by Rebel Hart
“What do you mean you got fired? They haven’t even charged me yet!” Deon yelled, still on the phone with his mom. “Okay. Just… Mom. I swear to fucking god, I didn’t kill anyone. You know I didn’t. I’m not a killer.” Deon’s head dropped, and it was as if I could hear her bringing up his record. “Yeah, but I didn’t do that either, Mom. You know that.”
I quickly put my phone away and started up the car. It was a bit of a struggle, getting dressed in a rush, given the circumstance we were in, but we managed, all while Deon stayed on the phone, trying to calm his mom. I was frustrated that our date had been cut short, but I was even more frustrated that this issue was cropping up after Deon had already been assured that things had been let go. Were they just lying to him when they said he wasn’t suspected of it anymore or did something change?
Well, one thing changed. Nathan and I had changed.
Was this my fault too?
“Mama, you have to calm down, okay? You need to listen to me.” Deon’s hands were clenched into fists as he tried to keep his temper in check. If his mom had just randomly seen the news, it was totally reasonable for her to be freaking out, even if what they were saying wasn’t true.
“Be patient, Deon,” I whispered to him. “She’s panicking.”
He nodded and took a deep breath. “I’m on my way home, Mom,” he said a bit more calmly. “Where are you?” Though I couldn’t make out the words, I could hear Deon’s mom, Ciara, yelling from the other end of the call. “I’m with Cherri.” He chuckled. “Yeah, a bit of good news with the bad.” He looked at me and said, “She’s excited about that.”
I did a lackluster fist-pump. “Yay.”
“Yeah. We’ve actually been talking for a while, but things finally”—he looked over at me and smiled—“happened.” He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Mom. I’m brazenly aware of the fact that I made you lie to Cherri and you always felt bad about it. Yes, of course I told her I made you do that.” He looked over at me. “By the way, I asked my mom to lie to you about where I was.”
“I gathered that,” I replied.
“Yeah, Mom, she knew that,” Deon said. Then he scoffed. “I told you, we’re on the way. Just listen to me, Mom. If there are any cops there, don’t talk.” He sighed. “Shouldn’t have mentioned cops.” He tried a few times to cut into what I could only imagine was a long string of Ciara freaking out, and then finally got in, “Mom. It’s not going to happen again because I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything last time!” I yelped, and Ciara must have done the same because Deon’s eyes widened. “Sorry.”
Deon didn’t hang up with his mom on the entire drive home, which left me without a good opportunity to explain to him what Nathan had told me about Miss Abrams. I wish I hadn’t gotten so caught up in everything that happened because I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was an important piece to the mysterious puzzle. I had no idea what was about to happen, but hopefully, I’d have a chance to mention it to Deon before things got too crazy.
I parked my car in front of Deon’s house, and gratefully, there were no police there yet. Deon rushed in the house, and Ciara was standing in the living room with the news on. Deon’s mugshot was on the screen next to a glowing image of Jessica Abrams.
“Oh, it’s not like she was an angel, anyway!” I yelled at the television and then turned to see Deon and Ciara both staring at me. “Sorry. I’m not a big fan of hers.”
“Hello, sweetheart,” Ciara said, reaching out her hands. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yeah,” I said with a smile, walking into the hug.
Ciara looked over at Deon as we parted. “She got even more beautiful.”
“It’s unreasonable, right?” Deon said. “How am I ever gonna get used to it.”
I smiled at them. It felt like taking a step back in time, being in the same room with them both again. If only we had the time to sit and catch up. We had to figure out how to get Deon’s name cleared of the accusations against him.
He walked over and looked at the television. “So, have they come up with any real evidence?” he asked.
Ciara shook her head. “No, nothing yet, but they claim to have lots of witnesses, and a warrant has been issued for your arrest.”
“They can’t do that, can they? You didn’t do anything wrong,” I whined.
