Page 24

24

Diem

“ S top fucking looking at me.” I squeezed the steering wheel, the heat of Tallus’s gaze burning the side of my face.

“I’m not looking at you.”

“Yes, you are. I can feel it. And I know what you were doing back there. I don’t want a dog.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I have a snake.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tallus,” I growled, fiddling with the buttons and knobs on the console, trying to figure out how to turn the goddamn temperature down because I was cooking inside my coat.

“Nicholas’s father worked in publishing.”

The non sequitur might save him for now, but I wasn’t about to forget the sly, underhanded excuse he’d used to get Nicholas’s card. “I heard.”

“And his son is part of the secret murder club.”

“I know.”

“Nicholas’s old man has been haunting the woods like he’s protecting a secret.”

“I know, Tallus. I’ve been along for the ride this whole time.” And the dots were connecting, but we still didn’t have the whole picture. “It’s fucking hot in here.”

Tallus shifted in his seat and brushed my hand away from the controls, punching a few buttons and stopping the hot flow of air streaming from the vents. Facing me, he tugged off my beanie and brushed his fingers through my sweat-dampened hair.

“How’s the pain?”

Excruciating , I wanted to say, but went with, “It’s fine.”

“Are you lying?”

“Tallus.”

“Okay. Never mind.” More calming strokes over my scalp. Cool air brushed my heated cheeks.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“What do we do from here, Guns? We know something. We’re on the right track, but how do we break it all open? How do we find and prove the truth about Weston’s… attempted murder?”

I’d been asking myself the same question since leaving the kennel. “I still want to chat with some of these teens, preferably Atlas.”

I wanted to corner Abercrombie, too, but his attitude the last time we spoke made me think he wouldn’t be cooperative and might cause trouble, even if we could prove his teenagers were up to no good. Parents didn’t always take kindly to someone suggesting their teens were troublemakers. Instinct put them on the defensive, and they refused to listen to reason. Chances were, Hugh would side with his kids no matter what we told him.

I checked the time on the dash. It was closing in on two, so I suggested a late lunch before hitting the high school.

***

We arrived at the school early. I parked on the opposite side of the street, confident the new vehicle wouldn’t draw suspicion, and encouraged Tallus to get out. All was quiet in the neighborhood, and the bell wouldn’t ring for another ten minutes. We had time to explore.

“Where are we going?” Tallus hustled to keep up.

I motioned to the student and staff parking lot and grunted something indecipherable.

Food had helped, but the throb in my shoulder persisted, making me cranky, and I’d been unnecessarily short with Tallus all day. The ache traveled down my arm to my fingers and up my neck into my jaw. Four more pain pills at lunch had dampened the worst of it, but a tension headache had joined the parade. I wanted to lie down and sleep it off, but we had things to do.

Tallus seemed to sense my vacillating mood and eyed me more than usual as though monitoring my pain levels. I wasn’t fooling him. He knew every groove on my face and was intimately aware of every muscle contraction in my body. Wisely, he also knew not to hassle.

I located the twins’ SUV in no time and checked the doors. All locked. Shielding my eyes, I pressed my face to the tinted windows to look inside. I didn’t know what I was hoping to find. Rope? A chain saw? A fucking ladder? Proof of some kind that they were involved in this mess.

I found none of those things. The car was pristine inside and out as if it had recently been detailed. I scanned the lot, noticed Atlas’s beat-up Civic a few rows over, and headed toward it.

Tallus stayed close.

Before I reached the car, he tugged my sleeve, drawing me to a stop. “D, look.”

Tallus pointed to an alcove off the main building, where two teenagers were busy playing tonsil hockey and groping one another. The angry dog gnawing a hunk of wood on the back of the guy’s leather jacket told me it was Duke. Whose face he was sucking to oblivion remained a mystery for only a few seconds longer. Their kiss broke, and Duke pulled back, revealing a pink-cheeked and rumpled Londyn.

“Son of a bitch.” I changed course, figuring that if they weren’t in class, we might as well start with the lovebirds.

Tallus chuffed as he scrambled to keep up with my long-legged stride. “She’s got a lot of nerve.”

