Embry’s instinct was to trust only the people sitting right here (and Daddy).
Rye cleared his throat. “Good thing I have a house next door with at least one mirror, and no one will be poking around, checking on me.” He didn’t mean it as something sad, but Embry’s heart tugged all the same. The orphan boy, living alone, with no one giving a care in the world. He was right—the only person who would check on him was Daddy, and he was magically comatose while healing up from life-threatening injuries. “Think you can send your findings to my place instead of Embry’s?”
“That I can do.” Ames peered at her BFF. “Em, you comfortable with that?”
Embry nodded. “Works for me.”
“Good. We’ll check in as soon as we—” Ames’s phone buzzed in her hand just as she was in the middle of slinging an arm around Embry’s shoulders. Ames tapped at the lock screen, the start of a message popping up. Her narrowed eyes growing wider, Ames aborted the hug and swiped furiously at the screen with both hands. “Oh shit—we have the dropout name.”
Her brown eyes rose to Embry, her perfectly glossed mouth a slack ring. She swallowed, drew in a steadying breath. “It’s Alistair. Porters came for his stuff right after we got here. Went home to his mothers.”
Panic rose like ashes from Embry’s gut as she tried to process this news. “Alistairdropped out?”
Did he think he was no longer safe at school? Was he afraid of retaliation? From her?
“Without even so much as a text?” Fairfax asked, fumbling with his own phone and finding nothing there. “Ghosted us. Ass.”
Rye tipped his head back against the tall wall of the booth and rubbed a hand down his face, the sandy stubble on his jaw rustling like the spiky side of Velcro. “I would wager his parents consulted an attorney and were told to pull him out of school and confiscate his phone.”
The whole table stilled, thinking it through. That was likely exactly what happened.
Then, with a sigh, Ames again slung an arm around Embry’s shoulders, but this time leaned in and pressed a kiss to the other girl’s temple. “Well, on that note… stay strong, Em. The Innocence Brigade is on it. We’ve got you.”
Embry’s throat constricted. The tears were threatening again. “You’re the best.”
Ames gave her another squeeze. “I know.” She reached again for her usual confidence, but this time fell even shorter than before, a tremor there. Embry’s adoration for Ames made her fragile heart leap. “Come on, babe. Time to go undercover.”
“We’re about as under-the-radar as an atomic bomb.” Fairfax gestured heavily at Embry. “Everyone knows where our loyalties lie.”
“Babe, that wasn’t exactly the vote of confidence I wanted to leave Em with.” Ames’s nostrils flared as she slid out of her seat. She reached down and hauled her boyfriend out of the booth before doubling down on her promise. “We’ve got this, Em. Don’t worry.”
And with that, they were gone.
Rye inspected his second coffee mug. “He’s not wrong. We’ll be lucky if anyone associated with the guilty party says a single word within earshot of either of them.”
“And if a blabbermouth automatically clams up, that’ll tell us something, too.”
Rye smirked over the rim of his mug. “Very perceptive.”
“You know I am.”
“I do.”
CHAPTER 23
A LITTLE LOVE IN A LONELY PLACE
AN HOUR AND A THIRD—POSSIBLY IRRESPONSIBLE—LATTE LATER,Embry’s bones were vibrating with so much energy, she was sure her pulse could power the entire coffee shop.
The more questions she and Rye asked each other, the more questions they needed to ask. Rye’s thumbs typed fast and furious as their queries piled atop one another, a mountain now. And even with so many lines of thought unanswered, Embry’s hope was rising.
For all the ways they vexed each other, Rye and Embry made the perfect team.
Embry was sure this was because of a lifetime spent as neighbors. That made sense.
“We’re assuming Oakley was killed by a strong spell because of how they found the body,” Embry said, thinking out loud as Rye tore apart a bear claw the size of a large pizza that Vanjust happenedto not have room for in the pastry case. “Everyone immediately jumped to that conclusion even before I’d walked up to the scene. But what if it wasn’t a spell that killed her? What if it was something else? If it is, that could help my case, right?”
They’d moved on to the manner in which Oakley was killed after hitting dead ends on adding more suspects without any additional information.
