“I thought maybe it was that asshole football player who’s gunning for me, but I’m not sure. He has all but told me he’s above the law in our town, but when I accused him of doing it, he looked genuinely confused. Like he had no idea what I was talking about.”
“Was he part of that case?” Striker asked, having switched to full-on detective mode.
“Yes. He was one of The Six. But, again, if he thinks he’s so above the law, he wouldn’t care. If he got away with it once, he’d get away with it again, right?”
“Maybe,” he replied, his voice trailing off. “Listen, I have to run. I’m getting another call that I have to take. Meet me at my office at noon. We can go out from there.”
“See you then.”
“Sounds good. And Kylene?… Be careful, okay? I can’t have anything happen to you.”
“I’ll be fine. I promise.”
We said goodbye and hung up. I rushed around the kitchen to make dinner enough for Gramps and me both, even if I wouldn’t be home to eat it with him. While I ate, I scribbled in my notepad, trying to work through everything I knew about Boobgate and what had happened that night. I’d always remembered flashes of the evening after a certain point but never fully clear moments. At the time it had happened, I’d been so drunk I could barely function. Not one of my prouder moments, but I was young and invincible, right? What could possibly go wrong?
Apparently, a lot.
Frustrated, I cleaned up my dishes, then got dressed. I still had about twenty minutes before Garrett was due to pick me up, so I lay down on the couch and tried to clear my mind. I’d never really tried that hard to draw forth my memories of the party. I was so traumatized when it all came out, I couldn’t have focused on it if my life had depended on it. But now, I thought maybe it was time to give it another shot.
Inhaling deep into my belly, I tried to slow my heart rate and center my thoughts. Considering those things were usually running around like toddlers on coke, it was no easy task. But eventually I could feel myself being lulled into a meditative state. I could see the earlier parts of the night. The ones with me in AJ’s lap and Garrett handing us beers. The ones with us laughing the way only carefree kids can.
The deeper into the night I delved, the spottier the memories got. I remembered a group of us getting into the hot tub—AJ, Garrett, Maribel, and Jaime all part of that crowd. The other faces were fuzzy. The heat of the hot tub must have made the alcohol’s effect on me even stronger. I remembered feeling sleepy.
A bunch of the group got out at the same time, wrapping up in towels. Garrett was one of them—or at least it looked like he was. I couldn’t be sure. Maybe Maribel, too. AJ was still there, his arm around my shoulders. I remembered him saying something to me—words I couldn’t grab to pull closer—but I distinctly remembered him getting out at some point, too. I was left with Jaime and the other faceless partygoers.
Then I remembered being alone.
Then darkness.
I focused harder, trying to scrape through the opaque barrier in my mind that wouldn’t let me see the truth, wouldn’t let me see the events as they played out that night. I wondered if my mind had erected the roadblock because I’d already been completely dead to the world when it all went down, or if it did so to protect me from the truth.
Either way, it wouldn’t yield.
“Dammit!” I yelled, shooting up off the couch. Just as I did, I heard a noise outside the house. I ran to the front door and looked through the peephole but saw nobody there. Still certain I’d heard something, I unlocked the door and eased it open a crack. I looked down on the front porch to see a manila folder lying there. The one that had been stolen from my car!
Without thinking, I lunged for it, snatching it up and hurrying back into the house, locking the door behind me. I stood in the foyer and slowly opened it up. Then I dropped it.
I felt sick to my stomach and choked back the bile rising up my throat. Breathing hard, I stared down at the copies of the photos from that night—hundreds of them—each with a simple note on them.
NEXT TIME WILL BE WORSE.…
I ran to my bag and ripped my phone out, dialing Garrett.
“Get over here now!” I shouted before hanging up. It was hard to contain the fear I felt, the present mixing with the past to create a debilitating cocktail. I crashed to the ground a few feet away from the file I couldn’t bring myself to touch and waited for Garrett to come.
TWENTY-ONE
Garrett nearly tore the door off the hinges trying to get inside. I unlatched the dead bolt to let him in. He burst through the door, looking ready to throw down against a threat that wasn’t there.
“What happened?” he asked, searching the room. Then he took a step forward and heard the crinkle of paper beneath his feet. He looked down at the evidence there and cringed. Then he pulled me into his arms and held me tight. “I’m so sorry, Ky.”
“Whoever stole the file did this,” I said, trying to focus on the mystery at hand rather than my rising emotions and the fear snaking its way up my spine.
He let me go so he could assess my expression. I’d told him about the stolen file earlier that day, so he knew about that. What he didn’t know—what I’d withheld at the time—was what that file had contained.
And it hadn’t been a slew of topless pics.
“Meg got me a copy of your dad’s notes from the boob scandal. That’s the file that was stolen from my car. And that,” I said, pointing at the manila folder, “is the exact folder she gave me, present contents excluded.” He glanced down at the evidence strewn across the floor, then quickly looked back to me. “They all say the same thing: ‘Next time will be worse.’”
