White Rabbit(44)
There’s a thick silence, the shadows moving around us like slime, and then he says the worst thing possible. “Shit. I’m sorry, Rufus. I had no idea—”
“Just drop me off at my house,” I cut in roughly. I’ve put up with Hayden’s bullying, Peter’s contempt, and Isabel’s manipulations; I’ll be damned if I let Sebastian Williams pity me. “I can use my mom’s car.”
His eyebrows arch in disbelief. “You mean you’re gonna try to go through with this ridiculous bullshit tonight?”
“When’s a better time?” I challenge. “At least now I’ve still got surprise on my side. Once news of Fox’s death gets out, and everybody hires a lawyer, I’ve got nothing. Whatever Isabel believes, none of those guys are going to talk to me unless they think I’m holding something over them. If I hit them with what happened to Fox, somebody’s gonna have to fake a reaction, and I’m betting I’ll know it when I see it.”
“That is literally the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard.”
Unfortunately, it is stupid. And what if it does turn out that Hayden is the killer? Not only is it too late to spring news of Fox’s death on him and measure his response, but will Isabel still be willing to pay me if I only prove her daughter is innocent at the expense of her son? Still, it’s better than the alternative—no plan at all—and so I state, churlishly, “Well, lucky for you, you don’t need to worry about it. Just drive me home. You know … please.”
Sebastian starts the Jeep, grumbling under his breath, but as he reverses out of the parking spot, he grunts, “That’s idiotic. I’m coming with you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I return, exasperated. “You’ve done enough.”
Sebastian slams on the brakes hard enough to make my seat belt engage, and my heart jumps reflexively into my throat as the vehicle bounces to a sudden stop. His eyes smoldering, my ex-boyfriend glares at me from behind the wheel. “What the hell is wrong with you, Rufus? Do you really think I’d let you do this by yourself? When April gave you that money, I thought … I thought she’d killed Fox, and she was just trying to game you or something. But you could be walking into some serious, life-threatening shit, here, and I couldn’t live with myself if I let you do it alone!”
“You don’t have to—”
“Fuck! I know what I don’t have to fucking do!” He exclaims furiously, smashing his fist against the steering wheel, and I stiffen in my seat. I’ve never seen Sebastian so angry. “I want to help you! Do you get that? One of these guys might’ve actually wasted Fox, and at least if there’s two of us, they’ll think twice before doing it to you, too. I should have said something the first time, when you agreed to take the money from April. It was completely insane, and I knew it, and I should have tried to stop you. But I thought if I—” He cuts himself off abruptly, eyes flickering with surprise, as though catching himself in the middle of something he didn’t mean to say. Rubbing the expression away, he gives me a forlorn look. “Don’t forget I’m part of this, too, okay? I found Fox, too; I lied to the cops, too; and I’m also worried about April. And … and you, too. You can’t just shut me out.”
“Okay,” I agree awkwardly, chastened and unmoored by the feeling in his tone, disappointed in myself for not considering that he also has some emotions of his own invested in the search for the killer. Megadouche though he may have been in life, Fox had still been one of Sebastian’s friends. “Um … I’m sorry.”
My ex-boyfriend is silent for a moment. “You know, if Fox’s killer also set that fire at the Whitneys’, the cops might clear April on their own.”
Theoretically, he’s right—only, according to the story we’ve given the police, April’s time remains officially unaccounted for when the blaze was first reported. It would require some suspension of disbelief, but the cops might deduce that she could technically have killed Fox, stolen his car, torched his house as a diversion, and then driven back to South Hero. “All the more reason to get started now.”
“So.” Sebastian puts the Jeep into gear, gliding past the entrance to the police station and turning left onto North Avenue. “Where are we headed?”
Unable to help myself, I study his reaction out of the corner of my eye and answer, “Lia’s. I want to know what Fox and Arlo were really fighting about. And I want to know why she lied to us.”
“Me too,” he admits. But he won’t look at me.
*
A mist rose up from the lake while we were grappling with cops and Covingtons. It rolled through the streets of Burlington and turned the glow of streetlamps into thick smears of gold in the opaque night air. The blue glow is still flickering in the upstairs bedroom at the Santos house when we pull up to the curb, and in spite of the late hour, it almost seems as though Lia has been expecting us; it takes only one text from Sebastian—Outside again. You up?—and within seconds, the front door eases open and the girl is hurrying down the front walk for the second time tonight.
“What is it?” She whispers when she reaches us, but the annoyance that sharpened her tone on our first visit is gone; now, she sounds frightened. “What do you want this time?”
“Fox is dead,” I declare, ready to pounce at the first sign of artifice in her reaction. To my surprise, she gives only a fluttering, distracted nod.