“Now I know how much you like it, I will be,” Dex says with a smirk.
“Me, too,” Pete grins, then points to my hand still holding the crayon. “If you’re not drawing, what are you doing with that?”
“Oh, right.” I look back down at the blank page. “We need to make a plan.”
“For what?”
“Your freedom.” I don’t look at them as I write their names across the top, giving each their own column.
I take a minute to remember what each has told me about their arrest through their letters and decide to start with the information I already know.
“Jagger,” I say, pointing the crayon at him. “You said you were trying to get rid of Conte Noir’s men, right? His gang was ruining your neighborhood?” He nods, and I continue. “He was on to you, and you were arrested for a man’s murder that you’d never even seen, and yet they had evidence. Right?” He nods, and I writeConte Noirat the top of his list. Thenframed for murderunderneath it.
“I didn’t know that,” Dex says, giving Jagger a sideways look.
“Maybe if you guys bothered to learn sign language, you would know more about him.” He ducks his head, looking properly chastised. I don’t mean to make him feel bad, but I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for Jagger in prison. Only being able to communicate slowly with a pencil and paper.
Jagger wraps his arm around me and places a swift kiss on my temple, making my cheeks heat.
“You’re right,” Dex admits. “I wasn’t a good cellmate to any of them. But I’ll be the best… the best…” He tilts his head as he looks between the other three, as if he doesn’t know what to call them.
“Friend?” I suggest.
He beams his big smile at me and nods. “Yes! I’ll be the best friend any of them has ever had!”
“Oh dear lord, here we go…” Sly says with a sigh before taking a sip of his black coffee.
I turn back to Jagger as I resume my investigation. “Allthat happened in Brookstead, right?” He nods, and I write that in his column. “And you don’t know exactly who this Conte Noir is, or where he lives?” He shakes his head, and I nod before turning to Dex.
“You lived in Greybridge, right?”
“Yep.” He takes a sip of his coffee, watching me write that under his column.
“I know someone was trying to hire you, and you declined. They didn’t like that, so they put a dead woman in your room, and you went to jail for her murder. Right?”
He nods, observing me as I writeframed for murderin his column.
“Do you know who was trying to hire you?”
“It was Il Nero.” My eyebrows raise slightly in surprise at the name, but I nod, adding it to his column.
Hopefully laying it all out like this will give me an idea of how to proceed. I tend to be more of a visual learner.
I turn to Pete next, and he leans back in his seat, raising an eyebrow at me in question. “Ask away, angel cake.”
“You told me you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“That’s right. I was walking down the street, and a man was shot in front of me. I couldn’t even see who killed him, so I tried to duck for cover. Suddenly, I’m being shoved to the pavement by a pair of cops who claim I killed the man.”
“How did they even get you for that? You didn’t have a gun, right?” Sly asks, mirroring my own confusion.
“I guess I had the world's worst attorney or something. The entire trial was a shitshow. They had multiple witnesses that said I did it, even though they never found the gun.”
“Fuck man, that sucks,” Dex says as I writeframed for murderin his column, too.
“Thanks, yours did, too. You too, Jag,” Pete says as they all give each other strange-looking head nods.
“Okay, and where was this?” I ask to get us back on track.
