Despite the smile lingering on her lips, I can sense the nerves rolling off her in waves as she crosses the threshold, and I wonder what it is that’s got her so on edge.
Colin comes around the corner, greeting Maeve with a single nod and grabbing his own laptop off the table by the door. “I’ll be back later,” he says, and he’s out the door without even a kiss on the forehead.Boo.
Following Maeve to the kitchen, I return to my coffee as she opens her laptop on the counter across from me, a knowing smile plastered on her lips.
“Looks like you two are playing house,” she teases, nodding toward the plate of food in front of me.
I scoff, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, divorced parents maybe. He’s done nothing but sleep on my couch for three days,” I whine, flinging a hand in the direction of the living room.
“Boring.”
I nod in agreement, then tip my head toward her laptop. “So, what have you figured out?”
“Put some music on,” she says, turning her attention to her laptop screen. “We need something light and happy for this shitshow.”
She settles into the chair opposite me and taps away on her laptop.
Taking a deep breath, I mess with my phone until the music starts, and I switch the output from the living room to the kitchen speakers.Today’s Pop Hitsstarts playing, which makes me feel less jittery.The classic rock made me antsy, and ‘this shitshow’ Maeve is about to dump on me already has my nerves on the fritz.
I’d asked her to look into the false EMS report, as well as the curious name of the police department employee who called it in.Micah Winters.
I already know Colin is the one who took my blood. He told me himself. So where did that report come from, and why?
Maeve spins her laptop to face me, looking around the edge at the man displayed on the screen.
“Micah Winters,” she starts as I study him. “He was at the party the other night.”
We make brief eye contact before I return my attention to the laptop and she explains, “I remember seeing him, though he was kind of just lurking around. It really didn’t seem like he knew anyone there.”
The first thing I notice is the tattoos crawling up his neck, the ink contrasting comically against the department-issued polo he’s wearing for the photo. He’s good-looking, with black hair, bright blue eyes, and an even brighter smile. But that lopsided grin can’t hide what I can already see plain as day in his alluring blue irises: he’s no angel.
“He’s on the forensics team at the department. Digital forensics, specifically,” she adds, continuing to examine his photo with me, her arms folded over top one another. I don’t say anything, just wait for her to go on asI attempt to pick apart as much as possible from the single employment photo on the screen.
“I called dispatch and convinced the girl on the other end of the line that I was a lawyer looking for the report for an upcoming court case.” She turns her gaze to me, shaking her head. “It doesn’t exist.”
“But I saw it,” I argue. The words of the report shuffle through my brain as I think back to the night Lucy came by for my statement.
Maeve shrugs, turning her laptop back to face her. “I can’t find much about him online besides this picture on the department website, but I’m betting Colin falsified the report to protect himself. How else would he explain how he got your blood? He can’t exactly say he took it himself.”
Nodding, I pull my bottom lip between my teeth in thought, staring at the back of Maeve’s laptop. “And he stuck this guy’s name on it? Why not his own?”
Maeve shrugs again, seeming to convey she’s hit a dead end and is simply coming up with a story to explain away the curious report. It’s a plausible one, but it still makes me wonder, and I never did ask Colin about it after Lucy left. “To protect himself. Didn’t you say his boss doesn’t want him near you?” She lifts a shoulder again, mouth pursing. “I really don’t know.”
I blow out a breath and lower the mug in my hands to the countertop.
“And what about the DNA? Who planted that?” Maeve asks me, like I’m supposed to know.
“Colin wouldn’t have done it,” I tell her. He’s been convinced this whole time that I’m the guilty one—and he’s right. As much as I sensed a slight change in him after the volunteering we did at Hope House, as willing as he’d been to appease my request and barrel past the No Kissing Allowed sign, I don’t think he’s quite to the point of acceptingallof me. If he knew I was responsible for the deaths of Richard and Grayson, he wouldn’t have covered for me. Not yet.
But someone is.
I take another sip of my coffee, changing the subject. “What about Max and his friends?”
Stella and Stone are the ones who discovered Richard and Grayson were connected to the trafficking ring out of Mt. Lance. They’d been up north scouting for Stella’s own lead a few months ago, and happened upon a familiar face hanging around the group home for foster kids. Stella recognized him from the high school here in town, and her interest was piqued at the friendly looking teacher who spent too much time around teenagers during what was supposed to be his summer off.
They followed him for days, noting that he’d hit the streets early in the morning and canvass the neighborhoods near the group homes. She saw past his attempt at looking helpful and innocent, and noted the flash of hunger in his eyes when he saw a teen looking particularly vulnerable and detached from the rest of their group.
Maeve did the digging from there, connecting him and another Devil’s Peak local who happened to spend a lot of time in Mt. Lance during the summer, as well. The trail of missing women and children in their wake became glaringly evident, as did the fact that unlike Richard, Grayson seemed to bring his terror home with him—releasing it on his wife and children once he made it back home on the weekends.
