Page 49 of Silent Betrayal

“We think the killer could be your mom,” Atlas tells her.

“My mom?!” She asks with wide eyes. “No—I thought you said the girls were… raped?”

“They were, but she could have done that with some sort of object,” Dom tells her carefully.

“Oh god!” Her hands fly to her mouth. Her eyes dart all over the map before she drops her hand and steps closer again.

“I want to say I can’t believe it. But she’s obviously insane,” she says before sighing, still scanning the wall.

She moves over to the section with photos pinned to it. Some are victims, others are suspects, and a few are surveillance shots. There’s a section for her, with her picture at the top and people connected to her beneath it. She strokes her fingers over the photos of her house taken from the security camera.

“You were watching me,” she says quietly.

“We were watching your house, yes. We knew something was going on. But we knew you weren’t involved. We just can’t figure out how you’re tied to the killer, if at all.”

“How did you know I wasn’t involved?” she asks, turning as her eyebrows pinch in confusion, her eyes dancing between us.

“Because we know you, you’re too kind and sweet to do anything like that,” Max answers quickly.

“But before you got to know me, was I a suspect?” The tension seems to suddenly grow thick in the room, and I fear this conversation is taking a route that none of us considered until now.

“Technically, everyone in this town was a suspect,” Gideon answers smoothly.

“But you didn’t follow everybody’s movements, did you?” she asks, sounding hurt as she turns back to the board. “In fact, I don’t see any other suspects up here besides Jeff, Brad, and my mother.”

She whirls around to face us again, her eyes full of pain.

“Did you—is that why you four were always around me at school?” she asks as her eyes bounce between the twins, Gideon and myself.

“N—” I try to answer but she cuts me off, her voice raising with anger and hurt.

“You… You were all asking me questions about my home and my family. I thought you liked me, and wanted to get to know me… but you were just trying to solve your case, weren’t you?” She wipes the tears that are spilling down her cheeks as she looks at the twins and asks, “was it part of your job to get close to me?”

Neither of them answers straight away, clearly unsure what to say as wewereall told to get close to her. They look at her with pained expressions, and she sucks in a sharp breath. “Was any of this even real?”

“Of c—” Dom tries to reach out to her, but she steps back, her back pressing to the wall. The fear in her eyes, as she looks at all of us like she doesn’t know us, breaks my heart.

“I—I need to be alone, let me go,” she whispers, sounding terrified. We all quickly part, giving her an easy exit out of the room and not wanting her to feel trapped by us, and she runs. Her door closes, and the sound is like a dagger through my heart.

What have we done?

Chapter nineteen

Iclose my door, and grab the box of tissues off my nightstand before moving to the window seat in the large window. It overlooks the backyard, and like mother nature knew my mood before I did, it’s dark and raining heavily. The perfect backdrop to mirror my emotions right now.

My mind replays every interaction I’ve had with the guys from the beginning. There were several instances where they would ask about my mother and what she knows. I thought it was because they were worried about me, and maybe, on some level, they were, but I saw the look on the twins’ faces. They were told to get close to me. Theyusedme.

How can I trust anything they tell me? Do they even love me? If so, when did it change from being work to personal? Is there an answer to that question that would satisfy me?

Wrapping my arms around my knees, I let the tears flow freely. I trusted them all, I gave them everything, and they all lied to me, they used me. They only got close to me because of their stupid case. A case that has something to do with me, apparently.

After about ten minutes of crying, I use a tissue to dry my face as I try to calmmyself down.

What was I going to do now? How could I possibly stay here with them, knowing everything was a lie? Or it at least started on one.

But how could I leave here with a killer on the loose, who not only targets women who look like me, but is likely someone I know? I have no money, no resources. Nothing. I’m stuck here.

What’s worse is the bodies piling up around us. As angry as I am at the guys, I want them to solve their case before anyone has to die, especially if it’s my fault it’s happening in the first place. Am I the real target? But why would someone try to kill me? If it was my mother or Jeff, they had plenty of chances already. And they would have had better opportunities to do it before I started school. Before that, nobody else knew I existed… except Simon.

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