I sit, my eyebrow shooting up. “Thanks but—is everything alright?”
Bram sighs, then pulls the chair out across from me, turns it around, and sits with his forearms on his knees. The temperature of the kitchen changes.
“Might as well tell you now,” he says, then pauses for a beat. “While you and Ash were gone, some things came together. I want to walk you through all of it, start to finish. Feel free to stop me any time you need to.”
Okay.
Okay.
“The bag,” Bram starts, and then he lays it out.
A man named Wade Fenton mailed it. Somebody hired him to find me.
I do the arithmetic before Bram gets there. “Derek.”
The name lands flat on the table. Reed’s jaw sets. Ash goes very still and very pleasant, which I know points the opposite direction from pleasant.
“We can prove the whole chain now,” Bram says. “Not just the bag. The letter he forged to cancel your wellness retreat, too.”
“And let’s not forget he indirectly paid for vandalism.” Reed, from the counter, arms crossed. “We’ve got it in writing.”
“How,” I say slowly, “do you have it in writing?”
“We went and saw Wade last night,” Bram says. “After you went up. The three of us.”
My stomach drops. “You—”
“We’re okay, not in legal trouble, nobody touched him,” he says.
A beat.
“Reed touched him a little,” Ash allows.
“A slap ain’t a crime,” Reed smiles.
Bram talks me through the rest. How Wade wrote everything all out. Longhand. Signed, dated, sworn, witnessed. Every instruction, every payment. And how they took pictures of every text Derek ever sent him.
I stare at the folder.
“So that’s what that is,” I say.
Bram leans forward, picks the folder up off the table and he holds it out to me. “And it is yours.”
I don’t take it. “What am I going to do with this?”
“Anything you like,” he says. “This is enough to open a real case against your ex. Charges with his name on every line. A protective order with teeth.” He keeps holding it there, steady. “Or it doesn’t go anywhere at all, if that’s what you prefer.”
“We have opinions,” Reed says.
“We have extremely loud opinions,” Ash agrees.
“And not one of them is the deciding vote.” Bram looks at his brothers until they’re quiet, then back at me. “It’s your name inthat folder, sweetheart. Not ours. We don’t get to decide what happens to the man who did this to you. You do.”
I zone out for a second, then reach for the folder.
You’d drown without me,says Derek’s voice.
I open the cover. Derek’s words in a stranger’s cramped hand. Make her sanctuary leak money. Make her scared. His whole small, vicious campaign, laid out, dated and signed and witnessed by a sworn deputy.
