Callum went silent.
I could feel his rage through the line.
“What did it say?”
I leaned back in the chair and looked at the sky because looking anywhere else pulled me back to that hill. To Destiny on her knees. To her hands turning red while she tried to scrub hate off a dead woman’s stone with the sleeve of my jacket.
“Whore,” I said. “And under that, like mother, like daughter.”
Callum cursed softly.
“Destiny saw it?” he asked.
“She was the one who found it.”
Another silence.
This one worse.
“She tried to clean it off,” I said.
My voice came out rougher than I liked.
Callum heard it.
Callum heard everything.
“That where your head is?” he asked.
“My head is here.”
“Didn’t ask where your body was.”
I took another pull from the bottle. “My head is on the job.”
“Good. Keep it there.”
I didn’t answer.
Callum let it sit for one second, then moved on because he was a good president and a better bastard when the situation called for it.
“JD’s pressing hard,” he said. “And I mean hard. He’s got the lawyers, the old money people, the school board contacts, the country club snakes, all of them moving.”
“What’s the angle?”
“Airtight bullying case. Hazing, harassment, stalking, drugging, defamation, desecration of a grave. You name it, they stepped in it.”
I sat forward.
“Tell me.”
“They got group chats. Snapchats. Deleted messages. Videos. Photos. Hackers dug up everything. And apparently, this wasn’t the first time Mandy’s grave got touched.”
My blood cooled.
“What?”
“Wasn’t the first time,” Callum repeated. “Someone had a camera up.”