“Right? Doesn’t even wait for Weston’s mother to pull the fucking plug on her kid.”

“Tact, D.”

“It’s true. She’s sucking face with that idiot while her boyfriend is technically still alive.”

Tallus couldn’t argue. I was right.

Londyn spotted us first and shoved Duke away. Duke spun and almost tripped on the backpack he’d left on the ground. Both stared at us with wide, mistrusting eyes as we closed in. Duke seemed to get over his shock first and stood taller, puffing his chest and lifting his chin in a failed attempt to intimidate.

Only when I was within ten feet of the pair did something dawn on me. The patch on Duke’s jacket. The snarling dog chewing what looked like a hunk of tree. The scrawled company name above it. Bark Boss .

My blood instantly boiled. A switch flipped inside me, and without thinking, flying on adrenaline, instinct, and rage, I caught the edge of Duke’s coat in my good hand, balled it around my fist, and backed him against the brick wall, landing him with a thud hard enough to wind him.

“You son of a bitch,” I spat, inches from his face.

“Diem!” Tallus snagged my coat and tried to yank me away.

Duke’s attempt at smugness vanished, and he paled.

Londyn squeaked a small cry of surprise, scrambled to get her backpack off the ground, and ran.

“Stop her,” I snarled at Tallus.

“Dude, relax.” Duke held his hands placatingly, but I wasn’t in the mood to be placated. I was in pain, and if my synapses were firing correctly, I suspected this asshole might be part of the reason why.

“What the fuck is Bark Boss?” I growled.

Duke blinked a few times in apparent confusion, then stammered, “My dad’s company. It’s… He has a… They do landscaping.”

“A landscaping company?”

Duke furiously nodded, his hair catching in the rough bricks behind him.

“Do they do tree trimming?” I asked.

“Y-yes.”

“Is that so.”

“Diem.” Another tug on my arm, gentle but persistent. “Let him go. He’ll talk to you.”

But the acid in my core burned me from the inside out. Visions of that branch crashing played on repeat in my mind, only it wasn’t me in its path. It could have been Tallus , my brain kept saying. It could have been Tallus.

“Do you help your dad? Do you work for him during the summer when you’re not in school? Did he teach you to scale trees and cut away dead branches? Rig them with rope so you can direct their fall?”

“I don’t… What are you… Y-yes?”

A growl resonated in my chest.

“Diem.” Tallus wedged himself between Duke and me, wearing an expression of concern as he pressed his palms to my chest, urging me to step back.

Without breaking eye contact with the teen, I released his coat and stepped away, but I wasn’t finished. “Did you drop a fucking tree on my Jeep yesterday?” I roared.

“W-what?” Duke dashed a frantic look around, and that was when I realized Londyn was gone. Tallus had let her slip away.

I worked my jaw, leveling my temper. “Did you. Drop a tree. On my fucking Jeep yesterday?”

“N-no.” Duke shook his head, emphasizing his statement.

I moved to step closer, but Tallus remained in my path. My height and weight had never intimidated him. “Think, Diem.”

I spoke over Tallus’s head. “We know what you guys were up to in that cabin, and we’re going to prove Weston didn’t have an accident. We know, asshole. We fucking know, so I hope you’re ready to warm a cell for the rest of your fucking life.”

Duke seemed to slowly recover his wits. He grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder as he backed away, face contorted in anger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Awfully suspicious how quickly you moved in on Weston’s girlfriend. Someone might think you needed him out of the way because he had something you wanted. In my line of work, that’s called a motive, but you would know that already with all the studying you’ve done on writing the perfect mystery. Here’s the thing. There is no perfect crime. In the end, everyone makes mistakes.”

“Fuck you, you freak.” Duke spun on his heels and darted off toward the front of the school.

The minute we were alone, my fearless boyfriend clenched a hand around my jaw and dragged me to his level, ignoring the flash of pain the movement caused. His hazel eyes were glacier. “You do not get to throw your weight and size around and pin people against walls. I don’t care how much you hurt or how angry you are. You just don’t. Do you hear me, Diem Krause? That is not okay.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Tallus moved a finger to my lips, shushing me. “Even if they’re a slimy little prick of a teenager with an attitude problem. Even if it’s highly probable they rigged a tree branch to fall on us. Never. Again.”

