CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE #2
“Can’t this wait?” Manuel questioned, sidestepping so our arms met with more solid contact.
Veritas appeared wholly unapologetic. “Not particularly. She needs to give her statement while things are still fresh, though you’re okay to get that GSW looked at while I’m talking to her.”
Manuel frowned. “GSW?”
“Sorry, gunshot wound. It’s the lingo of the trade.” Veritas turned and pointed. “The paramedics are over there.”
Manuel didn’t even flinch. “I’m fine here, sir.”
“It wasn’t a question, kid.”
Oh, if I took exception to being referred to as a kid, a guy in his senior year of high school most definitely would—especially on the coattails of being ordered around about an issue he’d already stood his ground on.
They sized each other up.
If I didn’t intervene, I worried Manuel might do something to land himself in jail, and while it might be marginally safer with Pierce no longer strutting around as the king of the roost, who knew what his replacement would be like?
I placed a stilling hand on Manuel’s arm. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. In fact, I’ll feel a lot better if you get checked out by the professionals. Do it for me?”
He arched a brow. “For you?”
“Yes, it bothers me that I dragged you into all of this. Have I said I’m sorry?”
Manuel studied me for a long moment before nudging me with his shoulder.
“I’m not, and you might as well accept the idea of me tagging along.
Call me the Robin to your Batman. Batwoman?
Meh, the names are a work in progress.” His arm encircled my frame for a brief hug before he walked off, leaving Veritas and me alone.
It was just us, the flashing lights, and about a dozen law enforcement officers twenty paces away.
Veritas didn’t ease into it. “Tell me what happened.”
I recounted my tale, from going to Manuel’s house, being simultaneously surprised and terrified by the mayor—since Veritas and his team already put two and two together to realize George Orten was somehow involved.
It cost me nothing to admit that much. Then, I detailed being chased, hit, and ultimately held at gunpoint by the chief.
“Which is when you guys showed up and saved our lives,” I concluded.
“Okay, sure.” He closed his notebook, running a fingernail over his left eyebrow a few times. “What would really be helpful is some clarification on what happened after we got here.”
“For your report?”
“Maybe,” he hedged. “I guess it all depends on what you say.”
That wasn’t evasive at all.
I hugged myself. “But you were here. You witnessed everything. What more could I give you?”
He cast me a deadpan stare. “Really?”
“What?”
He pocketed his notes and crossed his arms. “Okay, let me tell you what my men and I witnessed on arrival—an officer of the law holding two innocent teens hostage, but besides that, some strange things.”
My heart rabbited. “Strange?”
“Yeah, strange.”
“Like what?” Could Veritas see the evil in Pierce’s eyes? I assumed I’d been the only one to perceive the black, wispy tendrils leaking their dark nature into the atmosphere before an attack.
He flashed an amused smile. “That’s not how this works, Willa. I ask questions. You answer them.”
Well, then.
“I told you what I saw.”
“Yes, you did that.” He cherry-picked his words. “How about you explain what made you pass out twice in rapid succession, for seemingly no reason.”
“No reason? Did you stop to consider that I was terrified? Goats do that, don’t they? The fainting ones? Maybe I’m narcoleptic.”
“You prevaricate a lot. I’m going to need straight answers from you. Yes or no, did you—”
“Willa?” my dad’s voice cried out.
Tonight was a night of interruptions, the good and the bad.
My dad’s voice grew closer. “Willa? Where the hell is my daughter? I want to see her now!” Near the mouth of the stairs, two uniformed men attempted to wrestle away the raging slice of fury that was my dad—attempt being the key word.
He glared at them. “Not after you finish with her, not fifteen minutes from now, not even five minutes from now! If I don’t lay eyes on Willahelm Walker in ten seconds, your entire police department will suffer the worst publicity you’ve seen since Rodney King! Now—”
He towered above them, an imposing figure. The sense of safety that I’d lost when Manuel left for the paramedics returned with a flood of warmth.
“Dad!” I cried, tears welling in my eyes. The steady presence of a parent flipped a switch, transforming me from defensive teen to blubbering toddler in an instant.
