Jaden (Jaded #3)

“Okay.” The two detectives shared a look. “We’re going to be very honest with you.” She glanced at me. “The phone you got was a goldmine. You were right. There were emails, text messages, the whole nine yards of enough evidence to implicate the assistant in Grace’s murder. They talked about Grace even. They said she was a good subject,” she hesitated, “but we’re wondering how they even knew about Grace.”


“They were there.” The words burst out of me before I realized it myself. Oh my god. They were. I couldn’t believe it. “The night Grace confessed, they were there. We were at the hospital because of what happened to Corrigan, which—”

The female held up a hand. “We’re ahead of you there. We believe they did cut your car’s brakes. There’s elevator footage of Maria going down to the basement with a backpack and twenty minutes later, coming back up. Her backpack is missing so we don’t know what she did with it, but we’re guessing she had things in there to do the cutting, and then she got rid of all the evidence.”

The male added, “There’s a dumpster on the garage level. We’re assuming she tossed everything there.”

“And they’re missing? Both of them?”

The female nodded. “Yes. We’re sorry we dropped the ball on this. We really thought it was you, and of course, we can’t offer you an official apology—”

“—at least not until we find Guadalupe Ramirez and Maria Ramirez.”

“They have the same last name?” I turned to Bryce. “Are they family?”

“We’re looking into that, but it might comfort you to know that Maria Ramirez has had psychological assessments done in the past year. She’s gone into more than four treatment hospitals. None of them will release information, but if we can prove she’s dangerous, they’ll break confidentiality.” The two detectives grimaced at the same time. “All we have is circumstantial evidence right now, nothing to fully warrant doing a BOLO. However…” The female forced her mouth to grin, though her face was stiff. There were bags under her eyes. “We can do something helpful, at least for you.” She gestured to my ankle. “We can remove that today. We have enough so we can take you off the suspect list.”

“What?” I couldn’t—no—”Really?” But wait. “What about my hair, prints, and you said there was video footage of me?”

As the male officer bent down and started to remove my monitor, the female explained, “We lied about the video footage. There is video footage, but it’s more of a shadow. We don’t have enough to go on with it. As for the DNA, yours wasn’t enough of a match. And we think your hair was there from past visits. We know you two were friends. It won’t add up in a court, especially with other evidence being much more explicit.”

“Wait. You said my purse was in her car.”

“Yeah.” They both frowned and didn’t answer right away. Then the female confessed, “We lied about the purse. We never had it.”

“But . . .” I shook my head, clearing my thoughts. “So, this is done? I’m done?” We knew who had killed Grace? I looked at Corrigan, who was frowning to himself. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t look happy. When he saw my look, he turned away.

What the fuck?

I started for him, but the female officer stopped me. She said, “Actually, we’re here on another sort of business.” She turned until she was looking right at Corrigan. When he realized, he narrowed his eyes. She asked, “How well do you know Michael Reveritt?”

“Ritt?”

I shared a confused look with Corrigan, then saw a speculative expression cross over Bryce’s face.

Corrigan shrugged. “He’s my fraternity brother. Why?”

“We questioned some of your brothers today. They told us that you and Reveritt haven’t been seeing eye to eye lately.”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m not the president, but I’m one of their leaders. With Sheldon and what’s going on, I took courses online so I could be here with her. The two leaders graduated last year, and the guys who were supposed to step up, just aren’t, so it’s been Ritt and me. Why? What does this have to do with anything?”

She hesitated a moment, then her partner finished with my monitor and stood up. He nodded to her. “All right. Did your fraternity brother ever talk about Sheldon at all?”

Corrigan cast me another puzzled look.

He wasn’t alone. I had no clue.

He scratched behind his ear. “I mean . . . yeah. He was interested last year. He talked about her a lot, but Bryce came back from Europe and I think things stalled on his part. Sheldon was never interested in him. I know he hit on her, but I don’t think anything came out of it.”

He gestured to me. Everyone’s eyes trailed to me, and I shook my head. “No. Yes, Ritt’s a creeper. He always was, but nothing unusual to me. He was drinking a ton when we saw him before the party the other night—”

“Party.” The female detective straightened abruptly. Her hand fell from where it had been resting on her hip. She asked me, “You went to the party, too?”