* * *
“Miss Davies,thank you for coming in.”
A man in khaki slacks walks into the small room I’m sitting in. The sleeves of his white shirt are rolled up, revealing a tattoo. He takes a seat across from me, and I angle my head so I can read what his tattoo says.Semper Fi. He has dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard with more salt than pepper. “I’m Detective Morris.”
A detective? My knowledge about police procedure is limited to television dramas, but aren’t detectives used for actual cases? I thought this was just about some questions.
I lick my lips and wipe my hands on my shorts. I wish Brady were with me. They separated us the second we walked in the station doors, whisking me away from him without the possibility of a last glance.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” I tell him, my voice shaking.
He folds his hands on the table between us and offers me a smile like he feels bad for me.
“You’re here because we need to talk about a conversation you had this afternoon with your friends.”
I make a face. Conversation? What conversation?
“Earlier today, did you take part in a conversation where the topic included killing your stepfather, Ted Blake?”
My mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. I don’t know what to say. The answer isyes, but does he understand why that conversation took place?
“Yes, but it’s not the way it sounds.” Desperation coats my voice. “We were being stupid. We were angry at him.Iwas angry at him after... after…” I pause, considering my mother’s threat. Usually I want college more than I want air, but whatever’s happening here is bigger than a debt-free ride through higher education.
I tell him what happened. He listens, and when I’m finished, he nods his head.
“Thank you for sharing that with us,” he says evenly. No emotion, no understanding, noI’m sorry you went through that.
“Do you understand the severity of a conversation like the one you and your friends had today?”
“Yes, of course, but it’s not like we did anything. Nothing happened. Obviously you know that, because Ted’s alive. Isn’t that proof that nothing happened? That Brady and I shouldn’t be here?”
What about Finn? If they came for me and Brady, wouldn’t they have also come for Finn?
“Is Finn Jeffries here too?”
Detective Morris ignores me. He looks at me like he’s evaluating me, rubbing the pad of his thumb against his chin. “Lennon, at around eight-thirty this evening, your mother found your stepfather unresponsive in his bed. She called an ambulance, and they pronounced him dead on the scene.”
Shock takes the breath from me. Soon my lungs are screaming for it, and I suck it in. “He died? Of what? My mom said he wasn’t feeling well.” I rub my forehead, as though checking for a fever.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. Normally we’d attribute it to natural causes and the family would decide if they’d like an autopsy, but then your mother informed us of the conversation she’d overheard and we thought it was enough to look a little harder.”
I gasp. “My mother?”
He makes a face as if even he’s surprised to hear she would inform on her own daughter.
“I had nothing to do with it. None of us did. We talked, we left in Brady’s car, and that was it.”
“What did you do earlier in the day?”
I walk him through every moment, starting from the second I woke up this morning.
“Was anybody else in the house today besides you, your mother, and your stepdad?”
I shake my head no, and then it hits me.
Brady packed my bag.
Even so, he would never do anything to Ted. Brady has a whole future ahead of him, one he wouldn’t give up to do something so stupid, so violent, so unlike him.
