“It wasn’t her,” I said softly.
“Oh, thank god.”
There was a pause. I didn’t know what else to say. “Is there something you need, Victoria?”
“Sam called me,” she said. “She told me you stopped by, and what you guys talked about. About Alex and Isaac. I didn’t know about any of that.”
Sam had kept that from Victoria too? I wasn’t necessarily surprised. She’d probably been embarrassed.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “Isaac didn’t kill Alex. He was in another state.”
“I know,” Victoria said. “She told me.”
I sighed. I didn’t understand why I was rehashing this with Victoria. I was too exhausted and upset for this right now.
There was a sharp inhale on the other end of the phone. “You know, I’ve been having my doubts about Will for a while. When Sam told me about Isaac, it made me realize that anyone Alex was sleeping with could have been a suspect.” Victoria was speaking so quickly that the worlds were almost jumbling together. “And then when that cop told me they thought they had found Hazel’s body, it hit me how serious this all is.”
It took me a second to process her words. I sat straight up, clutching my phone tighter to my ear.
“What are you trying to say, Victoria?”
“I didn’t tell you this earlier because Alex swore me to secrecy,” she said. “Seriously. She didn’t tell anyone this. I only know because I caught them once leaving the community park, and it was obvious they had been sleeping together.”
My mind immediately went to Nick. It had to be …
“Who?”
“Her teacher,” Victoria said. “That young cute one.”
Her teacher. The words rang in my ears. I was grateful I was sitting down because my knees would have given out beneath me. She couldn’t have said that. I was hearing things.
“A teacher?” I repeated. “Do you know what his name was?” I asked her.
“Mr. Myers,” Victoria said. “But Alex always called him by his first name. I think it was—”
“Bradley,” I answered, as my entire body began to shake.
24
I could feel the rage spreading through my body. Bradley had lied to my face. Turned out, I had not been special at all. He’d slept with another of his teenage students. A girl I’d known. A girl whose death had thrown my entire life off course. Alex and I were connected more than I thought. We’d both been preyed on by the same sociopath.
A sociopath who knew and taught Hazel. My stomach flipped, and strangely I felt like I wanted to pray. To get on my knees and beg to a god I didn’t believe in that Bradley hadn’t gone anywhere near my sister, that he hadn’t killed her or Alex. But if he had already lied to me about sleeping with Alex, he could be lying about sleeping with Hazel too. I had a hunch that Hazel was too smart to succumb to him, but she still could’ve figured things out and confronted him. He was a perfect suspect.
This also felt like the perfect excuse to banish Sam’s earlier suggestion about Will to the back of my mind.
Out of all the people I had spoken to, Bradley had the best reason to kill Alex. He was a teacher sleeping with his student. Had Alex wanted to go public? Had she threatened him? Those could be great reasons for wanting her dead.
I sat on the edge of my bed, remembering all of the invasive questions Bradley had asked the other day about Will and Alex. I’d thought he was trying to help me, but had he been interested because he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t caught?
Bradley.His voice sounded like a knife in my brain. I wanted to kill him. I had been so fucking stupid to believe anything he had said. Stupid then tobelieve I had been the only one. This poor, misunderstood, old soul that he couldn’t help falling in love with. But men like that didn’t make exceptions and fuck just one eighteen-year-old. They made it a habit. If he had slept with Alex and me, how many more were there between? Or after?
He wasn’t going to get away with it any longer. I had protected him inThe Smileys Next Doorbecause I had deluded myself. But I was tired of protecting the seedy men who had taken advantage of me. A day of reckoning was coming for that motherfucker. I just had to be smart about it. I would get proof.
I needed to figure out how to handle this. I could tell Pullman. I’d already spilled the beans that I knew Hazel was looking into the case, but would he take me seriously?
I decided I couldn’t wait, so I picked up my phone, remembering Bradley’s lingering goodbye.Can we exchange numbers … Maybe we can even grab a drink?
I opened my messages and texted him.
