Page 34 of Lethal Danger

“No. I mean, I will. But I want to tell you about Randall.”

“Okay.”

“I should’ve told you before. See, he was my boyfriend. Well, not really.” The words spilled rapidly as her breathing sped up, too. “We went on a date like once—without telling our parents ’cause you know that’s not allowed—and I could see how weird and controlling he was right away, so I called it quits. Then he got super weird. Like really obsessive, you know?”

She continued before he could give a response, which she apparently didn’t expect or need. “So when Sam and I started going out, Randall freaked and got super jealous and kind of scary.”

“How do you mean that?” Hawthorne had to nearly cut her off to squeeze in the question.

“He followed Sam around and got in his face one time. Told him to stay away from me or else.”

“Or else what?”

“I don’t think he technically said, but it was obvious he meant he’d beat Sam up or something. Randall could get really angry sometimes.”

“Do you think he’d ever become violent?”

“I think he killed Sam.” Her voice lowered slightly, whether because of the gravity of her accusation or because she’d stepped inside a building, Hawthorne wasn’t sure. “I think he followed him to the fair that night, and they probably got in a fight or Randall just ambushed Sam out of nowhere. And then Randall moved him to the Logboat Adventure to make it look like an accident.”

“That’s an interesting theory.” And a plausible one in some ways. At least there was a possible motive for murder.

“You mean you don’t believe me?” Disappointment colored her voice.

“Not at all. I believe everything you told me that you know about Randall and Sam is true. But we can’t know the truth of the parts you’re speculating on without evidence. This is really helpful, though. I hadn’t heard of any possible motives for this to be intentional before.”

“So you mean you’ll look into it?”

“Of course. I promised I’d look into this for you, Rebekah, and I’m going to do that. You just keep giving me any information you remember, and I’ll keep following leads, okay?”

“Okay.” She sounded slightly appeased. “Well, wish me luck. Gotta take my test.”

Given he didn’t believe in luck anymore, he searched for a better alternative. “You’ll knock ’em dead.”

She laughed. “Thanks. See ’ya.” The line went quiet as she ended the call.

Knock ’em dead may not have been the best choice of words under the circumstances, but, thankfully, Rebekah hadn’t seemed to notice.

Had someone clobbered Sam so hard it had killed him? A rock smash could be matched with or inflicted after a blow to the head from something else. Or a fall against a different hard object, perhaps during an altercation.

Murderous possibilities, always easy to access in the storage vault of his mystery writer’s mind, cycled through his thought. Were any of them true in this case?

Only one way to find out—keep investigating. He needed to talk to more of the people who had been there the night Sam was killed and the morning when his body was discovered. Hopefully, Hawthorne would be able to find evidence the police had missed.

They’d concluded it was an accident fairly quickly. They hadn’t had as much reason as Hawthorne had now to look harder at the evidence. To consider foul play.

Rebekah’s convictions and the first possible motive Hawthorne had learned of ignited a suspicion in the back of his mind. A suspicion she could be right.

And if the boy had been killed, Hawthorne wouldn’t rest until he found his murderer.

Eleven

“So weird without the boss here, isn’t it?” Nevaeh stared at the empty armchair where Phoenix always sat with her K-9 Dagian.

Jazz, sharing the sofa with Nev at PK-9 headquarters, followed the direction of her bestie’s gaze. “Yeah.” Hopefully, it would be more relaxed. Phoenix tended to bring a sense of intensity to every PK-9 Agency meeting just from her presence. And it was nerve-wracking trying to figure out what the boss was thinking the whole time behind her inscrutable, ever-watchful gaze.

“I keep waiting for her to march into the room with Dag.” Bristol Jones grinned as she feigned a glance at the break room door from the end of the love seat she shared with Cora Thomson.

Toby, Bristol’s black Labrador, paused in the middle of searching for dropped food on the floor to look in the same direction, as if wondering what Bris had seen.

---