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“Then the relationship with Evan just… happened?”
“I guess,” Skye offers with a shrug, closing my bicep wound with a large butterfly bandage. “They’re a close group, probably due to their side gig. Those pills we took at the Aurora that night? They sell them. And apparently, they’ve sold drugs in this town for a long time, according to Evan.”
“The Aurora has always had a reputation as a party club. I just never knew the drugs were a part of the establishment. Evan told you all this when you worked there?” I ask, studying the careful movements of her fingers as she tends my wound.
“Kind of,” she says, making a guilty face. “I found out about the pills accidentally when I worked that night. But the knowledge about the other drugs, I had to pull out of him by force.” She shrugs, cleaning the last of the blood off my skin, and closes the first aid kit. “I wanted him to confess the details of thatnight with Paige, but all he said about it was ‘it was an accident’. He did, however, confess to selling a bad batch of pills to an unsuspecting group of kids eight years ago, claiming fault with their new in-house manufacturing.”
I swallow hard. “Eight years…?”
Her eyes meet mine. “Three kids died, Zaden. One of them was Drake.”
Anger warms my blood, and I stand from the table, pacing up and down the warn wooden floorboards of the kitchen, my hands laced behind my head. I want to hit something.
“I’m going to kill him,” I say, the image of Evan’s smug face filling my mind. “Or Katrina’s going to kill him. The police never found where the drugs came from. Never made an arrest.” I shake my head. “I guess I fucking understand why.”
Skye stands and strides over to me, and I walk around her to continue my pace.
“How long have you known about this?” I ask, shooting her a fuming glare.
“Since that night after Marleighs,” she answers softly. “I didn’t know how to tell you. Or who I should tell. After leaving Evan passed out in his truck at the Aurora, I walked back to the motel. The next morning, Detective Phillips called me and said they were suspending the search for Paige. That she was really gone. And my life stopped. I couldn’t think past that.”
I approach her and wrap my hands around her arms, gripping just hard enough to make her understand that I care. “This is the kind of shit you have to tell me, Skye. You can’t keep this to yourself. This isn’t just about Paige anymore. This is about Jax and Katrina and Raven and Alice.”
“And Mia,” Skye adds. “Fun fact, Mia’s father is Stephen Knight, Dylan Knight’s brother. They’re cousins.”
I release her, and return to pacing. “I don’t even know what to say,” I admit, completely at a loss for words. “I can’t believe you would keep me in the dark like this after everything we’ve been through.”
“I don’t know, Zaden. Why wouldn’t I tell you?” She exclaims, and I pause to look over at her. “Maybe because my sister died because of Evan? Maybe because Drake and two others died because of Evan? Raven’s father?” She shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes. “You tell me.”
“The Jacobsons can’t get away with this.”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt!” She finishes. “Because I’m selfish. I see all this pain and death around me. I’ve lost every single person I’ve ever loved, and I don’t want to lose you too. So if you have to hate me, fine. Just chalk it up to another one of my fuck ups. But don’t you see the theme here? Each time nothing happens. It all gets swept under the rug because of their ties to law enforcement. There is no way to win against Evan or the Jacobsons, and I am not adding your name to their list of casualties.” Her voice starts to waver, and she looks away, wrapping her arms around herself.
I release a frustrated sigh and walk over to her. I pull her into my embrace, tucking her head beneath my chin. “We’re going to figure this out,” I say, trying to sound reassuring.
“I don’t know how. I’ve been trying ever since I got here, and I’m no closer to any sort of closure than I was when I started,” she says, burying her face in my shirt and taking a deep, steadying breath. “You wondered why I would jump off a bridge? This is the shit in my headright now.”
I tighten my arms around her. “You were almost added to the casualty list today.” I kiss the top of her head, and she looks up at me. “Fuck, I was scared.”
“I told you my life is chaos. They want me to go back to California. We can end this. I wouldn’t blame you,” she says, an edge of unmistakable sadness in her voice.
I shake my head. “I’m not losing anything else to them. Definitely not you.” I lean down and kiss her softly. “I can’t believe that man got up and left today. In fourteen years, not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about him. And I let him leave.”
“I don’t know how he survived,” she says, gripping her hands in my shirt. “I’m sorry you had to see him again because of me.”
I sit back on the kitchen table as Skye steps between my legs, her hands resting on my thighs. “He said it was a job to him. Back then, and today. You’re being targeted for threatening the Jacobsons, jeopardizing their side business. My stepfather was a junkie with a debt. And that guy was sent to clean it all up.” I run a hand through my hair. “It all circles back to them. What was your plan? If you get a confession or evidence, who can you trust with it?”
“There is no one person,” she says, her eyes locked with mine. “You have to go beyond Pelican Beach. You have to go to the masses. They can’t silence everyone.”
“You want to take it public.”
She nods.
“What are you missing? What do you need to make that happen?” I ask, searching her eyes for hope.
“I’ve found evidence linking Evan to that night with Paige, I just can’t prove that it belongs to Evan. I need somethingphysical that people can see and can’t be disputed. I tried to pull the security footage at the Sandbar, but it was erased. That was the only day missing. There had to be something there. But I don’t know how to retrieve it,” she says, shaking her head. “Evan’s alibi hinges on the truth concerning his whereabouts during that timeframe. He said he never left the Sandbar. I believe he did. I want to know if he was driving his own car, or Paige’s. If we can prove that, his alibi is bullshit, and they have to consider where he went.”
I chew my bottom lip, thinking. Then I nod. “I got this. I know a guy.”
