WITNESS: Joshua was sitting on a blanket on the beach, waiting for his girlfriend to get them some drinks. The boys approached—
DETECTIVE MORGAN: That would be John Kyle, Reese Connor, and Tony Smith?
WITNESS: Yes.
DETECTIVE MORGAN: Continue.
WITNESS: One of the boys asked where Donovan Pritchard was. Joshua said he was supposed to join them later in the evening. But he didn’t want there to be any trouble. John said he’d take care of Donovan later. That he had a plan to get back at him. Joshua told him to let it go. At least they would all get their diplomas. Reese agreed with Joshua, telling John that maybe it would be better to let it go. Then Tony said something I couldn’t quite hear. Joshua got up and asked him what he’d said. John laughed and said he just called your sister a slut. Joshua pushed John and told him to watch his mouth. John said that Kate was probably off…I guess I shouldn’t say what he said.
DETECTIVE MORGAN: It’s fine. Use any language you feel comfortable with.
WITNESS: Well, he said she was probably off screwing some boy. Not that word, but you know…and then he told Joshua how they saw her slipping out from under the bleachers in the gym a week before school got out. Joshua told him he was a filthy liar and shoved him again. John got mad and shoved Joshua. Then Amanda, Joshua’s girlfriend, walked up and told them to stop. John laughed again, accusing Joshua of hiding behind his girl. Joshua spit on him. I thought John would kill him right there and then, but Reese pulled him back, whispering something in his ear. Then John nodded and walked away without saying anything else.
“Sounds like it had nothing to do with the prank Donovan pulled.”
“Prank?” David asked, looking over his shoulder at his brother.
“Yeah. That’s what Donovan told me started the whole thing. He broke into the football coach’s online dating profile and changed it to make it appear that he was a man looking for other men. Then he posted a link to it on the school website. Didn’t go over well.”
David laughed. “Sounds like something I might have done. Kudos to Donovan.”
“Yeah, well, he made it look like these boys did it in the computer lab at the school. They couldn’t be suspended since there were only a few days of school left, so they were banned from walking the stage at the graduation ceremony.”
“Sucks.”
“More for the family than the boys, I’m sure. But they were pretty pissed from what Donovan told me. But they’d never done anything like what happened to Joshua, so he had no idea they would go that far.”
“Spitting in someone’s face in front of his friends is pretty big. Maybe that was the game changer.”
“Either way, it wasn’t Donovan’s fault. But the guy’s carried the weight of it for a long time.”
David nodded. “Maybe this case is a blessing. Maybe if she forgives him, he can forgive himself.”
“You never know. How are they getting along, anyway?”
David punched a few key strokes into the computer and one screen was filled with an image of Donovan in a pretty intense clutch with his target.
“See for yourself,” David said.
“Is that live?”
“Yeah.”
Ash pulled out his phone and punched a few curt words into his text app. A second later, Donovan pulled back from the girl and studied his phone, quickly leaving the room and her alone.
“What’d you say?”
Ash didn’t answer. He simply headed for the stairs.
“I’m going to the safe house.”
“Well, then you can tell Donovan that the threat was real.”
Ash paused on the bottom steps of the stairs. “How so?”
“The team found tool marks on the outside of one of the master bedroom windows. Someone was trying to force it open from the outside.”
Chapter 11
Donovan
Why did I kiss her? I knew better than that.
I slammed my hands against the closed door of another bedroom, cursing under my breath before opening the door and stepping inside, grabbing a shirt at random from the selection hanging in the closet. It was a simple button-down shirt, dark blue and unadorned. Then I turned back to leave, my eyes moving over the bed. My thoughts automatically jumped to a place they shouldn’t have gone. I could still feel her smooth skin against my hand; I could still taste her lips on mine. But allowing my thoughts to move on from there was irresponsible.
It was fucking stupid to kiss her in the first place. Knowing that Ash had seen it…I could lose my job over this.
Without my job I had nothing.
What the hell had I been thinking?
It was because it was Kate. Any other target and it wouldn’t have happened. But this was Kate and when I looked at her, when I found myself staring into those perfect eyes, I couldn’t keep the memories at bay. And that was my undoing.