No Place Left to Hide

The narrative returns to Brooke’s lake house six months prior. Brooke swims back to the boat and finds that Jena is sprawled under the steering wheel, unconscious. Brooke begins damage control, bringing the boat to dock and rushing back into the house. She feels the gravity of her actions and doubts herself.

Using Claire’s phone, she calls her dad and tells him there’s been an accident. Her father gives her instructions that will make it appear like Jena and Claire snuck back to the lake house after Brooke left. In his narrative, they crashed the boat together while drunk, and it was all a terrible accident—one the Goodwins aren’t liable for.

He gives Brooke extensive legal advice, telling her to dial a lot of people using Claire’s phone to make it look like she was still alive after Brooke left the house. He also tells her how to dispose of evidence and to leave Jena in the boat, as Brooke waking Jena or calling an ambulance will ruin their false story. Brooke feels incredibly guilty about leaving Jena, knowing that she could have a concussion or even die before someone finds her, but her dad threatens her and says she has to do as she’s told. Brooke acquiesces. Finally, she drops Claire’s phone in the water and leaves.

In the present, Jena snatches Brooke’s phone away and demands to be let out of the car, terrified at Brooke’s confession. Brooke says she’s going to report Jena to the police for the events of the night and the months of harassment. Jena says she’ll confess to everything if it gives her a chance to take Brooke down. Brooke demands to know who the two masked men were, but Jena refuses to tell her. Brooke suddenly sees Jena as an obstacle between her and her ambitions, just like Claire, so she notes that Jena isn’t wearing a seatbelt and deliberately crashes the car.

The narrative flashes back to six months prior. Brooke is in school when the police find Claire’s body. She worries that Claire may have somehow survived, but the news that she’d truly dead is a relief. Brooke has already planned a candlelight vigil and rehearsed how she will act around the students. As everyone sees the news on their phones, she makes herself start crying and fakes grief.

In the present, Brooke survives the crash relatively unharmed, but she is stunned. She gets out of the car and checks on Jena. She’s still alive but unconscious and bleeding. Brooke starts to look for a rock that she can use to finish her off, as killing her another way might leave evidence of murder.

However, when she returns to the car, Jena is gone, having run to the tree line despite her injuries. Brooke gets a text from Jena asking for no “hard feelings” with a link to a YouTube video. Brooke discovers that Jena’s phone was never stolen; she hid it in the car, filmed Brooke’s confession, and posted it online. Brooke then receives an email that has dozens of her classmates and school officials listed as recipients and includes a link to the video. Brooke realizes that she’s been exposed, and her last action in the narrative is to scream.

The chapter closes in the form of a group chat featuring Jena, Felix, and Dylan as they plan to get a confession out of Brooke. The chat details Brooke’s arrest and that Jena is recovering from her injuries in the hospital. Felix and Dylan admit to getting carried away harassing them, which they apologize for, but they all rejoice that they got the outcome they wanted. They note that, in the news broadcast of the Goodwins’ arrests, Mr. Goodwin claims to have played no part and blames everything on Brooke.