by Callie Rose
“Yes, I do. I don’t want to hurt Penelope. Or you. I’m not a killer, Harlow.” He spreads his arms, as if presenting himself as an open book. “That’s not who I am.”
“You killed someone,” I shoot back angrily. “So that’s exactly what you are.”
Judge Hollowell’s face hardens. It’s not the same as seeing him hurt or afraid, but at least it’s something. It’s a crack in his mask.
“People do things out of necessity sometimes. Things they don’t want to do.” He clears his throat, his hazel eyes glinting. “That doesn’t mean those actions have to define them for the rest of their lives.”
“No. This won’t define you.” My voice is thick. “It will define my mom.”
He shrugs, as if that’s a minor detail. “For a while, yes.”
My lip trembles as I think of Mom sitting behind the little glass partition, the way she looks so different in prison orange. Five years. Five years of only getting to see her in tiny doses, of never getting to eat ice cream and watch movies or sit on the couch and talk about nothing for hours.
Five years of her life. Gone.
What would five years of prison do to her? Would she be the same person at all when she got out?
“All right.” A tear slips past the corner of my mouth as I speak. “You win. I won’t talk to Detective Dunagan.” I laugh bitterly. “He’ll probably be thrilled not to hear from me.”
Hollowell nods, smiling reassuringly. “I’m glad, Harlow. You’ve made the right choice.”
His words hit me like a punch to the sternum.
There’s a box full of pain in my chest that I haven’t allowed myself to open since the night Mom was arrested. It’s where I shove everything that hurts too much, that threatens to drag me under and make it impossible to keep functioning.
And as I stare at Hollowell’s blandly attractive face, I let that box snap open.
It hurts.
So fucking bad.
I crumple, resting my elbows on my knees and dropping my head to my hands as a wracking sob tears through my body.
“Fuck. Fuck,” I mutter, the words like broken shards of glass in my throat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Mom.”
My pain feeds itself, each sob pulling out another, and from what feels like a great distance, I hear Judge Hollowell telling me it’ll be all right, that I’m doing the right thing, that it’s better this way.
I struggle to take in a full breath, but my lungs are seizing so hard it’s almost impossible. My eyes hurt, and my throat hurts from crying so hard.
The couch cushion shifts slightly as someone else’s weight settles onto it, and when Hollowell’s hand falls on my knee, I jerk my head up, my body going rigid, my tears fading as revulsion floods me.
“I know you’ve been put in a hard situation by all of this, Harlow. So have I. We’re both doing the best we can.”
Judge Hollowell looks so perfectly sympathetic that I could almost believe he means it.
And I see it now, more clearly than I ever have before.
He wants to believe his own lie. He wants to believe he’s a good man who made one mistake. Maybe he even hopes that pinning Iris’s death on my mom will erase some of the guilt on his own soul, as if convincing the world she did it will make it true somehow.
I stand up abruptly, jerking my knee out of his grasp as another hitching sob escapes me. I rub my hands under my eyes, and they come away dark, smeared with mascara.
“Can I… use your bathroom?” I ask, my voice scratchy and raw.
He hesitates for a half-second, but then nods and stands. “Of course. Come with me, I’ll show you where it is.”
Striding from the living room, he leads me down a long hallway toward the back of the house. Halfway down the corridor, he stops, gesturing to a partially open door. “Here you are.”
He makes no move to leave, so I brush past him and step into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind me. The face in the mirror almost makes me jump. My skin is blotchy and red, my eyes swollen and bloodshot. Mascara has streaked and smeared around my eyes, making it look like I got punched in the face.
I switch the tap on.
But instead of splashing water on my face, I turn quickly and survey the room.
My body feels turned inside out, and my stomach and chest ache from crying so hard, but my heart jumps to life inside my chest again as I shove down the pain I unleashed earlier.
I need to be quick, and I need to be subtle. I have less than a minute before this starts to seem suspicious.
In keeping with the rest of the house, the bathroom is large, modern, and sparse. A large shower with natural stone tiling takes up one corner of the room, and lining the wall beside it are three large windows. Through them, I can see a portion of the yard and the privacy wall that surrounds the property.
Moving fast, I dart over to the first window and unlock it, sliding it up just a fraction of an inch. The gap is so small I don’t even know if I’ll be able to fit my fingers inside it later, but I can’t risk opening it wider—it would be too easy to spot.
Then I hurry back to the sink, and this time, I do lean over to wash my face, letting the cold water soothe my hot skin. I grab a tissue and wipe away the mascara smears from under my eyes, then blow out a shaking breath.
Adrenaline replaced all the sadness in my body as soon as I stepped into the bathroom, and I hope Hollowell can’t see that changes in my eyes.
But the honest truth is, I still look like shit, and when I let my shoulders slump, I’m the perfect picture of sorrow and defeat.
I’m still dabbing at my eyes as I open the door and step out of the bathroom. As I suspected he would be, Hollowell is waiting in the corridor for me, his hand resting lightly in the pockets of his suit. He looks me over with an assessing gaze, and I don’t try to hide my distaste. It would probably make me seem more suspicious if I didn’t seem to hate him.
