White Rabbit(52)

In my head, I’m sorting the geography of the lake house, failing to picture the water heater. Sebastian beats me to the punch, sliding a meaningful glance my way as he clarifies, “So you guys came up on the side of the house? By the kitchen?”

“Yeah,” Lia confirms dully. “And he started ranting about how it was ‘time someone put Fox Whitney in his fucking place,’ and how he wasn’t gonna be messed with or whatever. I kept telling him to let it go, to forget about it, but he wouldn’t! All he said was, ‘If you don’t wanna watch Whitney’s candy ass get obliterated, then you can just stay fucking here,’ and he left me with the bike.”

“He went inside?” Sebastian’s anticipation sounds as acute as mine feels. I don’t know if either one of us still thinks that Arlo stabbed Fox—not anymore—but, then, none of the night’s puzzle pieces seem to fit together cleanly.

Lia starts shaking her head. “He never made it into the house. He got all the way to the kitchen door, and then he just … froze. Like, he just stood there, looking through the window, for … I don’t know, thirty seconds? Maybe longer? And the next thing I knew, he was bolting back down the stairs and running for the bike again.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing! His face was totally white—like he’d just watched someone get eaten by a bear or something—but all he did was jam his helmet on and start up the bike like he was gonna fucking take off, with or without me. I barely got into the seat in time!”

“And you guys came straight back here?” I ask. She nods briefly, and the possibilities begin to swirl in my mind, a tight orbit moving faster and faster as I realize how few explanations make sense. “Did he tell you why he’d freaked out?”

Lia shakes her head again. “He said it was better if I didn’t know. He said … he said all I had to do was not tell anybody that we went back. That the police would come around, asking about April and Fox, and that I had to just say we’d left when we left the first time, and that was it. He told me if I kept my mouth shut, we’d both be okay.” Once more, she begins to weep. “He said it would be okay! He said he’d come up with a plan!”

The information is coming too quickly. “‘A plan?’ What do you mean?”

“He was sure that Lyle would come gunning for him because of what Fox did, and he—”

“Lyle?” Sebastian interrupts.

“Yeah. That’s their supplier. Lyle.”

“Lyle,” I repeat, staring. “You don’t mean … not Lyle Shetland?”

“Yeah, actually, I think that is his name.” I feel two pairs of curious eyes probing me through the dark. “How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess.” A dull ache pulses to life in my temples as I contemplate facing down even more of my past, my night turning into a clip show of every bad dream I’ve ever had. If I’m going to get killed for all this, it can’t happen soon enough. “So, Arlo had come up with a plan.”

“To get away from Lyle,” Lia explains, “in case he wanted retribution. The guy’s a loose cannon, and even though it was all Fox’s fault, Arlo wasn’t sure Lyle would believe it. He said there was someone he could get money from—enough to leave town until the dust settled, and he could prove to Lyle that Fox had screwed him, too.”

I’m having trouble trying to pick which lead to follow first. “What do you mean, ‘someone he could get money from?’ Did it have something to do with whatever he saw at the lake house?”

“I guess?” The question stresses Lia out. “I have no idea—he didn’t tell me what he saw! I mean, based on what he’d said, I thought…”

“You thought Fox was dead?”

“I thought April was dead.” Her voice trembles. “I thought Fox had killed her, and that Arlo was gonna blackmail him. When you guys came here, saying she wasn’t answering her phone, I was sure of it. But then Hayden showed up, saying Fox was dead and April was at the police station, and I … I—”

She breaks off, crying again, and Sebastian continues to murmur comforting words that I barely hear. It’s possible, I try to tell myself, that when Arlo looked in through the kitchen door, he saw exactly what Sebastian and I had seen: Fox lying in a pool of his own blood, with his girlfriend collapsed beside him. It’s possible he intended to blackmail April … but I don’t think so. “Buy my silence” only works if the person you’re threatening needs what you’re selling; but April is so profoundly screwed by circumstantial evidence alone that Arlo’s silence would be useless to her. A better plan would be offering to sell her a fake alibi.

Only that offer hadn’t come in by the time Arlo pointedly directed us to the lake house so we could uncover the crime scene.

No. There is only one explanation; every way I try to add up Lia’s account, the sum is always the same: Arlo saw it happen. He and Lia returned to the cottage just in time for him to witness his business partner getting murdered, and by the time they made it back to Burlington, Arlo decided to use his knowledge as leverage against the guy’s killer.

Arlo had known everything all along.





17

A clock ticks somewhere in the darkness, almost menacing against the soft undertones of Lia’s grief and Sebastian’s consolation, but my brain buzzes loudly enough to drown it all out. My brother is still my top suspect—and only Arlo Rossi would’ve had the balls to blackmail Hayden. The Covingtons have pockets deep enough to buy anything from a Brazilian vacation to a hollowed-out volcano in the South Pacific if the guy had been serious about wanting to escape Lyle Shetland’s wrath.