Page 17 of A Little Discovery

The staff around us snort or choke in response to our banter, but we have been friends since middle school. Avery knows SabrinaCarlisle and is one hundred percent on board with the plan to bring her down.

“Alright people! We are going to do a breaking segment as soon as the Carlisle piece ends on the other channels,” she announces to the crew around us. “Make sure to have the pictures queued up, and let’s make some magic.”

Some of the crew cheer, but mostly we are in a waiting game. The monitors at our feet are showing the feeds from the other stations in the area, including the one we are going to be airing on. I look at Avery, and she shrugs.

“Don’t blame me,” she says. “It would be way too suspicious if we were the only stationnotto air her interview. Plus, you have to admit there’s a sense of poetic justice having the anchors intro her interview only to immediately call it out on being bullshit right after.”

“You’re going to get to that desk before the end of the year,” I tell her with a chuckle.

Avery just adjusts her hair and looks at the camera. “Showtime,” she whispers and pastes a huge fake smile on her face.

LUCKY

I’m a dead man…

Sabrina not only painted me as an adulterer, she announced to the entire city that I stolemy own moneyand made it seem like it was a crime… not that I actually have any of the money. She took all of it. Between her and her family, the money is gone. I don’t even have the two hundred anymore since I can’t even risk going back to the car.

Add onto it the fact that my father’s company released a statement that basically makes me unemployable to any company in this region… I’m fucked.

My only hope right now is to find my way to Gramps and hope he will take me in. I can’t stay here…

“Anybody seen Lucky come back?” Eli asks as he comes out on the porch. The guys gathered there tell him no, obviously since I haven’t gone back yet. “It’s getting dark and I’m getting worried.”

“Shouldn’t you be opening McKinley’s by now?” Toby asks.

“Ash is going to work tonight. She’s been asking for more hours, anyways,” Eli responds as he jumps down from the porch. “We need two people to stay here while the rest of us go check the woods for Lucky. He should have been back to at least grab his stuff by now.”

Well, he’s not wrong. I should have grabbed my backpack with my wallet at least, but I know they would stop me. It wouldn’t take much. I almost came out of hiding when I heard Shiloh’s sniffles, but Eric’s voice stopped me. He was part ofthatconversation, and I still don’t know what side they’re coming down on.

“Jay, you and Eric got the least amount of sleep aside from Spencer. Why don’t the two of you stay here and wait for him to get back. You can trade off naps if you need to.”

“I’m good to go, Boss-man. Don’t need no stinking naps.” Eric’s voice is trying to hard to be Miss Sassy, but it falls flat. There’s a heaviness to him and it’s all my fault.

But I don’t know who to trust…

While they argue over who is coming into the woods after me, I start to move in the direction I think the road is. I can at least get a head start and lose them completely once the sun goes down. Being in the woods has always been one of my favorite things, but I need to get away from them so that I can think things through. Losing the sun means I’m temporarily losing my sense of direction, at least until the stars really get to shine. There’s not as much light pollution here, but the canopy is thick, so I’m going to have to rely on other ways to tell where I’m heading.

CHAPTER 12

SPENCER

“In the age of misinformation and he said she said games, we are often left in the situation of having to decipher for ourselves what the truth is. A wise person once said there are three versions of events. Person A remembers things one way. Person B remembers things a different way. The truth is somewhere in between.

“Now, as nice as this idea is when it comes to recollecting events, it does not refute hard evidence or excuse defamation, fraud, or blatant falsification of evidence. Today, we have with us the very same investigator whose photographs were used by Ms. Carlisle to convince a judge to grant her a divorce on the grounds of infidelity.

“I am pleased to introduce Mr. Spencer Wright of Mr. Wright Investigations. Tell me, Spencer, why come forward today? Why not set things straight at the hearing with the judge?”

I glare at Avery since she knows this was not the planned script for the interview. I was supposed to show the photos and the notarized report and that was supposed to be it. She’s trying to turn this into a primetime special… Now, I remember why we don’t hang out more.

“I didn’t even know the hearing was scheduled,” I tell her. “Usually, the time between when I give my report to a client tothe time a hearing reaches a judge is at least three months. I’ve been called as late as two years after filing my report.

“As for the Carlisle case, I submitted my report to the client, Ms. Sabrina Carlisle, on July thirteenth before boarding a plane for Australia on the sixteenth. I spent the last month in a cultural exchange program through my school and only returned yesterday. I received no notice of a subpoena or summons to appear at neither my office, nor my home address, both of which are readily available on the report I provide to my clients for that very purpose.”

Avery knows all of this because she has hired me herself before to help find her sister and get her away from an abusive boyfriend. The smile on her face is devious, but it fits when she asks, “So are you saying that Ms. Carlisle purposefully didn’t have you called to court, even after using your photographs?”

I know what my friend is up to. She’s setting me up to blow it all out of the water. I told her how I already feel about Lucky. She knows what I’m looking for, what I want. She also knows just how much I’ve obsessed over the boy from the party.

“I’ve read the court transcripts. The lawyer for Mr. Holloway attempted to send a summons multiple times, but the address he was provided by both Ms. Carlisle’s attorney and the agency that records the investigator licenses was not valid. The address he was given was for the Phi Theta Gamma house at the university, where I have not resided in over a year and a half, and was never my address of record as an investigator.”

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