White Rabbit

by Caleb Roehrig

  Hayden, on the other hand, has “two dead bodies and a heaping side of arson” written all over him. With an ego the size of an aircraft carrier, he long ago established a cult of personality at Ethan Allen, and he likes being revered; any sign of disrespect is a crime, punishable by cruel and unusual torture. Fox apparently forgot his place, and reminding him of it—with prejudice—would be par for the course as far as my demented brother is concerned. As his partner, Arlo was likely already doomed by association even before he inevitably failed to produce the missing cash. The only thing I can’t quite figure out yet is why Hayden would burn down the Whitneys’ empty home on top of killing Fox.

  A superfluous house fire, however, is exactly the sort of thing you might expect from a pissed-off drug lord who needs to make an example of someone who’s tried to scam him. I admittedly don’t know a whole lot about drug runners, but it seems a pretty safe bet that any self-respecting kingpin would maintain a zero-tolerance policy about being cheated by his underlings. A bit of scorched earth—both literal and figurative, in this case—might go a long way toward encouraging the rest of the gang to keep in line.

  Glancing over at Sebastian, I recognize anxiety in the set of his jaw, and decide not to share these bleak little observations. Two of his friends are dead now and, thanks to me, the lies he’ll have to tell about what’s happened to them are still piling up. Preoccupied with his fears for Lia’s safety, he’s probably not in the best place for more bad news right now, and I can tell I should maybe not mention yet that the night’s agenda might also include rooting around in the private business of a homicidal drug lord.

  The fact of the matter is this, I suddenly realize: I have to lose him, one way or another. For his own good, I have to figure out how to make Sebastian go home and let me finish this by myself. After weeks of wishing all kinds of terrible fates for him, the thought that he might actually suffer one because of me makes my mouth go dry. He’s an ass, and I hate him; but I hate him because, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to stop feeling fucking feelings for him. It sucks. It really, really sucks.

  The Jeep screeches to a sudden halt, and I rebound against my seat, my heart jolting anxiously. Glancing up, I realize we’re back at Lia’s house, and as I catch my breath, Sebastian thumbs her a message. We’re here. Coming around to the basement.

  He doesn’t wait for a response—just jumps out of the car and sets off across the lawn, darting for a narrow side yard. As I follow, once again trailing in Sebastian’s wake, I shiver. The mist has thickened further, the air clammy and dense, and I feel it cling to my skin like cellophane. I can barely see onto the neighbor’s property, have no clue whether the block is truly as deserted as it seems, and I pick up the pace.

  Down a flight of concrete steps, illuminated by an outside light styled as an old-fashioned lantern, a door opens into a finished basement. Lia’s waiting for us just inside, standing in the dark, her wide eyes shining eerily in the glow from her cell phone’s display—evidently in the middle of texting Sebastian a reply. Thick carpeting swells under my feet as we enter, giving off the scent of a recent cleaning, and through the shadows I can make out the looming bulk of a widescreen TV, a plush sofa, and a pool table. The Santos family might not be quite as rich as the Whitneys or the Williamses, but they’re doing a damn sight better than the Holts.

  “What happened?” Lia asks immediately, her voice hushed but high-pitched, as though she’s worried about waking someone. “Is he okay? Hayden didn’t hurt him, did he?”

  Sebastian doesn’t answer right away, his hesitation presaging bad news, and when he does speak his voice is thick. “Lia…”

  “Just tell me,” she whispers.

  Sebastian lets out a breath. “Arlo … he’s dead, Lia.”

  Her phone’s glowing display chooses that exact moment to time out, and her face is plunged into shadow. She makes a strange noise, something between a gasp and a cough, and a high, thready whine drifts out of the darkness. “No…”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, no, no…” Lia’s silhouette wobbles, she sucks in another strangled gulp of air, and then she drops altogether to the floor as though her legs have been swept out from beneath her. She begins to sob silently, her breath hissing out in convulsive bursts before being sucked back with a wet gurgle, and Sebastian gets to his knees to comfort her. Pitifully, Lia moans, “It doesn’t make sense! He said it would be okay!”

