Page 49 of Wicked Love
Logan knit his brow. “What are you talking about, Dex? You didn’t have any idea those cops were coming after us, did you?”
“No. But—but everything leading up to that. All the things they could arrest us for. All the things we did…” I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead, but the pressure barely took the edge off the emotions whirling through me.
If this was a puzzle, then I knew exactly which piece made the key part of the picture. And I’d put it there. Two and a half years ago, that guy had lunged at us out of nowhere with a switchblade and stabbed Slade in the shoulder, and I’d sliced into him so automatically with the first rush of protective adrenaline. In just a couple of seconds, it’d been like he wasn’t even human anymore, just a collection of fleshy parts that my mind narrowed down to its most vulnerable points.
What kind of person was I if I could reduce any human being to an object to be broken and destroyed?
“I’m pretty sure we were all there for all the things we did,” Slade said, but a thread of worry wove through his joking tone.
I folded my arms over my chest. “It was me. The first time we went from guys just unraveling mysteries and tripping up the criminals to actuallymurderingsomeone. Maybe I didn’t need to kill him. I put all that blood on our hands, and then nothing was too much. We just kept heading farther down that path.”
Logan sucked in a breath. “Dex, man, you can’t blame yourself for that. You were fucking amazing that night. If you hadn’t jumped in there so fast, that asshole might have murderedSlade. We’ve all had to make the same call.”
“But I started it. I set it all in motion.”
“Dex,” Slade said firmly. I could feel him peering into my eyes even though I couldn’t handle the direct eye contact right now, my gaze fixed on his shirt collar. “It was going to happen sometime. Logan and I know that, one hundred percent. We were getting into more dangerous stuff already, more aggressive crimes, more hardened criminals… If it hadn’t been then, it would have happened a little later anyway. I swear to God, it’s not on you.”
I’d never heard Slade Galvezo sound that serious. My eyes twitched upward to briefly meet his. He looked serious too, serious and solemn and like he’d have killed formeright now if he needed to, no questions asked.
“Have you really been thinking that way all this time?” Logan asked. “Like it’s your fault that we’ve gotten so far off the straight and narrow?”
“Of course,” I mumbled. It’d seemed obvious.
A ragged laugh spilled out of him. “I’ve always thought it wasmyfault. Pushing us to go farther and take on more intense problems. Digging into the stuff with Maddie’s dad.”
My gaze slid to him, my forehead furrowing. “Of course it isn’t your fault.”
Slade gave me a brief, light clap on the shoulder, careful not to let it linger. “And that’s exactly what we’re telling you, dude. It sounds just as ridiculous to us as Logan blaming himself.” He raised an eyebrow at Logan. “For the record, I do also think your theory is ridiculous.”
Logan gave him a baleful look. “Thanks so much for weighing in.”
Their easy banter brought me back to earth. I inhaled slowly, and my nerves seemed to settle.
Could they be right? It wasn’t really my fault but just a natural consequence of the general path we’d all agreed to go down?
I’d never seen it that way before, but maybe I hadn’t let myself. I couldn’t deny that it made a certain amount of sense, especially the way the other guys talked about it.
A soft glow washed through my chest, soothing parts of my spirit that I hadn’t known were so bruised. It was okay. I’d protected my friend, saved his life. We were where we’d already been heading.
Trying out those thoughts, they felt okay. Maybe even right.
I glanced around the hallways again. Wehadbeen in much direr situations than this before, and I’d helped us get out of plenty of them. If I got my head on straight, I could handle this too. The path we took now was what really mattered.
Logan had called the halls a maze. A maze was a kind of puzzle. I should be the perfect person to crack its visual code.
“Let’s keep going,” I said. “I haven’t been paying enough attention. I need to take a closer look at everything down here.”
My friends started walking without question, trusting my process. That was the trust I’d earned from them over the past several years. We walked straight for a few minutes, then took another turn with me in the lead, then another.
My attention narrowed down to the small labels I hadn’t given much thought to at first. They were meaningless at first glance, combinations of letters and numbers like L4 and P2, but every corner was marked with them.
And the pipes we’d heard humming… I cocked my head, absorbing the sound, and moved toward it. After another couple of turns, we came to a section of hall where a few thick pipes stretched along one side of the ceiling.
Studying them, a mental map of the university campus unfolded in my mind. I pointed to the pipes. “I think those lead to the library bathrooms. All the L labels are that way, and they must stand for Library. Which means that must be the western end of the building.” I swiveled on my heel and motioned in the other direction. “So, this is east. And P must stand for something else. The PhysEd facilities are just east of the library, aren’t they?”
Slade let out an awed whistle. “I have no sense of direction, but if you say it is, I believe it.”
“The basements for some of the campus buildings are connected,” I said with growing excitement. “Which means they must all have access points. Let’s get back to the nearest P hall and see where we can go from there.”
