Page 57 of East

“Kin? As in the bartender?”

“Do you know any other Kins?”

I lean against the wall for support. “What happened?”

“That’s the crazy part. He was a few blocks away from the club in the early morning. Two college guys on their way to their shift at a nearby coffee shop found him. He was crushed, Aus. By a giant boulder.”

“What? You’ve got to be joking.”

“I’d never joke about something like this, man. There was a tractor nearby. They think someone stole it from a nearby construction site. Someone who knew how to operate heavy machinery, obviously. They brought the boulder over and waited until Kin passed by and…boom.”

“What the actual fuck?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“That’s like something straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.”

“That’s what Scarlet said.”

I rub at my forehead. A fucking boulder? What a terrible way to die. I hope it was quick. “Do they know when it happened?”

“Cops are saying around three in the morning.”

Damn.

Then why are the cops questioning Thea? She wouldn’t have anything to do with it.

She was asleep at Wick’s place when this happened.

Except…

She told me she slept in Wick’s bedroom. That Wick crashed on the couch.

If he left in the middle of the night, maybe in a shitty mood because his hook-up for the evening changed her mind…

She’d have no way of knowing.

I don’t think he and his brother ever really got along. I always got a frosty vibe when I watched them interact.

But because Thea spent the night with Wick…

The cops might think she was involved as well.

I pound on the door. “Let me in, you motherfuckers! Let me in!”

21

THEA

“I’m sorry?” I ask.

Officer King flips through her notebook again. “We looked through the news footage from this morning. You were wearing a pair of silver tennis shoes, were you not?”

“I was, but I didn’t⁠—”

“And we confirmed with your co-anchor, Mrs. Fields, earlier this afternoon that you were wearing the same shoes when you left. Your makeup artist confirmed you were wearing them when you got to the station as well.”

“Yes, but there’s a logical explanation for all of that. I lost my shoes last night. The heels I wore to the club. One of them broke off in a grate. Surely that’s happened to you before. It’s a universal experience for women.”