“This is getting out of control, Ky,” he said, stepping off the pile of photos to pace around the room. He raked his fingers through his hair—something he’d always done when he couldn’t work through a problem in his head. Or when he knew the answer and didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“I need to call your dad. I just … I wanted you to be here. My last meeting with him was strained, to say the least. I thought maybe your being here might help.”
He let out a mirthless laugh.
“Help? Yeah … I don’t think me being here will help at all, not that it matters.”
He wouldn’t look at me—not a good sign. So I stepped into his path, moving into his way whenever he tried to sidestep me.
“Spill it, Higgins. You’re not telling me something. If this is about what’s happening, then I need to know.”
“It’s about my dad,” he started, looking past me to the plywood window in the living room.
I felt my hackles slowly rise.
“What about your dad?”
“I don’t think there’s any point in showing him those,” he said, pointing to the mess of photos. “Just like I don’t think there was any point in you reporting your car break-in … or Gramps’ broken window, for that matter.” He hesitated for a second, finally looking down at me with guilt-ridden eyes. The longer he waited, the more I felt like I’d explode if he didn’t speak. “And I’m starting to think there was never any point in you reporting what happened to you freshman year.…”
I looked up at Garrett’s worried face, my mouth agape. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. That night, standing inside Gramps’ living room, littered with half-naked pictures of me, my best friend in the whole world shed light on a truth that I didn’t want to believe.
His dad wasn’t going to do a damn thing to help me.
TWENTY-TWO
I don’t know how long I stood there, begging my mind to come up with something coherent to say, but it didn’t. Garrett looked far too embarrassed to say anything more. Whether he was ashamed of his father or bothered by the reality that we were without reinforcements, I couldn’t tell.
Probably a bit of both.
“Garrett … do you have proof of this? That your dad is dirty?”
He sighed heavily and stepped closer to me
, lowering his voice.
“Things have been weird between us for a while now—since around the time your pictures surfaced.”
“Weird how? Because it’s a big leap from ‘things being weird’ to ‘my dad is a shady bastard.’”
“At first, I couldn’t make sense of it. You know how you are just a walking barometer for things that don’t feel right? That don’t add up?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, with him, I’m like that, too, and I’m telling you, I knew something was up. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. He looked … guilty. Like he felt bad about what happened to you. I didn’t think anything of that at the time, because, I mean, he should have. He’d known you since you were little. Half your childhood was spent at my house. I chalked it up to him feeling terrible that he wasn’t able to find any evidence that could really stick against AJ and those guys. Other than the pictures, he had nothing to go on—no way to ultimately tie them to AJ, since his phone had been spotted by the pool when he was inside. I know you think my dad is a jerk when it comes to the way he treats women—hell, I do too—but I couldn’t imagine that he was really willing to blow off your case because he thought you’d brought it on yourself.”
“That makes one of us,” I muttered under my breath. “Your point?”
“My point is that after you moved, and I was left trying to figure out how to navigate high school without you or AJ or anyone else I used to give a shit about, my thoughts on why my dad looked guilty started to sour.” Garrett stood there in the darkened foyer, staring at me with a fire in his eyes that I’d never seen in relation to his father. AJ? Yes. Donovan? Absolutely. But never his dad. “I realized his guilt was never about you. In actuality, it was never really guilt. It was fear. He was afraid of something.”
“You think someone is behind him pulling the strings.…” I said, more pieces of the puzzle falling into place.
His eyes narrowed as he held my gaze and he nodded once.
“After Mom died, Dad was strapped with all her unpaid medical bills. They didn’t have life insurance. No final arrangements planned. Nothing. I mean … she was so young.…”
The sudden strain in his voice when he spoke of his dead mother drew me to him, and, angry or not, I wrapped my arms around his waist, giving him the support he needed in that moment. He’d loved his mother fiercely. So fiercely that he’d thought he could love her back to health after her accident. But that didn’t happen.
And that damned near broke his spirit.
“I’m good, Ky,” he said, gently pushing me away so he could see my face again. This time, there was no anger in his stare. Only grief. “The point is, all that stress he’d been under—all those extra hours he put in on the job to make a dent in that debt—suddenly went away one day. It was so abrupt that I couldn’t help but notice. Hell, a complete idiot would have.”
“Is it possible that he negotiated a payoff with the hospital? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have faith in many people, but your dad? Really? He could be a chauvinistic dick sometimes, but … he used to take us for ice cream after our T-ball games. Tell us scary stories when we camped in your backyard—”
“And that was all before Mom died, Kylene.” Garrett’s tone was suddenly stern and cold, and it shut me up in a hurry. “Do you think I want to believe he’s been bought, Ky? That’s like you wanting to believe your dad is guilty.”
Point made.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just so hard to swallow.” In truth, it really wasn’t. Between my interaction with his dad the prior evening, my file going missing at the sheriff’s department, and Garrett’s observation, it didn’t seem hard at all.
But that didn’t make it any easier to accept.
“I checked with the hospital—to see if they’d made an arrangement with him. The lady told me that my mother’s bills had all been paid—in full.”
“Holy shit, Garrett…”
“And since neither of us won the lottery—”
“Someone else paid it for him. A bribe.” He nodded. “This is crazy, Garrett. Like totally messed up.”
