“I should have told them that Idle Delmar never stepped foot on that side of town, let alone Lady Lucky,” she hesitated. “But I didn’t. I lied.”
“To protect Haroon.” Bay clenched his hands into tight fists but otherwise kept his composure. It wouldn’t do to lose it now, not when he was finally getting answers. Even if he was outraged that Nila had helped someone screw over an old lady and tarnish her reputation.
“To protect herself,” Sila corrected. He crossed his arms and stared Nila down. His expression was enigmatic, but the way he held himself, loosely, as though ready to move at any moment, gave away how irritated he also was by all of this, any of the playfulness he’d shown before gone.
Bay couldn’t help but wonder why that might be.
Couldn’t help but hope it was because, despite all the times Sila had said or implied otherwise, maybe the younger man was developing real feelings for him and was upset on his behalf.
Could Sila experience things like love? It was hard to know for certain, though the professor in him told Bay the answer was most likely a resounding no. That didn’t mean he couldn’t feel other things however, things that came close enough to love he’d react the same way, treat Bay the same as he would if he did love him…
This was not the time for his mind to be spinning down that rabbit hole and he forced himself to slam a lid on that and concentrate. This was what he’d wanted for years. He couldn’t allow his messed-up obsession with Sila Varun to distract him.
“Tell him,” Sila demanded in a cool, even tone that still managed to have Nila jump as though he’d yelled it.
“I didn’t know why we were going there, I swear,” she began, only to have Sila click his tongue.
“Skip over the part where you make excuses.”
“Right.” She nodded like that was fair. “That day, Haroon asked me to go somewhere with him before we went out for dinner. It was our anniversary, so I thought it was a surprise for me and went happily. Only, we ended up at this house I’d never been to, and when he knocked on the door, a woman I didn’t know answered.”
“You went to see my grandmother?” No one had told Bay anything about her having had visitors that day, but then again, it wasn’t like it was the neighbors’ job to spy on what the others were doing. “When?”
“The day she was found,” Nila admitted, clutching the straps of her backpack so hard her knuckles turned white. “He said he was a friend of yours from class and he was there to pick up notes. I…We both believed him, me and your grandma. There wasn’t really a reason not to.”
No, there wouldn’t have been. Bay hadn’t had many, but the few friends he did have he’d brought over a time or two to study. Of course Idle would have believed he’d sent a friend to pick up notes he’d left there.
“I never even talked to him about where I lived,” Bay said. They hadn’t been close enough for that.
“He knew,” she told him. “He called your grandmother Ms. Delmar when she answered the door. I remember thinking he seemed so charming and kind. She welcomed us inside and then went to the kitchen to get us drinks. Haroon was given directions upstairs to your room and she said he could go on up and find what he was looking for.”
“Then what happened?”
“He got a message on his multi-slate and kicked me out.”
He blinked at her, certain he’d misheard. “He what?”
“Yeah,” she nodded frantically. “On our anniversary he kicked me out of someone else’s house. He’d texted Russ to come and get me and bring me to the restaurant to wait for him. I left and had Russ take me home instead, because screw Haroon, but Russ seemed just as confused over why he was there as I was.”
So Haroon had gotten Bay’s grandmother alone in her house that day.
“When I heard about her death, I knew something was up, so I went to Haroon to ask him about it,” Nila continued. “He was like a different person. He threatened me and told me I was an accessory, that he would ruin my life and make sure I went to prison instead of him if I talked. I called Russ trying to get him to back me up, but…”
“Russ disappeared,” Sila supplied. He waited to see if Bay had known, and when it was clear he hadn’t, added, “They still haven’t found his body, but it’s widely believed that he was murdered. No one understood what for, but if what Nila is saying is true, we now have a motive. And a suspect.”
“Everyone assumed it was the Brumal,” Nila said. “It’s caused bad blood between them and some of the Shepards. There was a huge brawl at the mall that same day, but no one seemed to remember if Russ was there or not.”
Bay remembered that, not only because it’d been a huge discussion in the papers for a solid hour before the Void’s had the story pulled from the media, but also because Flix had been involved. He’d come out of it with a busted lip and two broken fingers and the grudge he’d held for the Shepards had lingered ever since.
He wasn’t positive, but Bay was pretty sure Flix had lit one of the Shepards cars on fire later that week even.
“Haroon did it,” Nila insisted. “I’m sure of it. He would have silenced me too if I didn’t swear not to say anything. Since I wasn’t involved in any of his other dealings, and we’d dated for so long, he left me alone after I ended things.”
“Hold on.” Bay rubbed at his temple, struggling with this new information and what it actually meant. “The day my grandmother died, Haroon went to go and visit her and they were alone? And? What about after? He wasn’t the one who called it in so…What time was this?”
“Mid-afternoon.”
Idle had been found around six pm.
