Page 33 of Deathmarch
She had. Allie winced. She’d been fifteen, a freshman at the high school. He’d been a sophomore. She got a job at Finnegan’s bussing tables. He worked in the back, washing dishes.
She’d fallen in love with him the first time they went on break together—those blue eyes, his cocky teen-boy smile, his rebellious spirit. At first, she couldn’t believe that a boy like him would even talk to her. Then they became friends. He used to walk her home after work. Which was how her father had gotten his hooks into him.
They’d talked about music and cars. Well, mostly,he’dtalked about cars. While she’d pretended to be interested in the topic, for his sake.
And, yes, she had begged him to teach her how to kiss. For months.
He gave in on her sixteenth birthday.
The two years that followed had been as close to happy as she’d ever been. Before everything fell apart.
None of that mattered now. She had turned her life around since. She’d put herself through college. She created a business. She was her own person. She wasn’t dependent on anybody for anything, the best way to ensure that she wouldn’t be let down again. She refused to trust someone just so they could abandon her—like her mother had done, and her father, and Harper too, when it had counted.
He was staring at her like he wanted to see inside her.
“What?” she asked.
“Our past notwithstanding, if I find out that you had something to do with Lamm’s murder, I will make sure justice is served.”
She smiled at him sweetly. “Our past notwithstanding, if you frame me… When I get out, I’ll track you down and strangle you in your sleep.”
Chapter Nine
Allie woke and stared at the bars, confusion muddying her brain. Then reality hit, and the walls closed in on her, the ceiling dropping onto her chest, or it felt like it had. She couldn’t breathe. She was in Broslin, in jail, arrested for murder.
This can’t be happening.
She scrambled to sit.
Harper slept sprawled in his chair, his neck at an uncomfortable angle. She hoped he walked around lopsided for the rest of the week. In that moment, coming awake to a nightmare, she hated him more than ever, more than back when he’d deserted her.
Her father being a dick, sure, nothing new. The landlord being a lecher was nothing she hadn’t known before, hadn’t learned to skirt. But when Harper, the boy she’d loved with all her heart and given all her hopes to, threw her away in a careless phone call…
The abrupt rejection had broken something inside her that never got glued back together.
So, fine, there’d been extenuating circumstances.
He’d been forced to break up with her. If he hadn’t, he would have gone to jail. He had made the right choice for his life, dammit, she got that. But she’d beendevastatedat the time—barely eighteen and all alone in the world. There’d been a time when she hadn’t had enough toeat. The first few years had been a bloody struggle, and not only because she had to work multiple part-time jobs to stay afloat.
She’d been convinced that she was no good, that nobody wanted her, that there was something wrong with her.
So, screw Harper and his grand revelation.
And screw him double for arresting her, for so easily believing that she was just like her father, or worse.
For ten years, she hadn’t come back because she didn’t want to see him. She’d been right, she thought as she watched Broslin’s Top Detective, wondering if she had enough time to use the toilet before he woke up. Humiliation burned through her gut, rose in her throat like acid. She fought it back. She had no time to waste on embarrassment.
He’darrestedher. For murder. She needed to focus on that.
She buried her face in her hands.
How did the gold get into the trunk?It hadn’t been there when she’d left Maryland. Someone had to have put it in her car. Harper was the most obvious choice.
Most obvious, but not only.Allie’s mind was clearer now that the original shock had worn off and she’d had a little sleep.
Her car had sat abandoned out there during the time Harper had driven her to town, then driven back out. Her lawyer had said the lock on the trunk had been damaged. She hadn’t even realized that she’d knocked against the telephone pole behind her when she’d been rocking the car back and forth with the gas pedal, trying to dislodge it from the snowbank.
She knew only one thing for sure: someone was setting her up. Why? What had she ever done to anyone?
