“What did your brother do when the police didn’t arrest Aaron?”
There is not a single doubt in my mind Brady did something.
Sera’s face blanks. “My brother was supportive. Throughout everything… the surgeries, rehab, moving me out of my condo.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” She stays stubbornly silent. “What did he do to Aaron?”
She glares at me, voice icy. “What makes you think my brother did anything?”
“I was there last summer, remember? For all our differences, your brother and I share some fundamental similarities. Nothing is too much when it comes to those we care about.”
“What is it you think he did?” she whispers.
She doesn’t want to say it. To reveal her brother’s secret. I’ll do it for her.
“I know what I would’ve done. I would have tortured the bastard until he screamed for mercy. And then I would have cut him apart, piece by tiny piece and left them to rot.”
Sera blinks several times rapidly and then her slow smile surprises me. “Piece by piece? Sounds messy and time-consuming. Brady’s more of a just get it done kind of guy.”
Her humor takes some of the heat out of the rage that is boiling my blood.
I give her a crooked grin and hold up my thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Okay, that might have been a little extreme.”
It wasn’t. I’ve imagined that exact scenario several times since the night she confessed Aaron tried to rape her.
“A little?” She leans forward and presses her lips to mine in a quick kiss. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”
“What evidence does his family have against you?” I know no body was discovered. If it had, it would have been in the news.
She sighs. “A few days after I was hospitalized, two masked men attacked Aaron in a parking lot. Fortunately for him, a police cruiser saw it, and the men ran off. After he healed, he packed up and left the country. He told his family that Atlanta wasn’tsafefor him because I,” she says, smiling bitterly, “blamed him for a random attack, and my brother was obviously behind his beating.”
“And?”
She exhales with a shrug. “That’s the last time he spoke to his parents in person. From what I’ve been told, he went to Costa Rica first and then traveled around to different surfing hot spots throughout Central America. Periodically, he would email his family, and they would receive postcards… But there’s been no banking activity and no confirmed sightings.”
“Central America can be a dangerous place. How can you be blamed? You were in the hospital.”
Her shoulders droop, and suddenly she looks exhausted. “Apparently, I can be held responsible for ‘causing’ his death. Like if I hired a hit man or something.”
My body stiffens. “So… if your brother killed him, you made him do it?”
“That’s their theory, anyway.”
“What’s the truth?”
She fiddles with the hem of her shirt, her face collapsing in a kind of hopeless devastation. Something in me gives. I can’t pretend that I’m capable of keeping my distance. I scoop her into my arms and settle her in my lap. Framing her face, I make her look at me.
“I’m only asking because I need to know if he is still out there.”
Gold swirls with green as her eyes hold mine. She slowly shakes her head.
“That’s disappointing.”
She lets out a sound that is half laugh, half cry. “I truly don’t know what happened. All I know is one day after I’d had a particularly bad nightmare, Brady assured me that Aaron could never hurt me again. He didn’t have to explain it to me. I’d already caught Vincent handing a stack of postcards to an operative headed overseas.”
“Clever,” I say approvingly. “They knew they couldn’t hide it forever, but it bought them time to obscure things.”
She chews her lip. “I know I should feel bad… or guilty… for his family if not for him, but…”