“I wasn’t going to hit him.” No matter how intensely my insides burned, no matter how much someone might deserve it, I’d promised myself years ago that I would never raise a fist to a person again. “I swear.”

“I know, D, but you still can’t do that.”

Disappointment was written all over Tallus’s face. Disappointment at my actions. And I deserved it.

The floodgates of shame let go, and my face crumpled. I tried to pull away, but Tallus caught my hand and wouldn’t let me go anywhere. What had sent me flying toward the kid and taken over my brain in the split second I’d had to think was how close to danger Tallus had been the previous day. “It could have been you.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“But it could have been.”

Tallus tugged me against his chest and engulfed me in a tight hug. I didn’t resist and wrapped my good arm around him, squeezing back and kissing his head. If I could have packed him up and sent him home, I would have, simply to keep him safe, but Tallus wouldn’t go for that.

Clapping sounded from a short distance away. It shattered the intimate moment, and Tallus and I both turned to find Atlas leaning against his beat-up Civic, cigarette between his lips as he applauded.

He removed the cigarette and called, “Very sweet. I caught a vibe at the restaurant, but here you are, openly advertising. No judgment here. Carry on.”

Atlas blew a cloud of smoke into the air as we approached. My fingers twitched with muscle memory, and I could almost feel the tingling sensation that came with the first haul after not having smoked in a long time.

I’d have killed for a smoke but knew better than to fall down that rabbit hole again. No matter how stressed I was. No matter my pain level.

Atlas grinned at our arrival. “Saw you give Duke a little shakedown. Guy’s a dumbass.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t talk too highly of your friends.”

Atlas shrugged and took a drag off his cigarette. “We’re not that close.”

“You’re kind of the odd man out in your little group, aren’t you?” Tallus said.

Atlas didn’t respond and glanced toward the school as the end-of-the-day bell rang.

Knowing our time was limited—Londyn had likely run off to tell Daddy we were harassing her boyfriend—I moved the conversation in the direction we needed. “We found your clubhouse in the woods, and Loyal painted a lovely picture of what your group is all about.”

Atlas shrugged. “So?”

“Hugh Abercrombie doesn’t know what you guys were doing out there, does he?”

“Not my concern.”

“He seemed shocked when I suggested it the other day. I didn’t realize at the time that Loyal and Londyn were his kids. No wonder he isn’t happy about us poking around, especially since it means pointing a finger at all of you. I hope I didn’t get you guys in trouble, seeing as your group has been sneaking around, running a highly suspicious club, and writing highly suspicious stories.”

Atlas huffed. “Mr. A wouldn’t give a shit about the cabin. Loyal’s his prodigy, and Londyn’s got Daddy wrapped around her baby finger. They’ll weave him a nice tale, and he’ll go with it. Besides, he would probably commend the creative spin we take when writing our books.”

“What about Sonya? Would she be happy to know what you guys are up to?”

“Who?”

“Sonya. The twins’ mother.”

For the first time, Atlas seemed confused. “Christ, man, she ain’t been around in two or three years. She hit the road back when Loyal and Londyn were starting grade nine or something. I heard she left Mr. A at the altar. It was the talk of the town. Utterly humiliating. You think that shit only happens in stories, but nope. Something about an affair with a guy in Toronto, I think. Left Mr. A to raise the twins himself.”

Atlas smirked. “And as far as I know, Mr. A gives his kids whatever they want to keep them happy. Guilt does that. New wheels included.” He motioned to the SUV, where Londyn, Duke, Loyal, and Noel got into the vehicle. “Must be nice, huh?”

All four of the teens had eyes on us.

I glanced around, looking for any sign of Hugh Abercrombie, but didn’t see him among the flood of students leaving the building.

“We should split,” I said to Tallus.

“What about them?”

“They won’t talk to us now. Come on.”

We hustled toward the main road where I’d parked the Jeep as Atlas called after us, “Have a nice day. Stay out of trouble… Wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”