Deon walked over, wrapped his arms around me, and pulled me into a hug. “Unfortunately, they can do whatever they want.”
“Do you think it’s your father, Deon?” Ciara asked, and we both looked over at her.
Deon kept a close hold on me but turned to face his mother. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, it’s the same teacher, isn’t it?” she said with an odd shake to her voice. “The same one Nathan was caught with.”
“It is,” he replied, “and Sicily did find out that Nathan and Connor had made the entire school agree to these mini NDAs. Everyone got paid five hundred bucks to keep quiet.”
I remembered getting the snap myself when it went out. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because I was just so happy that it was being covered up for Deon’s sake. “People who were there got paid more,” I added.
“Yeah, a thousand bucks more,” Deon said. “So, yeah. I think it was either Connor or Nathan. Maybe both. I don’t know. They had all the cards. They were treating it like it was a non-issue at school today, and Principal Hix told me I was off the hook. For it all of a sudden to be cropping up now, it must have been one of them.”
“Did something happen to upset them?” Ciara asked.
Deon and I side-glanced each other, but I chose to speak up in defense of Deon. “I broke up with Nathan. He was…abusive, and he and Deon got into a fight about it.”
Ciara raised an eyebrow at me. “You were dating Nathan?”
“It’s complicated, Mom,” Deon defended. “I think Cherri got caught between Nathan and me.”
Ciara shook her head. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. All of this drama is happening because of the man I chose. There’s nothing I can do to stop it.”
“If you hadn’t,” I piped up, “we wouldn’t have Deon.” Deon squeezed me closer to him and kissed me on the forehead. “This is tough, but we just have to figure it out.”
“I need to go see Sicily. He’d told me before that he was prepared for if things went south. I had no idea what that meant, but I think he may be able to help.”
Ciara nodded. “Well, as long as the police haven’t come, you’re free to—”
As if summoned by the mention, there was a pounding at the door. My heart dropped into my stomach as a voice bellowed, “Deon Keane, police! Come out with your hands up.”
“No,” I whimpered, hanging onto Deon. “Don’t leave me.”
“Hey.” He grabbed my arms and looked down at me. “It’s gonna be okay. Call Sicily, okay?” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to me. “My passcode’s your birthday.”
I nodded as tears started to stream down my face. Deon turned, kissed his mom, and came back to me for one last kiss. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I responded, and then Deon walked over to the door and opened it. He lifted his hands into the air just as two armed police officers pointed large guns at him.
“Down on the ground!” one screamed, and Deon complied, dropping first to his knees, then down onto his chest, folding his hands behind his back.
Ciara wrapped an arm around me, and we both cried as we watched an officer walk over to Deon, slap cuffs on his wrist, and pull him up off the pavement. With aggression that wasn’t necessary, they dragged him over to one of the squad cars and shoved him into the back. With Deon in the car, they turned on their lights and sirens, almost as if they intended to make a spectacle, and started off down the street with him in tow.
I looked at Ciara once they were gone. “I’m gonna make this right, okay?”
Ciara nodded. “I trust you. Bring my boy—our boy—back.”
“Deon. Fuck me, man. I know—”
“It’s Cherri.”
Sicily was quiet for a long time, and then he let out a long, exhausted-sounding sigh. “They picked him up?”
“Yeah. He said to call you.”
“It’s a good thing you did, your highness,” Sicily replied, “because I’ve got proof that Deon didn’t push Miss Abrams.”
32
Cherri
Pulling onto Nathan’s dark and seemingly-empty estate was a little more ominous than I was hoping for. I probably had my reckless speeding to blame for the fact that I’d seemingly gotten to the property way before Avery and Alistair did, despite them being much closer, but not long after I pulled into the wrap-around driveway near the front door, Alistair’s car came cruising onto the estate. I got out of my car and looked up. There were no lights or anything on in the house, and I knew in an instant that something was wrong.
“Shit,” Avery said as she walked up. “It looks kind of creepy like that.”
