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I tried to answer those and the rest of the questions he came up with, filling the time and distracting myself from thinking about the fact that somewhere on this route, someone had tried to kill Elliot.

Had driven him off the road and then shot the car until the gas tank exploded, fully intending to not only make sure he was dead, but to destroy any evidence of what had really happened.

I looked up, frowning, as Hart slowed the Charger. “What are we doing?”

He pulled over to the side of the road, hitting the flashers.

“Looking at the scene of the so-called accident,” he replied, turning off the engine and getting out of the car after making sure no one was coming.

A glance back told me that the Sheriff’s car had pulled over a ways back, and it made me incredibly nervous that he was still there.

I jumped when Hart opened my door and looked down at me.

“You gonna come read this scene for me or sit on your ass?”

I blinked. “Oh. Um. Okay.” I got out of the car carefully, trying to avoid twisting my knee in the lumps of dirt and muddy grasses that made up the nonexistent shoulder of the road. “You want me to… what?”

Hart stood there in the rain, the water pulling strands of white hair down the sides of his fine-boned features. “Jesus fuck, Mays. You are a crime scene tech still, yeah? You have accident investigation certification? And arson certification?”

“I mean. Yes to the first, and I’m working on the second, but Hart?—”

“So then do your shit, Mays. Look at this scene. Tell me what you see.”

I stared at him. “You?—”

“I want you to do your fucking job,” he replied, but despite the profanity, his tone was oddly gentle.

I blinked, then turned to look at the road, dark streaks of rubber burned into the asphalt by the skidding of tires as a car— my car—had been pushed off the road, the swerving lines telling me that Elliot had tried to keep the FJ Cruiser under control.

Scraps of plastic in red and white and blue and orange testified to the crunch of two cars as one hit the other, twisted fragments of metal, plastic, and paint ground down by the passage of other tires and washed out by the rain.

Hart collected the fragments, dropping them into an empty baggie he’d pulled from somewhere.

I traced the path with Hart, pointing out the application of brakes, the turn of a wheel, the point when Elliot lost control and slipped over the edge, a tire track in mud and flattened grass and gravel leading to a scorch in the grass dark and wide enough for me to know that if Elliot had been in the car when it caught on fire, it would probably have taken DNA to identify him.

I shuddered, looking at the dark patch, and I felt Hart’s hand on my back. “He’s okay,” he reminded me, and I nodded.

“He said he shifted and slid out of the car, and that the deputy shot at the gas tank until it caught fire.”

Hart swore extensively before coming back to his questions. “Does that track with this?” he asked me.

I nodded. “No other reason for it to have caught fire,” I replied. “Not the way it came off the road.”

“Good to know,” Hart replied, his voice dark. “So this wasn’t an attempt to scare him—well, to scare you .”

“No,” I replied, half-swallowing the word. Neither one of us said it out loud, but I heard it nonetheless— It was an attempt to kill you.

The Sheriff’s Department car followed us up past the Hills’ farm, but pulled a Y-turn rather than actually parking at my parents’ house. Hart and I got out and watched the tail lights disappear around a bend before both of us let out a heavy sigh of relief.

“Fuck that fucker,” was Hart’s comment. “Now, you don’t actually need to feed any animals, do you?”

“Actually,” I replied, hesitating because I really did want to see Elliot much more than I wanted to feed some goats and chickens, “I do.”

Hart’s eyebrow—just the one—rose. “Seriously?”

“Goats and chickens gotta eat,” I told him.

“What are you going to do with them?” he asked.

“Elliot wants them, actually,” I replied. “Well, the goats and some of the chickens. Ray’s going to take the rest.”

“Elliot… wants them?” Hart sounded incredulous.

“He does,” I confirmed, then bent and pulled the meowing backpack out of the passenger foot-well.

“I—think we should drop Sassafras in the house first, though. I don’t want to carry her all the way down the mountain, and we can’t leave her in the car.

” I swallowed. “And this will take us past the crime scene.”

Hart’s expression was a grimace, although in reaction to the goats, the cat, the crime scene, or something else, I wasn’t sure.

I skirted the stain on the porch, then carried the cat into the kitchen where I released her, then pulled out two bowls, filling one with water and the other with a can of cat food I’d also thrown into the bag.

Sassafras, previously very into the wet food, sat in the doorway to the hall and glared at me as I tucked the backpack into the hall closet, paranoia making me hide it between some boxes.

