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Chapter 20
Fox~
I couldn’t get Hastings’ question out of my mind. The logical assumption would have been Donovan’s father, or Jacob’s or Alexander’s. There was no way the guys would have had the presence of mind to order a fake autopsy report. Donovan had killed Apollo Black, and that was bigger than what they could have handled.
So, the question now was whether there was a fourth person in on this, or three fathers of three boys? How many people were we dealing with here?
After we’d gotten home last night, Kincaid and I had gone one final round before falling into an exhausted sleep. It had been a long two days, and the adrenaline crash had hit hard. When I’d woken up, Kincaid was already gone, but she’d left a spare key and a note, and I’d been happy enough with that.
The key, especially.
There was also the fact that Kincaid hadn’t tossed my shit out, so after showering, getting dressed, then drinking a gallon of coffee, I had sent her a text before locking up her condo and heading out. Without Kincaid’s permission, I’d made the decision to help in my own way.
I had arrived at my parents’ home about an hour ago, and I let my mother do her thing, peppering me with questions about my unexpected visit, feeding me, discussing my classes, and she had even touched on how things were after the whole August debacle. The only thing she hadn’t asked about was Kincaid, but I didn’t blame her. The subject of Kincaid wasn’t a pleasant one.
So, now, I was in my father’s office, ready to discuss the whole purpose of my visit. He hadn’t said a word the entire time that my mother had been doting on me, but that was because he knew. He knew that this wasn’t a friendly visit. He knew that I was here on business.
“So, now that your mother is done avoiding the elephant in the room, what can I do for you, Fox?” he asked dryly.
“You’ve been on the governing panel of The Order for, what? Ten years?” I asked, getting to the point.
He sat up and placed his arms on his desk. “About,” he agreed warily.
“So, you were on the panel when Apollo Black died, correct?”
His face softened a bit at that. “Yes. It was a true tragedy. Apollo Black had been an amazing young man.”
“Who headed up the investigation into his death?”
His head reared back in shock at such a question. “What?”
“Surely, the panel looked into his death, right?”
“What’s going on, Fox?” he asked, ignoring my question. “Why are you asking me about Apollo Black?”
I leaned back in my chair, my hazel eyes locked onto his identical ones. “Why do you think?”
It took a few seconds, but my father wasn’t stupid. He was just as brilliant as his wealth proved. “You don’t think it was an accident,” he surmised quietly.
“It wasn’t,” I told him. “It wasn’t an accident at all.”
His shoulders dropped against his chair. “Kincaid.”
I nodded. “You said that the panel had no reason to fear her, but you’re wrong, Dad. You guys have every reason to fear that girl.”
My father didn’t say anything for a long time. He was absorbing all the implications of what I’d just told him, and he should. Kincaid wasn’t a nobody. The girl was a force to be reckoned with and accusing some of the most powerful men in the country of killing her brother, then covering it up, was bound to expose a lot. Especially, with Saxon in her corner. His father had already been asking questions, so there wasn’t any doubt that Kincaid’s accusations would be broadcasted on every news station in the country.
“We’d gotten the report,” my father finally said. “Along with an autopsy that confirmed that he’d died from the fall at the cliffs.” He shook his head. “There was no reason to look into it any further than that, Fox. You had Alexander George, Donovan Cooper, and Jacob Townsend collaborating the events of the tragedy. Even Merrick and Patricia Black had accepted what they’d been told. The only person who hadn’t been accepting had been Kincaid, but…she’d been a distraught fifteen-year-old girl. Of course, she’d been in denial. She’d just lost her big brother.”
I cocked my head. “But she hadn’t been in denial,” I corrected. “She’d been very aware that something was wrong, but no one listened.”
“I-”
“And you didn’t find it odd that the coroner who signed off Apollo’s autopsy report wound up dead a week later?”
His eyes widened. “How do you know that?”
I leaned forward in my chair, my arms resting on top of my thighs. “Dad, I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to really take in what I’m about to tell you. I want you to understand exactly what it all means, and not only for you, but for everyone involved.”
