CHAPTER SIX
H ow could I have forgotten the guys knew my car?
Heck, Hunter had replaced the brake lines on it after they’d been cut by…
whoever’d cut them. While I suspected the mayor, the matter was still up for debate.
Despite having the video feed and report, the police department wouldn’t jump through any hoops to help find those answers now.
Having a potentially unknown murderer on the loose was also the reason the body bore a new layer of paint.
Throughout my recovery, Hunter kept the vehicle under the guise of fixing the “tire” because I’d been too scared that my mom would revert to full helicopter parent mode if they discovered someone had tampered with my brake lines.
At some point, Hunter made the executive decision to give the Jeep a new paint job.
He did it on his own time, using the leftover paint he’d had when he did his own.
Because my parents were still in the dark, I had to pretend I wasn’t equally shocked when he drove up the driveway sporting a gray, instead of red, vehicle.
This was the first time I’d seen Hunter all day, and because of his imposing stature, my eyes naturally went to him.
He towered over everyone. If that wasn’t enough to keep most of the population at a wary distance, his squared features and piercing gray eyes that tunneled straight into the soul ensured Hunter Armstrong couldn’t be labeled anything but intimidating.
He seemed like someone I’d prefer not to run into in poorly lit alleys—or any alley, really, rain or shine, not just the cliched dark ones—prior to getting to know him.
The only person who had come close to his height and size was…
My throat clogged with tears. I slowed my steps until I wrangled the surge of pain back into submission. Suddenly, it just hit me.
Everything was too much.
My feet glued themselves to the pavement, and no matter what, I couldn’t keep going. I’d been on an unstoppable train ride all day, plowing through whatever hazard lay in the tracks without any choice in the matter.
Now that I’d stopped going through the motions, it was as if I physically couldn’t force myself to jump back on for more. A car honked, but my gaze remained on the guys. My crowded thoughts spilled over into my vision, giving me a dazed, distant stare.
“Just go around, asshole!” A hand fell on my shoulder.
My awareness zipped in with a mental shattering of glass, and I blinked up at Hunter, his large form dominating my field of vision.
A line of cars edged around us, some throwing out a handful of choice words, others asking if everything was okay. Hunter waved them off and, with little ceremony, hefted me into a bridal style carry and walked to the Jeep. Echoing footsteps and the gritty grind of shoes on pavement shadowed us.
Ralph and Kolton.
They must have followed.
“Get the door.” Hunter’s chest rumbled beneath my ears.
Ralph hesitated. “Where are her keys?”
Kolton scoffed, stepping closer. “Her pockets are too fucking small. They have to be in her backpack.”
“Kole, what are you doing? You can’t just go through her stuff!” Ralph yanked it from Kole’s grip, which jostled me and made Hunter’s chest rumble in frustration. “She could have… things in there.”
“It’s a backpack,” Kolton deadpanned, tugging but unable to regain control of my bag. “I fucking hope she has ‘things’ in there. What the fuck are backpacks for?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Ralph groused.
My cheeks heated, because I knew very well what Ralph meant, even if it’d gone over Kolton’s head. Did I want the oblivious blond football player to stumble across my tampons? “My keys are in the front pocket. It has a keychain clip inside it. You can’t miss it.”
“See? Give me that,” Kolton demanded as a zipper sounded. “So you’re talking now?”
“Ease up,” Ralph ordered, his voice dark. It dropped lower when he murmured, “We talked about this. If you can’t stick with the plan, then go home. We’ll update you.”
My back muscles tensed. They’d been conspiring before this. It wasn’t just an impromptu meeting where they all wanted to discuss individual matters. This was a full-on, premeditated ambush.
Hunter’s arms squeezed me, causing my gaze to collide with his. He’d either been warning me not to run or projecting the fact that he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Knowing him, probably both.
“No fucking way. I can handle it,” Kolton protested as the jingle of keys rattled. He laughed and crowed, “Got ‘em! Pfft. Don’t know what you were so fucking worried about.”
The door sprang open, and Hunter wasted no time depositing me into the passenger seat.
“Hey, wait—”
Hunter was already halfway around the hood of the car before I got my bearings.
Kolton stooped down, crowding close as the driver’s door popped free and Hunter climbed inside. My protests fell silent. “No, no, you’ll get your chance to talk, but for now, zip it. We’ll be right behind you.” He hunched even lower, his arm braced across the cab roof. “Hey, Hunter? Your keys?”
Hunter’s brows lowered over his unimpressed, slate gray glare.
Kolton huffed. “Do you want to dip out for work later or not? Come on, bro, what’s the worst that can happen?”
“You ride the clutch, and then I have to replace it. Clutches are a bitch.”
