Page 50 of The Piece You Stole

Detective Ferdinand’s smile transforms his face, making me realize they’d laid a trap for me, and all this time, they were waiting for me to step into it. “You sound as if you were on friendly terms there, Miss Leo.”

They lean toward me.

I sit back in my seat.

“He asked me to call him Simon,” I say. “He was friendly.”

“And is that the reason he lied to us about you having visited a neurologist? Because he wasfriendly?”

Their eyes glint at me, and I stare back. This is where this conversation has been leading all along. I should have known from the things they said before—the accusations they were making—that they believe there was something between me and Simon.

Now here they are, laying out their theory in a nice, recorded room. “I had no reason to want him dead.”

“Then it shouldn’t be so difficult for you to explain what you were doing in the parking lot with a doctor who you were the last person to see alive.” Detective Bradley doesn’t even blink. Just stares me down with those flinty green eyes.

A rat caught in a trap. That’s me.

They’re not going to drop this. They will keep poking and poking at me until I say something that makes me look guilty as hell.

“We have witnesses, Miss Leo,” Detective Bradley continues. “And we have a camera recording of you leading him out of a fire exit to his death.”

Lie. He was the one who led me out.

Detective Ferdinand’s smile widens. “A recording we will play to a jury if you don’t start telling us something we don’t already know.”

I shouldn’t have said a word.

But no sooner has the thought passed through my mind than my gaze returns to the slim, brown folder lying between us, and the photograph I’m desperate to forget.

I swallow hard. “He was trying to help me.”

“Do what?” Detective Ferdinand barks.

I jump, startled. But I don’t speak. I’ve crossed into territory so dangerous that anything I say will land me in Rylan’s crosshairs or see me locked up for the rest of my life.

Detective Bradley puts his hand on the file. I watch his fat, pink fingers curl around the edge as he prepares to open it.

My palms get so clammy I have to scrub them on the front of my dress. I rip my gaze away from the innocent-looking folder because I can’t look at that picture again. I just can’t. “Get away,” I whisper.

“From?” Detective Ferdinand prompts, a note of excitement sharpening his voice.

They have me now. And they know it.

I could tell them Nathan did it, but there’s no way Rylan won’t protect him, and thiswillcome back on me. Somewhere, somehow, I’ll be the one who pays for it. Big time.

“I…”What do I say? What can I say?

Scenting blood in the water, they lean even closer toward me. This time in unison, as if this is a dance they’ve perfected over the years. As detectives who must be in their thirties or forties, they likely have.

Detective Bradley taps the front of the folder. “This interview can stop anytime you want, Miss Leo. Just tell us what we want to know. We could even start talking about a plea deal. You could be out in five years or less.”

But he doesn’t say I will.

Just that I could be.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Three hard knocks on the door make me jerk my head that way. Not the cops. They never take their unblinking, predatory gazes off me.

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