Page 20 of The Guilty One

TATE

Five Days Before Disappearance

I press my ear to the phone, lowering my voice in the quiet office. “What the hell are you talking about? We’re not going to visit Aaron.”

Dakota scoffs. “You really don’t care what happened to Bradley? You don’t want to know?”

“No.” I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers, leaning forward on my elbows on the desktop. “Because it’s not my business anymore. Whatever happened, it’s awful, but it’s done. Aaron didn’t kill him, and you know it.”

“I don’t know any of you anymore. For all I know, you’re the one who killed him.”

“For all I know, you did,” I retort, frustration tingling a muscle in my shoulders. I don’t have time for any of this. “Why don’t you just call him and ask, like you did me?”

He draws in a long breath. “Well, I tried. You’re the one who answered.”

My patience is wearing thin as a call comes in from a client. One I can’t truly afford to not answer. “Look, I spoke with Aaron last week. He wasn’t planning to kill him. He was trying to talk me down from confronting him.”

“And did you? Confront him?”

I run my hands through my hair, chewing on the inside of my cheek in frustration. I shouldn’t have said that. “No. He called me, and we spoke. I told him he needed to keep his mouth shut, like we agreed.”

“And?” Dakota presses.

“And nothing. That’s where we left it. I haven’t spoken to him since. I had no idea anything had happened to him until I got the obituary. Why’d you send it from some weird address, by the way?” I ask, pulling up the email again and using the mouse to drag the pointer across the phony email address.

“I didn’t want it to seem suspicious if I sent it from mine,” he says simply, as if that makes any sense at all.

I massage the space between my brows. “Well, it’s going to seem a whole lot more suspicious that you created a weird email account to send it. Did you send it from your computer?”

“Um…” He pauses. “Is it bad if I did?”

I drop my head into my hands. “It’s all the same IP address, so it’s going to be really obvious you created a fake email to send it. So I’m going with yeah, it’s really bad.”

“Look, whatever. I didn’t do anything wrong. All I’m saying is, what are the odds? After all this time, Bradley wants to talk, and days later he’s been murdered. Don’t tell me you honestly think that’s a coincidence. There’s no way.”

I press my lips together, squeezing my eyes shut as a headache begins to form in my temples. “How do we know anyone killed him? For all we know, he had a car accident or a heart attack.”

“Blunt force trauma to the head,” Dakota says, stealing my breath with the interruption. “He was found at home alone.”

My blood runs cold. “How do you know that? You can’t possibly know that.”

His voice is emotionless as he responds, sending chills over me. I feel as if I’m going to be sick. “I have a friend who works at the hospital. He was working last night when Bradley was brought in. Said he took something heavy to the back of the head. Doesn’t sound like an accident to me.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing away the image that fills my head. “That doesn’t mean it has anything to do with him contacting us.”

He lets out a dry laugh. “It does if he told you what he told me.”

“No.” My hand balls into a fist. “None of us would’ve hurt him.”

“Someone did. You’re awfully sure it wasn’t us. Weird you don’t care enough to look into it, unless you already know what happened,” he says, and I feel as if a cold hand has slipped up the back of my shirt. Every part of me is pure ice.

I inhale sharply, my panic interrupted by another call coming in from the client. “Look, what do you want, Dakota? I’m at work. I need to go.”

“No. You need to come with me to meet Aaron. Find out what he knows.”

I watch as the call fades from the screen and send a quick text to tell him I’m at a showing and will call him back as soon as possible. “When?”

“Today. Tomorrow. Soon. As soon as we can. We need to talk to him, all of us in one room, until the truth comes out.”

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