“Are you all right?” he asks, tilting his head sympathetically.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” I wrap my arms around my stomach in a protective gesture. “I have to get to school.”
“Of course. You can still have a good future, Harlow. So can your mom. Remember that.”
Hollowell’s voice takes on the quality I’ve heard teachers use when they’re trying to impart some pearl of wisdom to a troubled kid. Gentle and condescending, as if he doesn’t expect me to truly understand his words yet, but he knows that one day, I will.
“Yeah,” I say again, then turn and walk back down the hall.
Judge Hollowell moves too, stepping forward so he’s just ahead of me as he leads me toward the door. He opens it, and I step out into the cool February air. But before I can head to my car, his voice stops me.
“Let’s give it a week, all right? I’ll just make sure you’re keeping your part of the bargain and not talking to anyone you shouldn’t. As long as you do that, I’ll start working on securing a plea deal for your mother.”
“Fine.”
It’s the last word I say to him before I hurry down the walkway, slip into my car, and escape.
19
The guys are waiting for me about a mile away, sitting in Lincoln’s car on a side street in the opposite direction from the route Judge Hollowell will probably take to the courthouse.
I texted them as soon as I pulled out of Hollowell’s driveway to let them know I was okay. If they’d had their way, they would’ve been camped right outside his house, loaded up with baseball bats and brass knuckles, ready to rush in and save me if things went south.
But we couldn’t risk it. We couldn’t risk Hollowell thinking my visit was about anything other than accepting defeat.
When I slide into the back seat of Linc’s car, everyone turns to stare at me, and horror is written across all of their faces.
“Fuck, Low,” River breathes, sounding tortured. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I swipe at my eyes again. Even if it was for show, the emotions I conjured up were
entirely real, and I feel hungover from my hard cry. “It worked.”
“You got a window open?” Linc asks. Hot anger burns in his irises as he takes in my puffy face, but he keeps his voice steady.
I nod. “It’s just a crack. I couldn’t do any more, since I’m sure he probably went back to check the room after I left. It’s barely noticeable, but it should be enough to open it from the outside without setting off alarms.”
I hope.
“Okay.” Dax’s face is grim. “We called to confirm the court cases being heard today, and he’s due in court by ten. So we’ve got about an hour before he leaves.”
We wait two.
Each minute ticks by with agonizing slowness, and Linc moves his car several times, just to make sure no one notices us loitering suspiciously and calls the cops. At a little after eleven, I catch his gaze and nod. We can’t wait any longer. We need to be sure Hollowell is out of the house, but if we wait too long, we risk getting caught when he returns.
There’s no gate blocking the driveway of his house. The wall around his property seems to be intended more for privacy than as a deterrent to trespassers—but I did notice a security camera mounted on the wall, angled to capture the driveway.
So we park a few blocks away and walk, then climb over the wall in the same spot the guys did when they spied on him a few weeks ago. Hollowell seems to consider himself an outdoorsy man; his property is heavily wooded, probably so he can imagine he’s living in some remote hunting lodge or something.
But it works out well for us, because there are plenty of trees to use for cover as we creep silently toward the house, communicating only by gestures and low whispers. It’s warmed up in the past few days, but there’s still some snow on the ground—just little patches here and there where it piled up the thickest and was the slowest to melt. We make sure to avoid those parts, not wanting to leave any obvious footprints or disturbances.
I spot the bathroom windows as we round the side of the large, sleek house, and my heart clutches in my chest. This is it. If Hollowell realized I opened it, or if I didn’t open it wide enough, our plan will crash to an abrupt halt right now.
Tugging on River’s hand to make sure I have his attention, I murmur, “The farthest one on the right.”
He nods once, and the five of us make our way slowly toward the house. We scanned for cameras and couldn’t see any that captured this angle, but I still move at a low crouch.
River reaches the window first, and my entire body tenses as he touches the glass, half expecting the ear-splitting screech of an alarm to blast through the air.
But the yard stays quiet and still.
And the window doesn’t move.
Fuck.
Fucking ball sucking motherfucker.
Did Hollowell notice it after all? Did he close it? Or did I just not open it enough?
I tap River’s shoulder. “Let me try.”
He nods and shifts out of the way so I can approach the window. It looks completely closed, but I use my fingernails to try to latch onto the bottom edge of the pane.
For a moment, nothing happens. Then the pane of glass shifts upward.
My insides seem to liquify with relief, and I push a little harder, forcing the window open about three inches.
“Boost. Give me a boost.”
Almost before I finish saying the words, four sets of hands converge on me, lifting me effortlessly in the air until I’m level with the window. I’m pretty sure Chase is the one palming my ass, and if I weren’t about to pass out from nerves, I’d probably enjoy this quite a bit.
Trusting them to hold me up, I use the better leverage to lift the window even higher. When it’s wide enough to fit through, the guys help me clamber through the open space.
It’s not graceful at all, but I get inside without falling or disturbing anything in the bathroom, so I’ll take it.
