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Maybe Lincoln is finally letting me into their world a little.
Truthfully, I don’t know if that’s a good thing. But if I’m being forced to keep this secret, to let it eat away at my mind and soul, I want to at least not be kept in the dark.
I say hi to Mom, who asks how I’m feeling just like she did this morning. She offers to cover for me on my cleaning duties, but I don’t take her up on it. Monotonous scrubbing actually helps take my mind off things.
At six, I head upstairs to change back into my street clothes, and Mom and I eat dinner in her little apartment. The Blacks always eat downstairs in their formal dining room, served by Gwen, the house chef. But we’re not responsible for the setup or cleanup of meals.
I wait until exactly 7:30 to head downstairs to the pool house. I don’t want Samuel or Audrey to find me alone in there and wonder what I’m doing, so I give the guys time to get there first.
When I walk in, they’re lounging on the large, comfortable chairs at one end of the pool, and I have a sudden flash of déjà vu. This is where I first saw Dax, Chase, and River. Where I overheard them talking shit about me and kicked River’s phone into the pool in retaliation.
Whether I like to admit it or not, my relationship with all four of them has changed a lot since then. My feelings for them have changed.
And maybe theirs toward me have changed too, because when I walk in, something like relief flashes in each of their eyes.
They’re all wearing street clothes, and it’s obvious they came here for the privacy and isolation, not for the pool. There’s an empty chair on one side of the circle, and I step toward it.
“So, what’s up?” I ask as I sink onto the soft cushion, glancing around at their faces anxiously.
“We’ve been trying to figure out who the guy in the mask was,” Lincoln says bluntly.
I sit up straighter, eyes going wide. “What? I thought you said we shouldn’t say anything.”
“We’re not.” He lowers his chin, giving me a steely look like I might’ve somehow forgotten his ten thousand warnings to keep my damn mouth shut. “We’re looking into it. We haven’t brought anyone else in on this or told anyone anything.”
I blink. “Okay. What have you found out? Anything?”
Dax runs a hand through his dark copper hair. “Not much, sadly. Did you show her the pictures, Linc?”
My gaze shoots back to Lincoln. Now that they’ve mentioned it, I remember him lifting his phone to snap several pictures of the man in the mask before the mysterious stranger got back into his car and sped off. Panic and shock has made some of the memories of that night a little blurry, almost dream-like, and I’d honestly forgotten about the pictures on his cell until now.
Lincoln slips his phone out of his back pocket, taps out his password, and then swipes the screen a few times before handing it to me.
I peer closer at the small screen. The images aren’t great quality. It was dark, both inside the car and out, and he obviously didn’t use a flash—thank fuck, or we’d all probably be dead. So things that were clearly visible in person are rendered grainy and shadowy in the photographs.
Iris’s body lies on the road, but if I didn’t know what it was, I’m not sure I’d be able to guess. The attacker’s car was almost exactly perpendicular to ours, so the license plate isn’t visible at all. And Lincoln was right—even in the picture, I can’t quite tell the color of it. It looks black, but so does almost everything in the image. He captured several frames in quick succession, so I swipe through them quickly. Some are blurry because of the movement and low light. But there’s one, right toward the end, that captured a clear view of the man.
His ski mask is rolled down, so it’s not like I can see any identifying features. But I can tell he’s wearing a mask and can even see the pale outline of the skin around his eyes and make out the shape of his mouth.
This doesn’t do anything to prove who killed Iris, but it does at least present solid evidence that the person who murdered her did it in a premeditated act of cold blood.
Bile tries to force its way up my throat as the image of the tall man hits me like a punch to the gut. I wasn’t prepared for how visceral my response would be to seeing these pictures. It feels almost like slipping back into a replay of that night.
Lincoln reaches over and tugs the phone from my stiff fingers at the same time Dax and Chase rise from their seats and sit down on mine, sandwiching me on the lounge chair between them. Somehow, this has become their unofficial duty—calming me when I’m about to lose it.
I love and hate that they moved without hesitation, and that their proximity instantly soothes me.
Lincoln presses a button on his phone and slips it back into his pocket. My stomach churns, but I suck in a deep breath and release it slowly. “So, has this led you to anything? Is there anything there that helps identify him? I can’t see it, but…”
Maybe I missed something. Please, let me have missed something.
“No, nothing yet. Well, except for the big, obvious one. Whoever killed Iris was male.” Chase shrugs, resting a hand on my knee.
“The most logical place we’ve been able to think of to start is to do more digging on Iris and her family. See if we can figure out what they were into that may’ve gotten them enemies,” River says carefully. He watches me closely as I reply.
“But you’re just sitting on evidence. You know that, right? I mean, right now the police think Iris was hit by a drunk driver—that her death was an accident. Those pictures could help their investigation so much.”
“Yeah.” River shrugs. “Or they could get buried and never see the light of day, while the killer suddenly knows they’ve got witnesses they need to deal with. If we can get more information, we can think about going to the cops, but even then it’s a risk. Right now, it’d just be fucking dangerous.”
