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Next time it might be fatal.Could they have meant…?
“I think—someonewarnedme,” I said, my chest constricting even tighter. “Warned me that this isn’t as bad as it could get. As iftheyhad something to do with the accident.”
Dexter’s forehead furrowed. “What do you mean?”
I fumbled with the phone. “I got a text right before the phone call. It didn’t make any sense on its own, and it was from a number I didn’t recognize. ‘Next time it might be fatal,’ they said. They must have meant the accident. The timing was way too close to be a coincidence.”
“What the hell?” The menacing note I’d only heard in Logan’s voice a few times before—when I’d been attacked—rippled through the question. He leaned over to peer down at the screen. “Give me the number, and I’ll track the maniac down. We’ll find out who meets a fatal end then.”
My gaze flicked toward Beckett, hoping he took Logan’s statement as rage-fueled hyperbole rather than a literal plan of action, and then darted to my phone again. My trembling fingers managed to open my Messages app.
The first contact at the top was Summer. Then a text I’d sent to my lab partner earlier this afternoon. Then one from Dexter giving me an update on the guys’ observations of the footage from the cameras we’d planted. Slade, Mom, another lab partner, a tutorial leader who liked to communicate through text… I scrolled back two weeks and then up to the top again.
“It’sgone,” I sputtered. “I swear it was there. I couldn’t have made it up out of thin air.”
Logan frowned and held out his hand for the phone. “There are ways to time texts so they’re temporary,” he said as he double-checked my messages. “Most people don’t know how to do that, though.”
Slade’s expression had darkened too. “You got it right before the phone call about your mom?”
As I nodded, Beckett rubbed my back in an obvious attempt at comfort. “Maybe it was a prank from someone who found out about the crash before you. Some people are assholes and take jokes way too far.”
Even in my dazed state, I noticed the look the Vigil guys exchanged. A chill wrapped around my gut.
“I don’t think I know anyone who’d do something like that,” I said weakly. But I did know a very good reason why someone might have wanted to target me and my family. Logan had been afraid of this all along—that if I got involved in the investigation, I’d become a target for the people who’d murdered my dad.
I’d been willing to take that risk. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be risking other people I cared about too, people who had no idea they’d been drawn into the line of fire.
“Someone realized,” I started, and cut myself off when Dexter’s attention shot toward Beckett.Hedidn’t know about that—about anything the Vigil had gotten into. How the hell could I explain it to him?
“Damn it,” Logan snarled under his breath as he handed the phone back to me. “We should have been more careful.”
“We will be,” Slade said, but his mouth twisted as if he were queasy.
Beckett took us all in, his brow knitting with confusion. “What are you talking about? Did something happen that would have put Maddie and her family in danger?”
Logan stepped toward him with a glower. “Nothing’s happening to Maddie on my watch. But I think it’s time you left. We have family business to take care of.”
Beckett’s eyebrows rose. “I care about her just as much as you do. If she needs help—”
“I’m her stepbrother,” Logan snapped. “It’s my stepmom in the hospital. We’ll handle it.”
I didn’t like the way he was talking to Beckett, but I couldn’t focus on anything other than the thought of Mom lying in some hospital bed while doctors cut pieces of the wreckage out of her and stitched her up. Because of me. Because I’d dug too far into business no one wanted me to know about.
The words tumbled out. “I need to see her. I should go, now.”
Logan caught my shoulder. “You’re not driving like this. You’re too upset. I can take you. I’d want to be there for your mom and my dad anyway.”
I caught Beckett’s gaze and grasped his hand again. “I’m sorry. I just—it’s too much. I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on back home.”
Worry was written all over his handsome face, but he dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Take as much time as you need. Your mom’s health is way more important than me.”
Before either of us could say anything else, Logan was ushering me out of the office. I glanced up at him, tugging my elbow away from his grip. “Icandrive myself.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Logan said with iron firmness. “And like I said, I’d want to be there anyway. So I’m not giving you a choice.”
Any other time, I might have kept fighting. But right now it was a struggle just to keep walking while my stomach felt like it was about to plummet right out of my body. Maybe he had a point. I could barely remember where I kept my key, let alone how to maneuver a car on a freeway.
Home was two hours away. What else might happen to Mom before I got there?