I turn around to help the guys inside, and they boost each other from the yard outside until those of us inside the bathroom outnumber the ones left outside. Chase comes last, scrambling up the side of the house as the guys pull him through the window.
When we’re all safely inside, I close the window so we don’t let a bunch of cold air in—I don’t know if Hollowell would notice that, but I don’t want to tip him off that anything is amiss.
Brushing off my hands, I jerk my head toward the bathroom door. I didn’t notice any cameras inside Hollowell’s house the two times I was here, and although I wasn’t looking for them the first time, I definitely was the second.
I thought that was a little strange at first—after all, Linc’s dad has security cameras inside their house. But then it occurred to me that maybe a man who was sleeping with an underage girl wouldn’t want his every move recorded, even if it was by his own security system.
Of course, it’s possible he has hidden cameras I didn’t see. But we just need to take that risk and hope we find something useful enough to justify it. Some hint at whatever other reason Hollowell might’ve had for killing Iris.
“Look for an office or a study or something,” I murmur as we slip into the hallway. “Anywhere he’d keep important stuff.”
It’s a long shot, maybe. But I’m still convinced there was something else going on that made Hollowell kill the blonde cheerleader. Something more than her pregnancy.
Poking around in Samuel Black’s study is what led me to the birth certificate proving that his infidelity had resulted in a baby and that the child was his, although at the time, I thought it was about Linc. I’m hoping we’ll be able to find something like that here. Something Hollowell wants to keep hidden.
We creep through the house like ghosts, but we don’t find anything promising on the first floor. I keep glancing at the time on my phone, acutely aware of every minute as it passes.
On the second floor, we finally come across what looks like a home office—a large room with a massive mahogany desk and wide windows that flood the room with natural light. The file drawer is locked, but River finds a key in the top desk drawer, and my heart jumps when it works. We grab files out as quickly as we can, flipping through them before putting them back right where we found them.
Most of it is incredibly boring. Legal documents and records of bill payments and things like that.
I’m starting to wonder if we’ll even recognize anything “off” if we see it. I don’t know enough legalese to interpret half the shit I’m reading.
Come on, you fucker. Come on. There has to be something.
Goddammit. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Judge Hollowell just reacted strangely when I said he killed Iris for getting pregnant because he didn’t expect me to know about the baby.
But I swear, I saw it in his eyes.
Surprise. Maybe even something like guilt.
And then relief.
There’s something else he’s covering up.
“Last two files,” Chase murmurs, dragging my attention back to the room as he pulls out two folders, handing one over to River.
I cast my gaze down at the filing cabinet, closing the file I’m holding. We’ve been here for almost two hours, and we’re starting to push our luck.
But we can’t go yet.
“You guys go through anything else you can find in here,” I whisper. “I’m going to see if I can find his bedroom.”
Linc immediately straightens. “I’ll go with you.”
I nod, and the two of us head toward the door. We’re almost there when River’s voice stops us.
“Wait.”
My gaze jerks toward him, my head moving so fast I almost give myself whiplash. He’s staring down at the open file in his hand, his brows furrowed as if he’s trying to translate the contents into another language.
“What?” I ask as Linc and I change course, heading back toward the others. “What is it?”
He doesn’t see my lips move. He’s so caught up in what he’s looking at that he doesn’t track the activity around him like he normally does. He che
ws on his lip and shakes his head, and when he looks up, I step forward and repeat the question, craning my neck to see what’s on the paper he’s studying so intently.
My heart falls.
It’s just a receipt from a dry cleaner. A refund, it looks like. I don’t know what River’s seeing that’s made him go so still and quiet.
I nudge his shoulder, dipping my head to catch his eye. My heart is beating out the milliseconds like a metronome set too high, echoing the nervous energy I can feel coming off him in waves.
“River. What?”
He blinks, still looking stunned and scared.
“Look at the amount.”
I glance back down at the paper, and my eyes practically pop out of my head. I didn’t even register it at first because no legit dry cleaner would ever give anyone this amount of money. It’s insane.
When I shift my gaze to River, he reads the expression on my face and nods grimly. “I know the name on the bottom too. Niles D’Amato. I’ve seen my dad talk about him with his lawyer buddies. He runs a drug trafficking ring that moves opiates through Connecticut.”
My mouth opens, and my gaze flies back to the papers in River’s hand.
Holy fuck.
In that context, the amount of money listed on this receipt takes on a whole new meaning. Why the hell is Judge Hollowell accepting “refunds” from a known drug trafficker?
Is this what got Iris killed? Did she find out about it?
My skin prickles as it hits me how much danger we’re all in. I don’t know what I was hoping to find up here, what I was expecting. But it wasn’t this. And if Hollowell killed Iris to keep this quiet, there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t do the same to us.
“Is there anything else in there?” I catch River’s eye and jerk my chin toward the file he’s holding.
He shakes his head. “No. Nothing that seems important. Everything else is just records of car payments. He either stuck this in here by accident or hid it in here on purpose.”
Lincoln makes a soft noise, and when I glance at him, he has almost the same look on his face River did before. Like he’s sorting through a series of disconnected images in his head, trying to piece them together so they form a cohesive picture.
