I sure hope I wake up.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Jax
Detective Layton is thirty-five, single, and the son of a mother who died from overdose. He spent his teen years in a group home, served four years in the Marines, and then applied to be a cop. He made detective two years ago in Virginia and transferred to Cloverwick three months ago. Why he transferred here, I don’t have a clue. But Damon in evidence said he hasn’t been given a warm welcome—no chummy poker nights, no friendly heads-up about which files to leave alone—and has only been thrown petty theft cases since coming here, which seems right on par with being tasked with finding Marshal.
Marshal Wayne was not popular.
“Do you think he knows?” Caleb asks, knee bobbing in the passenger seat as I put the Hellcat in drive.
We’ve been parked across the street from the Cloverwick Police Department for the last three hours, and Layton has just climbed into his unmarked cruiser with the intent of someone with a lead, and I intend to let himleadus right to it. Hopefully, it’s another suspect.
“Yes.” I don’t sugarcoat it as I throw an arm over the passenger headrest and back out.
Layton most definitely knows that Marshal is dead. I meant what I said when I told Kira she did a good job, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t highly obvious in our antics. And a detective with a suspicion is a dog with a bone. If he has CCTV of Marshal heading toward Kira’s neighborhood, that’s good enough for him to keep digging.
“Oh, fuck.” Caleb braces his hands on the dash and hangs his head. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am.”
“Not in my car you aren’t.” I keep my eyes on Layton.
This little excursion is meant to toughen Caleb up. If he wants to help pretty girls hide bodies, he needs to know everything that comes along with it. The paranoia. The pressure. The way your brain starts running constant calculations—who knows what, what cameras were where, what kind of thread you left behind. It’s never just burning the body. You don’t just clean up a mess and go back to your life.
So yeah, if he wants to be the white knight for a girl with bloody hands? Fine. But he’s going to learn that this isn’t as easy as I make it look.
“Yeah,” I draw out the word. “They’re going to like you in prison.”
“Fuck.” His voice is haggard.
“Me?” I continue, trying to lay on the pressure so he gets stronger. “I’m going to be just fine. But you? You’ll be passed around like—” His shoulders suddenly hunch, as if he’s really going to hurl, and I groan. “Jesus, I’m kidding. No one’s going to prison. Sit up.”
He lifts his head slowly. “We aren’t?”
I roll my eyes. “Landons don’t get locked up. You’d know this if you’d ever stepped out of line before.”
He sits up, a bit green in the face. “Hiding a body isn’t stepping out of line enough for you?”
I take my eyes off of Layton’s bumper to cut him a flat look.
“Right.” He nods. “You mean fights or drugs or—”
“Don’t do drugs.”
“So just fights?”
I give his arms a glance. “Yeah, maybe not that either.”
He has the build of a normal, lean teenager, but he’s definitely not working on bulking up like I was at his age. That Landon growth spurt can border on lanky if you’re not careful.
Dejected, he leans back and looks out the window while we tail Layton, picking at the skin around his nails.
“Nix thinks I’m strong,” he mutters after a minute.
“NixNoland?” I huff a laugh. “The girl who wears combat boots? She called you strong?” I whistle, impressed.
