Page 122 of Black Sheep

I made sure she was declared dead so you wouldn’t know she was still alive! So you wouldn’t find her and finish the job of killing her!

I thought the terror in her eyes was for my other sins. Now I know better—

“I’m sorry if this is a bad time, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had since my other employer’s…issues. I thought you’d want to know immediately.”

I drag air into my useless lungs and focus on the two people seated in front of me. Fionnella Smith. And Bolton.

I stare at my brother. He stares back at me. I can’t even find the gear for confusion.

My gaze returns to Fionnella.

“What?” Is that my voice? It sounds like a stranger’s.

Her eyes narrow, flicking to the empty hallway and back again. “Is everything okay?”

She’s in there. In the bedroom where I thought my life could have meaning again.

Dear God. “You have a report to make. Make it.” My eyes return to Bolton. His gaze is steady. Direct. He’s either dialed down the drugs or he’s found the perfect cocktail to help him fire on all cylinders. I don’t have the mental capacity to decipher which.

She thinks I tried to kill her mother…

“I found out who moved the Camaro. And I…we know the identities of the victims.”

“We?”

“I’ll tell my part—it’s the easiest—then let your brother tell his. Your father had it moved and burned. I figured he wouldn’t use a local service so I trawled through nine hundred dredging companies on the eastern seaboard, and I lucked out.”

“Just like that?”

She smiles. “No, son. But I won’t bore you with the details. And this is where it gets interesting. According to the kind gentleman who manned said operation, there was only one body recovered from the trunk.”

“There were two bodies on the video. You saw them.”

She nods and glances at Bolton. “You wanna take it from here?”

My gaze shifts to my brother, every single hair on my nape erect.

He stares down at his balled fists for a minute before he exhales. “I didn’t know what Pa had told them to do, Axel. I swear. Not until we were on our way to Bearwood Lake. When I realized what they planned to get you to do…I…I just couldn’t. Knocking a few heads together for extortion money was one thing. Cold-blooded murder—”

“What did you do?”

“I told them I needed the restroom. They thought I was off my head—”

“You were off your head.”

He shrugs. “Maybe I was, but what does that matter now? Ronan was glad to get rid of me, and you guys were so scared to attract attention, you were driving so goddamn slow. I made it to your side of the lake just as you were leaving.”

“Then what?” I ask, but the puzzle is unraveling, faster than I can handle. I know what’s coming. What’s been coming for the last ten years.

I thought my life was over fifteen minutes ago.

I’m about to watch my own burial.

“The car was still sinking when I got to it. There was just enough daylight to see what I was doing.”

I shake my head. “But the trunk was shut.”

He shrugs. “Penknives aren’t just for snorting coke. Plus I may not have been a high school swimming champion then, but I could still hold my breath for three minutes and eleven seconds.”

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