2 Sisters Detective Agency(64)

“That’s fine if he’s one of our victims. But it doesn’t help if the person we’re looking for is a friend or associate of someone we targeted,” Ashton said. “Or someone they hired.”

“Excuse me for butting in.” Baby put a hand up. “But isn’t finding the guy who’s hunting you a problem for the police? Rhonda, we should turn Ashton in. There’s probably a big reward, which I think should probably go to me because it was my idea to do it.”

“Are you kidding me right now, Baby?” Ashton turned to her in shock.

“Nope,” she said.

“We go way back, you and me,” he said.

“I go way back with the cute lacrosse player from school. This guy?” She gestured to him. “I don’t know this guy at all.”

“I didn’t come here to hand myself in,” Ashton said, turning to me. “I came here for your help. I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am for everything we did. It’s like I’m someone else or…under the mask I was seeing through different eyes. But I can see now. What we did was wrong. So wrong. But at the same time, I don’t want to die for it.”

“No, Ashton, you don’t want to pay for it.” Baby scoffed. “You don’t want to do time, so you’re hoping Rhonda will stick up for you. Make this all go away. That’s what rich kids do. Well, you should have thought about that before you broke the law.”

I put my own hand up. “Baby, don’t be a smart-ass. You don’t get to lecture people about being spoiled when you’re sitting on a twenty-thousand-dollar couch in your dad’s fifteen-million-dollar house. And the party you hosted here last night shows you’re much more Courtney Love than Mother Teresa.”

“I don’t know who either of those people are,” Baby said. “But I do know that if someone busted in here, tied me to a chair, and broke all of my worldly possessions, I’d probably want to clamp a car battery to his nipples too.”

“Baby, outside,” I snapped. She followed me in a huff as I got up and went to the Strand, slamming the door behind us.





Chapter 86



As soon as we got outside, Baby took her phone out and started tapping on it.

“Put that away and look at me.”

“In a second.”

“What are you doing?” I leaned over. “Are you googling Courtney Love?”

“No.” Baby scrolled. “She seems cool, though.”

“Derek Benstein didn’t have a car battery clamped to his nipples,” I said, pushing her phone down. “He was tortured with a cattle prod and then shot to death, probably while begging for his life.”

“How was I supposed to know that?” Baby took out her vape pen and put it to her lips. It wobbled in her mouth as she spoke. “Online it just said he was electrocuted. He’s dead. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that I’ve seen those crime-scene photographs,” I said. “And his death was horrific. It was prolonged, violent, and sickening.”

“How did you—”

“Never mind.” I grabbed the vape and threw it into a nearby bush before she could take another drag. “What I’m telling you is that Ashton has come to us admitting he’s done terrible things and saying he’s sorry. He’s asking for help. It doesn’t matter what a person has done; when they ask for help turning things around, you’ve got to set aside everything that happened before that moment and try to start fresh.”

“You’re nice,” Baby said, plucking the vape from the ground and bringing it to her lips. I sighed, the fight going out of me for trivial things when I was trying to communicate such important themes. “I guess you’ve probably had some nasty kids come to you wanting you to go into the ring for them in the courtroom.”

“I have,” I said.

“Rapists and killers and stuff.”

“That’s right.”

“And how did you know which ones really were sorry and which ones were just playing you for a sap?” Baby asked.

I tried to answer, but no words would come.

“I don’t trust this guy.” She nodded toward the house. “Yeah, I knew him back when we were kids, but this is some heavy stuff right here.”

“You’re still a kid,” I said. “And news flash! You don’t trust anyone. You don’t trust me, and I’m your own flesh and blood.”

“Well, what does that even mean?” she asked.

I stepped back and exhaled slowly, reminded myself that I was trying to talk about family trust and loyalty to a child whose mother had dumped her on her uninterested father’s doorstep.

“Let’s just not call the police yet,” I said.

Baby got some kind of alert on her phone. Something was going on in her internet world, a disruption only she could sense as she went back to flicking and scrolling.

“Let’s get more information and see what kind of danger we would be putting Ashton in if we did that. We don’t know if this guy is watching him right now. If he senses Ashton’s about to be locked up, out of reach, he might make a move.”

“I’d say you’re right,” Baby said, exhaling smoke at her phone screen. “He’ll probably move on Ashton next.”