Alejo looked at Brandon with a quiet expression she couldn’t read.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“If he didn’t do it, he has nothing to worry about,” Paris said. He patted Alejo squarely on the back. “You know me and him are friends.”
Quietly, Deputy Golden stepped to Paris’s side. “We’re okay to take him in? Just … like that?”
Paris’s jaw clenched. “I don’t want to do this, either. But there’s a witness.”
Logan blinked. Alejo narrowed his eyes. Brandon’s face drained of color.
“How could there be a witness?” Brandon asked.
“Woodley, move.”
Brandon stepped aside.
“No,” Logan muttered. “No, he didn’t do anything.”
Paris paused. He glanced at Logan over his shoulder and his expression was complicated; concern and confusion tugged at his focus. He motioned to Brandon and said, “Why don’t you take Logan inside. She shouldn’t be out here for this.”
Logan’s heart hammered in her chest. This was wrong. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Brandon approached her tentatively, hands raised in front of him as if she were some kind of wild animal he had to calm. The fear in his face made her sick. He was supposed to be fighting for Alejo, not talking her down. Even if he didn’t care about her, he was supposed to fight for Alejo.
He offered her a small frown. “Let’s go inside.”
“You’re just gonna let this happen?” Logan asked.
“What else is he supposed to do?” Alejo said as Sheriff Paris ducked him into the back seat of the cruiser. His expression softened. “Go back inside with your dad. I’ll be okay.”
Logan clenched her fists.
Paris fixed them each with a skeptical look before walking to the driver’s side of the car. He pulled out of the Bates parking lot with Deputy Golden’s cruiser trailing behind. Logan watched Alejo in the back seat, his eyes trained forward, jaw tight like he was swallowing his panic.
The morning was thick with hanging clouds. The sky was blank white and too bright to look at. Logan squinted into the empty horizon.
This was the end of them.
Brandon turned back toward room eight in silence. Logan followed him inside and slammed the door. Before she could speak, Brandon tore off his glasses and threw them against his nightstand. He pressed his palms over his eyes and turned his back to Logan, taking one measured breath and then another.
“Okay,” Logan said, “what’s the plan?”
Brandon moved his hands to look at her. His expression was as empty as the sky outside. He looked at her like he’d just realized she was in the room. His eyes were wide and glassy with a fear that went deeper than Alejo’s arrest. It was fear of something else, deeper than false accusations, like an animal trapped in a net.
“I know you didn’t let them take Dad without a plan to get him back.”
“I don’t know.”
“We have money from the show.”
“We do.”
Logan leaned in expectantly. “So … we should use it to get Dad out of jail. What do we have to do?”
“I don’t know,” Brandon said again. He fixed his gaze on the floor and massaged the back of his neck.
“I’ll look it up and—”
“No.” Brandon sat on his bed and curled his fingers around the edge of the mattress, knuckles white with tension. “We should … we should leave him. The person is still out there. They’ll know it isn’t him.”
Logan shook her head. “In jail. You think we should leave him in jail.”
“Until we know what’s going on,” Brandon said. “He’ll be safer.”
“Oh, cool, so you’re hoping more kids die.” Logan clenched her jaw. “There’s, like, forty total kids in this town. We just got here and there’s already been three murders. I knew two of them. The next one could be Ashley. Or me.”
“It won’t be you.”
“How do you know?”
Brandon was quiet. He gripped the mattress harder. “There won’t be anyone else. We’ll catch them.”
“You know who it is?”
Brandon stared.
The motel room was quiet, but it was alive with a current that made Logan’s heart race. Because, for just a second, she’d thought everything would be okay. She and Ashley were friends, Brandon and Alejo had promised to tell her everything when this was over, and even if everything hurt, the clues were slowly coming together. There was a light at the end of this—the promise that she would make it out of this town in one piece. But now it was all wrong. Bug was dead, Ashley was gone, Alejo was on his way to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.
And Brandon was all she had.
Brandon, who stared at the wall now like his husband hadn’t just been hauled away in handcuffs. Brandon, who couldn’t speak more than a few words without disappearing into himself, who wouldn’t look her in the eyes, whose whole plan was to just wait. Something boiled in her chest, electric and blinding and new. It was a rage she’d never let herself feel before because it was too big, too hot, too much. It was a fire that sparked its way over her skin now. Her breath caught.
“I thought they’d come for you, not Dad.”
“So did I,” Brandon breathed.
Logan swallowed and closed her eyes. She remembered the Brandon from her dreams—the one who buried her, who spoke in a voice as deep as an ocean, whose eyes shone dark and glossy like an oil slick. She remembered the Brandon who couldn’t look at her in Tulsa. The one so full of anger it choked her.
“Was it you?”
Brandon lifted his face from his hands. His eyes were foggy with tears. His hands shook, hovering in front of him in a silent question. The gray morning light crept in through his drawn blinds, painting his face sickly and pale. “Logan…”
“Me and Dad weren’t here when Tristan went missing. He didn’t do it. But you were already here.”
“I wouldn’t—”
“Everyone thinks you did it.”
Brandon’s brow furrowed. “You think I killed those kids?”
