Love Me (WITSEC #3)(64)

I squeezed her hand. “Thank you.”

Keelan returned with the first aid kit and Knox got to work collecting things and ripping them open. “It’s going to be a little bit before everyone clears out of here. Until then, I’m going to clean this and bandage you up to stop the bleeding,” Knox explained calmly. “Did you lose consciousness when they hit you?”

“Yes, for a moment,” I answered honestly.

“She could have a concussion,” Keelan said with a tight voice.

Gently, Knox began to clean my wound. “From the beginning, can you tell us everything that happened?”

I squeezed Isabelle’s hand again and, in detail, told them everything that had happened.





19





We didn’t get home from the hospital until morning, and we spent most of Sunday resting. I hadn’t ended up having a concussion, but I had gotten stitches. Logan had shown up as I’d been getting sewn up. After waiting for the hospital staff to leave the room, I had told him everything that had happened.

To all of our surprise, Logan had been calm and hadn’t done anything untoward the entire time. I didn’t know if it had been because he’d had somewhat good news to share or he’d felt guilty for the things he had said the last time I had seen him. Or it could have been a combination of both.

“Should we call the police?” Knox had asked.

Logan had shaken his head. “It was planned too carefully. By throwing a Halloween party, you created the perfect opportunity for them to slip in without being seen and thus, not having any witnesses to attest that they were even there. Which means they could have killed you in those woods and we’d have no way to prove it.”

“And it also means there’s no point in reporting what happened to the police,” I had said.

“It’d be your word against theirs, and with the sheriff orchestrating this, he’s already planned on you calling the police and will twist everything up to make things look really bad for you.”

“They won’t stop coming after her unless she drops the charges,” Creed had said.

“Which I don’t understand,” Keelan had said. “Shi can say she doesn’t want to proceed, but the case is in the prosecutor’s hands now.”

“That is true. What Ian and I have come up with is that the sheriff has a lot of friends and the prosecution is one of them, and maybe even the judge. Because there’s substantial evidence, the prosecution has no choice but to proceed with the case. But if the sheriff got Shi to back out, he could convince everyone that things were settled amicably and get his daughter and her friends off with a warning or a lesser sentence,” Logan had explained.

Colt, who had been holding my hand the entire time, had asked, “Are you any closer to finding a way to deal with the sheriff?”

Logan had looked at me. “Yeah, we are.”

Logan hadn’t told us much. Just that the sheriff would be taken care of next week and to stay vigilant until then.

It was now Monday and Colt, Creed, and I were walking into school.

“It’s kind of chilly out today,” I said, feeling grateful. I had my hair down to hide my stitches, and heavy hair and heat were a miserable combination.

“It’s chilly now, but it’ll be right back to being hot in the afternoon,” Colt said as we walked up to our lockers.

“It’s November. It should be cold out,” I grumbled.

Creed smiled. “Are you missing that Alaskan weather?”

“No. Maryland weather. I’m used to having all four seasons. Fall has been completely skipped here.”

“I can’t do anything about the weather, but we can pick you up a pumpkin spice latte on the way home if that will make you feel better,” Creed suggested.

Colt laughed into his locker as if that would hide the fact that he was.

“You two are terrible,” I grumbled even though I was teasing.

Colt whipped his head in my direction. “What did I do?”

I turned up my nose and started walking toward class. I didn’t make it far before Creed caught me from behind. With his arm around my stomach, he pulled me against his chest. “Is that a yes or no on the latte, you little tormentor?”

I smiled. “You started it.”

“And I regret nothing,” he said.

Colt came to stand next to us. “Why are the police here?” he asked as he stared down the hall.

I looked in that direction. Outside our first class were two police officers. Not a second later, the sheriff walked out of our class with the school’s principal. His eyes scanned the crowded hall of students until they landed on me. I knew he was here for me. That gut feeling was confirmed when he, the other police officers, and the principal started walking toward us.

I pulled my phone from the back pocket of my jeans and slipped it into the front pocket of Creed’s shorts.

“What are you doing, Shi?” he asked.

“If anything happens, call Logan,” I said in a low voice as the sheriff approached.

“Shiloh Pierce, we're going to need you to come with us,” one of the police officers said.





They said Gabe and Amber were missing. Whether or not that was true, I wasn’t one hundred percent certain.