Page 55 of Sinful Sorrow

“Kinda reminds me of someone else I know.” Aubree sits back and sets her feet on the corner of my desk, tossing candy into her mouth. “Wanna tell me what that was all about?”

Not all of it.

“Sophia is someone I like to think of as a digital Robin Hood.”

She considers my words. Processing. Filing. “Okay.”

“Sophia does slightly illegal things to garner information about things that might eventually lead to better things.”

“So kind of how you’d like to ascertain the purchase records of a knife that killed a girl. You’ll receive that information in a slightly shady way, but hoping the result will help solve a case and bring peace to a dead girl and her unborn fetus.”

“Kind of like that, yeah.” I check the clock on the wall and count the minutes. “We don’t talk about the means with which she does things. We focus on the positive that comes of it.”

“Sounds like you’re breaking the law to me.” She brings her hand up and studies her nails. “But what do I know?”

I roll my eyes. “My husband’s very existence is like, a law broken. And your boyfriend’s existence is?—”

She stop signs me and purses her lips. “Not my boyfriend. Timothy Malone’s career choices, pre and post Copeland City, are his and his alone. Unlike you, I am not married to the mafia.”

“Uh huh. Well, simply knowing him is still scratching on ‘sort of illegal’. It’s up to you to decide where, exactly, you put down your flag as far as ethics go. I wouldn’t be hurting anyone by using a badge number to collect information that might help the detectives close a case.”

“Except, if that information is needed in court, you condemn the detectives to evidence they can’t use.”

“No. I do my research, and if that research turns up anything useful, I let the detectives know, then they can run the same searches and find the same, usable information. Or,” I add when my phone dings, placing my hand over the device and preparing to flip it, “I drop that information in an envelope, seal and send it. The detectives can use it, so long as it wasn’t them who illegally obtained it.”

Picking up my phone, I check the screen and find a text from Detective Asa: You’re free and clear. Be confident. Be assertive. And use the email address, attached below, for correspondence. Telling them your name is Detective Asa, but requesting materials be sent to Minka Mayet @ im-a-newb.com isn’t gonna instill faith. I’ll reroute all emails back to you, untraced.

Scrolling away from her text chat, I jump onto Google instead and swallow the nerves lodged in my throat. Because I’m about to lie. And although, I suppose, I have a decent amount of experience at it, I still worry I’m going to screw things up. For me. For Archer. Even for Soph, when her fake police alias is blown to hell and back.

Typing into the search bar, I pull up every hunting store within a ten-block radius of the haunted house, then I glance toward my door and make sure no one is coming in.

“So what are you supposed to do?” Aubree lowers her voice, like she knows we’re about to get into trouble. “How do we proceed?”

“We call them.” I hit the phone icon and bring the device to my ear. “And we fake it.”

“Hunter’s Hunting Supplies. This is Beverley speaking. How may I direct your call?”

“Uh, hi. This is Detective Asa of the Copeland City Police Department. I’m in the middle of a homicide investigation, and I need to speak with whoever controls accounts and sales over there. I have questions.”

ARCHER

“It’s really too bad about what happened to Naomi, right?” The foursome—Naomi, Mason, Kallie, and Brent—rarely shared any classes. In fact, there was just one that all four of them attended; Econ 101, which is essentially thrust upon every student sliding into college and hoping to come out the other side with a modicum of useful knowledge.

Lucky for us, Dana Jefferson sat in that class, too.

“She was nice, ya know?”

“So you hung out with her?” Fletch’s eyes are still tired, and his jaw clenches too often for me not to notice. But anyone outside of us, anyone who doesn’t know us, doesn’t notice the tension boiling in the detective’s blood. “Did you spend a lot of time with the victim, Dana?”

“Not really.” She drags the line of gum from between her teeth, forcing pink strings to stretch, stretch, stretch, and then break before she tosses the lot back into her mouth. “Semester only started a little while ago, right? And we’re all freshmen, so we’re kinda still getting our bearings. Naomi and Kallie aren’t staying where I’m staying, so I’m busy with my sorority sisters, and they were busy with themselves.”

“So they ignored you?” I press. “They excluded you?”

“They were fine. No bad blood between them and me or anyone else. Like I said, we’re all new. We’re still learning people’s faces and names and such.”

“But you knew Naomi’s face and name when we rolled up here and asked.”

“Because she’s on the news!” The girl is younger than her peers. Only seventeen. And though immaturity is expected of a teen, Dana seems to be the too-loud, too-flakey kind for anyone to truly tell their secrets to. She looks from me to Fletch, shaking her head. “She’s on the news, Detectives. So of course, when I saw it, I was like woah, that’s that chick. And now you’re asking about her. It’s easy for me to know her name when she was on the screen while I was eating breakfast. A girl is likely to take a personal interest when that same face was in my lecture hall just last week.”

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