Chapter 2

The whole country was moved by him. People in their thousands were weeping over his posts, calling him "the most devoted partner", "the man who won't give up".

Could someone like that really have done something wrong?

But I couldn't stop seeing it. That summer when we were sixteen, when Nina ended up in hospital because of lily pollen. The doctor had said the anaphylaxis was so severe that if we'd been a few minutes later, her airway would have closed. After that, not a single lily product had ever entered her family's house.

There was no world in which Nina Sterling, about to marry the man she'd spent six years with, would have asked for lilies filling her wedding venue.

So why had she said it?

She was looking forward to this wedding. She'd been planning it with me for months.

Did she want to tell me something about Sebastian?

The thought hit me so hard I felt my pulse in my throat.

My phone vibrated. An unknown number. I stepped away and answered.

"Mia Holloway?"

A man's voice, deliberately lowered, with a note of anxiety in it.

"I might have something. About Nina's case."

My chest clenched. I pressed the phone hard against my ear. "Tell me everything. Whatever it is, I'll make it worth your while."

"I don't want money. The thing I have — I've left it in the derelict factory on the edge of the old industrial district. Third green wheelie bin from the left, underneath everything, in a black plastic bag."

He spoke quickly and rang off.

My palm was damp with sweat.

It felt strange. Too convenient. But if there was even a fraction of a chance it meant something, I had to go.

I notified Detective Pierce, then drove straight to the old industrial district.

The area was desolate. The abandoned factory rose up like a skeleton. The sky had gone the colour of a bruise — the same heavy, airless grey as the night Nina died.

I found the third green bin, breathed through my mouth, reached in underneath the rubbish, and felt a black plastic bag sealed with tape.

Inside: a cheap resealable sandwich bag containing a crumpled piece of paper and a grainy photograph — a printout of what looked like dashcam footage.

The handwriting on the paper was uneven and childlike: It was very dark, it was about to rain. I was near the factory wall playing with my camera. I saw a black car, it went fast, there was a bang, then it went back and forth. It scared me and I didn't move. This is all I have. I hope it helps.

I looked at the photograph.

My hands started to shake.

It showed a car wheel — mud-caked, a section of the hub only. Snagged on it was a small, almost invisible scrap of fabric. The colour and pattern of it: I would know it anywhere. It was from Nina's dress. The dress she was wearing the night she was killed.

But something didn't fit.

The rainstorm that night had started in the early hours of the morning.

If the note was accurate — the child had seen the accident before the rain, when it was dark but the rain hadn't started yet — how was a child playing outside at that hour? And if they'd witnessed something that terrible, why had they waited two months to say anything, and why this strange method, when Detective Pierce and Sebastian had gone door to door through every household in the area?

The logic didn't hold.

This felt deliberate. Bait, set out for someone.

But I couldn't afford to ignore it.

I handed everything to Detective Pierce.

The police moved fast. Working from the wheel design visible in the photograph and the fabric scrap, combined with the limited tyre impressions from the scene, they identified several suspect vehicle types and began a quiet search.

A few days later: in an illegal chop shop two counties over, being broken down for parts, they found a dark-coloured old car.

From the wheel wells, they extracted a trace amount of biological material.

DNA matched Nina's.

The car that killed her had been found.

And yet the more I understood, the heavier I felt.

This evidence had come too neatly. Too exactly when it was needed. As though someone had been watching, and had waited for the police to give up before personally delivering the answer.