My hand fluttered to my mouth. “Oh my God.”
“I saw it when I went to go buy cigarettes during lunch. I tried to call but there was no answer at the house, and of course you still don’t have a mobile. So I drove straight here from school,” he said in a rush. “It’s the same shed, Mara. Exactly the same.”
I remembered Joseph, lying on the concrete floor in a nest of blankets, his hands and feet bound by twist ties. And how Noah and I were almost too late to save him.
To save him from ending up exactly like Jordana. My stomach rolled with nausea.
“What does this mean?” I asked, even though I already knew.
Noah ran his hands through his hair as he sped, pushing ninety-five. “I don’t know. The photograph they have of Lassiter shows him wearing a Rolex on his right hand. When I saw the documents in the Collier County archives in my mind, whoever was pulling files had the same watch,” he finished, before swallowing. “But I’m not sure.”
“He took Joseph,” I said, my voice and mind hazy.
Noah’s expression was hard. “It doesn’t make sense, though. Why would he go after his own lawyer’s child?”
My mind flooded with images. Joseph, the way he must have looked when he was waiting for a ride home from school the day he was taken. My parents, as they spoke in tense voices about my father dropping the case. My father speaking to Lassiter—
That same night.
“My father was going to drop his case,” I said, strangely removed. “Because of me. Because I was falling apart. He spoke to him that afternoon.”
“Still doesn’t make sense. Your father would have dropped it for sure if one of his children disappeared. The judge absolutely would have ordered a continuance.”
“Then he took him because he’s sick,” I said, my voice a twisted hiss. My mind raced, tumbling ahead before my mouth could catch up. I flashed back to before I knew about the case, before this had all happened. To my brother watching the news one afternoon, as Daniel lifted an unmarked envelope.
“Where did this come from?” Daniel asked.
“Dad’s new client dropped it off, like, two seconds before you got here.”
Lassiter knew Joseph. Knew where we lived.
“I’ll kill him.” I spoke the shocking words so softly I wasn’t even sure I’d said them aloud. I wasn’t even sure I’d thought them, until Noah’s eyes turned on me.
“No,” he said carefully. “We’re going to go to the courthouse and find your father and have the trial continued. We’ll tell him what happened. He’ll withdraw from the case.”
“It’s too late,” I said. The words congealed on my tongue, and the weight of them pulled me down. “The trial’s over today. Once the jury’s out—it’s over.”
Noah shook his head. “I called. They’re not out yet. We can make it,” he said, his gaze flicking to the clock on the dashboard.
I turned the paper over in my hand, examining it as my dark thoughts grew and spread and swallowed up any possible alternative.
“Whoever leaked these photos did it to influence the jury. They did it because my father—because Lassiter—is winning. He’s going to be acquitted. He’s going to be free.”
I couldn’t let it happen.
But would I really be able to stop it?
I had wanted Jude dead, and he was. And I’d killed Morales and Mabel’s owner just by wanting it, thinking about it, about her choking, his head smashed in. I grew nauseous at the imagery, but swallowed hard and forced myself to remember, to try to understand so that if I needed to, I could do it again. The collapsed building, the anaphylactic shock, the head injury; those were the causes of the deaths.
I was the agent.
Noah’s voice snapped me back into the moment. “There is something profoundly wrong here. I know it, which is why I came to get you. But we don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on. We have to get to the courthouse and speak to your father.”
“Then what?” I asked, my voice hollow.
“Then we’ll give statements about Joseph’s kidnapping, and Lassiter will be indicted for it.”
“And he’ll be out on bail again, just like this time. And what evidence can we give?” I said, my voice rising. I hadn’t meant to say—to think—my earlier words, but a crazed enthusiasm was taking over. Adrenaline flowed through my veins. “Joseph doesn’t remember a thing except for the lies we told him. And I’m on antipsychotics,” I said, my voice growing steadier and steadier. “No one’s going to believe us.”
Noah switched tactics, no doubt because I was right. In a low voice, he said, “I brought you because I trusted you. You don’t want to do this.”
As Noah asserted his knowledge of what I wanted, my mind rebelled. “Why not? I’ve killed people for less than murdering and butchering a teenage girl and kidnapping my baby brother.” I grew incomprehensibly giddy.