“Did you?”
“You know me. We’re family.”
Logan sucked in a ragged breath. “I don’t know you.”
Brandon stood, but not as though he meant to come after her. He looked out the motel window and shook his head. “I can’t explain it to you. Please trust me.”
She couldn’t. She wondered if she ever had.
“I have to … I have to make sure Ashley is okay,” Logan said. She plucked the keys to the minivan from Brandon’s bedside table.
“Logan,” Brandon said, quiet as a breeze. “I promise we’ll explain everything when this is over. I promise. We’ll be okay again.”
She doubted they had ever been okay in the first place. Brandon stood behind her, lips parted like he had a thousand more words tucked under his tongue. Like he wanted to let it all spill out into the silence between them.
But he said nothing.
Logan stepped out into the morning and closed the door behind her.
* * *
For the thousandth time since coming to Snakebite, Logan was suffocating. She pushed down her rising panic attack and drove across town. The morning was petrichor and musk, rain fighting to split from the gray clouds overhead. Snakebite was unsettlingly quiet as though it were already in mourning. The minivan tore down Barton Ranch’s gravel driveway, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.
The Ford was parked in the driveway, spattered with mud and dirt. Logan stormed past it to the back of the house. The windows were shut, blinds drawn, and for a moment Logan hoped no one was home.
She sucked in a sharp breath and knocked on Ashley’s window.
Nothing.
Logan knocked again. Her heart hammered in her chest because Ashley was all she had left. The wind from the lake was biting as the slate gray sky.
She slammed her fist against the window again.
<
br /> The window tore open. Ashley pushed her curtains aside and then they were face-to-face. Ashley’s eyes were red rimmed with tears. Her expression wasn’t grief, it was anger. She leaned out the window, fingers clenched on the windowsill.
“Are you okay?” Logan asked.
“What are you doing here?” Ashley snapped. “Go home.”
Logan blinked. “I’m sorry about Bug. I just wanted to…”
Ashley’s eyes narrowed. Through the window, her bedroom floor was littered with clothes and blankets. Her bulletin board was stripped bare, and pictures of Bug, Fran, and Tristan were scattered across the room. The cool wind fluttered Ashley’s curtains against her arms.
“What happened?” Logan asked.
Ashley exhaled. “I got asked a million times why I was there. At the motel. Why I didn’t … hear anything.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You already said that.”
“I…” Logan started, but she didn’t know what else to say. She hadn’t expected Ashley to be angry like this. She hadn’t really expected to see Ashley at all. “What did you tell them?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Logan folded her arms. “You were at the motel. You could just say we’re friends. It’s not weird.”
Ashley said nothing.
“Can I come in?” Logan asked.
Ashley glanced back at her room, then reluctantly nodded. Logan climbed in through the window and surveyed the damage. It wasn’t just clothes and photos on the floor. Ashley’s chair was knocked sideways, the contents of her desk swept to the floor, her closet emptied. It was worse than she’d thought.
“What do you want?” Ashley asked.
“I…” Logan pressed a palm to her forehead. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. You weren’t responding to texts or calls. And—”
She paused. She couldn’t get the sound of handcuffs clinking around Alejo’s wrists out of her head. She couldn’t wipe away the police lights on the blinds, the sound of Brandon’s glasses hitting his nightstand, the look on Alejo’s face when he realized what was happening.
“Paris arrested my dad.”
Ashley eyed the clutter on her floor. Slowly, she began picking up her pictures and piling them on her desk. She was unsettlingly calm about the arrest. Her jaw was tight, her movements cold and rigid. A breeze wafted into the room and fanned over Logan’s back and, suddenly, it clicked.
“He said there was a witness.”
Ashley paused.
“I’m going through the list of people who were at the Bates, but it’s pretty small. Gracia and Elexis are family. They wouldn’t throw my dad under the bus.”
Ashley folded her quilt and tossed it on the bed. “The Bates is pretty much apartments. Lots of people live there.”
“Ashley.”
She turned, eyes glassy with impending tears. “I don’t wanna talk to you about this. I wanna be alone.”
Logan’s heart crashed and she wondered if it was breaking. Her pulse was heavy, slow, deep. It labored with the weight of this grief, but she wasn’t angry like she was at Brandon. It was like someone had come up behind her and snatched her world right out of her palms. It left her cold in its wake. Ashley’s expression said everything—it was anger and sadness, but more than that, it was guilt. It was the same look she’d had when she admitted she’d broken up with Tristan.
“You didn’t even see anything. Why’d you—”
“I did.”
Logan paused. “Oh my god, you mean when he was taking out the garbage?”
Ashley looked away.
“You know it wasn’t him,” Logan croaked. “Why’d you say it?”
“He could’ve—”
“He didn’t.” Logan sank to the edge of Ashley’s bed and cupped her hands over her nose and mouth. “Me and Dad weren’t even in Snakebite when Tristan went missing.”
Ashley huffed. “Maybe they worked together. Like a team.”
“Oh my god.” Logan’s voice was too loud for the room. She closed her eyes and exhaled. “I told you it wasn’t him. You promised you wouldn’t say anything unless we were sure. Did you not trust me at all?”
