“You sure?” I asked skeptically.
“Yep. Chief just handed it over.”
Strange.
Slapping it against my hand, I backed away from Crew, curiosity rising. “Thanks,” I said, then turned around to head for my bunk.
Getting mail at the station wasn’t out of the norm, but it was rarely addressed directly to me. Typically, we received updated reports and procedures from our governing body in Boise. Chief Madden would then distribute them to his paramedics.
Sitting on my bed in the empty bunkroom, I folded my legs beneath me and ripped into the envelope. I dumped the contents on the bed, and paper fluttered everywhere. A few scraps slipped off the sides of the narrow mattress and onto the floor.
I blinked slowly, taking a beat to absorb what I was seeing.
Newspaper articles.
Curious, I lifted one up, then instantly dropped it like I’d been burned as the headline blazed and seared itself into my retinas.
UNIVERSITY STUDENT ACCUSED OF RAPE
“What the fuck…”
With shaky hands, I sifted through more articles. There had to be at least thirty of them from various publications, both print and digital. A few more jumped out at me.
BOISE STATE RAPE CASE SETTLED
HUMAN REMAINS FOUND
BELIEVED TO BE THOSE OF RYAN BOYD
DNA CONFIRMS REMAINS AS RYAN BOYD
Abstractly, I knew he was dead because Lane had said so, but to see it splashed so plainly across these headlines had the knowledge truly sinking in for the first time.
Ryan Boyd wasdead.
My tormenter, my rapist, the man who had taken something from me that had taken over a decade and a half to recover, was dead.
So why was someone sending me these articles now? My name had never been released to the public. I’d been very firm about that.
A lot of that time was hazy, but I’d never forget the day when a detective and Ryan’s lawyer had shown up, unannounced, I might add, at my off-campus apartment to speak with me about the case.
They’d been frank about the reason for their visit, which I’d weirdly appreciated even if it pissed me the fuck off. There’d been no shady backroom dealings—other than approaching me without my own attorney present.
“You’re going to let this go,” Ruiz, the Boyds’ lawyer, said.
“And why would I do that?” I asked, adopting confidence and bluster I definitely didn’t feel. Internally, I was freaking the fuck out. I knew I should’ve called my attorney immediately, should’ve demanded these asshats leave, should’ve donesomething. But I was frozen. Exactly as frozen as I had been since that night three months ago.
I wondered if I’d ever return to normal—or whatevernormallooked like after going through what I had.
Chadwick gave me a pitying smile that had me wanting to claw his eyes out. “Come on, Miss Rausch. We all know these kinds of things don’t stick. They’re impossible to prove, and they never go the way you’ll hope. Save yourself further trauma and take the deal.”
I wanted to laugh. What the hell did he know about trauma? Did he not understand his very presence wasfurthering my trauma?
“What deal?”
As pissed off as I was, he did have a point. Walking this road, intent on persecuting the disgusting boy who’d violated me, would likely not pan out the way I hoped, no matter the assurances my attorney made me.
Ruiz dug into his briefcase and withdrew a sheaf of papers, sliding the stack across the table between us until it rested in front of me.