Ralph, not one to be left out, added, “You don’t pay attention and drive off the road.” He ducked down too, squishing Kolton against the open door. “Hey, Hunter, what’s the equivalent of a skin rash on a car’s new paint job?”
“Kole’s death warrant.”
Ralph snapped his fingers and smirked at Kolton. “Right, that.”
Kolton snorted, spinning the keys around his finger. “What’s a paint job among friends? You painted Willa’s Jeep no problem. Barely even took you a week.”
Hunter deadpanned, “I stayed up until three in the morning each night removing emblems, taping, and papering off every seam, and did four rounds of sanding on every single inch of the body.”
I shifted in the seat, clearing my throat while Kolton let out a long, low whistle. “Wow, he must really like you. What the fuck? Why four?”
Hunter said some not so kind things, then growled, “Different grits of sandpaper. That’s why. No arguments. Ralph drives.”
Hunter put the Jeep into drive and took off, so that was the end of that conversation. He navigated the parking lot with ease.
I guess I was being escorted home.
Not even on the road yet, Hunter’s phone lit up in the cupholder.
Without looking, Hunter grumbled, “That’s Kole. Do me a favor and send him the hand emoji flipping the bird.” He rattled off his password.
Boxed in, especially after hearing how labor intensive the paint job was, I felt obligated to obey. Sure enough, the message was from Kole.
KOLE KEISER: WTF, man. If I’m not driving for you, then you should have fucking let me ride with you.
My phone also dinged, so I sent Hunter’s message and pulled mine out.
KOLTON: Wordsmith, tell that dick to stop the car.
Hunter glanced over and scoffed, “You too?”
“Yeah, he wants me to tell you to stop the car.”
Hunter leaned into the turn as he flipped the blinker on. Motorcyclists did that. “Send him the same emoji just to fuck with him,” he dared.
Yeah, no.
Instead, my fingers moved across the screen long enough that he noticed. “No wonder he calls you Wordsmith. Are you writing a novel over there?”
“No, I’m just explaining why it wouldn’t be a good idea to blackmail you into pulling over on the side of the road. He keeps sending secrets that he has on you.”
Hunter gave a one-shoulder shrug, waiting until I pocketed my phone before he cleared his throat. “So, what happened?”
A gorgeous fall day passed outside. Sunlight filtered through arrays of orange, yellow, and red canopies, dappling the dull brown grass in a fiery bouquet of fall.
Normally, a light chill bit the breeze, but today could have been any other late summer day.
Birds chirped, and a family of deer stood at the edge of a cornfield waiting to be plowed.
The entire world spun on, oblivious to the amount of anxiety and adrenaline flooding my veins at Hunter’s simple question.
My heart thudded, the sound deafening in my ears. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice as muted as the brush of a wing.
“What? Why?”
“No reason, just... I’m not sure what to tell you. You’ve heard what happened by now.”
“No,” he corrected, pulling onto the end of my long, long driveway, making me blink.
How long had I watched the scenery pass by? And he hadn’t pushed.
Hunter glanced at me. “You were in the psychiatric ward. We visited you a couple of times, but we treated you with kid gloves. None of us, including Ben or Ralph, who was arrested right alongside you, knew why they sent you there. Then, Ben wrecked. How convenient that the safest driver I knew wrecked not long after we saw security footage of some random man trying to cut your brake lines. Somehow, at the same time, you staged a break from your confinement and ended up with a concussion so bad that it landed you in a coma.”
Newspapers must have omitted information that the police knew brake lines were severed, or, more likely, the police hadn’t told anyone. It was their cover-up, after all.
Of anyone, they’d know best that two people could keep a secret if…
If one was dead.
“How?” I asked, my vision swimming from the hit.
Officer Reeves only debated answering me for a split second. “Car accident. Ben’s brake lines were cut.”
“No, no, no,” I whined, hugging myself tightly and rocking in the chair.
I blinked, surfacing from the deep thoughts to see we’d reached the end of the road.
Coming home always felt like being the hero in some fantasy novel, traveling in a caravan of horse-drawn wagons through a mystical forest, only to be spit out the other end into a small clearing where my house stood.
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Hunter continued in the same macabre tone in which one might announce the death of a beloved one.
Yeah, I definitely couldn’t tell him Ben’s brakes had been cut. So what did that leave? Without that, I couldn’t explain why the police wanted to question me or why Ben’s dad would be angry enough to commit murder on his dead son’s behalf.
If I didn’t know Hunter well, a touch of fight or flight might have kicked in right about now.
Oh, who was I kidding? It still kicked in.
Not far back, Hunter’s matching gray, but newer Jeep, dogged our steps. They’d followed on our bumper the entire way home.
We were all here.
Hunter turned to me. “So you better be ready to talk, because we have questions.”