaquin. “Did you find him? Nadia?”
“Not yet, but we will,” Joaquin said, gasping for breath as I turned my back on them to face the wall. He reached out to grasp my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“No. I’m an idiot,” I said, glaring at Tristan’s name. “There are all these things I’m remembering. The other morning I walked in on him locking something inside his desk—probably the coins.” I looked at Krista. “Then you heard him and Nadia talking Thursday morning and they were both gone all day—the same day five souls got ushered? They must have been off somewhere, planning it. Making sure everything would go off like clockwork.”
“I can’t listen to this,” Krista said, shaking her head and taking a few steps back toward the fire pit.
I pursed my lips as I looked over my shoulder at Joaquin, knowing how hard this must be for her.
“Remember that tally I found the other day? The one Pete took from me?” I said, and Joaquin nodded. “I think it was theirs. I think that’s why Nadia immediately knew what it was and tried to pin it on me. I saw Tristan making those same kinds of marks in the sand the other day.”
“This is insane,” Joaquin said, rubbing his forehead. “This can’t be happening.”