White Rabbit(53)

Finally things are starting to come together in a way that makes actual sense. I still can’t explain why my brother would stab Fox, frame April, and then later decide to torch the Whitneys’ place—although it’s possible the fire had been a message from Lyle’s people after all, delivered just a smidge too late to be truly effective—but I can now easily picture how the scene at the Rossi home might have gone down.

Hayden and Arlo were united in their antipathy for Fox, and my brother is a master at exploiting the emotions of others; it’s not at all hard to imagine him convincing his blackmailer that they were on the same side, that he honestly believed a payoff was mutually beneficial—two backs being scratched simultaneously. He could have made it sound sincere … all the way up to the point where Arlo dropped his guard, giving Hayden a chance to deliver a little payoff directly to the guy’s trachea.

“When you two went back to the lake house,” I ask Lia, “did you see any cars besides Fox’s?”

She shakes her head with a loud sniffle. “No. We were on the other side of the house from the drive. And, anyway, I told you, everybody else was already gone—we passed them on the road.”

“Before you doubled back, then. Did you and Arlo pass anyone going the other direction? Someone who might have been on their way out to the cottage?” I’m thinking of Hayden’s deliberately ostentatious convertible—a great car for when you want people to notice you, and a lousy one for when you don’t.

“I don’t remember.” Lia sounds bewildered. “I mean, no one else was invited, and I wasn’t really—” She stops in midsentence, her eyes popping open. “You think maybe April had an accomplice or something?”

“April didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Fox,” I declare flatly, surprised by my own conviction. “She was set up.”

I don’t want to add much more than that, but to my chagrin, Sebastian tips our hand anyway. “What do you think Hayden would do if he figured out Fox had sold him a bunch of pills that didn’t work?”

“You think—You think Hayden did it?” Lia stares, her eyes going huge. “Oh. Shit. Oh shit!” Without warning, she scrambles to her feet, her knee grazing my face as she rushes for the basement door, slamming the deadbolt into place with shaky hands. “He was here! He thought I had his money! What if he comes back?”

“Hey, don’t freak out.” Sebastian crosses to her, gently taking hold of her arms again. “You already told him you don’t have it, right?”

“Well, yeah.” She gives us both an indignant look. “I said if Fox didn’t have it, then I sure as hell didn’t know where it was! I’m not their fucking secretary or something.”

“Okay, so he probably won’t come back,” Sebastian continues. He tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and I taste something bad in the back of my throat. “If he does, just stay inside and don’t answer your phone. In fact, don’t answer it at all unless it’s one of us. Call the cops if he scares you, and make sure he knows you’re doing it.”

Agitated, she gives a staccato nod. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” There’s a loaded moment that follows, the clock ticking and the mist drifting sluggishly outside the door, a gray-gold haze caught in the glow of the lantern. Then, Lia peers up at Sebastian again, gazing through her long, dramatic eyelashes. “Can … can you stay here? Just in case? If he really does show up, I don’t want to have to face him alone. Please, Bash?”

My heart goes through an ugly series of yoga moves, twisting and lurching as Sebastian meets her eyes, their profiles limned by the light behind them. I know I wanted to find some excuse to leave him behind, a way to keep Sebastian out of harm’s way, but this is the universe kicking me in the nuts. Like I haven’t suffered enough without having to watch them flip their relationship switch back to On Again right before my very eyes.

But the fact is that it’s probably for the best, and I know it; not only is “guarding Lia” a job assignment Sebastian will no doubt readily accept, but—no matter what—I need to put some distance between us before his soulful eyes and sexy cologne completely undo all the hard work I’ve put into burying my feelings for him over the past week.

Sebastian, however, doesn’t seem inclined to make my life any easier. Pushing Lia subtly away, he says, “I can’t. Rufus doesn’t have a car. I’m his ride.”

“So what?” She gives me a look like I’m a vagrant, covered in my own filth, who has somehow wandered into her home by accident. “Call him a cab or something. Hayden’s not out to kill him.”

My sympathy for her is evaporating rather quickly, but in this, at least, we are sort of allies. “It’s cool. I’m sure I can still get a Lyft back to my house, and I have the keys to my mom’s ca—”

“No,” Sebastian interrupts irritably, giving me a look that’s part exasperation and part some other mood I can’t quite identify. “We already talked about this.” He turns back to Lia. “You’ll be fine. Your parents are here, right? And your brother? Hayden won’t pull anything with witnesses around—he’s psycho, but he’s not stupid.”

Lia is no more pleased than I am by this weak brush-off, but she folds her arms across her chest and stops arguing. I’m going to have to find some other way to ditch him. In the meantime, there remains one piece of information I still need, and I face my ex’s ex. “Arlo ever tell you how to get in touch with Lyle Shetland?”