Trace rowed out to Friendship Beach. The one place she knew no one would bother her. The little island across the channel that had been their haven as children and now her respite place as an adult.
News trucks poured into their sleepy little town when the Tampa Tribune reprinted the Summer Island Gazette article online. It swooped through the cities and hit the news broadcasts in two days.
If it weren’t for Houdini chewing a camera wire to distract the crew, she would’ve never made her escape through the back fence unnoticed. Houdini was the best.
Stroke after stroke helped calm her nerves while crossing the channel. At the canal, she turned in, ducking beneath overgrown mangroves. At the beach, she dismounted the board and dragged it up on shore.
The movement, the exercise, kept her mind busy, but when she crossed the small peninsula to the lagoon side, she could see the edge of the dock and the boats and the beach bordering Dustin’s life.
Her chest throbbed. She rubbed her sternum, as if rubbing the notion of the almost-relationship with the wrong man from her heart.
It didn’t work.
The anguish infested her with spikes of sadness and claws of cruelty. Cruelty that Dustin had posed as a man with compassion, caring for her feelings, when all the time he only used her. For what, she couldn’t reconcile. None of it made sense.
All she knew was that she’d been manipulated into believing a man again. She had no one to blame but herself.
She’d been blind, but she needed to wake up and fix this.
But how?
How could she make something right in her story when Robert Remming controlled the narrative?
The sound of a marine engine revved her pulse to rocket speed. She ducked into the mangroves and peered through the branches. To her relief, Kat and Jewels were on Trevor’s dingy. There was no sign of Dustin or the press or Rhonda or any other enemy.
“Trace. It’s only us.” Jewels lifted the engine, and they both paddled to the beach through the shallow canal. “We need to tell you something.”
Kat hopped out and tied the dinghy line to the post Trevor and Jewels had installed a few months ago.
Trace traipsed out of the trees and faced her friends. “I came here to be alone. To think.”
The water rippled onto the shore and then retreated back into the dark canal that Trace wished she could disappear into. The water had always been her barrier to pain.
“You can return to your self-brooding after our chat. But you need to know something first.”
“Is it that important that it couldn’t wait until I returned?”
Kat popped a hip out and took on her attorney persona with shoulders back, chin up, attitude out. “You think I’d come out here if it wasn’t?”
Trace picked up a stone and skidded it across the water of the lagoon. It hit one of the rocky outcroppings that kept their little island paradise from tourist boats and then sank. “Fine. What is it?”
“I know a way out of all of this.” Kat marched across the sand and stood by Trace’s side.
A boat came tearing through the channel, ignoring the no-wake zone, sending waves up through the lagoon onto shore, tickling Trace’s toes. “How are you going to shut up the media, convince the world that the lonely murderess wasn’t at fault, and tell me how the man I loved didn’t stab me in the back?”
“Love?” Jewels joined them.
“No. I didn’t mean that. I meant trust. We were friends.”
Jewels opened her mouth to say more, but Kat’s quick reflexes shot out with an arm and a look. “Listen. I can’t fix everything, but I can fix the legal side. You signed a gag order—which was stupid.”
“You can chastise me later.”
“Right, well… You broke the gag order and that’s illegal,” Kat grumbled.
“I didn’t mean to. I told one person, and he told the world.”
Kat shook her head. “You still told someone. And it wasn’t us.”
Trace realized she’d hurt Kat’s feelings and probably the rest of her friends as well. “I couldn’t tell you guys. I couldn’t wrap you up in my mess. I did this. I needed to figure out how to handle it.”
“But you told Dustin.” Jewels pushed Trace’s hair behind her ear. “I don’t believe he told anyone.”
“He’s the only one who knew. I was at my breaking point. I didn’t know what to do, and he was there.”
“We were there,” Kat said with clipped speech.
“I told you. I couldn’t have risked it.”
“You could’ve hired me as your attorney for guidance,” Kat hissed. “It would’ve been legal to tell me in confidence.”
Trace wasn’t sure if Kat was madder at her because she didn’t trust her as a friend or a lawyer. “I hadn’t thought about that. All I thought about was the guilt that I’d kept the secret of how a family’s son died and how it was my fault that he was there that night.”
Her words lodged in her throat. She choked down the tears before they could take hold.
Jewels hugged her into her side. “I’m so sorry you’ve gone through this without us.”
“I was desperate. I’d even written a letter to the family and thought about mailing it. I showed the letter to Dustin. That’s how I know it was him who gave the information to the newspaper. Only someone who read that letter would know the details.”
“He wouldn’t do that. Trevor swears he didn’t even tell him. He kept the secret for you,” Jewels said.
“Letter? What letter?” Kat asked as if she hadn’t heard anything else she’d said.
“The letter I wrote explaining—”
“I got that part. Where’s that letter now?” Kat asked.
Trace pointed across the channel. “Dad’s place. Desk, faux compartment. No one would find it there.”
Kat abandoned Trace’s side.
“Where are you going?”
“To prove you’re not liable.” Kat untied the dinghy.
Trace took off after her. “Wait, how are you doing that?”
“Don’t leave without me.” Jewels took the tiller, Trace snuggled down in the middle, and Kat pushed them out into the canal.
“We’re going to prove that letter was seen by someone else. An alternate crime was committed, and at worst you were negligent. However, I have a feeling the company won’t want to take it that far. Not when we can countersue for gross negligence on their part.
Trace wasn’t sure what all that meant, but she liked the direction they were taking. The only problem was, even if Kat could save her from a lawsuit, fines, and jail time, she couldn’t save her from a broken heart.