“That’s Auggie’s.” Grayson watches in curiosity.
Without delay I unzip it and empty the contents onto my lap.
Axel laughs sarcastically. “Of course, that’s where you kept it hidden. The one place we wouldn’t dare look. One hundred lifetimes and it was in the fucking giraffe the entire time.”
He and Grayson are sitting up now, still observing me.
“How did Auggie get this?” I ask. Because it was inhis room, behind his desk. Hidden in a spot he didn’t tell anyone about.
Grayson picks up the polaroid, his eyebrows furrow together, and he rolls his lips in anger. “You know what happened to Carrie.”
I nod.
“He suspected she wasn’t the only one. But after Axel’s sentencing they let it go. For a while at least.” Grayson drops the photo, picking up the phone next.
Where the photo didn’t have any threads attached to it, there is a bright shimmer when he touches the phone. It is a different color than I’ve seen. It’s pure white.
“The lights, the threads I’m seeing. There’s one that’s attached to that phone.” I decide it’s best if we all know as much as we can.
At this point keeping anything from them would be a mistake, just as it always was. I just didn’t have the wherewithal to realize it before.
“Interesting,” Grayson says, and he means it. He continues examining it. “The charger isn’t something we have.”
“You’ve never seen these items?” I ask.
“No,” Axel confirms. “You would always sneak and find them and then hide them before we could. We just know they existed because Auggie toldus they did. A phone and a picture. Damming proof.” Axel rakes his fingers through his tousled hair.
“But if they took the pictures, why didn’t they stop it? Why couldn’t they keep the girls from being assaulted.”
Grayson drops the phone in shock. “Sunday, they did.”
“What?”
“Right after this picture was taken, Tripp and Auggie jumped from the closet to pulverize Maxwell into a bloody pulp, and they managed it. But then the next day Axel was shanked. Left for dead in his cell. We guessed they kept him alive if only to continue to keep the boys in check. To remind them how far the Thorne’s influence extends.” Grayson reaches a hand up to cup my face, the rough pad of his thumb stroking my lips. “Tripp and Auggie took the other pictures not knowing what it meant. They just wanted to see if the others were up to anything nefarious. Unfortunately, they didn’t know until too late that Julia was a victim in this too.”
“Tiffany?” She was the third girl in the pictures on the phone. The one William drugged.
“For what we have found, she was brought into their organization very shortly after,” Axel confirms.
“If–” I organize my thoughts. “If they knew investigating further would get Axel killed. Why did they do it?”
“For me.” Axel snorts sardonically. “Tripp’s goddamn guilty conscience weighed him down too heavily. He knew I was in jail because of him and no matter how much I told him it was okay, he didn’t believe me. I just wanted my brother to live out a normal life, at least as normal as he could in this town. But he was stubborn. Just like Auggie was. Just like you are. All of you on a mission no matter what.”
It sounds like the truth…except not all of it, and I don’t quite believe him. There’s more to it than that, but before I can demand a better explanation, Axel’s fingers find their way into my curls, tangling further into the mess. He jerks me out of Grayson’s hold until I am looking up at him upside down.
He slams his lips to mine. This angle is different, his bottom lip on my top. It’s easier to bite down on his.
He growls, but then Grayson is swatting him away.
“Stay focused,” Grayson admonishes.
“So what did they do?” I ask breathlessly.
“They went to the goddamn FBI.” Axel jumps up from the bed. I can feel his anger, the tension that has formed. He kissed me to calm himself, but without the outlet his emotions are bubbling to the surface. “Nobody would listen to him. Until Agent Franz found the file. Saw her lost daughter.”
“Then why wouldn’t the FBI listen if her daughter was taken?”
“Because her daughter wasn’t even missing in their minds. There was evidence she had gone on a trip out of the country. That she was just living her best college life. That she was a part of an exchange program.” Axel sneers. “The Thornes know how to cover their tracks. They have been doing this foryears.Decades and decades.”
