Chapter Thirty-Six
Isla thought about James her entire ride back to the Corrigan estate.
His haunted demeanor troubled her as she returned the car she had borrowed and walked back to her room.
When she was alone, she sat on her bed and typed up everything she remembered and the multitude of questions she had on the laptop Rey had given her. She called him and Nat on three-way.
“Sounds to me like he and his buddies were involved in whatever happened to her,” Rey said.
“Two things,” Isla mused. “First, what happened that changed Eden so much over Labor Day weekend? I think if you run some checks around that year and time and cross-reference a car accident, that could help me ask the right questions. And then there’s what happened when Eden and I got here two years later.
She had to meet someone. She told me she was doing that, setting things right. ”
“Whatever James the coward and his goon-squad friends did, Eden was involved, and James didn’t stop it,” Nat continued over the noise on her end. “What if she came back to settle the score before she came to LA with you?”
“And what? It went sideways?” Isla asked before she could think about what she was saying.
She was talking about her friend, not a third-party job with no ties.
Sideways meant someone who didn’t like the score Eden was settling could have hurt her.
Isla whispered, a crack showing through her businesslike demeanor, “Do you really think they would have hurt her over some high school thing? Really?”
Isla didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t. The Corrigans were a lot of things: ruthless in the business world, fiercely protective of their members, private. But were they capable of more than that? Were they deadly?
Rey cut through. “I’ll do some searching here and let you know.”
“Got it,” she said.
Nat said, “And promise me one more thing?”
“What’s that?” Isla asked.
“To be careful.”