Page 57 of Soul So Dark
“What the fuck are you doing up here?” he mutters, meeting me halfway.
“My keys aren’t here,” I lie. “Whatever, they’re probably at my house.”
Accepting my response, Aiden turns to head back to the stairs. But as he passes Dallas’s door, he swings his arm out and, on pure reflex, I reach out and swat his hand away from her doorknob.
As soon as I do, he stops dead in his tracks, locking his eyes on my hand. For a brief moment, I think he’s going to snap at it and bite it off.
Why the hell did I do that? Dallas isn’t even home, so it wouldn’t have mattered.
I stare back at Aiden with the same stone-faced look until, finally, he lowers his arm and continues toward the stairs. We walk in silence through the dark house and back out to his car. The Avalanche is gone, leaving us alone in the driveway. We both get into his Lexus and, as soon as he starts his engine, he looks over his shoulder at me.
“Out with it.”
“What?”
“What,my ass. Don’t bullshit me. What the hell was that up there?”
I settle back into the seat with a shrug. “Dallas doesn’t like it when you fuck with her.”
“How do you know?”
“Obviously,” I scoff. “And Col doesn’t need anyone messing with his other sister right now.”
“Likeyou?” Aiden peers at me through his snake eyes.
“What?”
He throws the car in gear and guns it down the driveway. “Seven years walking through that house and tonight is the night you decide that a doorknob jiggle crosses the line?”
I don’t have a good answer, so I focus on the road ahead.
“What are you doing, Alex? Trying to be her savior?” His tone turns acidic. “You think you can protect her from the things we’re chasing? Does it make you feel better, like she won’t be the next one who ends up in that pipe?”
Is he seriously trying to do this right now?
“Kind of like you’re doing with Sydney?” I counter.
That one lights a fire under his ass and he slams on the brakes and whips over into a gravel pull-off, skidding to a halt. He whips around and leans over the console. “No, not like Syd. Because I won’t let anything happen to Sydever again,” he snarls.
Aiden thinks he fucked up. He’ll never admit it, but he thinks it’s his fault those awful things happened to Sydney. And he thinks that if he makes another mistake, there’s no coming back. And maybe he’s right; maybe next time there won’t be any second chances.
“Col didn’tletanything happen to Evie,” I say slowly.
Aiden sets his jaw, his gaze burning a hole in the gear shift. “He should’ve done something. He shouldn’t have cared what it looked like or what Evie thought.” He lifts his head and locks eyes with me. “He should’ve done then what I’m doing now.”
It wasn’t Sydney, but it could’ve been Sydney. The result of one decision weeks or months ago, one seemingly insignificant deviation could’ve meant that she was the one stuffed in that culvert in the woods. And that’s what he thinks.
“Maybe,” I concede, “but if you’re right, then maybe we should concentrate on making sure no one elsedoesend up in that pipe.”
“I am right,” Aiden nods, “because Bowen did it. He killed Evie.”
“How do you know?” I know Bowen killed Evie, just from what Colson said, but I want to know whyAiden’ssaying it now.
“Because when Wells and his goons hauled me out to Canaan, trying to get me to confess that I did it, they kept saying they knew what I did to her hair.”
“Evie’s hair?”
Aiden nods, “I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, but when I told Col about it, he didn’t sound too surprised. He said it’d be pretty convenient for Bowen if he made it look like I butchered Evie’s hair before killing her.”
