Well, the truth is, I accidentally fell into the dark place and then brought back some sort of hell-demon-beast thing, which laughed like a manic clown, picked up Ronnie’s knife and slaughtered everyone else in the room while I just screamed and screamed.
Nope. Wasn’t going to fly.
The two detectives eventually arrived, in similar dark-navy suits, two pigs in a sty, sliding into the room with their badges flashing.
“Interview of Cinnamon Saunders, commencing at seventeen zero five on November third, nineteen ninety-five…”
He knew the drill already. After all, he’d done this all once before.
He’d answered, ‘no comment’ to every question in a row for several hours, despite their mounting frustration. They slid photograph after photograph in front of him, stills from the security cameras. Cinn had touched an image of himself on the floor, his hands clutching either side of his head. He still possessed the faintest lingering of the familiar headache that had struck him like a sledgehammer, a thousand invisible needles jabbing at the very core of his consciousness.
“And this,” one of the detectives had said, “is where it gets interesting.”
Interesting. This was the word used to describe the moment Cinn’s life—his small but precious life that he’d built from the rubble all for himself—fell apart.Interesting.
Another glossy piece of paper had been pushed towards him. This time, a printout of pure white. A photograph of nothing. The poor detectives, and apparently their team of technology specialists, were baffled by the CCTV printouts. They knew it wasn’t Cinn’s doing, of course. They wanted to know how Heino Richter had managed to tamper with it.
“You know, Cinnamon, we’re trying to help you here. We know you were forced to take Ronnie and Samuel into Rosewood yesterday. We know Heino Richter set all this up. Tell us your side of the story, give us something on Richter, and we can—”
“No comment,” Cinn spat. Any information he gave on Richter would have immediate repercussions for Tyler. The man he’d done all this for.
It was at that pointshe’darrived. The woman currently sleeping opposite him.
She’d stormed into the room like she owned it, dressed in her stark white suit, her heels creating a loudclickety clack. Her gaze drifted over Cinn to magnetise towards the two detectives, unblinking. “Gentlemen,” she said, voice like honey. “This room is now mine. As is your guest here.”
One detective’s face reddened as he stood up, wagging a thick finger. “Miss, you’re interrupting a criminal investigation. On what authority—”
They were silenced by the flash of a badge Cinn was too far away to read.
An outraged, “You can’t just—”
The woman raised her hand, blue eyes frosting. “I’ve had five hours sleep in the last forty-eight hours, three cups of coffee, and just reduced your receptionist to tears. I’m on a roll. Don’t push your luck.”
With a glance at each other, the two men scooped up the photographs, turned off the recording system, and filed out of the door, slamming it shut behind them.
“You too, Mrs. Thompson.”
His attorney had blinked, looking baffled. Cinn prepared for her to protest—surely she didn’t want to leave him all alone with no representation?—but the woman only gave him a weak, confused smile before leaving the room. She was an even more useless attorney than the one he was assigned when he was convicted at sixteen.
The woman in white took the seat opposite him. She smiled a too-white smile. “Cinnamon, isn’t it?”
He’d cringed, feeling his face pull into the scowl it made whenever he heard his full name. There were many things he’d never forgive his mother for, and his name was one of them. “Just Cinn.”
“Just Cinn. Nice to meet you. I think you’ll want to come with me.”
What happened after that was a whirlwind.
They’d taken a rental car from the police station to his house. She’d said he would need a few things. That they were going somewhere. Luckily, his flatmates were all out. He’d grabbed some clothes… his Walkman, as many cassettes as would fit in the remaining rucksack space…
They’d gotten back in the car.Why, oh why, had he got back in that damned car?
On the drive out of the city, she’d answered everything he asked before that with elusive and vague responses.
He’d given up attempting to talk to her, and pulled his headphones over his head, cranking the volume up until his eardrums were being shredded by Pixie’sDoolittlebeats. Reciting the nonsense lyrics of the opening track to himself must have calmed him down, because he eventually fell asleep.
When he awoke, they were at some sort of fancy airfield place—glossy jets lined up like toys in a neat row on a concrete field.
His memories got even fuzzier.
