RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,137

father's a lot like mine. I guess...it brought back some difficult memories.”

He nods, clenching his jaw. He’s suddenly even angrier than he was a minute ago. “I wanna talk about something with you, Little E,” Wren says. “I know now's not a good time, but I don't want to wait anymore. I thought I could keep my mouth shut until you came to me, but…” He shakes his head.

Oh god. No. No, no, no. This is bad. “Wren, I don’t—”

“I did a bunch of research on you before you arrived,” he says stiffly. “I checked your social media. Dug up your school reports. It’s severely fucked up, I know, and now that everything’s changed between us, I feel like a fucking predator just thinking about it.”

“This…isn’t news,” I say. “You already told me that you looked into me. I got over that a long time ago. We don’t need to—”

“Elodie. Stop.”

“Can you stop staring out of the window? You're beginning to freak me the fuck out.”

He bows his head, closing his eyes for a second. Only after a deep breath does he finally look up at me. “I didn’t tell you that I was also sent some official documents from Tel Aviv. I put in a request with a friend who lives out in Israel, and he sent me an envelope. There was a police report inside it.”

I go very, very still. “What police report?”

Reality fractures, shatters to tiny pieces when he takes a deep breath and speaks again. “The one that was filed the night they found your mother’s body.”

33

ELODIE

THREE YEARS AGO

The metal chair creaks underneath me, the loud, abrasive sound cutting through the tense silence of the small, windowless room like a knife. The man on the other side of the scratched, wobbly table gives me a tight smile that doesn't come close to reaching his eyes. He looks like he feels sorry for me but he doesn't quite know what to do to comfort me. He probably doesn't have kids. Probably unmarried, too. There's no wedding band on his left hand, which means he's probably one of those cops who's dedicated his life to his work. When all you do is focus on the bad shit people do to one another, it stunts your heart's ability to feel anything other than contempt and mistrust.

“Won't be long now,” he says in a heavily accented voice. Someone must have told him that I only speak English. I nod, looking down at my hands, resting on top of the table; I was allowed to wash them after the photographs were taken and the forensic analysts had swabbed me, but I was so numb that I didn't do a good job. There's old blood, black now, still shored up beneath my nails—dark crescents of gore that keep on reminding me of the surreal scene I came home to from school.

Seconds pass.

Minutes.

The clock on the wall tick, tick, ticks, its hands marking off the unbearable stretch of endless time that I sit here at this table in my stinking clothes, feeling the emotionless eyes of the detective crawl all over me. Eventually, the door opens and a beautiful woman wearing high waisted pants and a crisp white shirt whirls into the room, carrying a stack of paperwork. She smiles at me; she has one of those soft, warm smiles that instantly makes you feel at ease. Like she could be a friend. “Hello, Elodie. My name is Aimée. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am sorry it has to be under such painful circumstances.” Not Amy, like the Americanized name. Aimée, like the French verb 'to love.' Her accent's wonderful. You can always tell when someone's new to the English language. They don't use contractions. 'It is' instead of 'it's.' 'I am' instead of 'I'm.' They aren't comfortable enough with the language to get lazy with it yet.

She sits down next to her colleague, and a waft of jasmine water hits the back of my nose. I begin to piece together this woman's life as she flicks through the papers she's brought along with her. She's French, obviously. Early thirties. She takes excellent care of herself, working out every day in private behind closed doors but never talking about it, as is the way of all classically French women. She drinks her coffee black, dipping her croissant into the piping hot liquid at her desk each morning. She loves children, but she's never found the time to have them. She'll