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“So, do we just wait for the fire to burn out?” Emilia asks, glancing at each of us.
“Yeah. Once the fire’s extinguished, we need to gather up the bones. They won’t burn,” Wilder explains.
That’s news to me. “What do we do with them then?”
“I brought a sledgehammer. I’ll crush them up, and then we can bury them.”
Well, I’m rather impressed at his level of research and ability to complete a job thoroughly. I’d always written Wilder off as one of those guys who wanted to go through life having fun but never really getting his act together. It still baffles me why he’s even enrolled at Ridgeway. He’s repeatedly made it clear that he doesn’t care about his grades or graduating. So to hear that he didn’t just go all stabby and get carried away with getting his revenge on Mel but actually put some thought and groundwork into it all is impressive.
“We still don’t know who she really is,” Emilia says with a frown.
“Does it matter?” Wilder asks.
“Why weren’t you on tour with Death on a Matchstick?” Hawk asks. Emilia and Wilder share a quick glance before Emilia sighs and fills us all in on what happened that summer.
Wilder must have heard this story already, because he doesn’t seem surprised at all, but Hawk is shocked. “Did my sister know?”
Emilia shakes her head. “No one knew. I basically pretended the summer didn’t happen.”
Something about what she said makes Hawk frown. “Not even Mel?”
Emilia’s eyes widen. "I’d forgotten about that." Lips pulled down, she bites on her bottom lip as she tries to think. "No. I never mentioned that summer to her. Even with Mel, I barely talked about anything before Halston. I didn’t want to have to explain anything about either of you, so it was easier to just not talk about it."
“So, how did she know you worked in the cafe?” Wilder asks.
Emilia’s wide eyes flash to mine.
“That’s possibly when she first saw you.”
“So, not the first day on campus?” Emilia asks me.
I shrug a shoulder. "It’s impossible to know. I’ll continue trying to find out who she is, but you might just have to accept that we’ll never have all the answers."
"She said something about me not knowing who she was," Hawk pipes up. "As if she were someone I should know, or maybe I should know who her family is." He shrugs, unsure. "She made it seem like we’d be in deep shit if we messed with her."
Wilder scoffs. "Yeah, well, we sure showed her."
“She could have been lying,” I surmise. “We know she’s adept at it, or she might have been taunting you with the fact that we don’t know anything about her.”
“Maybe,” Hawk says with a sigh. “Who the fuck knows.”
“And who the fuck cares,” Wilder tacks on before turning to stare out the window. “She’s gone now. She’s not worth another moment’s thought.”
“Agreed,” Emilia chimes in.
“Agreed,” Hawk and I both say at the same time, before the four of us burst out laughing.
"I guess since we’re all here," Wilder begins, trailing off as his gaze latches on Emilia’s. She reaches out to take his hand while angling the upper half of her body toward Hawk. Her tense posture puts me on edge, and I have a distinct feeling whatever Wilder’s about to confess isn’t good.
His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and he shifts his focus to Hawk. “It was me who stole Compton’s file from your computer. I’m the one responsible for his death.”
The silence that fills the car is so thick that it sticks in my throat, threatening to suffocate me. How? Why? For what purpose? I’m completely taken aback by Wilder’s admission. I would never have thought he would betray Hawk like that.
Peering at Emilia, I can tell that she already knew this tidbit of information. A niggling voice at the back of my head wonders how long she’s known for, but I quickly snuff it out. Emilia’s got integrity. If she knew, she would have told us. He must have only confessed to her today—probably when they finally made up—and that’s why he’s telling Hawk and me now.
Shifting my attention back to Hawk, his face is unreadable, although the tense set of his jaw and the narrowing of his eyes give away his anger. "Why?" he hisses out. I notice Emilia’s hand on his thigh, giving it a squeeze in a silent gesture to keep his head. Yeah, I’m not sure how long that’s going to last. Perhaps spilling his secrets in the small confines of a car wasn’t the best place to do it. Wilder may find his body burning right alongside Mel’s before the night is over.
If it’s possible, Wilder manages to shock me even further as he confesses everything he’s been up to this year—the fucked up secret society he joined so that he could get into his family’s good graces and meet them, the shit they asked him to do for the trials, the creepy as fuck vow they made him recite, and the meeting with his grandfather last week.
