Page 46 of The Lies We Steal

She could feel me there and I think it was driving her insane she couldn’t find me when she felt my eyes on her body. Hiding in the shadows of the library, through the windows of her classes. I’d made it a point to make sure she didn’t mutter a single word.

I wasn’t going to do anything severe, not until it was completely necessary. Until I’d noticed a vital piece of me was missing. I’d thought, maybe I’d lost it in the ruckus, but when the high settled, I realized I hadn’t lost it.

It had been taken from me.

Her sticky fingers from years of thievery, had stolen my ring. The girl who’d quickly shifted from a naive bystander with kaleidoscope eyes to the women who’d stolen from me.

I rubbed my finger where my missing ring used to sit, feeling naked without it. In my anger, I’d decided to kill two birds with one stone.

Sneaking into her room before I’d headed to the library to watch her. I’d planned on trashing the place to find what I had come for, but when it was nowhere to be found, I went with option B.

Prove a point and make sure they both knew what was to come if they spoke a word of what they’d witnessed.

I didn’t even know she had a pet. That was luck on my end and a severe inconvenience for her.

Course, I let Thatcher handle the skinning of the animal, figured it’d be rude not to include him in something that bloody.

I hadn’t seen her face when she found it. But I’d heard her, the wrathful scream, the crashing of throwing things around the room as I waited at the bottom of the steps of her hall.

That anger was all mine. I’d done that to her. Set a fire under her ass. And I owned every inch of that emotion. All of her emotions.

“What about it?” I ask, fist clenching at the need to get what belonged to me back.

“Silas finally got into the school badge access database,” Rook says, “A joint and two bags of Doritos later, and we found out that Briar’s uncle, Thomas Reid, is a biology professor.”

“And the study of organisms has to do with what exactly?” I say not following.

“Look at you, Ali, paying attention in class. Mommy and Daddy would be so proud.” Thatcher teases, I grind my molars.

Mommy and Daddy can go to Hell.

“Will you just fucking tell me what you found?”

“Thomas Reid has swiped in and out of the chemistry lab more than any science teacher at the university.” Silas speaks, the click of metal ringing. Shocking me a bit that’s he’s actually talking.

“Over the past two years he’s been in there after-hours, one, two in the morning. Hundreds of times.”

I lick my bottom lip, “So we think he is the teacher who texted Chris? Not to state the obvious, but what if Chris was just lying so we didn’t kill him? What if he’s actually the one who did it.”

I hated having to play this connect the dots shit. I felt like a corrupt detective and being a cop wasn’t something I’d ever aspired to be.

“Why tell us about planting the body then? If he wanted to lie, wouldn’t he have just denied all of it? Also, what teacher do you know who’s headed into the chem lab at two in the morning? It would make sense for him to be,but we can’t go chopping his head off,” Rook smiles wickedly, “Yet.”

“But it’s a lead. We can watch him, follow him, until we get the proof we need.” He continues.

Rook’s zippo clicks, the flame lighting the end of his cigarette, “And we think his darling niece is involved or at least knows about it. I mean, think about it,” He inhales,

“She’s broke as a fucking joke. You think a scholarship is what is paying for Hollow Heights? How’d she even get in to begin with, is an even better question. She’s not exceptionally smart or wildly gifted. Thomas must have had quite a few strings he could pull to get her here. The kind of money that buys your homely looking niece into a prestigious university. The kind of money that pays for peoples’ silence.”

I cross my arms across my chest, chewing the inside of my cheek.

This was it, a solid reason to go after her. Hard.

To show her what it’s like when you get in over your head with people who don’t give two fucks if you live or if you die.

Ideas crackled. Thoughts sparked.

Images of her wide eyes soaked with unshed tears and panic. Her rosy bottom lip trembling as she contemplates every life decision she ever made up to that point.