Page 42 of A Hidden Past

“I don’t give a shit.”

She sets the coffee in front of me and says, “I swear to God, you’d better finish that.” I lower my eyes, and she says, “No. Screw that. You’re man enough to go challenge Julian Kensington to a duel in the streets, so you can look me in the eye when I talk to you.”

I lift my eyes to hers and see compassion. Anger, sure, but also compassion. I think it would be easier to just see anger.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

I take a deep breath. “I was angry. I just… I wanted…”

“Nate, the police ruled her death an accident.”

“It wasn’t a fucking accident!” I shout.

“Don’t you dare shout at me,” she says, somehow not raising her own voice. “We can talk without going crazy.”

“No! Fuck that!” Tears come to my eyes again, and God, I’m so mad right now. “No one cares! No one cares that she’s dead! They know what happened! I know they know! That diary proved it, and you gave it back to him? And what were you doing there, anyway?”

“I was following you. I saw your van pass my house, and I…” she looks away and reddens slightly. “I thought I’d surprise you. I was going to follow you to your first house and…” she lifts her hand and lets it drop. “Make out with you a bit and then invite you over later. I thought it would be nice to tease you and get you excited for later. Then I saw where you were really headed, and… I guess I didn’t get there fast enough.”

That should make me feel good. That should make me calm down. At the very least, it should make me stop acting like a petulant child.

But I’m too upset to think. All I can feel is angry and humiliated and powerless. So instead of acting like someone with an ounce of intelligence, I say, “You know what? I’m not just a damned sex toy.”

She doesn’t flinch or gasp like I expect her to. She just sighs and says, “Calm down, Nate.”

“No! I’m not going to calm down! Why don’t you care? Why does no one—”

“I care, Nate!” she shouts, raising her voice loudly enough that I flinch. “I care that a girl was murdered ten houses down the same goddamned street where I live. I care. But that doesn’t mean I go to their front porch, wave the diary that I stole in their faces and shout that they need to ‘fess up or else. Speaking of that, or else what? What were you going to do?”

“I was going to go to the police,” I mumble.

“The police that ruled the death an accident?”

“Someone needs to—”

“Enough, Nate. It happened. She died. She was probably murdered. Whoever killed her got away with it. It happened. It sucks, but there’s nothing you can do about it, and shit like what you pulled today will do absolutely nothing to help.”

Annie’s face flashes across my mind. Her broken, twisted body, torn apart by some dickweed who just had to drive home drunk off his ass.

“I can’t just leave it like that,” I whisper hoarsely. “It’s not fair.”

I stand suddenly and stalk out of the kitchen. I grab the keys to the van off of the table in the foyer, then leave the house, ignoring Vivian as she calls my name.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Lena read through the key points of Lila Kensington’s medical record. Then she read it again. Then she read it another time.

She didn’t need to read it more than once. She’d learned years ago to memorize key points on the first read-through. She read it anyway, because while she didn’t need to absorb any more information, hearing it repeated in her head solidified it and helped her understand what she wanted to do next.

She hadn’t gotten that far yet.

“I’m heading out, boss. Can I convince you to go home and sleep in a bed, or would you like me to bring you a cot from one of the cells?”

Lena smiled at Harris. “Why don’t you lie down on the floor, and I’ll rest my head on your chest?”

“That’s funny. Seriously, boss, you’re starting to obsess.”

“What reason would the medical examiner have to lie about Lila Kensington’s cause of death?”

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