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My eyes close.
“Noel,please—”
“Yes,” I growl thickly, turning to meet my best friend’s eyes. “Your family will always be safe, Thomas. They willalwayshave me.”
He nods, his mouth tight as he turns to look out over the city again. We both sit there in silence, just letting it all sink in.
“What are the chances of me getting another one of those smokes?”
I grin.
“Well, you’re dying.”
He chuckles as I shrug, picking up the pack and sticking two more between my lips.
“Might as well live a little, right?”
Present:
It’s late.I’ve spent the first few hours of the evening sitting on the edge of Ella’s bed, just watching her.
Watching, and wrestling with the things inside of me she brings out. Wrestling with my own demons and past—the things I’ve done, the secrets I kept, the promises I made.
The ones I broke. Intentionally or otherwise.
Lewis looks up from the counter when I step into the kitchen.
“Well?”
He snorts, shaking his head and stretching as he leans back in his chair. He’s been here most of the day—as if the time it would take for him to travel from my house to his office would be time wasted from his work. Which is fine with me, because currently, his work is to poke as many holes in this case against Ella as he can.
“They haven’t got a thing, Noel. I mean, yes, there’s a case. But the entire thing is built on circumstantials, and anything that actually has the faintest hint of gravity to it will be easily explained away if not completely thrown out in court. It’s a puff-pastry of a legal case, basically.”
My brow furrows.
“Which means this entire thing is a hit job.”
He frowns, nodding.
“Precisely. I reached out to some of my contacts with the Crown Prosecution Service, and Liam was good enough to connect me with a few others on that side of things. This entire thing was hasty at best. Someone leaked her Hemlock Estates record—which was supposed to be sealed, by the way—to the police. Along with the medical report we had buried concerning your, uh…” he gestures to his own ribcage.
“Specificallywhich‘someone?’” I snarl.
He shakes his head. “Anonymous. But they do have a witness who’ll testify he saw her in the garage that night, pouring kerosene into a bucket.”
My eyes narrow.
“Who,” I rasp lethally.
Lewis glances down at the papers spread out methodically in front of him.
“A Jon Karzony. He was apparently—”
“A chauffeur,” I hiss. “He worked for Thomas and Cassandra, and stayed on after…”
After Thomas died. After I took his place.
“He’s obviously lying.”
