Nic was frustrated now, all of the threads tangled together, and her mind too exhausted to sort them out.
“Just tell me everything. Please. You can start with your arrest for gun possession if you want.”
He looked back to the front of the store, then out the window to the gas pumps.
“I’m scared, okay? I didn’t want to go up against Reyes. I can’t go back to prison, and I can’t leave this town. I have two jobs and about fifty bucks in the bank. I’m an ex-con. Are you starting to get it?”
“Why would you have to leave town?”
“You don’t see it? You still don’t see what he is?”
“Who?”
“Reyes. Officer Jared Reyes.”
Now a rush to her head. A wave of nausea.
“He’s the criminal, Nic. A con man.” Kurt let this sink in for a moment, but not a long one. Not long enough.
“Three years ago, he pulled me over for supposedly running a light. It was bullshit. Next thing I know, I’m out of the car and he’s holding a handgun, saying he saw it in plain sight in the back seat of my car. He didn’t even pretend to look back there. He didn’t even bother to go through the motions of the setup.”
Nic stared at him now, her perception of Reyes taking a new turn.
Kurt continued. “Then he said it could all go away for ten grand—like I would have ten thousand dollars. He said I could borrow it from my family. He gave me until the end of the day. I thought,fuck him,you know? I was young. I believed in justice and the people in this town who’d known me my whole life. I believed in the chief and his bullshit about helping kids…”
“But you were convicted,” Nic said, finishing the story for him.
Kurt nodded. “The chief backed Reyes. His pet project. His prodigy. The son he never had. Who the hell knows. Doesn’t matter. Reyes is a con man, Nic.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. But what does this have to do with Edith Bickman? Reyes was the one who made me suspect that she was lying. He found a hole in her story about being in New York.”
Kurt looked up and crossed his arms, like he was preparing to tell her something she wasn’t going to like.
“I went to see her to find out what the hell she was doing. She was a decent girl, but she had an infatuation with Reyes, and he knew she needed money. Always. Had a mountain of debt fromcollege and now nursing school. She said he called her a few days after the search ended. Said he knew where your mother was hiding but that he couldn’t collect the reward money because he was a cop, and it was his job to find her. He said it would be easy—she would call you with the story about the truck. He said you were the only one who would come back and try to find her—it had to be you. Then he would help you find your mother, your father would pay her the million bucks, and they would split it.”
“So Reyes did give her my number,” Nic said, remembering what Mrs. Urbansky had told her father, and how Reyes had put that lie in Edith’s mouth the morning they’d met.
Nic couldn’t help it, but this almost made her giddy. “Then she is hiding somewhere? Reyes knows? I don’t care about him or the money—this means my mother is safe!”
But Kurt’s face did not lighten. “Wait—there’s more. Whatever Reyes said to her in front of you, the holes he pointed out in her story, they were all meant to keep you here, to keep you frantically looking for your mother.”
Nic suddenly knew exactly what he was saying. “No, you’re right—if he knew where she was, why take the chance that she would leave? Why not let me find her the first day?”
“I don’t know. But he wanted you here. He wanted you to stay.”
“And he wanted to set up Watkins,” Nic said now, fitting two of the pieces together. “I think he broke Watkins’s taillight. Forged an invoice for the replacement parts because Watkins didn’t get it repaired in town like Reyes thought he would. Maybe he wants his job.”
“I don’t know, Nic. That’s strange that he would betray the chief. And why you? Why did it have to be you?”
Nic drew a quick breath, her hands crossing at her chest. “I know why.”
She thought about those photos from the summer camp yearbook. Her resemblance to Daisy Hollander. Reyes being the one to drive her out of town. And his growing obsession with her after she let him into her life.
“Nic? What is it?” Kurt asked.
She turned suddenly. “I have to go,” she said. Kurt followed her to the door.
“Wait,” he said. “Where are you going?”