The personnel yielded their half-hearted attempt when Dad cast the pair one last glare and elbowed through. His brown orbs, a dead ringer to my own, searched and found me, projecting security and warmth.
We met halfway across the floor.
“Willa? What—oh, Willa.” Dad hugged me tight enough to pop my spine. He didn’t release me, brushing my hair and murmuring about his baby and something about revisiting Mom’s bubble wrap ideas.
My flayed, despondent, survival mode self ate it all up. His comfort spread far, collecting my broken remains.
Dad leaned away, shifting my hair from the left side of my face, the one that’d been treated to the glass explosion when the chief’s truck grill pulverized my window in that first direct hit. “Are you okay? We passed the Jeep on the way in. I was—I was sure you’d be dead.”
“No, I’m safe.”
Dad gave me another once over, cataloguing every scrape and bruise. “Your mom is downstairs with your brother. They wouldn’t let us all up—something about it being too traumatic for children. Whose truck was that?”
Mom was here too? I’d never be able to leave the house again. Though, at this point, I didn’t totally resent the notion.
Veritas followed and spoke up. “It was Trent Pierce’s personal vehicle.”
“Pierce? The chief of police? Ben’s dad?” Dad asked me.
Dad never met the man, apart from the brief brush at the station when I’d been booked, but he’d been well aware of the void he’d filled in Ben’s life.
Ben’s old clunker broke down, and his own father said he’d be there after his shift ended hours later.
When, troubled, I’d informed my dad about this, he’d dropped everything and gone to collect my boyfriend. They’d been very close after that.
Dad frowned. “Why’d he hit you, Willa? Were you running from him?”
“She was, but with reason,” Veritas replied. “The police department has been covering up the fact that they found her in the woods the day before her supposed accident at Vedault.”
Dad blinked. “What? They found her the day before? In the woods, like she escaped? Supposed? What? I—”
Veritas—earning my nickname for him—continued piling on the truths. “They buried this information because they wanted to interrogate her to determine if she was involved in Ben’s death.”
“They questioned her? Without her parents? Wait, Ben died in a car accident… while she was locked up.”
“They kept the real report from the press. Ben Pierce’s brake lines were cut, much in the same way hers were.”
Dad blinked, his arm frozen around me. “Hers?”
I wanted to face-palm myself. It was like watching a train wreck, and I was helpless to interrupt it.
Or maybe, my mind whispered, you’re just tired of all the secret keeping.
“Yes, the incident that occurred a month or so before, at the Save-A-Lot. That was when her friend…” He pulled his notebook out of a pocket on his tactical vest. Did he sleep with the thing? “Ah, Hunter Armstrong took her car into the shop to replace the brake lines.”
Dad’s mouth gaped like a fish at this point. Were it not for Manuel and me nearly perishing multiple times on this very spot, Dad’s reaction might have been comical.
With a satisfied nod like he hadn’t pulled the rug from beneath my dad, Veritas flipped the notebook shut.
“So there was evidence of tampering, but the Fairview Police Department was forced to drop the case in an agreement deal. You see, during the interrogation, the chief stormed into the room and hit Willa so hard that she needed medical attention. To avoid brutality charges, they coerced or blackmailed—my team is still working on that angle—your daughter into telling the fabricated story about suffering an accident while at Vedault. In turn, they would drop all accusations against her being involved with Ben Pierce’s murder. ”
Veritas’s tone was almost cheerful considering he’d been dealing out a barrage of verbal blows, one after another, like they were religious flyers.
His actions felt intentional, as if he’d suspected how much I’d been keeping from my parents and wanted to toss out all the secrets he knew in a petty retaliation for not telling him more about what’d happened here today.
Or maybe he just enjoyed making sure people lived up to his name—Veritas.
Dad blinked. “I’m sorry, one more time, from the top.”
His words were slow, bland, and nothing like the word weaver professional he was for the camera. One might believe that he lacked any emotion whatsoever under the onslaught of news. They would be mistaken.
Dad was furious and burying it hard. Asking Veritas for a repeat was only because he wanted to make sure he had all the facts straight. Inside his head, he’d be building his case against me.
Yeah, I was definitely grounded.