“Make that extra creepy,” Alistair added, then he wrapped an arm around my back. “You doing okay?”
“I was,” I said. “Deon and I… We’re together now. Made official and christened, by the way.”
Avery’s mouth went agape. “Why would you tell me that now when we don’t have time to discuss it? How was it? Was he well-endowed? He has large hands.”
Alistair walked over and tapped Avery on the shoulder. “Hello. I’m your boyfriend.”
“Hi, honey,” she replied sweetly, either not understanding his frustration or choosing to ignore it.
I chuckled. “I figured we had a few seconds to talk about it, since we’re waiting for one more person.”
“One more person?” Alistair asked. “Who?”
Almost exactly on cue, a car came driving onto the Loches’ estate. It wasn’t anything like the nice cars that Alistair or I were driving, but it was certainly the one I was most happy to see. It parked behind Alistair, backfiring as it turned off, and then Sicily climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked over to us.
“Oh,” Avery said. “Why?”
“Because he’s going to prove Deon’s innocence,” I said. Sicily made it to us, and I reached out and hugged him. “Thank you for coming.”
Sicily chuckled. “Oh, this is nice. Yeah, no problem. Deon’s my guy. I’d never leave him hanging.”
“First things first. We need to find Nathan,” I said. “I was hoping he’d be here, but…” I looked at the darkened lights not just on the main manor, but Nathan’s smaller home as well. “It looks empty.”
“Well, let’s go in just in case.” Avery walked past me, pulled out her keys, and slipped one into the front door, unlocking it. She turned around to the shocked expressions on all of our faces and shrugged. “What? Princess-in-line benefits. A key to the house.”
“You get one, but the queen doesn’t have one?” Sicily asked.
“I’m not the queen anymore,” I said quickly, “and when Nathan tried to give me a key, I refused. It felt a little too domestic for my tastes.”
“Fair,” Sicily replied.
Alistair, Avery, Sicily, and I slunk our way into the house and started to walk around. Alistair, Avery, and I knew the house quite well from our time in The Royal Court, so we split up to make our rounds of the house. Sicily just sort of wandered in a direction on his own. Everyone’s voices could be heard calling out from different parts of the house. I’d walked through the dining room and parlor and was just about to enter the kitchen when a voice pierced the silence.
“Oh god!” Sicily screamed.
I booked it back toward the sound of Sicily’s voice, down through the foyer and into the sitting room. Sicily had a hand over his mouth and was heaving, so I rushed over and pushed him toward a planter. I turned to see a dead body sprawled on the floor just as Sicily puked into the pot with a disgusting splat.
I tiptoed toward the body just as Alistair and Avery made their way back to where we were standing, and I kicked the body over to its back. Red hair flopped off to the side, and I was staring down at the unmistakable face of Alicia Loche, Nathan’s mother, with a bullet hole straight through her forehead.
“Oh my god,” Avery whined, ducking behind Alistair. I ducked down near Alicia, and Avery yelped. “Ah! How are you being so close?”
“Not the first dead body I’ve been around,” I replied.
“Wait, what?” Avery yelped.
I looked up at her. “Yeah, we’re gonna have a lot to talk about when this is all over.” I sniffed the air. “It doesn’t smell like it’s decomposing yet, so this was recent.”
“I’m gonna be sick again,” Sicily grumbled from behind me.
I stood back up. “Nathan’s in trouble.”
“How do you figure?” Alistair asked. “Better question, why do you care?”
“You said so yourself. It shocked all of you when Nathan raped me, right?” I asked.
“Nathan raped you?” Sicily asked. “Oh, man. Did Deon murder him?”
“He tried,” I said. “Look. We all know Nathan. He’s an asshole, and a brat, and a tool, but he’s not a rapist. He snapped. Is he my favorite person in the world? No, but he’s…” I rolled my eyes. “He’s our king. We promised to have each other’s backs. I have a feeling Connor did this, and he could kill Nathan too.”
