Page 87 of Shattered
CHAPTER 24
Melissa
Whirring headlights blurred past me, a yellow haze in a midst of blue shadows. The driver honked and shook a fist through an open window. I looked both ways before stepping onto the road, making sure no one else was coming, but then I looked behind me, afraid that Rourke was following me. Afraid that he wasn’t.
There was nothing there. Just the woods. The banks of trees. The whistling wind splitting through the silence that ached inside of me, growing into an ear numbing cacophony. Irvine’s car by itself, the front door still open. His body on the ground. Rourke’s black car was gone. There were no signs of him.
I was alone.
The next car slowed. The driver stopped her car and leaned out of the open window. A hand waved, motioning with chipped polish on her nails. A complete stranger.
But I had trusted far worse. I ran to her car and got in, slamming the door shut.
“Thanks,” I managed to get out. The woman didn’t acknowledge that and simply looked out the windshield. We were around the same age. She wore a halter top and a jean skirt. Her dark hair reminded me of my mother’s. Her car was older than mine, but it ran smooth, and a tape deck adapter plugged into her phone played eighties music. She hummed along to the track, and when we got to the edge of a street that led back to the main roads of Sage City, she parked the car and handed me her phone.
“This is where I leave you,” she said, her voice dry. “Want to call someone to come pick you up?”
I looked at the clock on the dashboard; it was late. The only person I knew who wasn’t working, was Garrett—no,Rourke, and I couldn’t call him. Even if I wanted to, doing so would put him at risk. Wouldn’t it?
Why did I care? I shouldn’t have thought twice about him, about his safety.
But I already had.
It would take about two hours, but I knew the way home. I shook my head. “I’ll walk.”
“Good luck,” she said.
***
In the morning, I asked Iris for help. She drove Dahlia’s car in silence, helping me find my car, like that stranger on the road. I halfway expected a note from Rourke to be tucked in the driver’s seat, anything to warn me not to follow him, or to give me the signal thatthat’sexactly what he wanted. But there was nothing.
I didn’t go to work that day. Dahlia sent me a text, reminding me of the charges for missed shifts without a server to cover, but I ignored them. It seemed so ridiculous to be worried about debt being paid when life was short. When there were reasons you might take your last breath at any moment. When you had the power to put someone in prison, but you knew you couldn’t. Not because the person was innocent.
But because you didn’t want to.
***
The next day, I went to work early. Detective Foreman was there too. Dahlia was already in the Greenhouse, pretending like she sat in the dressing room every day when in reality, she rarely graced us with her presence. There were several boxes of cupcakes, two more than her usual, so that some of us could even get two if we wanted. Lucky us.
“Take one,” Dahlia said, shoving a box at Detective Foreman.
He shook his head. “Ate already,” he said. Dahlia hid her glare behind a false smile, a look that despised him for being too good for a cupcake.
Detective Foreman took his time questioning everyone, though it was largely the same questions that we had come to expect. Did we know Irvine Montgomery? What kind of man was he? Did he have any enemies? Did he have any big plans he may have mentioned? Had we entertained him recently? When I told him that I hadn’t spoken with him in years, he left me alone and moved on to Iris. Teagen hadn’t been questioned yet and was hiding in the corner.
As an unspoken pact, none of us were willing to divulge which of us had entertained Irvine. We claimed our non-disclosure agreements or held onto pretend obliviousness. It was the server’s choice to admit it herself. None of us cared that Irvine was dead, because if it was the Angel, like Detective Foreman suspected, then Irvine deserved it. Even if we didn’t know the woman Irvine had hurt, there was a good chance that he had hurt one of our own, and none of us were willing to put that woman in jeopardy.
“Just remember,” Dahlia announced loudly, tucking one delicate wrist underneath her other, “that the Adler family is our lawyer. If anyone needs anything, anything at all—” she paused, glancing around the room, making sure Detective Foreman could hear her, “—remember that you don’t have to talk to Detective Foreman without our lawyer. You have rights. The Adlers will protect them.”
This show was more for Detective Foreman than for us. Dahlia was flexing her hired muscle, though I was sure Detective Foreman already knew about the Dahlia District’s association with the mob.
“That’ll be all for now, actually,” Detective Foreman said, standing up to excuse himself. “But if anyone knows or hears anything, please contact us. Innocent—” he paused over the word, as if he couldn’t bring himself to believe it either. He shook his head and started again, “Innocent men are dying.”
Did he mean innocent until proven guilty? But how many people were willing to deal with the bellyache of actually going through the legal system to demand justice for assault, rape, or abuse? To prove someone guilty? When the trauma of it was hard enough to live through once. Especially when the survivors, the sex workers, weren’t seen as having basic human rights.
I was sounding like Rourke now.
“We have reason to believe that the killer will leave the city soon,” Detective Foreman continued. “We don’t have much time. Please help us.”