“I don’t think we should tell him about this. In fact, that might be the worst idea.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding to myself as my mind worked overtime trying to figure out what to do. I grabbed my phone and dialed Meg, hoping she’d know how to handle our epic clusterfuck.
“Ky?”
“Meg. I need you to come over to the house right now.”
“What’s wrong—”
“The stolen file has made a reappearance of sorts—with a few nifty new additions.” My acerbic tone told her everything she needed to know.
“I’ll be right there,” she said. “And Ky? Don’t call the cops. Not until I see what’s going on.”
“No worries there,” I replied, shooting Garrett a cautious glance. “I don’t think they’d be any help.”
“I’ll be there in five,” she said, then hung up.
* * *
Meg didn’t bother knocking. Instead, she came barging in like the cavalry she was—or at least the one we hoped she’d be. After a quick reintroduction to Garrett, who she hadn’t seen in years, we got right down to business.
“Where was this left for you?” she asked, scooping the evidence off the floor and carrying it over to the kitchen table. Much to my dismay, she began spreading it around, looking for anything that could be of use. She made sure she put gloves on before doing it.
“On the front step. I didn’t see anyone come or go, not that it’s easy to with our new opaque window.” I gestured to the plywood, and she frowned.
“Related incident?”
“I’m starting to think so,” I replied, running to my bedroom to grab the brick that sailed through the picture window. I handed it to her when I returned, and she eyed it carefully.
“You didn’t give this to the cops when they came?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at me.
I shrugged.
“Maybe I’m psychic. Or maybe I just don’t trust the fuzz.”
Meg’s gaze darted to Garrett. I could practically see her picking him apart in her mind.
“You’re the sheriff’s kid, aren’t you?” He nodded. “Did you know about this? Because you should know better than to withhold evidence.” He nodded again. A wry smile stretched across her face. “Guess it’s a good thing for me you don’t.” She stacked the photos up and stuffed them back into the folder. Garrett looked relieved to have them put away. “Now, I don’t mean to offend you when I say this, Garrett, but I don’t trust your father’s department at this point in time, so I’m going to keep these locked up at my office until I can get to the bottom of this.”
“How?” I asked, thinking it was the million-dollar question that had no answer.
She cocked her head at me, flashing a look of disappointment.
“I told you I have resources, Ky. I’ll have my private investigator do a little digging for me. In the meantime, I’m going to have someone install a discreet camera to watch the front of the house. Maybe one for the back, too. And I don’t want you staying home alone anymore, got it? You can come stay with me if you need to—whatever. But no more home alone for you.”
“I’ll make sure she isn’t,” Garrett said.
Meg quirked a brow at him.
“He’s just a friend, Meg,” I explained before she could put him on the stand and cross-examine him.
“Okay. That should cover it for now. But in the meantime, I need you two to act as normal as possible, which I realize is asking a lot under the circumstances. Someone is keeping a close eye on you, Kylene. You’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest with your return home and your digging around in matters put to rest a long time ago. I need you to do your best to lay low. Act normal. Can you do that?”
“Yeah,” I said, sounding unconvincing at best. “I think I can.”
“You too, Sheriff’s Kid. I need you both to keep your noses clean—for your sakes as we
ll as mine.” She tucked the file under her arm and made her way to the front door. “There’s a football game tonight, right?” Neither of us bothered answering her rhetorical question. It was Friday. Of course there was a game. “You should go. Public places are good. Safe.”
“We were planning to go when all this happened,” Garrett said.
“Good. Then stick with that. I’ll call you if I find anything out. And if anything else goes down, I’m the first call you make from now on, Ky. Understand?”
“Yes ma’am,” I replied, forcing a smile.
“No more ‘ma’ams,’ please. They make me feel old.”
She gave us a wink before slipping through the front door and closing it behind her.
“Are you sure you’re up for all this?” Garrett asked, looking concerned.
I took a deep breath.
“Someone is just trying to scare me, Garrett. And I don’t scare that easily. So let’s stick our middle fingers high in the sky by going to the game tonight and acting like everything is right with the world.”
“It’s clearly not, if you’re at a football game,” he replied before cracking a little smile.
“Yeah, but … it’s Jasperville. It’s expected—practically mandatory. I can pull it off.”
“Then we should head out. We’re already late to get Tabby.”
I grabbed a sweatshirt and stopped in the kitchen to leave Gramps a quick note. I let him know I went to the game and that we’d be home later. Then I told him I loved him.
Wiping a rogue tear from my cheek before Garrett could see it, I picked up my keys and headed out the door with Garrett on my heels.
We rode in silence, neither one of us really in the talking mood. But that would have to change before Tabby jumped in with us, and Garrett was the first to realize that fact.
“You know, I thought I’d have to drag you from Gramps’ tonight to get you to go.”
I looked over to see him smiling at the thought.
“Like you could! You know I have crazy monkey grip, Higgins. Once I latch these babies on to something, there’s no prying them off.” I held my hands up in front of him and turned them back and forth. “I didn’t want to wound your mannish pride by making you look like a wimp.”
Dare You to Lie Page 16
