Page 28 of Jagged Line Paradise

“You’re agitated.”

I practically laugh. “No, shit, I’m fucking agitated. I. Don’t. Know. Where. She. Is. You’re wasting your fucking time in here with me.”

“Okay. So, let’s say you don’t know where she is. Then who does?”

My body tenses with the insinuation that I know anything about Lonnie’s sudden disappearance. “I don’t fucking know.”

He sighs. “So, you say you hooked-up the night before she went missing. What kind of hook-up was this?”

I grit my teeth. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Was this...consensual?”

My head flops back on my shoulders, my eyes rolling toward the ceiling. “Fucking Christ.Yes.”I lift my head to look at him squarely. “Of course, it was consensual.”

“Hmm.” He flips through the folder again. “Tell me about Martina Ruiz.”

My spine snaps to straighten.

“Did you ever hook-up with Martina Ruiz?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say reluctantly, but truthfully. “Maybe five, six months ago.”

“Did you know Martina was recently picked up and charged for soliciting?”

I swallow. “Yeah. I know. She told me. She’s afriend.”

“And so, you’re saying you and Martina hooked-up as friends?”

“I haveneverpaid for sex.Never.I don’t need to.”

His head briefly bobs and his eyebrows lift. “Awfully confident for a teenager.”

“I’m eighteen. I’m an adult.”

“Yes, you are an adult. You’d be tried as an adult, too. So, I suggest you tell us the truth.” He pauses as I let tense silence fill the space between us, my jaw clenched and aching. “Look. I know Paradise Park well. I know your neighbors well. I know Martina got mixed up with another friend of yours, Anthony Johnson?”

I jab my finger at him pointedly. “That asshole is no friend of mine, do you hear me? He’s a piece of shit, and I don’t have anything to do with him.”

“So, you know his line of work?”

“Everybody in Paradise Park knows his line of work.”

“What about Avalon? Did she know?”

I lick my lips, a dark chuckle slipping out as I look down to the side then back up at him. “Are you kidding me?”

Jack shrugs. “You said you hooked-up with her the other night. You hooked-up with Martina Ruiz a few months ago. I can’t know for sure the circumstances that led to either of those hook-ups.” He leans back, crossing his arms over his chest. “For all I know, Andrés, you and Lonnie had a good time. She left with some cash. Maybe she didn’t make enough for the night, and Anthony—”

I shoot to my feet, slap my hands down on the table, and lean forward, staring him down. “Don’t you fuckingdaresuggest he’s pimping her out. No one is pimping her out. She’s a fucking virgin, for Christ’s sake!”

“But...you hooked-up with her before she went missing?”

I straighten to my full height, raking both my hands back through my hair. “She’s not selling herself. She wouldnever.And if she tried to, I would stop her.”

There’s a long, heavy pause in the room. Jack finally breaks the silence after three deep breaths. “Did she try...and did you stop her?”

My blood runs cold as it fully hits me—not that they think I’m a suspect in Lonnie’s disappearance. I get that I was the last person with her and that’s fucking suspicious. The thing that has me shivering is the realization that her disappearance is fully under investigation and they know—theyknow—something bad has happened to her.

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