I twist my seat back around, finishing the dregs of my coffee, not bothering to respond, trying to think through the implications.
My clothes stink of smoke. I need to get rid of them before our housekeeper takes them for washing. She might be loyal as far as her employment contract goes, but I don’t want the lowestearning person in our household to guess what I’ve been doing in my free time.
Evie’s an eyewitness.
The thought hits me like a slap.
Forget the housekeeper guessing from the scent on my clothes. Evie was there. She knows damn well we’re the ones started the fire.
Her brother’s an addict. She might know those people. She mightcare.
Why the hell didn’t they get out? They had minutes to get free.
But I know the answer to that one without thinking. Because they were stoned. Because they were unaware of their surroundings.
I should have checked.
Random users were never meant to be hurt; they’re not my targets. Guilt and panic light up my brain, making it hard to think beyond the fact we’re knee deep in some serious shit.
We’ve hit other dealers before, always without consequences. It’s gone on so long without repercussions, it felt like a game. Can we wipe out every supply house within the town limits? Can we strangle the supply of drugs until the entirety of Tiaki District is bone dry?
The police haven’t bothered to mount an investigation up to now. Probably just as glad as me to be rid of the scum on the streets, hooking vulnerable children—vulnerablegirls—just to make a profit.
But this?
Innocent bystanders getting hospitalised isn’t a crime they can push aside. Nobody’s going to care the arson was accidental, a consequence of the method used to gain entry.
Theillegal explosivesused to gain entry.
My face turns pale as I work through the possible scenarios.
We’ll probably be okay. Even if we’re not, the same Vale who can convince girls to get abortions—and I do not want to know if my father has direct experience—can probably reroute a criminal investigation.
I should contact him just in case. Let him put feelers out to see what the police and media know so I’m prepared.
The message takes a few attempts to craft. The service we use is encrypted but I don’t know enough about techie stuff to understand if that is enough. Because of that, what I send is so vague, my next fear is he won’t understand what I’m asking.
He’ll report everything to my father but it’s not like I have a list of alternative fixit men in my contacts. I’ll just have to be circumspect about the things I don’t want him to know.
I could also inform him about Evie, dump her in his lap as a mess to clean up. But thoughts of what that might entail make me shudder.
She won’t be the first girl in town to disappear for the crime of becoming a rich man’s inconvenience.
No. Evie is a problem I can sort myself.
I reach my bedroom with a lightness in my step, thinking through how to approach her, how to frame the query, how to improve her life until she’d never consider naming me.
Inspire the same tight-lipped loyalty she showed last night by refusing to name names, even when held at gunpoint.
Even when other things were done to her at gunpoint.
A warm flush runs across my skin, spreading until I’m suffused with a low buzz. It’s nice, better than nice. A sensation I don’t want to lose, and it grows stronger with every second I spend thinking of her.
I told my father she was a friend from school, so that’s what she can become. God knows, it’s where she should be.
I’ll get her away from her dreadful workplace, put her with people her own age, integrate her into our group so she always has friends with money and power when she needs them.
In return, I’ll gain her trust, earn her silence, and get to see her every day.
