about that, but not enough, this time, to stay put.
She loved her father with her whole heart. He was only trying to keep her safe with all these cameras and guards and alarms. But he was the most dangerous thing in her life. The very reason she needed all this.
Lia was growing really tired of living her life under a microscope. She was almost twenty years old. Would it ever end?
When she went downstairs and out, she used the front door. A black Tahoe was parked across the street, just back from the intersection, so the two men inside had a straight view of her building.
She gave them a wave and then turned her back, headed to the frat house about six blocks away.
~oOo~
The cops were still there when she arrived at the scene, and the crowd of early-morning onlookers, but the ambulance was gone, and apparently Jackson with it.
Quite a crowd had amassed. It looked like every single one of Jackson’s fraternity brothers was on the lawn, as well as most of the student population awake this early on a Saturday. Two uniformed police officers were talking to two different groups, taking notes on small paper pads.
It wasn’t a party atmosphere, but there was something unsettlingly social about the clusters of people talking amongst themselves.
Lia found Harriet and made her way through the throng. Just as she got to her friend, Geoff, the guy Harriet had paired up with last night, came up as well, bearing two cups of Starbucks coffee.
Geoff was one of Jackson’s fraternity brothers. His expression was drawn into all straight lines—narrow eyes, slashed mouth, straight creases between his brows. He was obviously angry, and worried.
“What happened?” Lia asked as Geoff handed a cup to Harriet.
An odd flutter crossed Geoff’s brow before he answered. “We don’t know. A couple guys saw Jack going out back with somebody, and then nobody saw him again until this morning, when he was out here, like he was.”
“Did they see who he was with?” Lia asked, with a little twitch of worry for Alex.
Geoff shrugged. “Just a guy. Nobody noticed anything about him, I guess.”
“You were talking to Jackson, Leah,” Harriet said over a sip of her coffee. “Did you see anything weird? Or did he say anything to you?”
Lia shook her head. “No. We only talked for a couple minutes.” It made her chest feel tight to know what had happened, and why, and not to be able to say.
She still couldn’t unpack this guilty feeling, either. Jackson had been about to dose her. Alex had seen it. Knowing her father, Lia was frankly surprised he’d survived the night with little more than humiliation and some new body art.
Though it wasn’t her father’s style to make such a flashy show of the justice he took.
Lia wasn’t supposed to know about her father’s doings, but it was impossible to live in Quiet Cove, much less be his daughter, and not know a lot of it—or at least the things that constituted town gossip. Most of what she knew about her father as Don Pagano was that he was immensely powerful and ruthless—so much so that he didn’t have to make a show of it.
In fact, she’d heard that straight from her father’s mouth. One of his most consistent pieces of fatherly wisdom was that when you truly were something—powerful, dangerous, smart, talented, whatever—you didn’t have to insist that you were. Saying it didn’t make it so. Being it was all that mattered. The people who felt the need to draw attention to themselves were making claims they hadn’t earned.
So she couldn’t imagine it was Papa’s idea to tape Jackson to the flagpole like this.
“LISTEN UP!” a gruff male voice shouted, and Lia, Harriet, and Geoff all turned. The older of the two cops stood in the middle of the yard, one hand at his mouth as a makeshift bullhorn. “THIS IS NO PLACE FOR LOOKYLOOS. IF YOU HAVE INFORMATION FOR US, PLEASE STAY AND LET US KNOW. IF YOU’RE JUST HERE FOR THE SHOW, GET MOVING. GO STUDY OR SOMETHIN’.”
“I’m going to go,” Lia said.
Harriet grabbed her arm as she turned. “Wait—you talked to him. You should tell the cops that.”
Lia very much did not want to do that. Before she could say as much, though, Geoff did it for her.
“Let her go, Harrie,” he said, giving Lia a look that seemed to mean more than his words. “She already said she doesn’t know anything.”