“I trust you,” Ashley said. A tear rolled down the curve of her cheek. “I don’t trust them.”
“Oh, don’t start crying.”
“How am I not supposed to…?” Ashley sat down at her desk. She rubbed her swollen eyes with the heels of her hands. “Before all this, nobody died in Snakebite. It was perfect.”
“Careful…” Logan warned.
“You guys showed up and everything fell apart.”
“So, you do think they did it,” Logan scoffed.
“Can you blame me?”
“Yes.”
Ashley’s expression wrinkled in frustration. “What do you want from me? I ignored the obvious because I trusted you, but … I can’t let this keep happening. I’m losing everyone.”
“You haven’t lost me.”
“I lost my home.”
Something snapped in Logan. She stood, red-faced and breathless. “Oh, like Snakebite was so great before.” Anger crept up her throat and threatened to choke her. “I’ve heard lots of stories. It sucked then and it sucks now. You thought it was perfect because this stuff didn’t matter to you, but it’s always sucked for people like me.”
“That is not true.”
“There’s a reason people like my dads have to leave. Alejo said you’d turn on me just like your mom turned on him,” Logan said. “But this fucking sucks.”
Floorboards groaned outside Ashley’s room. Tammy Barton peeked around the bedroom door and surveyed the room. Her gaze landed on Logan and her expression soured. “What is going on in here?”
“I was just leaving, Ms. Barton,” Logan said. She approached the window and opened it. She wanted to spit on both of them. She wanted to let them know that they’d torn her whole world apart. Instead, she laughed. “In case you didn’t hear, my dad’s in jail. Maybe you can go tell all your friends. You can have a party.”
Tammy’s eyes widened, but she said nothing. Under the stern layers of her town matriarch persona, she looked more confused than relieved. “I don’t—”
“Logan,” Ashley snapped.
She didn’t wait to hear more excuses. Ashley was supposed to be her ally, but she was the same as Brandon. Too afraid to do the right thing, too afraid to admit what she’d done wrong. Logan climbed out the window and rushed back to the minivan. She pulled away from Barton Ranch in a blur, because this was it. This was the end. Alejo was gone, Brandon was silent, and Ashley was a traitor. After everything, she was alone.
She was alone.
27
Chokecherry And Other Menacing Flora
Logan was not okay.
Maybe she’d never been okay. It’d been two weeks since the fight with Ashley. Two weeks since Alejo was arrested. Two weeks of visiting him in the holding cell at the Owyhee County police station, talking about nothing, waiting for something to come to a head. Two weeks since her dreams of being buried alive had become a nightly occurrence. And for the last two weeks, Brandon was hardly more than a ghost in her life. No—given everything, ghost wasn’t the right word.
He was nothing at all.
Logan sat alone in the back booth of the Chokecherry. It was the same as always: mildly populated, playing country a little too loud with the lights a little too low. It didn’t set her on edge like it had the first time Ashley walked her through these doors. In a way, it was almost comforting. It was familiar.
“Can I have another porter?” Logan asked as Gus approached her table.
He slapped a plastic cup of water on the table and fixed her with an arched brow. “You’re drinking water.”
“Ugh, this sucks.”
“I don’t think you like beer much, anyway,” Gus said. “Your dad used to order beers and he always made that same pinched-up face you do.”
“Huh.”
&nbs
p; Logan was decidedly not into dad talk.
“Brandon was always doing stuff like that. Trying to order stuff to make him look normal.”
Logan blinked. This was maybe the first time she’d heard someone tell a story about her fathers that wasn’t about Alejo. She’d given up on the idea of an investigation the day Bug died, but she still wanted to understand. She cleared her throat. “Did Brandon come here a lot?”
Gus threw his dish towel over his shoulder. “Let me get the dishwasher running, then I can tell you all about it.”
He made his way back behind the bar.
The bell at the front door rang and the door swung open. Late-afternoon light spilled into the Chokecherry, painting the cracked cement floor a sickly shade of yellow. The first to enter the bar was John Paris with Fran hanging on his arm, honey-brown curls bouncing at her shoulders. John’s glorified shadow, Paul, tagged along behind them. He sneered at the dark corners of the bar.
Logan shrank into the shadows and held her water cup close to her chest. She’d never been one to hide, but she was already at rock bottom. She didn’t have the mental fortitude to fight anyone anymore.
“The booth at the back is empty,” Fran said.
“No,” Paul said. “There’s someone—”
Hefty footsteps clapped over the cement floor, each one louder than the last. Logan braced herself.
“Haven’t seen you in a bit,” John Paris scoffed.
He slid into the booth opposite Logan. Fran and Paul hung back, watching the scene unfold with a strange mix of fear and admiration. Logan gave a fleeting glance to the rest of the bar, but no one did anything. No one said anything. They just watched.
She was alone.
“Yeah, haven’t been out much,” Logan said. She took a sip of water and avoided eye contact. “No offense, but I was really hoping to just sit by myself today.”
John laughed. “Ashley couldn’t make it?”
Logan grimaced.
“Uh-oh, trouble in paradise?” Paul asked.
The Dead and the Dark Page 19