“It looks like they ran Layla and Finn’s DNA just to make sure the samples they had weren’t confused with what they found at the scene,” I explain as I blindly walk over to the table, the words in front of me swirling together.
“Right, I have a copy of the work order on the computer,” Gwen replies, punching a few keys into the system and pulling up the report. “The lab was supposed to bump them up against the sample taken under Layla’s fingernails and the blood found on the brick that came through her window.”
I continue reading the report in silence, not believing what I’m seeing.
There’s no way. No fucking possible way…
A harsh knock at the door has me dropping the papers on the floor and racing across the room hoping that what I just read isn’t true and that it’s Layla on the other side of the door, perfectly unharmed, so I can wrap her in my arms and beg her to never leave again. I throw the door open hard enough for it to smack against the opposite wall, my hope sinking when I see Eve standing on my doorstep.
“Where the hell is my daughter? She was supposed to be at the recording studio a half hour ago, and now she isn’t answering my calls,” Eve says angrily. Just like yesterday, she pushes her way right past me and into my house like she owns the place. “I left her ten voice mails from the studio. You did this, didn’t you? You convinced her to go off on her own and ignore me.”
Eve stands in the middle of my living room in her perfectly pressed business suit and not one hair out of place on her head. Her arms are crossed in front of her, and she’s staring at me like I’m the scum of the earth. I almost believe I am until I remember what I just read on that DNA report.
“Layla isn’t here. Finn picked her up an hour ago,” I tell Eve as calmly as I can when all I want to do is fly across the room and choke the life out of this woman for being so conniving and such a liar.
“Nonsense, Finn would have told me if he was planning on picking her up and bringing her to the studio,” she states, pulling her Blackberry out of her handbag and scrolling through the messages.
I take a few deep breaths to try and calm my anger but it’s no use. My blood is boiling and I feel like I’m two seconds away from ripping the doors off of their hinges and punching holes in all the walls. I want to scream and bust every fucking thing in this place right now.
“Really? Finn would have told you the truth? Just like you’ve been telling the truth all these years?” I question her with my jaw clenched, biting down so hard on my teeth that it feels like I’m going to crack all of them.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Eve asks distractedly, still paying more attention to her phone than what I’m saying. Her cavalier attitude is all it takes for me to crack. I storm across the room, grab the phone from her hand, and heave it so hard into the wall that it shatters into a million pieces and leaves a nice size dent behind in the drywall.
“What the hell is your problem?” Eve demands. “That was a brand new phone!”
I see that Gwen picked up the papers that I tossed to the ground in my haste to make it to the door. Her face is filled with shock and anger, her nostrils flaring as she walks up next to Eve and shoves the pages at her roughly.
Eve grapples with them so that they don’t fall to the floor and flips through the pages.
“DNA results? What are these for?”
I finally walk across the room towards her, making sure to stay out of arm’s reach so I’m not tempted to do something I’ll regret.
“Those were the lab reports that were run after the attack on Layla. They were supposed to just bump them up against Finn and Layla to make sure they didn’t confuse the real perpetrator with the two of them. But someone at the lab screwed up. They ran Layla and Finn against each other.”
I’ve never seen someone’s face pale as quickly as Eve’s. She goes from having her cheeks red with