Chapter 2

【Claire's POV】

"Have you tried calling Jade?" I managed to ask, my throat tight.

Riley's face crumpled with worry. "I've been trying her flip phone all morning. It just goes straight to voicemail." She twisted her hands together. "Claire, I couldn't sleep at all last night. I kept thinking about her, wondering where she was. She's never stayed out this late without at least texting."

The knot in my stomach pulled tighter. Jade Thompson—quiet, hardworking Jade who wore secondhand clothes and worked mysterious late-night jobs to pay for her mother's cancer treatments. Jade who was desperately trying to make enough money for the surgery that could save her mother's life. Jade who always wore those wire-rimmed glasses her mother had bought her as a graduation gift.

"We need to go to the lake," I said suddenly, pushing myself up from the bed despite the way it made my head spin.

"What? Claire, no. It's a crime scene. The police—"

"The police will have moved the body by now. And if..." I swallowed hard. "If it's Jade, we need to know."

Riley looked terrified. "I don't know if I can handle this. I've never dealt with anything like this before. What if we see blood? Or evidence? I mean, I've been preparing for law school, but actual crime scenes..." She shuddered.

"The cops will have cleaned up the worst of it by now," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. "There won't be anything too horrible to see."

Twenty minutes later, we were hurrying across campus through the drizzling March morning. The early spring cold cut right through my designer jacket, but I barely noticed. Riley clutched her flip phone, hitting redial every few minutes as we walked.

"Still nothing," she muttered after another failed attempt.

The campus felt different somehow—charged with an electric tension that made my skin crawl. Students clustered in small groups, their voices hushed and urgent. News of the murder had spread fast in the way that only college gossip could.

As we approached Mirror Lake, the scene that greeted us was both exactly what I'd expected and somehow worse than I'd imagined. Yellow police tape fluttered in the breeze, creating a barrier around the southern edge of the lake where the pine trees grew thick and dark. The tall evergreens looked particularly menacing in the gray morning light, their branches heavy with moisture from the night's rain.

Police officers moved methodically through the scene, their radios crackling with static and coded communications.

"Jesus," Riley whispered beside me. "This is really happening."

I found myself drawn toward the crime scene tape, unable to look away from the organized chaos of the investigation. That's when I saw him—a tall man in a rumpled suit, maybe late twenties, with the kind of intense focus that marked him immediately as someone in charge. He was interviewing a jogger in bright athletic gear, his notebook out and pen moving steadily.

"The victim was discovered at approximately six-fifteen this morning," I heard him say to another officer as we passed close to the tape line. His voice carried the kind of authority that made people listen. "The witness was on his usual morning run when he spotted what he initially thought was trash near the water's edge."

The jogger—a nervous-looking guy in his early twenties—kept shaking his head. "I almost didn't stop," he was saying. "But something seemed wrong about the way it was positioned. When I got closer..." He shuddered.

"Take your time," the detective said calmly. "Any detail could be important."

A CSI technician approached the detective, pulling off latex gloves with obvious frustration. "Detective Reid, we've got a problem. It rained most of the night, and this morning's drizzle isn't helping. A lot of potential evidence has been compromised."

Detective Reid. I filed the name away automatically.

"What can you tell me?" Reid asked.

"Footprints are mostly washed out. Any fiber evidence is going to be degraded. The position of the body suggests she was dumped here rather than killed on-site, but the rain has eliminated most trace evidence that might have confirmed that."

My eyes drifted across the crime scene, taking in the methodical work of the investigators, when something made me freeze. There, about twenty feet from where the police were working, was a thick cluster of wild bushes that sent ice shooting through my veins. I knew those bushes. I'd seen them in my dream, dark and menacing in the rain. That's where I'd been running toward when the hand struck my face.

The headache hit me like a physical blow, sharp and sudden enough to make me gasp. The detective's voice faded into white noise as the dream crashed back over me with terrifying clarity.

Rain drumming against my face. The sound of my own panicked breathing. Streetlights creating pools of sickly yellow light in the darkness. My glasses fogging with each gasping breath.

The footsteps behind me, getting closer.

The sharp crack of flesh against flesh.

The glasses flying through the air, catching the light before disappearing into the wet grass.

"The glasses," I whispered.

"What?" Riley looked at me with confusion.

But I was already moving, my hangover forgotten, adrenaline flooding my system as I ducked under the police tape and ran toward the bushes. Behind me, I heard Riley calling my name and the sharp whistle of a police officer ordering me to stop.

I didn't care. I had to know. I had to see if I was losing my mind or if something impossible was happening to me. The wet grass soaked through my expensive shoes as I crashed through the underbrush, my eyes scanning the ground frantically.

"Miss! You need to stop right there!" Detective Reid's voice was sharp with authority, and I could hear him jogging after me.

But then I saw them.

There, half-hidden beneath a sodden pile of maple leaves, were the wire-rimmed glasses from my dream.