Page 102 of Blade

I shook my head. “No.” I sat on the cold tile, wrapped in a towel, my whole body trembling. I never wanted to speak of it again.

One day, I got a Google alert from the words I’d entered when I started working at my firm.Truck driver. Remains. Bones. Colorado. Blade.I saw the picture of the man and learned his name. I ordered a copy of the paper where the article was printed, cut out the report, and sent it, anonymously, to Kayla.

But now a thought rushes in.

“Shannon,” I say out loud, but in a whisper. “She was staying at Avery Hall that month. Her mother had gone back home ...”

Artis nods. “Right,” he says. “Her brother broke his leg. He couldn’t drive to school. And Shannon didn’t want to stop training.”

“She lived on the first floor,” I remember now. She would have been there ... that night.

“She heard you and Mio come in through the window. Then she saw Mio go back out—and throw something in the dumpster.”

What is going on here?Even if Shannon went to the dumpster to see what Mio had thrown away, why would she keep my blood-soaked dress all these years? Why not give it to the police or Edie? Or even to her mother, who had gone out of her way to destroy the other Orphans?

But then Artis has the answer.

“She went to Dawn the next day and told her what had happened. She gave her the dress. She thought Dawn would do the right thing. She didn’t want you to get in trouble.”

“How do you know all this?”

His face changes again, this time to something cold. Indifferent.

“We dated in high school, after you left. But then she quit skating and moved home. She came back eight years ago when Edie died and the job opened up at Avery Hall. She started seeing Emile.”

My God.Artis and Shannon. They acted like strangers before.

But Dawn had the dress—he just told me that. How did he get his hands on it?

Then I think—Artis, the lawyer. His practice dependent on The Palace. If he has my dress from fourteen years ago, he must have gotten it from Dawn, who’s kept it all this time. Which means they’re working together now.

Artis is not working to help Grace.

No. He’s helping frame her for Emile’s murder.

But then whymydress? It had to be Shannon who took Grace’s dress the night Emile was killed—in his office at The Palace—and his body later moved to the field.

And now I remember about the four cars Grace said she recognized that night. And the footsteps she heard coming down the hall toward Emile’s office.

“It was you,” I say, staring incredulously at Artis. “You were there when Emile was killed! Did you do it? Did you kill him?”

Artis puts the car in gear and starts to drive.

He says nothing, but I feel myself moving further toward one conclusion.

“It was you. Oh my God, Artis.” The custody files are right there on my phone. Emile wasn’t just taking down The Palace, then leaving with its skaters. He was taking his son with him. The son Shannon had with Emile just five years ago.

“It wasn’t just business—you wouldn’t kill over that. You could move your practice somewhere else. It was personal, wasn’t it?” I race through the pleading that’s still open on my phone. The affidavit Artis filed to try to keep Emile from gaining custody of Shannon’s son and relocating to California.

“You stepped in when Emile abandoned her, didn’t you? You raised Caleb like your own child. You were planning to marry Shannon, and Emile was ruining everything. Your law practice. Your family. Your entire life.”

Still, no answer. Not even a flinch. Which means he has a plan to get himself out of this.

I feel the car accelerate even though the road is buried in a foot of snow, nothing visible from any window.

“What are you doing?” I say, my heart racing as we skid out, then swerve back.

He keeps driving.