“Your point? Don’t play shy, Wick. Baines specializes in roofies.” Carson searches my face and, even though I keep my features disinterested, he still sees something that makes his eyes go plastic bright. “He preys on women. That’s not too different from the men you used to catch, right?”
Right. Up until five months ago, I ran an online business specializing in catching cheaters and gold diggers. Most of my targets were guys. Most of my clients were women. And yeah, I did it for money—my sister, Lily, and I needed it—but I also did it because those women needed answers. I made sure the men they loved were really who they said they were. I made sure no one ended up like my mom did.
And later, I used those same skills to bring down Todd and save my sister.
But Carson only knows a little bit about the last part and nothing about the first. He’s fishing and I play it blank, realizing too late that I should have played it stupid.
“What are you talking about?” I say, twirling a strand of hair around my finger. Carson’s mouth thins and I switch the conversation around. “Look, your best bet for tracking Baines is putting something on his phone, only that’s no good because I’d have to get close enough to do it and—”
“And it shouldn’t be hard since you two go way back. One of my sources says he’ll be selling at Judge Bay’s Carnivale party tonight.”
“You sure?” Bay is a local luminary: rich, well-connected, the kind of guy who uses summer as a verb. I know of him the same way most people like me know of him: He presided over our legal cases. “That’s pretty bold.”
“My source says your new mommy has accepted an invitation as well.”
I go very, very still. “You’ve been watching Bren?”
“Scared now?”
“No.” I’m fucking terrified. I shove suddenly sweating hands into my pockets. “You wouldn’t dare touch her.”
Only, he would, to get to me. My sister and I were adopted by Bren Callaway two months ago in what the papers are calling a fairy-tale ending. Although the description makes me gag, I can’t fault the observation. Lily and I went from foster care rejects to looking like poster children for Ralph Lauren. Yeah, Bren was married to Todd, the psychopath who tried to kill both me and Lily, but aside from Bren’s seriously crappy taste in men, she’s straight out of Disney casting.
She doesn’t deserve what Carson would do to her to get to me.
“I want you there.” The detective stands, tosses my bag to me. “Do whatever you have to do. I want to be able to follow Baines’s movement by tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’m fresh out of magic wands.” Then again, I might not be. Baines isn’t the only one who can get roofies. I could knock him out, download a tracking app to his phone. There’s a certain poetic justice to it. I’m very capable of this . . . and that fact should scare me.
Actually, it does scare me. Thing is . . . if I tag Baines, Carson will go away. Bren and Lily will be safe. I can go on pretending I’m normal.
For a little while at least.
“Make it happen.” The detective stares down at me, and even though it’s finally healed, my injured arm starts to burn. “You wouldn’t want to ruin that lovely new life you landed, now would you?”
“No.” And isn’t that just the funniest punch line? Here I am with a new life, new start, and I’m already ruining it. Worse, I’m risking ruining it for my sister—and for Bren—and they deserve any happily ever after life will give them.
I consider Carson. This is probably where I should cry a bit, but I’ve swallowed my tears for so long they’ve turned to bone.
I roll my hands into fists. “Maybe you’re the one who should be careful. I brought down a rapist you couldn’t. The papers are calling me a hero.”
Even if I can barely say the word.
Carson’s upper lip wrinkles. “That so?”
Above us, the bell rings. School’s finished for the day and the hallway swarms with students, their voices swelling like the growl of distant thunder. How long before the rumor of me getting hauled out of class by the police reaches Bren? Or my best friend, Lauren?
Worse, how long before it reaches Griff?
Is it considerate that I want to be the person who tells him first? Or paranoid? I never told him I was working for Carson. He thinks I’m free.
And just like that, my hands are shaking again. “I’ll send you a text when it’s finished.”
“Good.” Carson smacks open the classroom door and motions me forward. I’m almost into the hallway when his fingers sink into my bad arm, pinning me against the lockers to hide his grip. “The next time you think about blowing me off, Wicket, you think about everything I could destroy.”
I hold my breath, waiting for Carson to twist my arm until I want to scream. His hold stays light though. It’s not punishment. It’s a promise.
“Understand?” he asks, fitting Bren and Lily and everything I want into one word.
I nod, but the detective doesn’t let go and I shouldn’t look at him. . . . I do, realizing too late he isn’t focused on me. He’s staring at Griff.
Who’s headed straight for us.