“There’s got to be something we can do… Let’s talk it out one more time? It just all feels so ridiculous that I’m having a hard time processing alone in my head.”
James waved his hand.
“Then join me out here and I’ll help the best I can.”
Rose nodded and started to pace across the seen-better-days carpet. Her hair was cinched up tight in a slick bun that contrasted with the casual cut of her clothes. The boots she had put on gave her an inch of height but she still looked impossibly small making a groove in the carpet as she went back and forth. If he had seen her without context, he couldn’t have imagined anyone would go to such lengths to hurt her.
Though, maybe he was projecting his own surprising yet steady feelings of protectiveness for the woman.
“The author of that article is, according to the website, based in Mississippi,” she started. “If Darius doesn’t find anything that links him to Damon, I’m going to assume Damon found the article and is just using it as his own plan.”
“Itwasone of the most viewed press pieces during that time,” James said. “Even the comments on it had a lot of interaction.”
She nodded. Then she paused.
“So let’s say that’s his outline as a middle finger up to everyone calling me an action hero. But why wait five months to do any of it? Was it a funding thing? Was it a planning thing? Why wait that long?”
James hadn’t thought about that yet.
The timing of it was a little odd.
“Maybe it was a grief thing?” he offered. “Or, you know, he might not have instantly wanted his revenge against you. Something could have triggered him sometime after.” He didn’t know how true that was, though. Darius had confirmed with the bomb maker that he had been hired by Damon less than a month after the bus incident. “Or the gap could be because he was getting Derrick’s affairs in order. Didn’t you say their parents were much older and lived up North?”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure how hands-on Damon might or might not have been.” Rose’s voice went soft. “To be honest, I don’t really know much about Damon. I only spoke to him once. At the hospital. After he identified Derrick’s body. It wasn’t a very pleasant conversation on any front.”
James had wanted to ask about this before, because, aside from him doing an internet search, he also didn’t know much about the man behind the attacks. Only what Rose had told him at the sheriff’s department, a conversation that felt like it had happened years ago and not a day. Now, though, any and all details could be important, so he didn’t hold back with his questions anymore.
“Howdidthat conversation go? Between you and Damon, I mean.”
Rose slowed her pacing.
“I shouldn’t have talked to him but I—I was upset. Guilt and anger and being so dang tired from all that adrenaline finally leaving my system. Ishouldn’thave talked to him, but I did.” She sighed. “I apologized for hesitating and that opened a can of really angry worms. He had me detail out everything that happened and I told him everything I told you.”
“The fight between that Lloyd guy and Derrick on the bus, you mean?”
She nodded.
“Poor Lloyd too, he just happened to walk by when I was done. Derrick went over to him and, even though I couldn’t hear what they were saying, they were definitely heated. Price eventually had to break their fight up and send—”
Rose came to a halt.
“Lloyd,” she said, interrupting herself.
“Lloyd?” James repeated.
Her dark eyes were like saucers when they swung to his.
“I understand targeting me after the viral video and press, but don’t you think some of that anger might have gone to the man who actually fought Derrick?”
James didn’t know why he hadn’t given another thought to Lloyd before. Now a rising sense of urgency pulled at his gut.
“When is the last time you saw Lloyd? At the hospital after the storm?”
Rose took her phone off the small table. Her thumbs were lightning-fast across the screen. Still, she answered.
“I actually ran into him at the hospital about a monthago when I was visiting Doc Ernest… The Camden Pharmaceuticals people eat lunch in the hospital’s cafeteria since the research annex doesn’t have a big kitchen…” Her focus narrowed in on her phone.
James left her to her silence.
