Page 139 of Kismet

“I’m fine.” She straightened her headband, cheeks hot with simmering rage.

“Can I get you some water?”

She nodded, and I escaped to the break room to hunt down a glass. I took an extra minute to decompress and review what I’d seen. The words. The hysteria. The aggression. Something didn’t sit right, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.

By the time I returned to the bullpen, Jolie seemed composed. I set the glass in front of her, and she thanked me.

I sat and waited to see if she would restart the conversation. When she kept her gaze down and didn’t speak, I took the liberty of pushing.

“Your friend Gigi is dead?”

“She killed herself.”

Shit.

“When?”And how the fuck had Yates known?

“Not quite a year after it happened. She never came back from it. It destroyed her. She stopped coming to school. She stopped talking to me. Bastian tried. He always had a crush on her, but she wouldn’t talk to him either. He felt responsible since he was the one to invite us to the party.”

“I’m so sorry, Jolie.”

“You said I can charge him. I want that man’s badge. For Gigi. He should not be allowed to be a police officer after the way he treated us. I don’t care if he’s sorry. Sorry won’t bring her back.”

“No, it won’t.”

Jolie lifted her chin and couldn’t have looked more like a defiant teenager if she tried. “What do you need to know?”

I spent the next hour taking a proper statement, listening as Jolie recounted the incident at the college, as she talked about the people involved, and described the fearful steps she, Gigi, and Bastian had taken that night to try to get Gigi help. The entire time, I made notes. The raw pain laced throughout the teen’s story made it impossible not to apply what I learned to the case.

The unsub was within reach, of that I had no doubt. After seeing this frail, wisp of a girl attack Yates, I could no longer disregard her as a potential suspect. Jolie had enough fire in her core that with better planning, I was certain she could have taken Yates down.

She nearly had.

If she wasn’t a primary suspect, she was involved somehow or knew who was responsible. Maybe she had helped.

I could have asked again—she dodged my question the first time—but I didn’t think I needed to.

Perhaps, I didn’t want to.

When I’d written down the full scope of the story, I had Jolie reread and sign it. I collected a contact phone number and an address and walked her out. On the street, she zipped her coat, fit her hat over her golden blond hair, and drew her mittens over her hands.

I thought she would say goodbye and walk away with her head down. Surprisingly, she hugged me and thanked me for listening. As she clung, the tropical scent of her perfume infiltrated my nose. I had noted the familiar scent the minute she sat down beside my desk.

I ignored it then, and I ignored it now.

36

Kobe

I had too muchshit inside my head and needed to sit down and think.

Could I have held Jolie at the station for suspicion of murder? Yes, probably.

Should I have updated Golding and taken instructions from her? Also yes.

I did neither of those things.

Returning inside, I hit the vending machine in the lobby, bought a bag of salt and vinegar chips and a can of root beer. The breakfast Dominique had fed me—Apple Cinnamon Cheerios because Cosette had insisted we have the same—was long gone from my stomach.