“You didn’t participate?” I ask. “You had nothing do with the school shooting?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t even know it was happening. I was on the other side of the school, down the road, blasting music in my ears.”
I step closer to him. “What about the rifle they found in the bushes behind you?”
“Don’t know anything about it. Never saw it.”
“And—what did Aiden say to you afterward?”
“Nothing.” Noah raises his hands. “I was suspended for the rest of the year. I didn’t see Aiden for months. When I did—I mean, what was there to say? I don’t rat people out. And it’s not like I knew Aiden had something to do with it. I still don’t know that. I just know I didn’t.”
I start pacing. “Reports said the shooter—the one they saw, over by the woods—was wearing a Spider-Man costume. Just like you were.”
“Yeah.”
“Did Aiden know you were going to wear a Spider-Man costume to school?”
Noah thinks about that. “Probably. Yeah, he probably did.”
“And it never occurred to you that Aiden set you up?”
“It crossed my mind. But I didn’t know. And I’m not a rat.”
I bring a hand to my forehead, push my hair off my face.
“The second shooter,” I mumble.
“Yeah, you keep going on about that,” says Noah. “You’re sure two people did this?”
I nod. “That’s the only way it could’ve happened. So if you didn’t do it …”
“Then someone else helped Aiden,” says Noah.
And after tonight, I think I know who. I think I know who was working with Aiden, who’s been working with him all along.
The man who was in Noah’s house with my uncle when Lang planted the incriminating evidence to frame Noah.
The man who always seems to show up conveniently to rush to Aiden’s rescue.
The man who demanded that I stop investigating the school shooting, my uncle’s murder, all of it.
The man who told Aiden tonight, I’ll take care of this.
“I have to go,” I say.
“No, don’t.” Noah puts a hand on my shoulder. “You said yourself, you can’t go home.”
“I can’t stay here.”
“You could, actually,” he says, his voice quieter.
I look at him, his eyes peering directly into mine.
He puts his hand on my face and moves in for a kiss.
Like a surge of electricity through my body. Realizing that I’ve always wanted this. His hands in my hair, my hand cupped around his neck, letting myself surrender— “No,” I say, breaking away. “I have to go. They’ll look for me here. It might not be the first place Isaac looks, but he’ll get here eventually.”
“So let him.”
“Why?” I gather myself, fix my hair. “So we both get in trouble?”
He concedes that. “Where will you go?”
I don’t know. Hotel, not an option—no cash to my name, and using a credit card would be the same as handing the address to Isaac. Ricketts’s house, negative. Uncle Lang’s house, nope, I already gave back my keys.
Someone I can trust, but close by, so I don’t have to drive the streets very long.
“Justin,” I say.
“Justin … Rivers? The guy who owns Tasty’s?”
I nod, suddenly feeling awkward admitting that to someone I just kissed.
“I … didn’t know,” says Noah, taking a step back.
“No, it’s not like that,” I say. “I mean, we went on one date.”
Noah’s eyes trail away. “Okay. I understand. He’s a nice guy.”
“Hey,” I say, and when he looks back at me, I grab his shirt and draw him in and kiss him hard.
Then I pull away and leave his house.
82
I PULL MY car into the lot at Tasty’s Diner and park around the back, out of sight. There’s only one other car in the lot, Justin’s Jaguar. I walk in and find him behind the bar, reading something on his laptop.
I admit—one of the reasons I came here tonight was the small chance that I might run into Aiden Willis, who apparently spends a lot of nights at Tasty’s drinking. But no luck. Justin is here alone.
“Hey there,” he says when he looks up, not unhappy to see me.
“Slow night?” I ask.
“It picks up in the summer,” he says. He looks me over. “You doing okay?”
I take a long breath.
“You must not be,” he says, coming around the counter, walking up to me, unsure of how close to get, whether to touch me—the whole awkward thing again.
I give him the short version of my lovely evening, that in the course of investigating my uncle’s murder, I may have bent the law tonight and found myself on the wrong end of an arrest warrant.
“I don’t know for a fact that I’m wanted for questioning,” I say. “Or that an arrest warrant was issued. But my guess is they’re looking for me.”
“You need a place to stay,” he says. “You can’t go home.”
“Well …”
“That’s no problem. You can stay at my place. I have plenty of room.”
“If you’re sure it’s not a bother,” I say. “Technically, you wouldn’t be harboring a fugitive. But you might want to give this some thought.”