“Fuck,” she says.
“Are you cussing because you’re mad you can’t crush my hand?”
“No, I’m cussing because it feels like a crazy weight has been lifted off my chest. Because it feels like I’m flying high. I feel like I could accomplish anything.”
I pull her around to face me. “But if you ever mention what I did, I will destroy you,” I warn.
“I already promised I wouldn’t,” she says. “Hell, after they find a new placement for me, we might never see each other again.”
TWENTY-SIX
Liam
Present
“So they really did write off his death as a—fucking hell, Liam! What are you doing?” Gabriel asks as I whip the car off the road and into a parking spot.
“Something Jesse said just hit me,” I say as I clamber halfway into the back seat.
“Did I need whiplash over it?”
“I’ll massage your neck later and make sure to kiss you all over and make up for it,” I assure him as I rip open my laptop bag and pull out the file Jesse gave me.
“Is this from Jesse? The person you said was boring and useless?”
“Shhh, my love. I didn’t think of it because Abby always called her friend Christa. It wasn’t until I was going over shit that I remembered her sister calling her Margaret Christine.” I wave the file in front of Gabriel, who takes it from me.
“Oh shit, she died. She was… what? Eighteen?”
“Looks like it. Died after a college party. Her body was found the following day in a ditch about a mile from her house. A neighbor found her. It was determined that she was intoxicated and slipped and fell into the ditch. Because of the water in it, she ended up drowning,” I say.
“That’s awful. Abby never said anything about it?”
“Abby and I hadn’t seen each other in two or so years by that point,” I say as I flip through it before hesitating.
“What?” Gabriel asks.
“Look at the results from the autopsy,” I say.
He examines it for a moment. “I’m sure I’m supposed to see something here… that I’m missing… and I want to look smart… but…”
“The sediment found. Someone thrashing in the water as they drowned would be working up sediment and other traces of things. Hell, even if she just fell into it, she’d have stirred it up when she hit.”
“I see that… but…”
“Twenty years ago, that area was newly developed. There was a case on that road about five years back; that’s why I know the area. There are no basements in those parts because bedrock sits right below the dirt’s surface. So sediment like this wouldn’t have been found in a recently constructed ditch in an area where bedrock and clay were prevalent. Clearly, she was drowned elsewhere and then moved near her house, and it was written off as an accidental death.”
Gabriel hums in thought. “Let me shoot this off to Jesse. I bet he could look into it further. If we could figure out who Steven was meeting at the bar that night, we could prove these cases mesh. Like… if he was meeting Cameron or something.”
“I was thinking about cameras for the bar, but what about the band?” I ask. “Are they popular enough that people arerecording the band? There’s such a low chance of it, but you never know.”
“Let me look while you drive,” he says.
We reach the hospital without any concrete information and when we head up to the room Abby’s in, I find her asleep.
“Abby, you’re alive,” I say by way of greeting.
She opens her eyes and stares at me for a second, like she’s looking at a ghost. “L-Liam?” she whispers. “What happened to you?”
