Page 30 of Release You

Henry strolled in, wet hair, wearing plaid pajama pants and a white Henley and carrying two beers in his hand. “I figured you might need one of these.”

“You have no idea.” I reached for the bottle he offered me and took a long, satisfying pull.

He sat on the bed and drank. Tonight, had been a complete bust. I hated being on the losing end. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought—break in, grab Tessa, and steal his dad’s will. What was I thinking?

“Okay. So this is going to require a bit more planning,” I said.

“You think?” He met my gaze and tilted the bottle until the beer was all gone. “What happened tonight?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Either your uncle found out you’d seen your mom, or he has really good intuition. The man stole millions from you. He must have a proper criminal mind.” That had sounded funnier in my head. “I’m sorry. I know you were hoping to have your mom back tonight.”

I placed my hand on his shoulder and glared at the wall to our right with the last fifteen years of my sister’s life and the pictures of his dad’s last moments pinned to it. The answer to this mad puzzle was on there somewhere.

“So what do we know?” Henry followed my line of sight. His eyes filled with tears when he saw the murder board. “It’s all connected, isn’t it?”

CHAPTER 10

A Scratch Is All We Have

Henry

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Maybe tonight wasn’t a complete bust. We did learn something.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Someone other than me believes in Lisa’s innocence.” She smiled, placing a hand over her heart. “That means that somewhere out there, there’s proof Lisa didn’t kill your dad.”

My mind churned with flashes of that day. I hadn’t come back to Paradise Creek to stir up old memories. I came back to set things right. But if Lisa was innocent, every minute she spent in jail was a huge injustice, one that Mom at some point had tried to fix. I owed this much to Nikki, Mom, and Lisa. The time to face the past had come. It still hurt to think of Dad, but I had to try. I pushed my feelings aside and went to the wall plastered with my worst nightmare.

“What did we see that day? Do you remember?” I shot a glance toward Nikki.

“Sometimes I feel like I saw something. But I don’t know what. You know? Like when you can’t think of a word and it’sright there at the edge of your mind, but you can’t quite reach it. And other words you know are not right jump in its place.” She drank from her beer.

“Fuck. Nikki. I know exactly what you mean.” I ran my fingers through my hair.

“So what did we see? How do we know what’s real?”

“Or what’s part of a waking nightmare?” I finished her thought.

She nodded in agreement and took my hand in hers, her gaze full of pity. “I felt something tug at my brain when I put these pictures up. Maybe if we go through it together, we might come up with something.”

“How does a man as big as me get beaten this bad?” I stared at the images in front of me, not recognizing the face of the man in them. What a brutal crime. So much hate. So much blood.

I vaguely remembered going to court. The details of the trial were a blur. All I remembered was spending most of my days wondering where they had Dad, if he was really dead.

The story I read later on the internet said Lisa Morrow had been convicted of murder in the first degree. The defense attorney had argued that it’d been a crime of passion. Lisa had been eighteen at the time, almost twenty years younger than Dad. How the fuck had the lawyer come up with that? In the end, the attorney’s argument had been what saved Lisa from life in prison. Temporary insanity—the same insanity that had made her strong enough to beat a grown man to death.

“Whoever did this was strong enough to move the body.” Nikki squeezed my fingers.

“What?” I frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

“You remember Dom?”

“Yeah, your non-client.” I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. Why did it matter if he was a client or not? Nikki wasn’t mine. She never was.

“That’s the one.” She pointed a finger at me. “He found a mark on…the body. According to his expert friend, based on coloration and whatever else, his friend thinks it was postmortem.”

“He thinks someone moved Dad and scratched his arm in the process?”

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