Page 4 of Sunburned

I felt the blood drain from my face as I nodded.

“The initials were I.J.K., as in Ian Jason Kelley, and the shoe was exactly his size.”

“Shit.”

“They have to do testing on the remains to confirm, but if it’s actually him…”

She didn’t have to finish that sentence. There’d been no murder investigation after Ian disappeared, because there’d been no body.

But that was about to change.

Eleven Years Ago, May

I could hear the music a block from the club.

“We can get out here,” I volunteered as my mom slowed for a stop sign.

She pulled her Honda over to the curb, her eyes twinkling beneath the turquoise scarf wrapped around her head. “What, you don’t want people to see your mom dropping you off at the club for your twenty-first birthday?”

I chortled. “Yeah no.”

“Ugh, these stilettos were not made for walking,” Rosa complained as she pushed open the back door.

“Just for dancing?” I teased.

I climbed out of the car into the balmy evening and adjusted my short, sparkly dress, my birthday present from Rosa, who had also done my makeup, and tamed my perpetually tangled long brown hair into glossy curls.

“Wait!” my mom called before I could shut the door. She raised her phone. “Strike a pose.”

I rolled my eyes but Rosa and I did as instructed, posing likeCharlie’s Angels on the sidewalk until the driver of a pickup truck rolled down his window to whistle.

“Bye!” I said, slamming the door to my mom’s car and blowing her a kiss.

“Thanks for the ride, Alex,” Rosa called as we started down the street.

I could see my mom laughing as she drove away.

The sidewalk outside Starfish was teeming with people waiting to get in. But the bouncer, who’d been on the football team at our high school back when Rosa was a cheerleader, lifted the velvet rope as we approached. “Birthday girl in the house,” he said into his walkie.

After a moment, the black-suited manager appeared in the doorway and ushered us inside. Dance music pounded through the speakers, flashing blue and silver lights reflecting off the disco balls that hung from the rafters as he led us past the bar and around the dance floor to a booth in the corner.

“Drinks are on the house tonight, ladies,” he said, gesturing to the vodka and juices in the center of the table. “Happy birthday.”

As he disappeared into the crowd, Rosa pulled me toward the booth. “Corner table so you can lurk in the shadows. No balloons, as promised. And I didn’t even invite anyone. Though I may have told a few people we’d be here. But only people you like.”

“Jesus, am I that bad?”

“I’m just messing with you. You know I love you.”

Her eyes narrowed as they caught on someone across the room. “Is that…” She snapped her fingers, searching for a name. “The squirrelly guy that was your lab partner senior year—”

“Ian Kelley?” I looked over to see two guys leaning against the wall near the hallway that led to the bathrooms. It took me a minute to register that one of them was, in fact, Ian. He was taller than he’d been in school, and even thinner, looking more like a ferret than a squirrel now with his new tattoos and all-black clothes, his dyed black hair shaped into a mullet. “Yeah, that’s him,” I said.

At first it looked like he and the other guy were just talking, until I noticed an exchange pass between their hands.

“Is he dealing?” I asked, thrown.

“Looks like it.”

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