My thoughts spun too fast to hold on to any of them. I didn't know how bad this was going to get, but I knew Marcus would twist this in every possible way he could to make himself look like the victim.
Behind me, I heard a sudden shout. I couldn't make out the words, but I knew Rowan's voice. It was hoarse and frantic, and it cut through everything else. I tried to turn around, but the cop kept pulling me forward.
"Sir, you need to sit down," another voice said. "Just stay there, alright?"
I couldn't make out Rowan's answer, but I picked up on the panic in his tone.
Next thing I knew, I was shoved into the back of the police car. The door slammed shut to seal me inside, the interior dim and too warm after being out in the cold. I couldn't hear much of what was going on up the path, and I couldn't see much, either, without completely twisting myself around to look out the rear windscreen.
I tried to force myself to calm down. Logically, I knew this would work out. It had to. But Marcus had a squeaky-clean image and no paper trail of the things he'd done. Right now, I looked like the aggressor.
I clenched my jaw and stared at the metal gate that separated the front seat from the back. I hated this. I hated that even now, Marcus was still trying to control the narrative.
My foot slammed into the back of the front seat with a loud, sharpthud. The force of it rattled my bones. "FUCK!!"
The curse tore out of me before I could bite it back. My voice sounded rough to my own ears, cracking under the weight of everything pressing in on me. My breaths came in sharp, ragged bursts, and my heart pounded so hard it gave me a headache.
After a moment, I did my best to shove the rage back down. Losing it in the back of a police car wouldn't help anything. I had to remind myself that I'd get out of this. I still had some leverage.
Rowan
34
“You’re not listening!” I snapped, clutching the towel tighter against the side of my head. “Eli didn’t do this! He’s not the one you want!”
The officer crouched beside me, notebook in hand, face unreadable. He’d already cut the cable ties from my wrists and passed me the towel for the blood. My hands still shook. My vision was still a little blurry. But I could speak, and right now, that was all I cared about.
“Sir, I need you to slow down,” he said. “We’ll get to all of that, but we're – ”
“Marcus!” I spat. “Marcusdid this.NotEli.Marcusbrought the gun.Marcustied me up. You’ve got it backwards!”
“We have officers on him now – ”
“Yeah, and one of them just cuffed Eli!” I struggled to sit straighter, my heart pounding faster now than it had when the gun went off. “Eli stopped him. He kept Marcus from killing me. And now you're treating him likehe’sthe danger!”
The officer's brow twitched. He was clearly used to people yelling at him in the chaos, but his calm demeanour only pissed me off more. This wasn’t some misunderstanding in a pub. Eli and I almost fuckingdied.
“I get that you have a job to do,” I said, voice catching. “But you need to get someone back there and tell themthey’ve got it wrong. You need to let him go!”
“I understand.” The officer spoke gently now, like he was trying to talk down a jumper. “But I need your statement so we can sort out exactly what happened. Start from the beginning.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing useful came out. Just the same words, stuck in a loop. “Eli’s not the one you want.”
I could tell I was trying his patience. His jaw tightened in the way people's faces do when they're pretending not to be annoyed. He wasn't yelling, but he was getting frustrated with me. And I knew if I kept circling the same sentence, he was going to write me off as hysterical or concussed. Or both.
He was already weighing it. I could see in his eyes that he was trying to decide if I was too wound up to be helpful or if I was just wasting his time. I started to gear up again and was ready to launch back into it –
A voice cut in from somewhere behind him. "Let me try."
The first officer glanced over his shoulder. Then, after a pause, he stood and walked off without a word.
The second one crouched down in front of me and looked me in the eyes. "Hey, Rowan."
I blinked at him. His face wasn't immediately familiar, but the voice was. It took a second, and then it clicked.
Charlie Davenport. We had half our classes together back in school. Always talked about music and shows and how much we hated double periods. He'd been one of Eli's mates, too, and they had a tendency to find trouble.
A faint smile tugged at his mouth, but it didn't last. "Listen, I know Eli didn't do this. But the rest of them don't. All they saw was him holding the gun."