A glance at the cat told me her ears were still partly back, and she hadn’t stopped eyeing me with suspicion.

Apparently a car ride in a backpack was not a way to endear myself to her.

But since she was pouting, I decided to go see if Hart needed any assistance.

I walked outside, finding him squatting beside the stain left on the deck by my mother’s blood.

“Anything interesting?” I asked.

“Nothing you probably don’t already know,” he replied.

“I’ve put in an injunction to get access to the full files and evidence from Augusta County.

” He gestured at the stain. “Hard to say with all the trampling and the rain, but it seems pretty clear to me that…” He trailed off, then looked up at me, his expression saying he wasn’t sure how much I wanted to hear this.

I didn’t particularly, but it also wasn’t going to send me into a spiral or anything. “She bled out on the porch after suffering multiple slashing or stabbing wounds?”

Hart made a soft noise. “That,” he said. “Not close, I guess. You and your mom.” It was partly a question.

“I haven’t spoken to either of my parents since I was fifteen,” I replied shortly. “When they were willing to let Noah’s Arcana go untreated.”

“Fuck. Right.”

He stood, and I was a little gratified to hear his knee creak—not quite as loudly or long as mine did, but still. “I’m going to feed the goats,” I told him. “Since they’re probably starving.”

I headed down the stairs and across the gravel drive to the barn, hearing the crunch of Hart’s footsteps behind me.

I pulled open the sliding door, and we were greeted by the excited bleating of goats that hadn’t been fed for a whole day.

“Sorry, guys,” I told the goats, scooping out feed from a bucket with an alpaca logo on it, clearly from the Hills’ farm, putting the pellets into the little feed trough in their stall.

The goats had rushed over as soon as we walked into the barn, and they started jostling to get their faces into the food first, black and white and grey goat butts wiggling.

I poured in several more scoops of food.

“What’s in that?” Hart asked.

“Corn? Stuff? No idea,” I replied. “Alpaca food.”

“They’re goats,” he pointed out.

“They are,” I agreed. “Goats’ll eat anything, and Helen brought it up from their alpaca farm after Momma died.”

He let out a soft grunt at my explanation. “What do the chickens get?”

“Corn and wheat,” I replied.

“And they stay in here?” he asked, looking around the barn.

“The chickens are in the coop,” I replied. “They can get out into their pen whenever they want. The goats I would normally let out to graze for a while, but it’s pouring.” I put another scoop into the trough. “Okay. Let’s go down to the Hills.’” And Elliot .

“What if the Augusta County asshat is waiting just down the road?” Hart asked.

“We’ll walk,” I replied, giving the goats one more scoop. “Through the woods. There’s a track that cuts down the mountainside and will bring us up at the edge of their property behind the barn, out of sight of the road.”

The one eyebrow rose again.

“Helen used to give us cookies,” I explained.

“You didn’t get cookies at home?”

“Cookies are sinful,” I informed him. “Gluttony. So no, we didn’t.”

“Jesus,” the elf muttered. “No offense, Mays, but your family is fucked up.”

He wasn’t wrong. “We can’t all be Harts,” I replied, trying to lighten the mood a little, although I wasn’t entirely certain I was succeeding.

“According to my mother, you can,” he retorted. “So fuck these assholes. There’s a-whole-nother family willing to adopt you so you don’t have to have any more ties to this shitshow.”

Maybe it was because I was still strung out from the shock and aftershock of thinking Elliot was—and then finding out he wasn’t.

Maybe it was the aftermath of my mother’s murder or the stress of Noah still being in prison…

But I had surprisingly strong emotional reaction to Hart’s comment and had to blink back tears.

“Okay,” I said, and turned away when my voice cracked.

I didn’t see him coming, and I flinched a little when Hart’s wiry arms wrapped around me. “Fuck, Seth,” he rasped. “Don’t you fucking start leaking on me again.”

I sniffled as I hugged him back. “Sorry.”

“We’re both fucking messes, Jesus fucking Christ.” He let go and stepped back, sniffing hard. “I think we’d better go find that stripey dick before we both totally lose our fucking shit.”

“Okay,” I agreed, wiping the tears from my cheeks.

I took a deep, steadying breath, mentally tracing the path that led from the back of the goats’ paddock into the woods and down the steep hillside. Somewhere in the midst of the trees, my parents’ property line met the Hills’, although I’d never known precisely where.