Page 60 of East

She looks up, sniffs a few times. “One of your employees… He’s dead, Aus.”

I nod slowly. “I know. Kin. I just got off the phone with Leo, one of my waitstaff. He’s been trying to tell me all day, but my phone was off.”

She wipes a tear from her eye. “They think… They think I did it. That I killed him.”

I drop my jaw. “No fucking way. Why on earth would they think it was you?”

“Because I had a pair of his shoes on me.”

“You what?”

“I snagged them from Wick’s living room this morning. I had lost my heels last night—one of them broke off in a sewer grate. I couldn’t show up to work with no shoes on, and I thought the broadcast wouldn’t show them. But the shot was wider than I thought, I guess, because all of Chicago saw me wearing his shoes this morning.” Her face twists. “And I slept separately from Wick last night at his house, so I can’t even use him to corroborate my alibi.”

I close my eyes as I process all this information.

Thea spending the night at Wick’s house is the most inconvenient truth of all.

I have to swallow that. She chose to bring me to this gala tonight. But she can’t erase the past.

I certainly know that better than anyone else.

Thea gets to her feet, grabs a small tissue from her bag, and blows her nose. “Do you know how it happened?”

I lift an eyebrow. “How what happened?”

“Kin.”

I draw in a slow breath. “It’s pretty morbid. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“If these people think I did it, I should at least know what they think I’m capable of. In case I have to fight this.”

“It won’t come to that, baby.”

She looks up. “You don’t know that.”

Those words hit like tiny poison darts in my heart. It’s true. I don’t know that. I don’t have the influence in this city that some of the elites do. Elites like Rouge Montrose, the woman who landed me in this situation in the first place.

I don’t know how to respond to Thea’s curt words, so I wrap my arms around her as she begins to shake with sobs again.

“Shhh, baby. It’ll all work out.”

She sniffs again, looks me in the eyes. “Tell me what happened. To Kin.”

I sigh. “Okay.”

“Well?”

I wrap an arm around her shoulders. “Apparently the murderer stole a big tractor from a nearby construction site.”

She blinks a few times. “Go on.”

“They then carried a huge boulder from the same construction site and waited in a nearby alley. Kin walked by and they dropped the boulder on him. This happened around three in the morning, but his body wasn’t discovered until a few hours later. Couple of guys on their way to work.”

“Christ. That’s an awful way to start your day.”

“No kidding.”

Thea takes in a shaky breath. “So that’s why they were asking me if I ever used heavy machinery on the farm.”