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Bane clears his throat, and my adrenaline spikes like I’m about to run a half-marathon or something instead of standing here in the middle of Evie’s kitchen.
“We’re looking for a car. It crashed in a ditch next to a cornfield,” Bane says, dragging his palm down his face and exhaling a long breath. “We don’t know if it was a reported crash, but it would’ve happened roughly two weeks ago.”
Diesel tsks. “Curious timing. So this does have something to do with your nanny then, hm?”
Nova stretches his neck from one side to the other, and his eyes narrow on the phone. “Check nearby chop shops, junk yards, impounds—the works. And be discreet.”
“Alright. Location?” Diesel asks.
Bane shakes his head. “We don’t have one. I’d guess a day’s drive from Rosewood in every direction.”
Diesel whistles under his breath. “Damn, man. Don’t make it easy on me, yeah? I don’t suppose you have plates for me.”
“Nah, man. No plates. But the driver was six-foot or so, dark blond, caucasian, total psychopath,” Bane continues.
Diesel laughs. “Is that a physical trait now—psychopath?”
“You know it is. They have that look about them, ya know? Their files are usually fucked-up, too.”
“Too true. Alright. I’ll hit you back when I find something.”
The call ends and the three of us look at one another, a fragile sort of understanding passing between us. Gratitude softens the hard edges of my soul as I look between the two men I trust my life with.
More importantly, the two men I trust her life with.
37
EVANGELINE
“I still can’t believe you’re gonna sit here and watch this with me. And with popcorn too,” I muse, tossing a few kernels of popcorn in my mouth.
Lincoln grins, tossing his arm over the back of the couch. His fingers twirl around the ends of my hair. “It’s no trip to Disney, but I thought you could use something fun to take your mind off things.”
My smile slips a little bit at the reminder. It’s been two days since we found the box of Polaroids. We’re no closer to figuring out who’s behind everything, and no matter how many times I try to think about anything out of the ordinary from that summer, I come up empty-handed. I’ve even picked Cora’s brain a few times, but we’re both drawing blanks.
It’s exhausting to try and fish through memories, but it’s nearly impossible to try and find something conceivably inconsequential to me at the time. It’s a conundrum and a paradox.
“Well, I’m happy for the distraction anyway. I don’t want to think about all that stuff until tomorrow. And maybe not even then.”
“Ignoring it won’t make it go away, sugar.”
I roll my head across the cushion to look at him. “I know. But for tonight, in here with you, I’m going to pretend it doesn’t exist—that he doesn’t exist.”
His fingers twine in my hair, tugging gently. “In here, it’s just you and me, yeah?”
“Yeah, I like that,” I breathe out, a little distracted. I can’t help it when he looks at me like that. It gives me all kinds of things the two of us could do instead of watch a movie about sparkling vampires. I clear my throat and focus on the screen as the opening credits start. “Who’s your favorite character?”
“Despite the fact that you couldn’t walk ten feet without running into this franchise, I’ve never actually seen it before. For years, it was all everyone talked about, so I think I got the gist anyway.”
I grin around another mouthful of popcorn. “Nah, you can’t understand the fandom if you were never in it. I wanted an Edward poster on my wall so bad, but my mom never let me put anything up on the walls. So I taped it to the inside of my closet instead.”
He chuckles. “Spend a lot of time in the closet, did you?”
“Nah, not really. It only lasted a few days before someone tattled on me. I came home from school and it was gone.”
Lincoln tugs on the ends of my hair, and I look at him. “I’m sorry, sugar.”
I lift a shoulder and let it fall. “It’s just a poster. Besides, I could plaster the entire first floor with memorabilia from that franchise now if I wanted to.”