  My scalp prickles. “What would be okay?”

  “He said not to worry, he said it would be okay.” She rocks back and forth, her hands crawling through her hair. “He said it would be okay, he said he had a plan and everything would be okay. All I had to do was … was…”

  “Was what?” Sebastian coaxes gently. “Lia, what happened tonight?”

  She looks up, a bar of light from the window in the basement door illuminating the lower half of her face, making her tears shine as they slip down. Barely audible, her breathing still choppy, she confesses, “We went back.”

  “You went back. You mean, to the lake house?” In a flash, I’m down on my knees, too. “When?”

  “After everyone left.” She blinks miserably, her glistening eyes finally visible to me again as my own adjust to the dark. “Race and Peyton took off, and Arlo wanted to go back inside. He was really pissed at Fox, you know? He was so angry, I was afraid of what would happen, so I talked him down. I told him he’d better take me home, or he’d have to fight me, too. So he agreed, and we got on his bike. But…”

  “But?”

  “Halfway to town, he stopped. He pulled off the road somewhere in, like, Colchester, and just sat there for, like, a full minute. And I was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Take me home!’ But, instead, he turned back around and started for South Hero again.” Her sobs have settled, but her voice remains choked as she goes on, “I was, like, hitting him the whole way, trying to make him stop, because I knew he’d decided to go have it out with Fox after all, but he just ignored me. He ignored me.”

  “What happened when you got to the cottage?”

  “He was so pissed, he actually cut across the neighbor’s property—like, off-roaded through somebody’s garden and almost got clotheslined by a tree branch—because it was shorter than going all the way up to the actual driveway. We just about crashed into the Whitneys’ water heater because he hit the brakes too late, and he didn’t even apologize for almost getting me killed!”

  In my head, I’m sorting the geography of the lake house, failing to picture the water heater. Sebastian beats me to the punch, sliding a meaningful glance my way as he clarifies, “So you guys came up on the side of the house? By the kitchen?”

  “Yeah,” Lia confirms dully. “And he started ranting about how it was ‘time someone put Fox Whitney in his fucking place,’ and how he wasn’t gonna be messed with or whatever. I kept telling him to let it go, to forget about it, but he wouldn’t! All he said was, ‘If you don’t wanna watch Whitney’s candy ass get obliterated, then you can just stay fucking here,’ and he left me with the bike.”

  “He went inside?” Sebastian’s anticipation sounds as acute as mine feels. I don’t know if either one of us still thinks that Arlo stabbed Fox—not anymore—but, then, none of the night’s puzzle pieces seem to fit together cleanly.

  Lia starts shaking her head. “He never made it into the house. He got all the way to the kitchen door, and then he just … froze. Like, he just stood there, looking through the window, for … I don’t know, thirty seconds? Maybe longer? And the next thing I knew, he was bolting back down the stairs and running for the bike again.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing! His face was totally white—like he’d just watched someone get eaten by a bear or something—but all he did was jam his helmet on and start up the bike like he was gonna fucking take off, with or without me. I barely got into the seat in time!”

  “And you guys came straight back here?” I ask. She nods briefly, and the
possibilities begin to swirl in my mind, a tight orbit moving faster and faster as I realize how few explanations make sense. “Did he tell you why he’d freaked out?”

  Lia shakes her head again. “He said it was better if I didn’t know. He said … he said all I had to do was not tell anybody that we went back. That the police would come around, asking about April and Fox, and that I had to just say we’d left when we left the first time, and that was it. He told me if I kept my mouth shut, we’d both be okay.” Once more, she begins to weep. “He said it would be okay! He said he’d come up with a plan!”

  The information is coming too quickly. “‘A plan?’ What do you mean?”

  “He was sure that Lyle would come gunning for him because of what Fox did, and he—”

  “Lyle?” Sebastian interrupts.

  “Yeah. That’s their supplier. Lyle.”

  “Lyle,” I repeat, staring. “You don’t mean … not Lyle Shetland?”

