No, she had been in…
A white fucking hoodie.
Even the dead guy said it, when he was looking for her. I rarely misremember words people speak out loud.
“Yes,” Sylvan is saying as I look from him to Neve and back again. He holds my gaze. “I need to report a corpse.”
SIX
NEVE
“Nolan.” I whisper my brother’s name into the phone. Blue and red lights flash behind me as I walk away from Sky Arena, my shoulders hunched and my hair blowing in my face from the icy wind. I cup a hand over the bottom of my cell.
“Neve?” He sounds sleepy. He’s senior partner at his firm, and I’m sure he’s got to be up early tomorrow and normally I wouldn’t ever wake him like this, but it’s important. “Are you okay?”
I glance over my shoulder, my limbs shaky and frozen. My thin cotton sweater isn’t enough to stave off the cold and the twenty-minute walk back is going to be brutal. An officer offered to take me home after questioning, but I’d seen the suspicion in her gaze. I didn’t trust myself to spend any time together cozied up in her cop car.
“No.” I look away from the lights and squeeze my eyes shut a second before I cross the street at the crosswalk, heading deeper into campus, closer to my place. The lawn is gorgeous, dusted with snow, the old, looming buildings dark for the night but lampposts thankfully light the way.
No sirens scream at the arena anymore, but even now, I see more cop cars zip by, a few of them unmarked, all in black.
And a forensic van.
White.
I duck my head.
It’s not like I’m in trouble, not really, but they said we’d probably have to come down to the police station at some point tomorrow so I needed to “keep my ringer on” and “answer any unknown calls.”
I bite the inside of my cheek as Nolan’s voice becomes more alive.
“What? What happened? Do you need me to be there? I’ll drive; it won’t take me long at all?—”
“No, no.” I exhale, avoiding a girl’s gaze as she jogs through campus at night with a Rottweiler on a leash. The dog sniffs in my direction but then turns away, tongue lolling out as they keep going.
Smart girl.
Meanwhile, my fingers are going so numb I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hold the phone.
“Spit it out, Neve, what the fuck?” The big brother irritation snaps through Nolan’s voice and I jump a little, even though I’m not a baby.I’m not.
“You remember Jackson?” The way I blabbed about him when I was drunk on the phone with my brother. I told him about Jackson’s“real live house!”and how he had an in-ground pool and everything.
Turns out it was his mom’s, and he was crashing at her place while she was on vacation in Costa Rica, but none of that matters anymore. It never did. It’s not like I was ever going tomarryJackson.
I fucked his best friend after all, who was a much better fit for me but I’m not really into him either and consideringI wasthe last person to see his friend alive; he’s not going to want anything more to do with me.
Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Everything spills out as I stop dead on the sidewalk in front of Shadow Hall, the English building, and I tell my brothereverything.
At the end, there’s silence.
I pull my phone away from my ear to make sure we’re not disconnected. But a second later, he speaks.
“Get a goddamn lawyer, Neve.Now.”
I resist the urge to scream. “I don’t have money for a?—”
