by Callie Rose
Toward us.
“Closet! Go! Go!”
We throw ourselves toward the open closet door, and a half second after Dax pulls it shut behind us, Audrey and Samuel Black burst into the guest room.
“Audrey! Audrey, for God’s sake, stop!”
“Get out!”
There’s the sound of a scuffle, and a heavy thud, as if she just tried to slam the door on him and he stopped it. Chase, Dax, and I are huddled in the nearly pitch-black closet, holding as still as we can. I’m sandwiched between the two of them, gripping their arms so tightly my fingers ache—and even though the space between their bodies normally seems like the safest place in the world, I don’t feel safe right now.
Not at all.
“God… dammit!”
There’s another loud thud as the bedroom door is shoved open so hard it slams against the wall.
“Get the fuck out!” Audrey shrieks.
“No. You’re the one who wanted to come back early. You’re the one who wanted to talk. So talk!”
“It’s too late, Samuel. I have nothing I want to say to you.”
Audrey’s voice lowers, becoming almost husky with rage. Usually, her tone is languid and a little airy, which only enhances the impression that she’s floating around in some drug-induced haze. But not this woman. This woman is stone cold sober. And she’s fucking pissed.
“Nothing to say, huh?” Mr. Black’s footfalls are heavy as he strides across the room. “Then what were you muttering about the whole time we were in Aspen? Jesus, Audrey, I’m so fucking tired of this bullshit. You’re checked out all the damn time—”
“I’m checked out? Who do you think made me check out, you fucking asshole?” She follows after him, her voice strained and taut.
Dax and Chase’s arms are like steel bands around me as we all hold our breath, listening. There’s a scuffling sound, and I almost jump out of my damn skin when something slams against the closet door. I have a feeling Samuel’s got Audrey pressed up against the solid wood, and a spike of fear floods my veins. He wouldn’t hurt his own wife, would he? He wouldn’t… kill her?
When Mr. Black speaks again, the sound is so close he might as well be talking to the three of us trapped inside the large closet.
“I’ve admitted what I did,” he grinds out, his voice low. “I’ve told you I’m sorry. But if you won’t let me back in, that’s all I can do. You won’t even let me make love to you in our goddamn bed like a husband and wife should. You make me come crawling to you in here, once a month, and that’s all—”
“Because you fucked her in our bed!” Audrey isn’t screaming anymore, but she might as well be, for the intensity of the emotions carried on her words. “You decided to do that, Samuel! Nobody made you! You’re lucky I still share a room with you at all—but I’ll be goddamned if I let you fuck me in the same bed you had her in!”
I’m holding onto Dax and Chase like I might collapse if I let go. My knees are jelly from a combination of adrenaline, fear, and embarrassment.
We shouldn’t be hearing this.
This is just about the most private kind of fight a couple can have. Part of me wants to close my ears up and stop listening, but another part of me—the bigger part of me—strains to catch every word. Waiting, just waiting for Mr. Black to slip.
To say something he shouldn’t.
To mention Iris’s name.
There’s another soft thud against the wood, and when he speaks again, his voice is even closer. I think maybe he’s resting his forehead against the door, his body caging hers in.
“What do you want me to do, Audrey? Huh? I have made mistakes. I admit that.” His voice drops, growing rougher, deeper. “I got rid of her. She’s out of our lives for good. What more do you want? Why is that not enough for you?”
There are more scuffling noises as she shoves away from the door, shoving away from his hold.
“She’s out of our lives?” She laughs, the sound high-pitched, almost desperate. “It’s not that fucking simple, and you know it! And don’t act like you did this for me, you sick asshole. You did it for you. To cover your own goddamn ass.”
“Audrey…”
Mr. Black sounds tired—exhausted—and I hear him step toward her.
“No!” she bites out. “I can’t even look at you right now. I’m going out. Don’t follow me.”
Her heels tap against the floor as she stalks away.
Mr. Black doesn’t follow her. There’s a moment of silence, then he lets out a noise that’s half sigh, half groan.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
It’s all he says before his footsteps move toward the door. He doesn’t even shut it after himself, just turns and heads down the hallway in the direction of the master bedroom.
“Holy shit,” Chase whispers, his voice hardly more than a breath in my ear.
I don’t answer. I’m replaying the fight between Audrey and Samuel in my mind, trying to commit to memory everything that was said between the two of them, every little detail. I wish I could’ve recorded it, but I don’t even have my phone. It’s still in my old bedroom down the hall, along with the rest of my stuff.
“Shit. We gotta get out of here. If he finds out we heard…”
Dax doesn’t bother finishing that sentence. He doesn’t need to. It wouldn’t be good, I know that much. And thinking about it beyond that just makes my blood feel like water.
Slowly, the two boys release me from their hold. I have to pry my fingers away from their arms one by one, as if my body is convinced that as soon as I release my grip, I’ll go hurtling away through space. My legs wobble, but the adrenaline in my system keeps me upright as Chase slowly turns the door handle, peering out into the room.
“Clear,” he whispers.
My heart is beating like a fucking drum, almost as hard and fast as the night we saw Iris die, when I kept waiting for the man in the ski mask to come back for us.
