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But the Ryan-as-accomplice idea sounded so unlikely to her that she forced her mind not to focus on it. That left her back in the confusing mire. The cell should have been where she’d left it: in Aaron’s jacket pocket. She flipped through each step of the plan in her mind. She’d struggled but gotten through them all.
Invisible noxious fumes. She’d expected a haze, but everything looked normal when she peeked in the room. All but Aaron’s body, laid in a diagonal sprawl across the guest bed.
With a towel clamped tight against her mouth, she ran inside, deep into the stale, poisonous air, to the other side of the room. With every step, she held the cloth tighter against her closed mouth. The finicky window lock fought against her fingers. She tugged and pulled until her lungs burned with the need to inhale.
A few seconds more, and the metal hinge opened with a snap. She shoved the window up, and cool air poured in from the dark backyard. She gulped in the freshness, wishing she’d thought ahead and bought a mask. The carbon monoxide canister had required enough subterfuge and lying. Angling it just the right way in the air vent and taping around it to protect the rest of the house had proven daunting.
She looked around the bed, anywhere but at Aaron’s unmoving body. When she finally focused on his hair, she thought about the one time she’d joked that he’d soon need to color it to chase away the gray. His terse response still rang in her ears.
She looked at him now, quiet and still. The worries of gray hair far behind him. An arm stretched out to his side, with his shiny gold wedding band showing.
She waited for the inevitable shot of guilt, a dose she’d convinced herself she could tolerate for a lifetime if it meant freeing those girls. But no feelings of remorse or pain hit her. Seeing those videos, listening to the girls praise his body and touch themselves for his pleasure, had turned him from man to pure monster in her mind.
She’d slain that dragon. Stopped his grooming—all of it.
She hadn’t let him touch her since that night, and she’d done everything to keep her hands off him. Now she reached over and felt for a pulse. The telltale thump she half expected was gone.
That left the cleanup. Dressing his body, which now amountedto nothing more than deadweight. Getting him on the blanket and dragging him out to the garage. Loading him into the back seat and hiding him on the floor. Having the phone and the videos ready for discovery.
Her back was slick with sweat from the fight with foul air and a window. Her muscles tightened and locked from the soreness, but she had to keep going. Daylight would break, and the car had to be in position long before then.
Time was running out.
Tobias walked toward her, all traces of his usual amusement gone from his face. “Ryan is insisting he’s never met Aaron and has no idea how the phone got in his house.”
That fit with what she knew, but to Lila what mattered was the information he wasn’t spilling, though she feared the answer might be “yet.” “What’s Ginny saying?”
Tobias shot her awhat’s wrong with you?frown. “I’m not actually Ryan’s attorney, so she’s not telling me.”
Lila ignored the sarcasm and watched the staff of the sheriff’s office scurry around. For once they weren’t focused on her and whispering in the loud way men often did when they wanted you to know what theyreallythought about you. Today they answered phones and a few circled in a back corner near the biggest glassed-in office. No one paid any attention to her. It was almost as if they forced themselves not to.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand this. This thing with Aaron’s phone makes no sense.”
Tobias guided her around the corner from the main roomto the quieter hallway leading to the front doors. “Lila, you need to focus. It’s looking like Ryan is involved in Aaron’s disappearance, or at least met up with him close to the time when he died, which is a problem, since he never disclosed that.”
“That can’t be right.”
Tobias leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re that sure?”
“There’s no tie between them.” Every time she said or thought the words, she felt more confident in them being true. That original assumption of this being something other than “real” evidence of wrongdoing by Ryan sounded right to her.
Tobias shook his head. “Well, there’s you. You’re a pretty big link between them.”
“Neither one of them would fight to the death over me.” They’d proven that through their omissions and behaviors.
Tobias swore under his breath. “Is it possible you’re selling yourself short?”
“I know both of them.” He didn’t. Tobias sided with her out of years of loyalty. He knew she held back and didn’t fight her. He was her toughest critic and biggest cheerleader. “Neither would be bothered unless it was to get together and talk about how much I suck.”
“Enough with that kind of talk.”
She ignored his frown and the slap of his voice. “I’m serious. Something else is going on here.”
“You have a theory. Tell me.”
Not yet.She knew better. “It’s not that simple.”
Something sinister played out around her, which meant Aaron stood behind it. His rotting core guided this. She could only guess he’d been following the podcast. He’d love that sort of attention from the recent-college-graduate-turned-podcaster. But a bigger benefit existed, and it had nothing to do with a podcast. Getting back at her through Ryan was exactly Aaron’s style. Forget about hitting her straight on. He’d try to disable her from behind.
