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“Who the fuck pissed you off?”
Slade drops the bomb. “Ev found a link between Judge Jones and Astrid.” It’s the last thing I expected him to say, and it takes a moment for me to realize the implication.
“What the fuck?” I seem to be saying that a lot today. I look over at Ev as he grips the edge of the island so hard I’m worried he’ll crack it. “Ev?”
“I don’t have all the details yet, so I really do think we all need to keep our shit together until I do.”
“Fuck that, Ev. I know you have some kind of hero worship going on with the woman, but she’s a fucking liar and a killer. I don’t want her anywhere near my woman and kid,” Oz snarls. When nobody disagrees with him, I stalk toward Ev, fisting the front of his T-shirt. “Tell me what the hell is going on. I’ve just held that woman in my arms for the last hour, and now you’re telling me that she’s the enemy?”
“I never said that. I said—” I shake him, but he yanks himself free. “I stopped working on Astrid’s file while I was wading through Jones’s shit. That didn’t mean I wasn’t running it in the background. I just wasn’t actively pursuing anything because I thought we had all been won over by her.”
“Speak for yourself,” one of the guys grunts, but I don’t turn around to see who.
“Anyway, a name popped up when I was going through Jones’s old cases. Six years ago, he was working as a DA. He, as well as a couple of colleagues, from what I’ve found so far, were paid to hush things up.”
“Hush things up? What things?”
“There was a school shooting. It didn’t receive nearly as much coverage as other shootings because the students come from some of the richest motherfuckers in the country.”
“What does that have to do with Astrid?”
“With Astrid Montgomery? Nothing. With Astrid Oakes, everything. Because she was one of the perpetrators arrested.”
I draw in a ragged breath that burns my lungs. “No. I don’t believe it.”
“It seems whoever paid Judge Jones off managed to keep her name out of most of it. And the things they couldn’t erase, they had buried. That’s why I’m asking for more time before you all tar and feather her.”
I shake my head. I don’t buy it. None of it makes sense. I turn to look at Slade, who is staring at me like he wants to smash everything in the room. “You can’t believe this.”
“She has scars on her wrists from a set of handcuffs.” He huffs out a laugh and stands up, pacing back and forth. “I have to say, the kidnap story was a nice touch. It sure did tug at my heartstrings. I guess she knew I wouldn’t be as sympathetic if I knew the cuff marks were from resisting arrest.”
“She told Salem that she met Penn Travis the first time when he stopped her from shooting herself. Salem saw it in a different context, and I did too, at first,” Zig cuts in. “But after finding out about this, I’ve gotta question if Astrid was actually the bad guy looking for a way out. We’ve seen how the perpetrators tend to take themselves out at the end of their sprees, too fucking cowardly to face what they’ve done.”
“And why does this Penn guy keep showing up at fucked up times?” Oz snarls. “If he was responsible for blowing up the clinic, we know he has no morals at all. He didn’t care about the staff or patients there, so I sure as hell doubt he’d care about a bunch of high schoolers. The only people he seems interested in are Salem and Astrid, so it’s not hard for me to believe he’d step in that day before she could turn the gun on herself. Hell, he probably had a hand in the carnage himself.”
I stare at the tiled floor in shock. None of this seems real. “Why come here then?”
I stare at Oz and Zig.
“You don’t think she came here to warn Salem, do you?”
Oz shakes his head. “I think she came here to take her. She’s just waiting for us to let our guards down. And we nearly did, dammit.”
"When I couldn’t find Salem earlier, I had this feeling... Maybe deep down, I knew something was off. Fuck!" Slade shoves his hands in his hair and pulls it.
“So, what now?”
“Ev needs to finish digging. We need all the evidence we can get on this. We also need to find this fucking Penn guy. I have a feeling he’s closer than we think,” Zig answers.
“Anyone else find it odd that she hasn’t had a single vision since she’s been here?” Crew asks, crossing his arms.
Wilder grunts, leaning forward. “If she was lying about them, wouldn’t she at least have faked a couple to give herself more credibility?”
“The more she lies, the deeper the hole she digs for herself. Pretending she’s having a vision could just as easily blow her story to pieces as verify it,” Hawk points out.
Greg, who up to this point has been quiet, looks around the table with a scowl before standing up and knocking the chair backward.
“What?” Oz growls at him. “If you have something to say, then fucking say it already.”
