The officer snorts.
What the fuck?
“Hold the line, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
Bile tracks the length of my throat.
Don’t let them win. You’ve got this.
I’m giving myself a pep talk, when another male officer picks up, just as Tyler’s orange Camaro pulls into the parking space beside me. I can’t believe he still has that thing after all these years. It rumbles loudly, the sound of his deep-throated engine echoing.
“Officer Reid,” he repeats.
My tongue feels too thick for my mouth, but before I allow my words to dissolve at the tip, I start to speak. “Did you even try?”
There’s rustling on the other end. “Who am I speaking with?” Officer Reid asks firmly, and the wary tone of his voice tells me that I’ve captured his attention.
“You did nothing. You took the information I gave you, and you threw it in the fucking trash, didn’t you? It was too much work to find an already dead girl without any leads, wasn’t it?”
He sighs, clearing his throat. There is whispering in the background, and it causes me to shiver.
“Blaine Everson?”
I choose not to confirm or deny, simply stating, “You failed her.”
Officer Reid clears his throat, then says, “I’m sorry, Blaine, but it was your word against her parents’. When we spoke with them, they confirmed that they had heard from her regularly–”
I cut him off. “I would never fucking lie about something like that.”
“I’m really sorry, Blaine, but their word was enough to close the case.”
Silence descends, leaving tension so thick I can feel myself suffocating.
He speaks again. “I understand why you’re mad. Officer Maeve and I are mad too. Whoever did this to Laney knew what they were doing. They were smart.”
No, they were fucking animals,and you let them be.
“Us,” I correct him, then laugh, but it’s an empty sound. “Who did this to us!” I don’t recognize the voice falling from my mouth. “Or have you forgotten what they did to me too, Officer Reid?”
“Look, can we meet? Let’s discuss this, sweetheart.”
I laugh again, disgruntled, and I choose to ignore the choice of endearment that only feels like the heated metal triangle searing right into my groin all over again.
My words come out hard and heavy. “You failed her, Officer Reid. How many more women are you going to fail? How many more women do you have to find in shallow ditches, soaked in gasoline, with bullets in their foreheads and their throats so deeply slit they were almost fucking decapitated, to get up off your fat fucking ass and do something about it?” I swallow the lump in my throat.
“Blaine, could you please tell me how you know that information?”
“Oh, you think I did it.” I pause with another disheveled laugh. “You can go fuck yourself!”
I drop my phone from my ear and struggle to press the end button as my fingers tremble. Everything in front of my eyes is blurred with anger when I snatch up my black tote bag from the passenger seat and step out of my car.
How could a human with a goddamn heart so easily close a case so vile without clear answers?
Cameryn is resting against Tyler’s Camaro, the sole of her Doc Marten perched on the metal as she sucks from the joint between her lips. Jutting her chin up at me, she exhales a cloud with the relaxed movement. “You alright?” She passes the J to Tyler, standing beside her.
“Nope,” I reply.
