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Had Christian gotten into an accident? I couldn’t help but snoop. Though I only made it a few lines down before my heart stopped. Victim’s name: Rose Keating
What the hell is this?
I scanned the rest of the page, confused. It looked like a copy of the police report from the accident that killed her. But why would Christian have this? I skimmed through the stack with a lump in my throat—they seemed to all be about my mother’s accident. Some of them looked vaguely familiar from my weekly visits down to the police station after she was killed. The detective on the case had been so nice and treated me like an adult, even though I was only fifteen. He’d sometimes share updates and show me things from the file when he could. But after about a year, he’d told me the case was being moved to cold cases, and my weekly visits needed to stop. He’d promised to call if there was ever any new information. But my phone never rang.
After I went through the loose papers, I emptied the contents of the manila envelope onto the floor. More stuff from the accident. This had to be the entire police file. With each page I examined, my insides grew more and more shaky. One page in particular caught my attention—a picture of tire marks. Seeing them caused a fifteen-year-old memory to flash in my head.
I’d been sitting at the lead detective’s desk at the police station a few weeks after the accident. It was the first time I’d gone down to speak to him. He’d opened the case file to show me some documents from his investigation, and a picture of tire marks had been on top. He’d quickly turned the page, and when I’d asked to see it, he’d said he didn’t think it was a good idea. When I pressed, he’d frowned and quietly explained that the tire marks weren’t on the street. They were on the body.
Looking down at the photo again, the tire marks faded away, and all I could see was what was underneath. Skin. The pale flesh of my mother’s dead body. Nausea rushed up from my stomach. I took off running for the bathroom with the page still in my hand, stumbling to the toilet bowl just in time to empty everything inside me.
My head hung over the porcelain while a layer of sweat sheathed my forehead. I felt like I might vomit again, but the sudden urge to flee had me pushing to my feet to get the hell out of here first. The papers were still spread out all over the floor when I grabbed my purse.
Jake’s fiancée was standing in the living room. She took one look at my face and put down the decoration in her hand. “Are you okay? You’re so pale.”
I shook my head. “Yeah, umm…actually, no. I’m not feeling too good. I think I ate something that is disagreeing with me. I just got sick.”
“Oh no!”
I pointed to the door. “I’m going to go. I don’t want to ruin the party and…just in case it’s a bug and not something I ate, I wouldn’t want to get anyone sick.”
“You poor thing.”
I forced a smile and waved a quick goodbye at everyone else before heading for the door.
The entire way home, I wracked my brain, trying to figure out why Christian would have my mom’s old police file. I didn’t come up with any answers, but my intuition told me when I eventually found them, I was going to feel a lot sicker than I did now.
CHAPTER 27
* * *
CHRISTIAN
My call went to voicemail for the third time.
“Still not answering?” Lara asked.
I shook my head.
I’d arrived home after practice and had the crap scared out of me by my brother, his fiancée, and her sisters. I hadn’t even known he was in town today, but it was always good to see him, and it had been a long time since we’d celebrated our joint birthday together since we were born smack in the middle of football season. But my festive mood had taken a hit when Lara told me Bella had been here and then left, not feeling well.
“Maybe she’s sleeping or her phone died?”
Either reason made perfect sense, but I still felt uneasy not knowing she was okay when she’d left to travel home while feeling sick. Knowing her, she probably took the subway and didn’t even think about an Uber or a cab.
Jake walked over, eating a shrimp. He shoved it in his mouth and spoke with it full. “Go. We’ll meet you at the restaurant.”
His fiancée’s nose wrinkled. “Go where?”
“He wants to go check on Bella, but he’s trying to be polite since we’re all here.”
My brother knew me well. Plus, if it were Lara who had gotten sick and wasn’t answering her phone, he’d feel the same way. So I nodded. “Thanks. I’m going to change my shirt, and I’ll grab a cab and have him wait while I run up to check on her. Then I’ll have him bring me to the restaurant.”
