Page 145 of Timid (Lark Cove 2)

I scoffed, earning a shut the fuck up glare from Magee.

“Any idea how much money we’re talking about here?” the sheriff asked.

“Um . . .” Ryder hesitated, looking between the adults in the room before muttering, “About fifty thousand dollars.”

“What the fuck?” I exploded, earning another glare from Magee. But I was too pissed to keep quiet. “Mom spent fifty thousand dollars in a couple of months?”

Her car was nice, but not fifty-thousand-dollars nice. And months in a cheap hotel wouldn’t have used up the rest of her cash. So where the hell had she spent it? Why had she been so broke that she’d had to beg me for money?

Ryder’s shoulders curled in on themselves at my outburst. He looked over at me with guilty eyes.

Magee sat poised. He gave me a single nod to keep pushing.

“Ryder?” I warned.

He shook his head, clamping his mouth shut.

“What happened?”

He still didn’t speak.

“You need to tell me. Now,” I demanded. It was the sharpest tone I’d ever used with him. It was the same one Hazel had used on me countless times when I’d needed to get my act together. “I won’t ask you again. What happened to the money?”

His chin began to quiver and he dropped his eyes. “I . . . I took it.”

“You took it?” Willa asked. “Why?”

His teary eyes found his backpack at his feet.

The backpack he never went anywhere without.

“It was just a little bit at a time,” he confessed. “I’d sneak it from her purse when she wasn’t looking and hide it in my backpack. I wanted us to be out of money by the time we found Jackson. Because every time she ran out of money before, we’d stay some

where for a while, with her friends or whatever. I thought maybe it would make her want to stay here.”

My anger deflated and I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. Do you still have the money?”

He nodded frantically. “It’s in my backpack. I didn’t spend any of it.” Ryder’s panicked eyes shot to the sheriff. “I swear. None of it. Not even a dollar. And I have some of her recorders too.”

“Recorders?” Magee leaned forward. “What recorders?”

“The ones she gave me to carry for her.”

The room went silent.

Mom had given Ryder recorders? Could they contain the link to her killer?

“Would you mind if I took a listen?” Magee asked me, not Ryder.

“No. Go for it.”

Ryder immediately began digging in his backpack.

From over his shoulder, I watched as he lifted a flap in the bottom, one I wouldn’t have noticed, and started laying stacks of cash on the table.

Willa’s eyes stared unblinking at the money as it just kept coming. How the hell had he been carrying all of that around and we hadn’t noticed?

Soon the cash stopped and out came three recorders. They weren’t as fancy as the one the sheriff had used in all of our interrogations. These were single use only, so once they were full, you either recorded over what you had or bought a new device.