12. Cassie
CASSIE
Breakfast is delicious, but it’s hard to enjoy it with a shoe hanging over my head, waiting to drop.
I get a refill on my hot chocolate, sad that I’ll never get to have it again. I don’t know the specific details of what’s available to prisoners, but I feel quite certain hot chocolate isn’t on the list.
Around the time the waitress delivers the bill, Tor’s phone lights up. The lawyer is calling.
I frown, digging my own phone out of my purse and turning it back on in case they tried to call me, too. Maybe they’re calling about the arrest. Maybe the police have been in touch.
Now that breakfast is over, it’s time to face what’s coming.
I watch Tor for hints about the subject of the phone call, but his expression is controlled and carefully blank. His words aren’t much help, either.
“Oh… Okay, so what does that mean for us? Yeah, I do… That’s right… I can do that.”
I think he’s being deliberately vague, so I have to wait for him to hang up before I get any information.
When he finally ends the call, he looks at me across the table.
My eyebrows rise expectantly. “Well?”
“I have to go to the police station today.”
My stomach sinks. “For what? Are you in trouble?”
“No,” he assures me quickly, shaking his head. “I’m fine. But there’s been a development in the case, and they need to ask me a couple of questions. They’ll want to talk to you, too.”
“What’s the development?” I ask, watching as he shifts and pulls out his wallet.
“Let me get the check first. We’ll talk about it when we leave.”
I frown, unsettled by what feels like stalling. That, or it’s really bad, and he knows I’m not going to take it well.
All the food I just enjoyed roils in my stomach.
This has to be it. I don’t know why he worded it the way he did—we already knew Russell was going to talk to the cops today—but they have to be calling us about Russell’s statement.
Maybe it’s something Tor didn’t expect. Maybe they found the gun he got rid of last night.
Maybe he didn’t clean it as well as he thought he did, and they found a fingerprint.
It has to be really bad because we’re alone in this corner of the restaurant, and we have already been talking about things we wouldn’t want anyone to overhear.
Tor deliberately sat with his back to the wall so he could halt our conversation if the waitress came over or if anyone was seated near us who might overhear.
Now he gets up and heads to the front of the restaurant to pay our bill, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.
Tor leads me out of the restaurant, opening the door for me. The cool air hits me and makes me feel slightly less queasy, but not by much.
The sky is a moody gray. The clouds are heavy with rain that should start falling soon.
“What’s going on, Tor?”
He stops outside my car, rakes a hand through his dark hair as he looks anywhere but at me, then he says, “Let’s, uh… let’s drive to the lawyer’s office first.”
“No,” I say, eyes widening. “I want to know what’s going on now.”
He sighs, annoyance flickering across his face, but he adjusts accordingly. “Fine. We’ll leave your car here. We can come pick it up later. I’ll drive. We can talk in the car.”
“You’re scaring me,” I tell him.
He laughs shortly, opening the car door for me. “Get used to it. It’s gonna be a long day.”
I don’t know what that means.
I get in his car anyway.
I know he’s keeping something from me at the moment, but I know it’s because he believes it’s the best thing for me, too. I trust him.
Tor shuts the door once I’m in, then he walks around to the driver’s side.
I swallow, tracking his every move as he drops into the seat and starts the car.
When waiting for him to speak yields complete silence as he drives down the road, I finally burst out, “Are they arresting me?”
“No,” he says, almost shortly. “And get that thought out of your head right now. I don’t want you even considering the possibility that you’ll be arrested in connection with any of this, because if you’re thinking it, it might show on your face.
Banish it. I told you this is the reality now.
As far as the police are concerned, you didn’t do anything that warrants being arrested.
When you talk to them, you talk to them while knowing that.
You are not going to jail today. There’s no reason for you to. Got it?”
I nod, biting my lower lip. “Then what was the phone call?”
“They need to bring us in for follow-up interviews so they can ask us questions about Russell.”
My heart stalls. Deep down, I had the tiniest flicker of hope that he didn’t throw me to the wolves, but I knew it wasn’t realistic.
He isn’t Tor. He’s not some criminal mastermind.
The only thing Russell could do was tell the truth.
Otherwise, he might be in hot water himself, and he wouldn’t do that for me. Especially not now.
“The lawyer will have more information, so I’m sure he will advise us, but obviously, we need to talk about a couple of things before we see him.
I suspect they will ask when you last spoke to Russell, and I think you should tell the truth.
Tell them he was waiting for you when we got back from the movies last night, that he didn’t make his presence known until I left.
Tell them every true thing you can. We’re not going to practice or get too specific.
Just use common sense, and you’ll be fine.
The only lie I need you to tell is this one: if they ask if you told me about Russell waiting for you outside your house last night, say you didn’t.
Give whatever reason feels right to you.
Obviously, you texted me afterward about popcorn, and we called on the burners, so there’s no evidence of that.
And we did meet up at the motel afterward, but we can just say we decided to do that after the movie. We went home to pack overnight bags.”
“Okay.”
“They’ll want a timeline, but we already prepared for that. The only difference is, obviously, if they ask if either of us left the motel after we checked in, we say no. We were together the whole night.”
I nod, but with a bit less confidence. “I don’t… really see how any of this will help, though. Even if they can’t recover the gun, they’ll know now that I got it from Russell.”
He looks over at me. “When you arranged all that, were you careful? Did you ever text him about borrowing his gun? Or tell anyone else that you had it?”
I shake my head. “I’m not an idiot, Tor. I’m not just gonna text him , ‘Hey, can I borrow one of your guns?’”
He cracks a smile. “Good. So that was all in person?”
“Yes.”
