“We need to figure out what happened to him.”
They nodded. “We’re still looking into it,” Jasper said. Maybe I was the only one who forgot. “But there’s not a lot to work with right now. When we get past this Delta situation, we can focus on the Oscar thing.”
Yeah, I supposed that was fair. Oscar was dead and nothing would bring him back. But the rest of us … we hadn’t kicked the bucket yet, and to ensure we stayed topside, we had to take Delta down.
Beck walked out of the kitchen, handing me my cup, filled with beautiful, perfect, lifesaving coffee. “Figured you could use that,” he said, sitting beside me so I was sandwiched between him and Jasper. Evan and Dylan were on the couch across from us.
All of us stared at the envelope on the glass-topped coffee table.
No one pushed me to open it, which was so unlike their normally impatient selves, and it made me put on my big girl panties and reach out to grab it. I ripped the top off the seal before I could think twice about it.
Upending the contents onto the table, I found a cell phone: small, black, and totally beat up. One of those cheap burner types you’d get from Walmart. Thankfully, it powered up immediately when I pressed the button. There were also assorted pieces of paper; some that I could see looked like records of bank transfers.
Dylan immediately flicked through the paperwork, while I opened the messages on the phone. There was only one contact that messaged or called this phone, and it was not Catherine’s number. Or at least not the number I had for her. I scrolled back to the very earliest message, noting the year on the timestamp was 2009.
Unknown: You have your first assignment: befriend the girl. Remember. You fail, and your family will suffer. Your sister will suffer. This is a job, and I expect you to do it right.
This was it, the moment that Catherine blackmailed someone into keeping tabs on me. Someone who would become my best friend and one of the only people I’d ever trust.
Beck and Jasper leaned over to read with me as I scrolled through the messages. Most of them were standard stuff, but there were a few which turned my stomach.
Collect blood samples. Collect urine samples. Collect DNA.
“Dante refused to do some of them,” Jasper pointed out. “Like the DNA one.”
That was true, I could see the return messages where he’d argued with her. Catherine had allowed him some leeway in what he did, and I could see that some of the answers he gave her were modified. Some even false.
“He lied to her a lot,” I said, “about me. I can kind of see where he was trying to help me.”
I kept scrolling, my heart pounding harder because we were coming up to the dates close to my parents’ deaths.
Unknown: Weekly schedule of the parents. Condition of their car. I need both immediately.
Dante: Why?
Unknown: It’s not your job to question me. Just know that circumstances have changed, and I have need of this information.
Dante: Are you going to hurt them? Or Riley?
Unknown: Falling in love with your job is a bad idea, gangbanger. Remember that everything you have in this life, is because of me, and I can take it all away. How’s your niece?
“She doesn’t even try to be subtle,” I choked out before scrolling farther down. Dante had listed my parents’ work hours, my after-school activities, and our weekly dinners out.
I paused at a text to a different number. The first number that wasn’t Catherine. A number I knew very well.Dante: Riley is in danger. Stay put for more instructions. This is a life and death situation. Trust me.
My breathing came in and out in gasps.
“What is it?” Beck asked sharply.
“That’s my dad’s number,” I whispered. “He texted that to my dad on the day we crashed.”
My head felt light and airy, like my brain had disconnected from my body. “That’s why my father made us go out. He insisted on it despite the crappy conditions. Dante had tried to warn him, but instead he’d scared him.”
“Weren’t you going for dinner or something?” Evan asked, his eyes locked on me.
“Yes,” I started before more of the memories from that night came back to me. I’d deliberately not thought about it, which was stupid considering I was a key witness to what had happened, but who wanted to relive the worst day of their life? “We were going in the wrong direction. I didn’t really question it at the time, but … we were kind of heading out of town.”
My dad had seemed somewhat agitated.