To come back and finish the job.
That’s what this feels like. Like I’m waiting for Mr. Black to return, to dart back into the room and find us all.
We creep slowly across the empty space, and when Dax leans out to look into the hallway, my body goes rigid with fear.
He waves, gesturing us forward, and we pour out into the corridor. If Mr. Black comes out of his room right now, he’ll see us—the hallway stretches all the way to the master bedroom. But I ignore the screaming impulse to look behind me as we dart quickly and quietly toward my old room.
Before we even reach it, the door opens, revealing Lincoln and River on the other side. Both of their faces are stark, and they practically haul us inside, closing the door behind us.
It finally hits me that I haven’t taken a breath in way too long, and I suck in oxygen like I just ran a marathon.
“Did you—hear?”
Linc nods. “A lot of it. Not all. I texted River as soon as I heard them come in.”
Dax and Chase fill the other two in on the parts they missed, and I watch Lincoln’s face settle into a hard expression as River shakes his head.
“We need to go to Dunagan with this shit. Soon,” Dax adds once the twins finish laying everything out. “We need hard evidence. We’re so fucking close.”
“Yeah.” Linc runs a hand through his dark hair, looking slightly sick. “Yeah.” His gaze shifts to me, and I see pain burning in his amber eyes. “Just give me a few days, all right? It’ll be harder with them back, but let me keep looking for a few days. I’ll… I’ll find something. I’ll make him say something.”
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I nod.
I can’t even imagine what Linc’s going through right now—what he’s feeling. We’re all still nervous to jump the gun and report anything before we have irrefutable proof, but I think there’s also a part of Lincoln that needs a little bit more time to accept that this could really be possible. That his father, a man he might not always like but certainly loves, could be capable of something as vicious and
heartless as what we witnessed.
“Yeah. A few days,” I murmur. “Get something tangible, and we can go to Dunagan after Christmas.”
He closes his eyes for a second, breathing shallowly. Then he steps forward and kisses me once.
Before I can draw all the comfort I need from that kiss, he pulls away, turning to face the other boys.
“You should all go. If my dad noticed the extra car in the garage, I’ll tell him Dax and Chase crashed here last night.” His gaze bounces between me and River. “I won’t tell him either of you were here. The fewer people he thinks might’ve heard them, the better.”
The others all nod solemnly.
“Go. Now. Take the service stairs and walk around to the garage. I’ll keep an eye out up here and text if there’s any movement.”
I pick up my bag and shove my scattered clothes back inside as the others disappear to grab their shit. As soon as the boys come back, the four of us make a break for it, hustling to the end of the hallway and down the stairs before slipping out through the service entrance. We’re all still dressed in our sleep clothes; nobody bothered to change.
We make it to Dax’s car and pile inside, then he pulls down the driveway and out the gate.
No text comes from Lincoln.
We’re safe.
But that doesn’t stop every muscle in my body from shaking the entire drive back to River’s house.
26
The next few days feel like being trapped in purgatory.
Lincoln won’t let any of us back over to his house—not even the other guys—and although I know why he wants to keep us away, I can’t stand the thought of him locked up there alone with Audrey and Samuel. Searching, all by himself, for evidence that his father is a murderer.
Jesus, how much more fucked up could this shit get?
We text every day, but despite the frequent check-ins, Linc has no news.
It makes sense. Mr. Black isn’t an idiot. He’s a sharp, cunning businessman—of course he knows how to cover his tracks. I’m half-tempted to take what we know to Dunagan now, to move on this before it’s too late.
But what if Mr. Black has Dunagan in his pocket too? What if the whole arrest at the Black cocktail party was a show, purposefully orchestrated so that the largest possible crowd could witness my mom being hauled away?
To anyone in the ballroom that night, Samuel Black probably looked like a hero, a concerned employer standing up for his employee. But he didn’t fight that hard. He let them take her. And his innocence was affirmed by her supposed guilt.
And what about that lawyer he recommended?
Was Leda Koffman even working to get my mom out of jail, or was she just bleeding her bank account dry while sabotaging the case from the inside?
I have too many questions and still not enough answers, and with every day that goes by, I feel anger ratcheting up inside me like a roller coaster climbing slowly up the tracks. When it hits the peak, I don’t know what’s going to happen.
River and I hole up in his little downstairs apartment for the most part, and Dax and Chase come over often—but we’re missing a piece, and we all feel it.
On Christmas morning, I throw on a thick sweater and a pair of leggings. River’s parents have grudgingly put up with my presence, but I’m not exactly invited to join their holiday festivities—which is fine by me. I can sense the tension between River and his dad every time they’re in a room together, and I don’t want to add to it or be the source of conflict. Besides, I want to see my own mom. That’s who I should be spending the holiday with.
“You sure you don’t mind?” I ask for the third time, jiggling the car keys as they dangle from one finger.
“Positive.” River’s smile is soft. “My dad bought it for me since he couldn’t handle the thought of his son not having one. Didn’t look right. But I’ve only driven it twice. Take it.”
I chew my lip. “You know I’m not taking it forever, right? I’m just borrowing it.”
“I know.”
