“What?” She sprang up out of her chair, then fell back into it in shock.
Instead of answering her, he asked another question. “What were they like together?”
Lucky had to wrap her head around what that rumor meant if it was true. “Um. They got along. We hung out, the three of us, a lot. It wasn’t unusual for me to see them walking togetherbetween classes or talking in the halls.” She frowned, thinking about how often she spotted them together, Desiree’s hand on his arm. She smiled at him all the time. She complimented him. She flirted.
Just like she did with Hawk apparently.
Lucky covered her face with both hands, then dragged them down until they fell back into her lap. “How could I be so stupid?”
Hawk took her hand and kissed her palm. “Hey. None of that. You’re not stupid. They were hiding it from you.”
“Not that well, now that I think about all the times I saw them together. They were so…chummy.” She stared at the floor, feeling sick and betrayed.
Jase nudged her knee with his. “Did you know Desiree had been…detained multiple times by us, since the time she was thirteen?”
“No.”
Jase nodded. “There’s nothing officially on record, but the guys I talked to said she’d been brought in for all kinds of things--shoplifting, drunk and disorderly, possession, joyriding, speeding tickets and a bunch of other petty stuff. They’d catch her and haul her into her father’s office. The last offense was just a couple of months ago. Some guy pissed her off and she slashed his tires.”
“Sounds familiar.” Hawk glared daggers at the room.
“And she gets away with all of it?” Lucky’s stomach soured.
Jase’s steady gaze dared her to think otherwise. “Let’s play this out with the added information that Desiree has a history of breaking the law and getting away with it, and she and Neil were…having an affair.”
She cringed. “If Desiree was hooking up with Neil behind my back, then I suppose they were also talking about me, too. Things were getting really bad at home. Both of them had talkedto me about running away. I couldn’t. Not yet. Not without Danny. Not until I graduated. I’d need my diploma to have any kind of chance of getting a job.”
Jase went back to the past. “Desiree probably met up with Neil at his house, so no one would see them and out them. Right?”
Her stomach tied into a knot. “That seems the most logical place. His parents worked, so the house was empty until six weeknights. I would tell my parents I was studying with a friend, but I’d go to his place for a couple hours. I couldn’t take the chance of sneaking out at night, but Desiree did it all the time.” She thought about all the trouble she’d gotten into while Lucky was at home fending off her father’s abuse. “It would have been easy enough for her to meet up with him behind my back, maybe sneak into his room through his window. They had a lot more freedom than I did.” Her heart hurt just thinking about them talking about her, laughing that she didn’t know what was going on between them.
It hurt even more to think that those nights she was being hurt by her father, they were snuggled up all cozy in his bed, fucking and carrying on like they didn’t know exactly what was happening to her.
At the time, the only good thing she had in her life was Neil and Desiree. The two people who seemed to care about her. Neil even said he loved her.
But none of it was true.
They lied.
He cheated.
They had a baby together!
Oh. My. God!
She didn’t mean anything to them.
And if that was true, then… “Why kill my parents if he was cheating on me with Desiree? Why put himself at risk for me? Heobviously didn’t care about me if he was sleeping with her.” She gasped as the answer to Jase’s early prompt came to her.
Jase very quietly said what she was thinking. “I don’t think Neil killed your family. I think Desiree knew about Neil’s side business selling drugs, stole some from his house during one of their trysts, drugged your family, killed them because she maybe felt guilty for sleeping with your boyfriend and also wanted to save you from your father and punish your mother for allowing you to be hurt and not protecting you.”
“And then what? Set up her lover to take the fall?”
“Yes.” Jase nodded. “To make sure no one suspected her.”
“But that meant Neil went to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
Jase shook his head. “He wasn’t tried for the murder, remember, because the evidence disappeared from lockup. He was convicted on the drug charges.”
