Billy & The Beast (Ever After, New York #3) - Eli Easton Page 0,59

cheeks burn.

“After him?” he said with a frown. “Why would we be after him?”

I wiped my face. “Just . . . if there’s a warrant out or something. Or possible charges.”

“Look.” Simmons leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I don’t know where you got that idea. But if Seb is talking now, I’d like to speak with him.”

“Why?”

He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Why did you want to talk to me?”

“Because I’m worried about him. He doesn’t . . . he doesn’t remember that night at all. The accident. I think he might believe things happened that didn’t. Bad things.”

He studied my face for another few seconds, his gaze intense. Then he sat back and took a sip of his coffee. “Listen, Billy, how about you and I stop dancing around this? Otherwise, you’re wasting my time, and I don’t have a lot of it to spare.”

I knew he was absolutely right. I had to trust someone or I wasn’t going to get anywhere. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Okay. So. This morning I drove up to Benedict Canyon to see the site of the accident for myself. I met a guy who lives there who was walking his dog. He said Aaron—Seb, I mean—that his car was the only one involved in the accident, that there were no other victims. Is that true?”

Simmons blinked at me. “What gave you the idea there was another car involved?”

My hands shook on the table. “You mean there wasn’t?”

“What gave you that idea?” Simmons demanded, harder now.

I rubbed my eyes. Christ. This guy was a master at turning around every question, giving away nothing. But I was out of options. I sighed. “Seb. Seb thinks that. He thinks he hit another car while driving stoned, that he killed a woman and her little girl. He’s torn up over it.”

There. I’d done it now. Clearly, Seb couldn’t be torn up over anything unless he was alert and thinking again. But what else could I do?

Simmons looked out the window, frowning. He sucked his teeth. “Where did he get that idea? Who told him that?”

I was gonna strangle the guy. “Please, can you just . . . just fucking tell me if there was another car or not?”

He looked right at me, grimacing. “Seb Montgomery was going way too fast. Skid marks show he hit that curve at almost sixty miles an hour. He broke through the guardrail and went into the canyon. There was no other vehicle and he was the only one in his. There were no other victims.”

I put my head in my hands, elbows on the table. I thought I might be sick. “Oh, God.”

Now the pieces clicked together. No wonder the LA Times and the other papers hadn’t mentioned other people in the crash. It wasn’t because Montgomery Enterprises had paid off reporters to whitewash the account. It was because they hadn’t been there.

And that article Seb showed me about the other victims. I recalled it hadn’t named the drunk driver. Only the other man. The accident that killed that woman and little girl might have occurred around the same time, but it hadn’t been Seb’s accident. Or maybe that entire article had been invented. It was easy enough to Photoshop a fake newspaper article.

The thought that someone would do that, put that horrible crime on Seb, make him feel so much guilt and worry, when it wasn’t even true . . . how could anyone be that cruel? And why?

“Billy. Where did he get that idea?” Simmons asked again.

I shook my head. “He has a folder with his lab results and an article about the other victims.”

“Who gave it to him?”

“I don’t know.” I looked up. “Was he . . . the lab result shows he was stoned on methamphetamine.”

“That much is true,” Simmons said grimly. “He was high as a fucking kite.”

He was? I was surprised. It would make more sense if that had been a lie too.

Simmons kept talking. “A man who lived near the crash scene called for an ambulance right away, which was lucky for Seb. They were still extracting him when the fire started. He could have burned alive if they’d arrived a few minutes later. Then he was in the hospital in a coma for months. I never got to speak to him. I’d still like to do that, just to have that on record. But that, Billy, is all I can tell you.”

There was something about the way he said that’s all