He tugs me back down onto the couch beside him, dragging me halfway onto his lap and kissing me. I kiss him back, enjoying how easy it feels. Ever since that night at Linc’s house, something has shifted, has cracked open between us. I like it.
Part of me wonders if we’re moving too fast, but it’s hard to tell what too fast is when time doesn’t mean anything anymore.
And it doesn’t.
My mom was arrested just under two months ago, and that’s too damn long and barely the blink of an eye all at once.
River’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and I feel the vibrations since I’m practically sitting on him. He breaks our kiss as he tugs it out, glancing down at the screen and grimacing.
“It’s my mom. The Bettencourt family Christmas is about to start.” His gray-blue eyes narrow as he looks at me again. “You’re sure you’ll be okay?”
“Yeah.” I snatch one more kiss and then stand, twirling his keys around my finger. “There’s not even that much snow on the ground. I’ll just do a few donuts in a parking lot and then head to the prison.”
It just goes to show how little River cares about the car that no alarm shows on his face at my mention of doing donuts. He chuckles softly, then says, “I’ll walk you out.”
He knows I hate being alone around his parents, so he does what he can to be a buffer between them and me. I still don’t know quite why they’re allowing me to stay here when they clearly don’t like me much, but I think maybe it’s because they don’t want to be the family that kicked out the homeless, fatherless daughter of a suspected felon. It’s bad optics either way, but between kicking me out and letting me stay? Kicking me out is worse.
There’s a twenty-foot tall Christmas tree in the living room, and River’s parents are standing in front of it as we walk past. I try to give them a friendly smile when they glance up, but I don’t know why I bother. It never changes how they look at me at all.
It snowed two days ago, so there are fluffy white piles of the stuff everywhere. The walkway is clear though, and so is the driveway. I don’t tell River, but I’m a little nervous about driving in winter weather. I’ve never done it before. At least, not someplace that actually had a winter.
I’m sure I can handle it though. And it feels good to have the autonomy of a car again after the cops took Mom’s away.
River waits outside the front door until I drive off, and the GPS on my phone tells me how to get to Fox Hill Correctional Center. I know the bus route by heart, but not how to get there directly.
More snow starts to fall as I drive—big, fat flakes that swirl around in front of the windshield. I flick on the windshield wipers even though I don’t really need them yet, and I’m about halfway to the prison when the directions on my phone are interrupted by the sound of the ringtone. I glance down at it on the seat next to me, and my heart jumps.
Lincoln.
We’ve been mostly texting the past few days, so I don’t know what a call means. Maybe he’s just calling to wish me a merry Christmas.
Or maybe he’s finally found something.
I pull over to the side of the road and put my hazards on. There’s no way I’m talking on the phone and driving in the snow in someone else’s car. River might not subscribe to the “you break it, you buy it” principle, but I bet his dad does. And I definitely can’t afford this car.
My fingertips shake slightly as I pick up the phone, swiping the screen to answer before it can go to voicemail.
“Linc? What’s up?”
There’s silence on the other end of the line.
“Lincoln?”
I pull the phone away from my ear to make sure it’s still connected. It took me a while to answer. Maybe I just missed the call.
But no. His name is on the screen. The call went through.
“Linc?” My heart thuds in my chest. “Are you—”
“It wasn’t her.”
His voice is thick, full of emotions I can’t even begin to gu
ess at.
“What? What are you talking about? Who wasn’t her?”
“The woman my dad knocked up. It wasn’t Iris. It was Paige. Our… last housekeeper. He got her pregnant and then tried to buy her off. But her rate kept going up. She showed up at our fucking house this morning demanding more money, saying if he didn’t cough up, she’d slander his name all over town.”
My mouth works, but no sounds come out. I’m trying to process everything I just heard, and now I know why Linc’s voice sounded so strange. I don’t know how to feel about any of this.
If his dad isn’t a murderer, that’s good.
But it doesn’t change the fact that he’s a liar and a cheater.
And if Samuel Black is innocent, if everything we thought tied him to Iris tied him to Paige instead, it means… we have nothing.
No lead on the man in the ski mask at all.
“Linc,” I rasp, my voice strained, “just because he knocked up that woman doesn’t mean he didn’t—with Iris too—”
“He was with Paige that night. Negotiating. It couldn’t have been him who killed Iris.”
The line goes silent again.
I think maybe I want to cry, but I’m too numb for any tears to fall.
We lost.
We’ve been playing the wrong game for weeks, focusing on the wrong thing, and in the meantime, my mom’s case has been advancing toward trial, the evidence against her piling up like the snow on the side of the road outside.
Fuck.
“Low.” Lincoln’s voice softens, and I know that even though his own family life just devolved into a shit-show, he’s worried about me. He knows that, on some very fucked up level, I was counting on the fact that his dad was guilty. “We’ll keep looking. We’ll go back to our list and start digging deeper. We will not let your mom stay in jail. We’ll fix this. I promise.”
A flash of white-hot anger flares inside me, making my stomach clench. But this time, it’s not directed at Lincoln or any of the kings of Linwood. I’m furious at the man who did this to my mom, who put the boys in an impossible situation with no good answers.