Alistair nodded. “I can’t stand that fucker, but you’re right. I can’t just stand by, knowing he could die.”
“I don’t know how to find him, though,” I said. “Deon’s still locked up, and we need to get to him before they violate his parole.” I looked at Sicily. “Do you really have proof he didn’t do it?”
Sicily reached into his pocket, pulled out a jump drive, and held it up. “I could get expelled, but this is the footage from the bug you wanted me to put in Miss Abrams’s office. It was only connected for a few minutes, but it got almost all of Deon and Miss Abrams’s interaction, from flip out to jumping out the window. There’s a perfect angle, and you can see Deon just trying to stop her.”
Relief washed through me. “Okay. That takes priority. Let’s go get Deon, and then we can figure out how we’re going to track Nathan down and get to him before his dad does.”
33
Deon
After less than four fucking months out, I was back in police custody. Great. The only real hope I had was to pray that whatever Sicily had in his back pocket was enough to get me out before I could be pinged for violating my parole. Whether or not I actually did push Miss Abrams out that window, if my parole officer thought I was mixed up in something I shouldn’t have been doing, the judge could terminate my parole simply because he felt like it. And I didn’t want to go back to prison, not just for the obvious reasons, but because Venom would kill me if he saw my face back there again.
If they did violate me, I hoped they’d send me somewhere else. Otherwise, getting arrested again was going to be the least of my problems.
After a relatively short haul laced with rough handling, I was sitting in a police interrogation room. Pictures of Miss Abrams’s dead body had been forgotten on the table in front of me, along with a cup of water. Cops—predictable, if not a bit boring. I didn’t look down at the pictures and didn’t touch the cup of water. If they were watching me for signs of anything, they were going to get fucking bored before they got anything they could use.
After about five minutes, the door to the interrogation room opened. “Hello, Mr. Keane. I’m Dete—”
“I want a lawyer,” I said, cutting the detective off to do so.
He stopped short in his tracks and let out a sigh of fru
stration. I might be young, and perhaps lawyering up before even talking to someone looked guilty, but I wouldn’t even be there if it weren’t for someone’s willingness to believe a story without proof. Speaking to a detective was only going to run me the risk of getting myself even more tangled up, and I wasn’t that dumb.
“I can certainly get you a lawyer, Mr. Keane, but I’m sure you know, I can’t help you, if you don’t talk to me. If you don’t tell me your story now, you may never have a chance to tell it.” I held up a hand and pointed at the chair across from me. The detective, a stout, balding man with glasses, walked over and sat down in the chair. He collected the pictures of Miss Abrams and put them away in the folder he’d brought with him, then looked across the table at me. “Now then, why don’t you just start from the beginning?”
“Okay,” I said, leaning in. The detective leaned back to meet me. I looked him straight in his beady eyes and hissed, “I. Want. A. Lawyer.”
The detective gritted his teeth, and his nostrils flared. “Suit yourself.” He scooted back from the table with a loud screech and stormed out of the room, ruminating under his breath.
A few minutes later, a cop came into the interrogation room, placed a set of handcuffs on me, and walked me down to the station’s holding cell. There was one other guy that looked like he was wasted off his ass, so I found a spot as far away from him as possible and sat to wait.
Cherri, my mom, and even Nathan swirled around my brain. We all had one common denominator, Connor Loche. I still didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle, but I felt like I was getting close. As much as I hated to think it, I kind of wished I could talk to Nathan. That poor kid probably never stood a chance. When I chose to leave the Loche’s house, I really only had myself in my mind. I didn’t even think about how it might affect Nathan. We weren’t on bad terms when I left, but I was a kid who missed his mom and his home. I couldn’t bring myself to regret leaving. If I hadn’t, I might never have met Cherri, but if my leaving had anything to do with setting Nathan off on a path that led him to where he was today, I was sorry about that.