  “Yeah, actually, I think that is his name.” I feel two pairs of curious eyes probing me through the dark. “How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess.” A dull ache pulses to life in my temples as I contemplate facing down even more of my past, my night turning into a clip show of every bad dream I’ve ever had. If I’m going to get killed for all this, it can’t happen soon enough. “So, Arlo had come up with a plan.”

  “To get away from Lyle,” Lia explains, “in case he wanted retribution. The guy’s a loose cannon, and even though it was all Fox’s fault, Arlo wasn’t sure Lyle would believe it. He said there was someone he could get money from—enough to leave town until the dust settled, and he could prove to Lyle that Fox had screwed him, too.”

  I’m having trouble trying to pick which lead to follow first. “What do you mean, ‘someone he could get money from?’ Did it have something to do with whatever he saw at the lake house?”

  “I guess?” The question stresses Lia out. “I have no idea—he didn’t tell me what he saw! I mean, based on what he’d said, I thought…”

  “You thought Fox was dead?”

  “I thought April was dead.” Her voice trembles. “I thought Fox had killed her, and that Arlo was gonna blackmail him. When you guys came here, saying she wasn’t answering her phone, I was sure of it. But then Hayden showed up, saying Fox was dead and April was at the police station, and I … I—”

  She breaks off, crying again, and Sebastian continues to murmur comforting words that I barely hear. It’s possible, I try to tell myself, that when Arlo looked in through the kitchen door, he saw exactly what Sebastian and I had seen: Fox lying in a pool of his own blood, with his girlfriend collapsed beside him. It’s possible he intended to blackmail April … but I don’t think so. “Buy my silence” only works if the person you’re threatening needs what you’re selling; but April is so profoundly screwed by circumstantial evidence alone that Arlo’s silence would be useless to her. A better plan would be offering to sell her a fake alibi.

  Only that offer hadn’t come in by the time Arlo pointedly directed us to the lake house so we could uncover the crime scene.

  No. There is only one explanation; every way I try to add up Lia’s account, the sum is always the same: Arlo saw it happen. He and Lia returned to the cottage just in time for him to witness his business partner getting murdered, and by the time they made it back to Burlington, Arlo decided to use his knowledge as leverage against the guy’s killer.

  Arlo had known everything all along.

  17

  A clock ticks somewhere in the darkness, almost menacing against the soft undertones of Lia’s grief and Sebastian’s consolation, but my brain buzzes loudly enough to drown it all out. My brother is still my top suspect—and only Arlo Rossi would’ve had the balls to blackmail Hayden. The Covingtons have pockets deep enough to buy anything from a Brazilian vacation to a hollowed-out volcano in the South Pacific if the guy had been serious about wanting to escape Lyle Shetland’s wrath.

  Finally things are starting to come together in a way that makes actual sense. I still can’t explain why my brother would stab Fox, frame April, and then later decide to torch the Whitneys’ place—although it’s possible the fire had been a message from Lyle’s people after all, delivered just a smidge too late to be truly effective—but I can now easily picture how the scene at the Rossi home might have gone down.

  Hayden and Arlo were united in their antipathy for Fox, and my brother is a master at exploiting the emotions of others; it’s not at all hard to imagine him convincing his blackmailer that they were on the same side, that he honestly believed a payoff was mutually beneficial—two backs being scratched simultaneously. He could have made it sound sincere … all the way up to the point where Arlo dropped his guard, giving Hayden a chance to deliver a little payoff directly to the guy’s trachea.

  “When you two went back to the lake house,” I ask Lia, “did you see any cars besides Fox’s?”

  She shakes her head with a loud sniffle. “No. We were on the other side of the house from the drive. And, anyway, I told you, everybody else was already gone—we passed them on the road.”

  “Before you doubled back, then. Did you and Arlo pass anyone going the other direction? Someone who might have been on their way out to the cottage?” I’m thinking of Hayden’s deliberately ostentatious convertible—a great car for when you want people to notice you, and a lousy one for when you don’t.