“You said he practiced shooting with you. Did you go to a range?”
I shake my head. “He set up targets behind his house.”
Tor sighs with relief. “That’s perfect. I assume he did that often enough that neighbors wouldn’t have taken notice of that time in particular.” Then he glances over at me. “He never took you to a range when you dated or anything, did he?”
“Nope. That’s not exactly my idea of a date night.”
A smirk tugs at his lips, and he nods. “Noted. So if the police ask if you’ve ever held his gun…”
“Well, I did hold one of his guns when we dated. It was empty—or, not loaded, or… whatever. But it was new. He had just bought it, so he was showing it to me. That was a long time ago, though.”
He nods. “Okay. Let’s not talk about it anymore, so when the police ask, you’re coming up with answers on the spot. We need to keep you fresh and loose.”
“When this is all over with, you may want to consider law school someday,” I tell him. “If you’re this good at breaking the law, imagine how well you could defend it.”
Amusement glints in his eyes. “I think it’s cute that you imagine I would ever be a prosecutor and not the one defending the criminals.”
I wrinkle up my nose, imagining him in Terry’s office. “Never mind, then. You shouldn’t be a lawyer.”
The rest of the drive is pretty quiet. I have a lot of questions and a lot of things I’d like to bring up, but since Tor’s in agreement with the lawyer about not rehearsing—and it makes sense to me—I keep them to myself.
The rain starts just as we pull into the parking lot of the lawyer’s offices.
I don’t feel good about this.
An image flashes to mind of me being escorted out of this building in handcuffs, led straight to a police car, and then to the beginning of the rest of my life.
I don’t want this to be the last place I go.
The night of the murder, Tor thought fast, and I really felt prepared for the questioning, but I don’t today.
He addressed a very specific, very narrow part of the questioning I’m anticipating, and honestly, I don’t feel it was the most important part.
Given his previous coaching, I’m surprised, and by the time we get to the lawyer’s suite of offices inside the building, I’m having doubts.
I’ve taken my hands off the wheel and let Tor guide me through my defense so far because it was clear he was better at it than I was, but I feel like I need a lot more time to consider my answers since his review today was… well, a bit sparse.
He said the lawyer would prepare us, but the lawyer will know I lied to him after Russell’s testimony. He may not even be willing to represent me now. I certainly haven’t received a phone call from his office since turning my phone back on.
Still, I have enough faith in Tor that I follow him inside without voicing any of my concerns, and hopefully, I’m not turned away.
Tor tells me to take a seat in the waiting area, and he goes up to the reception desk alone. The receptionist’s gaze flickers to me, then back to him, and she nods with a polite smile.
Tor comes over and sits next to me. “He’s going to see us together.”
Voice low, I ask, “Are you sure he’s still representing me?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Why didn’t he call me?”
“I don’t know.”
I purse my lips. “I think he’s going to fire me.”
“He’s not going to fire you.”
“I don’t feel good about this.”
Tor reaches over and takes my hand, catching me completely off guard. He gives it a reassuring squeeze, and his blue eyes meet mine as he promises, “As long as we stick together, everything will be fine.”
That’s easy for him to say. His ex-boyfriend didn’t just implicate him in a murder.
My leg starts to bounce with nervous energy.
Tor lets go of my hand and grips my thigh firmly, instantly killing the bounce.
“Relax,” he says again, evenly.
My heart somersaults, and I won’t say I feel more relaxed, but with his hand on my thigh, it certainly doesn’t bounce again.
Finally, the receptionist leads us back to the lawyer’s office.
My heart is heavy, and my stomach is in knots, but I know it’s time to face the music, so I brace for it as best as I can.
I don’t know how the spark of hope in my heart continues to flicker no matter how doused it gets, but I know I must have had some because the sight of the lawyer’s somber face hits like a punch to the gut.
Yep. It’s bad.
Tor held my hand walking into the office, but he lets go now and takes a seat in one of the leather chairs facing the lawyer’s desk.
I sink into the other one.
“Mr. Walters. Miss Pritchard.”
“Hi,” I say weakly, fighting the urge to throw up all over his elegant desk.
“As I told Torrance on the phone,” the lawyer says, looking at me, “there has been a rather serious development.”
I can feel the bile rising, making its way to my throat. “Yeah.”
“I believe you know a young man named Russell Wilcox?”
I draw in a breath as gently as I can, but I’m fighting the wrenching, twisting, roiling in my gut, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep my breakfast down. Somehow, I nod. “He’s my ex-boyfriend.”
The lawyer nods. “You were dating at the time of the alleged rape?”
He knows all this already, but his choice of words is enough to make me forget momentarily that I need to vomit. “Alleged? Are you serious?”
Tor interrupts. “Yes, Russell was her boyfriend when she was raped.”
“Is that the reason you broke up?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer curtly.
He nods, but with calculation this time. “So he clearly had hard feelings toward the deceased.”
Not hard enough.
I open my mouth, but before I can speak, Tor does.
“Yes. There was a physical altercation between them shortly after the breakup. You know my brother. He can be an asshole, and… well, after the breakup, I imagine Russell was a little raw. His anger got the best of him, and he and Tim got in a fight.”
Frowning, I glance from Tor to the lawyer and ask, “What does any of this have to do with our case?”
Terry sighs, his demeanor shifting toward sympathetic as he says, “Well, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Cassie, but it appears there may have been a darker side to your boyfriend than what he showed you. He left a note next to the murder weapon last night, and…”
The lawyer pauses, searching for the right words, but Tor doesn’t wait for him to find them.
Tor’s voice cuts right through the silence. “Russell Wilcox is dead.”