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I nod, turning my head toward the commotion.

Peyton is lying on the ground, surrounded by paramedics. Her screams still carry across the school grounds, and a terrible part of me wants to hold on to the sound forever.

After everything she’s done, after all the suffering she’s caused, hearing her cry out in pain should horrify me.

Instead, I find myself wishing she’d scream louder.

“She was supposed to die tonight, too,” I admit numbly.

“I know,” Sienna replies, letting out a weary sigh. “You just never counted on me putting everything together. On me reading your manuscript and realizing what you had planned.” She pauses for a moment, looking almost reluctant to continue. “You knew Peyton was going to wear her old cheerleading uniform tonight after overhearing the Reds talk about it over brunch. You heard her mention that she needed to stop by her mother’s house to pick it up.” She pauses, visibly fighting to keep her composure. “But you got there first.”

Jennine’s house.

The spare key.

I remember knowing exactly where she kept it.

Just like Peyton knew where I kept mine.

“You’d written about a highly flammable chemical in Crashing Echoes,” Sienna says. “Something you claimed could make even a tiny ignition source incredibly dangerous. And when I read your new manuscript, I realized you must have arranged to get hold of some yourself.”

I bow my head.

“No. I already had it. I bought it on the black market while I was doing research for that book,” I explain quietly. “I never got rid of it because I had no idea how to safely dispose of a chemical like that. So I locked it away in a safe back home and eventually asked my PA to FedEx it to me. She had no idea what was inside that package, let alone what I was planning to do with it. None of this was her fault.”

Sienna looks at me for a long moment before picking up where she left off.

“So you went to Jennine’s house while nobody was home and treated Peyton’s uniform with the chemical. Then you waited until tonight, knowing she’d put it on without suspecting a thing.”

I watch as the paramedics carefully lift Peyton onto a gurney.

“All you needed was a spark,” Sienna says, her gaze following mine. “And you made sure you were the one who struck it.”

I can still feel the cigarette between my fingers.

The tiny ember flying toward her.

Peyton’s scream when the flames caught her beautiful blonde hair.

“I really thought she was the one doing all of this,” Sienna says, sounding utterly defeated. “God, Max. I was so sure it was Peyton.”

“What changed your mind?” I ask, my voice sounding strangely distant. “What made you start thinking it was me?”

“Peyton had solid alibis for every single murder. I spent the whole day double-checking them myself. I wanted to believe she was responsible. God knows she had more than a million reasons in her bank to want her friends dead. But the evidence just wasn’t there, which meant I was back at square one.”

Sienna releases a long, tired breath.

“Then, earlier tonight, Mrs. Trott asked me if you’d been having trouble sleeping and whether there was anything she could do to make your stay more comfortable. I thought it was a strange question, so I asked her why she’d think that.” She pauses for a moment. “That’s when she showed me the entry log for the front gate. You know how the gates lock automatically at midnight and don’t reopen until eight in the morning? Well, every room has its own access code so guests can come and go after hours. What I didn’t know was that the system keeps a record of every time a code is used.”

She looks down for a moment before continuing.

“Your code was used a little after dawn Friday morning. Mrs. Trott assumed you’d gone out for a drive because you couldn’t sleep. But something about that didn’t sit right with me. We had breakfast together that morning, remember? If you’d left at dawn, you would’ve had to come back before breakfast. Except there was no second entry in the log.”

She pauses, letting that sink in.

“Which meant you’d actually left before midnight the night prior and hadn’t returned until the next day. But you told Chief Neptune that you’d stayed in your room all night. I could understand why you’d lie to him. But me?”

She shakes her head, her voice losing some of its earlier resolve.