be avenged. And he wasn’t paying attention. What did I need to do to get him to see?
He stared at the photos on my phone, his hand faintly shaking as well, like I’d transferred my fear straight to him. His eyes drifted to the window behind me, and I knew what he was thinking—the Lomans would be back soon.
He had to believe me before they arrived.
“There have to be people in the department who remember the accident,” I said. “Who know something. It was a long time ago, but people remember.” It was horrific, that was what the first officer on the scene said. I had the article with me in that folder on the desk. “Maybe we can talk to the person who was first on-scene. Maybe there’s some evidence that didn’t make sense.” Another piece of proof to link the cases together.
I opened the folder, pulled out the article—so he would remember. Detective Collins had once told me that he knew who I was, what I’d been through—that it was a shitty hand to draw. He was older than me. He must’ve remembered this.
“Can I . . .” He cleared his throat, holding up my phone. “Can I hang on to this?”
I nodded, and he tucked my phone into his pocket, then pulled out a pack of cigarettes, sliding one out, a lighter in the other hand. “Bad habit, I know,” he said. His hand shook as he flicked the lighter twice before it caught. A slow exhale of smoke, eyes closed. “Sometimes it helps, though.”
I imagined the smoke soaking into the Lomans’ walls, the ornate carpet beneath our feet. How they’d hate it. I almost spoke, on instinct, and then stopped. Who cared?
In the article, there was a black-and-white picture of the road—how had I not seen it before, the same image Sadie had taken on her phone? The arc of trees, so different in the daylight—but it matched.
The article also had a picture of the wreckage left behind. The metal heap of a car crumpled against a tree. My heart squeezed, and I had to close my eyes, even after all these years.
I skimmed over sentences, paragraphs, until the part I remembered—that had been seared into my mind years earlier.
“The first officer on the scene gave a statement to the reporter,” I said. Reading the words that I’d wanted to forget for so long. “Here it is. ‘There was nothing I could do. It was just terrible. Horrific. I thought we had lost them all, but when the EMTs arrived, they discovered the woman in the backseat was still alive. Just unconscious.’ The loss will be felt by everyone in the community, including the young officer—”
I stopped reading, the room hollowing out. Couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say the words. Watched, instead, as everything shifted.
He raised his eyebrows, flicked the lighter again. Held it to the base of Parker’s medical paper, letting it catch fire and fall into the stainless-steel trash can.
I stared once more down at the article in my hand. The truth, always inches away, just waiting for me to look again.
The unfinished sentence, our paths crossing over and over, unseen, unknown. Officer Ben Collins.
CHAPTER 29
Smoke spilled from the top of the garbage can, the air dangerous and alive. “You knew,” I said, stepping back.
Detective Ben Collins stood between me and the doorway, not meeting my eye. Systematically dropping page after page into the trash. Each piece of evidence I’d given him, every piece of proof. One after another into the burning trash. He had my phone. My flash drive. The evidence of the payments—
The other payment, the one Sadie had found and copied, stored on the flash drive alongside the payment to my grandmother. That had gone to him. “The Lomans paid you off, too,” I said.
Finally, he looked at me. A man cut into angles, into negative space. “It was an accident. If it helps, he didn’t mean to do it. Some kid speeding past me, driving like a bat out of hell in the middle of the night. I didn’t know it was Parker Loman when I took off after him—he didn’t see the other car coming. The lights must’ve blinded them to the curve. Both of them ended up off the road, but the other car . . .”
“The other car—” I choked out. My parents. There were people inside. People who had been taken from me.
How long had he waited to call the EMTs after Parker Loman stepped from the car?