Page 90 of Ace

"Faye," I whisper.

Several more minutes go by before Wren confirms that the house is clear, but police are working on checking all the rest of the property.

"Fuck," he mutters a few minutes later.

"What?" I growl.

Why does this motherfucker always lead with that sort of shit instead of just giving us information when he finds it?

"Christopher Preston was there before she got home carrying her groceries inside. He arrived ten minutes after she left the house."

"Faye was found in the kitchen," I mutter.

"No way she would've missed that before leaving the house," Jericho says, speaking my thoughts out loud.

"Motherfucker," Hemlock growls. "We were thinking of the wrong fucking brother."

Chapter 38

Cora

"The more I think about it," Chris says as he tightens his grip on the steering wheel. "The more it makes sense."

"What makes sense?" I ask, thinking he's going to take the next exit off the highway since he mentioned getting cleaned up and getting a burner phone so I can call Alice at the office and get the phone number I need.

"William being responsible for all of this," he says, his voice now void of any emotion. "He always needed to be the center of attention."

"What?" I say, confusion hitting me in a weird way.

It's as if I'm existing in this moment,but also like I'm watching my life happen rather than actually participating in it, and it makes me wonder if I'm suffering some level of shock.

I pull in a deep breath trying to relax, by focusing my attention on my toes, flexing them in my shoes before moving upward to the next set of muscles. I need to make sure everything still works, and I fully grasp just how insane that is at a moment like this but I keep getting flashes of poor Faye and the way her eyes were open but unseeing. I shake my head again, Chris's voice making its way back into my mind.

"Remember the time he called Dad for help when he was running for president?"

"He never ran for president,"I say, growing even more confused.

"In high school. For his class? Dad missed my awards program to go help him," he says, sounding more like a bitter brother than one concerned that his older brother has had the ability to hurt people. "He never could stand not to be the center of attention."

"Were we going to stop to get a phone?"

"With you looking like that?" he says, his jaw clenching as if just hearing my voice annoys him.

"Chris," I whisper.

"Always the center of attention," he repeats. "I bet he killed Faye and had Sadie killed."

His words snap me right back into my current reality.

"Sadie overdosed," I say, my heart kicking up ten levels.

That's what they were told. Chris and William should think nothing else happened unless they knew better.

"Right," Chris says, but I know he knows what I know when he gives me a quick glance. "I bet he made it look that way."

As if watching CGI in a movie, his face transforms to someone I don't recognize at all.

The sadness is gone. The irritation he was portraying about William, all of it fades away. I swear he looks demonic, sinister in a way that had he looked like this all the time, I would've known the minute I opened the front porch that I should've run instead of asking him for help.

---