Chapter 16
The one thing Riely was never supposed to do was listen to the people who came to her grandfather’s house after she was in bed at night. But she’d been doing that for three years now.
It was usually the same people, too. Those guys Melvin and Joe, mostly. Sometimes there were three women who would stop by. But they were smarter than the guys. They almost always acted like they were keeping secrets, and never really said anything really bad.
What was really gross was when they all flirted with each other. Like, they were far too old for that.
Tonight Melvin and Joe were there again.
They mostly ignored Riely when she saw them in the house and stuff.
The house was really big—she had plenty of room to stay away from them, if she wanted.
But they didn’t realize she’d put a camera in her grandfather’s office a year ago.
She had the app on her phone. Her grandfather wasn’t very smart about technology or anything like that.
He didn’t know much about cameras that worked online or anything.
She’d hidden it in the air vent one weekend when he was in Wyoming visiting his dad’s cousin’s family and everything.
He’d left her with Bo. Bo was her bodyguard. He’d been with her for three months now. Mostly he just drove her places and made sure she had food at dinner and stuff. And didn’t let her do anything fun or anything like that.
Ever since…what had happened before. Her fingers wrapped around the necklace like it did every time she remembered. It hurt to even remember.
It was her fault he was dead. Her grandfather had made that clear without ever saying it out loud.
Riely stayed where she was in the back sitting room of her suite.
Her grandfather never came in that part of her suite.
He said she was a young woman and deserved her privacy.
She had a couch and chairs and a television in there.
He wouldn’t let her have a computer in her room.
But he gave her an allowance. He didn’t know about her other phone at all.
She just made sure to pay the bill every month so she could keep minutes.
He hadn’t found that phone yet. And Bo didn’t know about it either.
That was where she had all of her photos from…before.
Before she’d figured out that her grandfather was probably a murderer.
She knew he was. And he had probably killed her mom and grandma, too. Riely was just trying to find a way to prove it.
She listened to what was going on in her grandfather’s office now.
There was rumbling, though. It sometimes made it hard to hear. She’d have to wait until the air turned off.
They were talking about cleaning up messes again. Making problems go away. And something about people being stupid and doing stupid things too close to where they lived and everything.
Joe was, anyway. He was kind of the stupid one.
He kept going on about some woman should have died, then everything would have been fine.
Now they were going to find things out or something and that they should just kill them all and stop worrying about it.
He was really upset tonight. She couldn’t tell what had happened though.
No one was saying exactly why they wanted to kill everybody.
Melvin was the weird one. He kept saying stuff from the Bible all the time. He really creeped her out. He had apologized to her once, but she’d never figured out what he had been talking about. He’d just looked sad, and said she reminded him of his daughter or something.
Riely kind of thought she was probably dead, the way her grandfather had talked later. When she’d asked why Melvin seemed so sad all the time. Her grandfather had said Melvin had lost someone he’d really loved recently.
Her grandfather was going on and on about how they had to be really careful now.
That if something ‘got out’ they would all be in trouble.
And that he wasn’t interested in spending the rest of his life in prison.
That they had to act really fast to make this go away now and everything.
She heard the phone ring, too. And heard him saying something, telling someone they had to fix this before it spiraled out of control.
And took them all down and everything.
He had done something really bad. But Riely still didn’t know how to prove it.
Her grandfather’s friends left. She was supposed to be sleeping now. Grandpa would probably check on her before he went to bed—he did that almost every night, even at her age.
Bo had the night off.
She was glad. He was really creepy. She didn’t like him one bit. And it made it really hard for her to spy on her grandfather when Bo was around and everything. She looked at the photo on her phone. It was the last one she had taken of him before he’d died. It was her favorite and always would be.
She missed him so much. He had been the only one to have ever truly seen her for who she was. And he had listened to her when she told him about her grandfather and his friends being really bad men.
Riely was sure that was what had gotten him killed.
He was dead now. And it was all her fault.
She tucked her phone beneath her mattress, and cried herself to sleep again.