  “I don’t remember.” Lia sounds bewildered. “I mean, no one else was invited, and I wasn’t really—” She stops in midsentence, her eyes popping open. “You think maybe April had an accomplice or something?”

  “April didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Fox,” I declare flatly, surprised by my own conviction. “She was set up.”

  I don’t want to add much more than that, but to my chagrin, Sebastian tips our hand anyway. “What do you think Hayden would do if he figured out Fox had sold him a bunch of pills that didn’t work?”

  “You think—You think Hayden did it?” Lia stares, her eyes going huge. “Oh. Shit. Oh shit!” Without warning, she scrambles to her feet, her knee grazing my face as she rushes for the basement door, slamming the deadbolt into place with shaky hands. “He was here! He thought I had his money! What if he comes back?”

  “Hey, don’t freak out.” Sebastian crosses to her, gently taking hold of her arms again. “You already told him you don’t have it, right?”

  “Well, yeah.” She gives us both an indignant look. “I said if Fox didn’t have it, then I sure as hell didn’t know where it was! I’m not their fucking secretary or something.”

  “Okay, so he probably won’t come back,” Sebastian continues. He tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and I taste something bad in the back of my throat. “If he does, just stay inside and don’t answer your phone. In fact, don’t answer it at all unless it’s one of us. Call the cops if he scares you, and make sure he knows you’re doing it.”

  Agitated, she gives a staccato nod. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” There’s a loaded moment that follows, the clock ticking and the mist drifting sluggishly outside the door, a gray-gold haze caught in the glow of the lantern. Then, Lia peers up at Sebastian again, gazing through her long, dramatic eyelashes. “Can … can you stay here? Just in case? If he really does show up, I don’t want to have to face him alone. Please, Bash?”

  My heart goes through an ugly series of yoga moves, twisting and lurching as Sebastian meets her eyes, their profiles limned by the light behind them. I know I wanted to find some excuse to leave him behind, a way to keep Sebastian out of harm’s way, but this is the universe kicking me in the nuts. Like I haven’t suffered enough without having to watch them flip their relationship switch back to On Again right before my very eyes.

  But the fact is that it’s probably for the best, and I know it; not only is “guarding Lia” a job assignment Sebastian will no doubt readily accept, but—no matter what—I need to put some distance between us before his soulful eyes and sexy cologne c
ompletely undo all the hard work I’ve put into burying my feelings for him over the past week.

  Sebastian, however, doesn’t seem inclined to make my life any easier. Pushing Lia subtly away, he says, “I can’t. Rufus doesn’t have a car. I’m his ride.”

  “So what?” She gives me a look like I’m a vagrant, covered in my own filth, who has somehow wandered into her home by accident. “Call him a cab or something. Hayden’s not out to kill him.”

  My sympathy for her is evaporating rather quickly, but in this, at least, we are sort of allies. “It’s cool. I’m sure I can still get a Lyft back to my house, and I have the keys to my mom’s ca—”

  “No,” Sebastian interrupts irritably, giving me a look that’s part exasperation and part some other mood I can’t quite identify. “We already talked about this.” He turns back to Lia. “You’ll be fine. Your parents are here, right? And your brother? Hayden won’t pull anything with witnesses around—he’s psycho, but he’s not stupid.”

  Lia is no more pleased than I am by this weak brush-off, but she folds her arms across her chest and stops arguing. I’m going to have to find some other way to ditch him. In the meantime, there remains one piece of information I still need, and I face my ex’s ex. “Arlo ever tell you how to get in touch with Lyle Shetland?”

  Sebastian and Lia both turn to me with identically incredulous looks. Shaking her head, she asks, “I’m sorry, what?”

  Simultaneously, Sebastian practically shrieks, “Are you kidding?”

  “Hayden wants his money back,” I explain levelly. “He didn’t get it from Fox, and he couldn’t get it from Arlo, so that’s where he’ll be headed next. Trust me—his parents raised him on a steady diet of ‘I want to speak with your superior.’”