Razed (Barnes Brothers #2)(84)

Blood roared in her ears as he continued to speak. “She was raped—that’s on the sons-of-bitches responsible. You tried to help her. Both of you had done enough to save each other, and yourselves. The adults around you should have been there to protect you, to make sure none of that happened—and they should have stood by the both of you. They didn’t. They are the ones who failed. Not the fifteen-year-old girl who’d been slipped a couple of roofies and ended up sick enough to pass out.”

Keelie flushed from the shame.

“If I hadn’t wanted to go to the party—”

“Stop,” Zane said, his voice a growl. “If those bastards had been able to act like decent people, none of this would have happened.”

She averted her face.

“Does it help?” he demanded, his voice sharp. “Blaming yourself? Does it make him any less capable of doing what he did? Did it fix him? Fix her? Fix anything?”

“Fix anything?” Keelie’s laugh was so jagged it hurt her to hear it. It was brittle and broken and when she opened her eyes to stare at him, she had a hard time seeing him past the misery. How did you fix somebody like Price? How did she fix what had been done to Toria?

He must have seen some of the questions whirling in her mind because he came to her, caught her head between his hands. Pressing his brow to hers, Zane whispered, “You can’t. And you weren’t to blame. Maybe things would have been different if you’d spoken to the sheriff, and maybe not. But her parents should have pushed to prosecute. You tried to speak for her and her mother decided to take her away. That was her choice. Not yours.” He brushed his lips across hers, a gentle kiss. “And you didn’t make it happen by going to the party. That’s on them, not you. Not on her. It’s on them.”

She caught his wrists in her hands, squeezed. She wanted to believe that. So much.

“If you could do anything different, now, would you?”

“Yes.” She blurted it out, not even having to think about it. If she had the chance . . .

The chance.

Licking her lips, she looked up at Zane as her heart started to pound, hard and heavy in her chest.

If I had the chance . . .

“Price is being investigated,” she said softly.

“Price?”

She let go of his wrists and spun away. “My stepbrother. I saw the article online last night. That’s . . . that’s why I didn’t want to talk. That’s what set me off. He was accused of assaulting somebody on . . .” She stopped, bit her lip. On his campaign committee. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to go into that yet. Wasn’t sure how to even broach the subject. “A woman he works with,” she finished, lamely. “The papers aren’t painting her in a nice light. He’ll try to talk his way out of it. He’ll probably win. People just don’t speak up against him. Even if there are others who have had trouble with him, the family buys them off or threatens them.”

She swiped her hands down her jeans, her mind racing.

They couldn’t buy her off. Any attempt to intimidate her would be laughable. What would they do? There wasn’t anything they could do. Not to her.

“Keelie?”

She turned and stared at Zane. “I have to go. Now.”

Now. Before she lost her nerve.





Chapter Sixteen




“You stupid son of a bitch.”

Restart in safe mode . . .

“I’ll show you safe mode.” Travis almost slammed his fist into the ancient tower but decided the thing was ready to draw social security. It should live out its final days as pain free as possible. He’d just given it a new lease on life, although what he should have done was sabotage the obsolete piece of shit so Zach would let it go.

“Are you threatening my computer?”

Travis looked up. Zach stood in the door, drying his hands off.

“I’m trying to convince it that euthanasia would be a kindness in its condition. Zach, this thing is five years old. Do you even do routine maintenance on it?”

Zach frowned. “Maintenance? It’s not a pool for f*ck’s sake.”

“No.” Travis watched him, speaking slowly, the same way he talked to his nephew, Clay, when he went over using Trey’s computer. “It’s a piece of technology—that means it needs maintenance and upgrades and updates. That keeps it from running slow and crashing. It’s so loaded with spyware and malware, I’m surprised it even works. You haven’t emptied the recycling bin in more than a year.”

“It gets the job done. Why are you bitching about it anyway? You don’t work on it.” Zach tossed the rag he had into a laundry basket positioned near the wall and headed around the desk. He stopped when he saw the neat stack of papers. “What’s this?”

“Information.” Travis grabbed the stack, rolled it into a sheaf and slapped it against Zach’s gut. Automatically, Zach grabbed the pages. “Read it. I don’t know for sure if that’s your connection, but just in case . . .” He shrugged, keeping his eyes on the keyboard as he typed in another command.

It was easier to lie to his brothers if he didn’t have to look at them.

It was Keelie.

He’d had to dig pretty deep and go around some walls, but he had found pictures and Keelie looked pretty much the same. She’d been a little softer in the face ten, twelve years ago, but the eyes were the same, the shape of her face.