Briggs still hasn’t texted me. Rugby practice is over. Maybe he’s at the gym. I text him again, but get nothing back. Desperate to reach him, I text Parker.Do you know where Briggs is?
He texts right back.Home. Why?
I grab my keys and run out to my truck. I speed down the road to Briggs’ house and pull up to the gate. I bring up the text Briggs sent me with the code. I punch it in and wait for the gate to open. I probably should’ve pushed the call button and asked Briggs to open the gate instead of putting in the code, but given how he acted earlier, I didn’t think he’d let me in.
Pulling around to the front of the house, I park the truck and run to the door. I ring the bell and wait. Seconds pass, andnobody answers. I knock on the door. “Briggs, open the door! I need to talk to you! It’s an emergency!”
The door swings open, and I see Briggs standing there, an angry look on his face and blood on the side of his lip.
“What do you want?” he says.
“What happened?” I reach up to touch his lip. “You’re bleeding.”
He shoves my hand away and wipes his mouth. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I need to talk to you. Can I come inside?”
“You get five minutes and then I want you gone.” He steps aside.
What’s going on with him? Why is he so angry, and why is his face a mess? His lip’s still bleeding, and it looks swollen, like he got in a fight.
“My dad just introduced me to his girlfriend,” I say.
“You banged on my door to tell me that?”
“No, there’s more. The woman is a cop, or she was. Now she’s a detective and she’s been assigned to the hit-and-run. She’s looking for who did it.”
“She told you this?”
“Yes, and she said the guy we hit woke up a few hours ago.”
“Fuck.” Briggs rubs his jaw, which pulls on his lip, making it bleed more.
“She said she’s going to go talk to him tonight or tomorrow. What if he tells her about us?”
“He wasn’t conscious that night. He was passed out.”
“Wethinkhe was unconscious, but what if we’re wrong? What if he was conscious enough to hear what we were saying? Or what if he opened his eyes long enough to identify us?”
“It was dark. There’s no way he would’ve seen us well enough to identify us. It’s not even an issue because he was definitelypassed out. You don’t get slammed into with a vehicle that size and remain conscious.”
“She said they’re checking with body shops. What if that place that worked on the Range Rover kept records and gave them to the police?”
“Did she say they had any suspects?”
“She couldn’t give me details, but she said they think a white truck did it.”
“So then what are you freaking out about? They’re looking for a truck, not a Range Rover.”
“They’re not that different.”
“They’re totally different. You need to stop worrying about this. It’s over. The cops will look for the truck, never find it, and close the case.”
“I guess, but—”
“Ella, I can’t keep talking about this. It’s over. You gotta let it go. You’re going to create more problems if you keep obsessing over this, and your dad’s new girlfriend’s going to notice. You need to calm the fuck down and act like it never happened.”
“Easier said than done.”
