Page 85 of What We May Be

Chapter Twenty-Four

They’d been scouring the natatorium for twenty minutes when Sean’s phone vibrated with an incoming call. He backed out from under the bleachers, yanked off his gloves, and withdrew the device from his pocket, Trevor’s name lighting up the screen.

“Hey, Trev—”

“You need to get to Charlie!”

Sean’s pulse kicked at the sheer panic in Trevor’s voice. And at the sirens he heard blaring in the background. “What’s going on?”

“It’s Rachel! Rachel’s the killer!”

Sean flailed a hand for the nearest solid surface, not believing his ears.

Marsh was by his side the next instant, a wall of steady. “What’s happened?”

Sean clicked the phone over to speaker. “Run that by us again.”

Abel’s voice was a touch steadier, but only just. “A vase of red roses was found in the locker room.”

Trevor cut back in. “Right where we were sitting yesterday, Sean.”

“And Rachel put them there?” he asked.

“We were in Charlie’s office when she told us about them,” Abel clarified. “Looked mighty frightened. But Maggie doesn’t think she heard anyone else come or go, and now she’s in the wind. Said she had dinner with her sister, but she was a no-show.”

“I ran a background search on her,” Marsh said. “Clean, nothing pinged. Owns her house and her car. She’s active in the community, organizes all the department events, and babysits her sister’s kids a lot if the frequency of Chuck E. Cheese charges on her debit card are any indication.”

“Her sister is a nurse at HU,” Trevor said. “We also dated in high school, she knew about Craig’s misdeeds—both times—and she apparently knows about Alice because she and Abel are a thing and he told her.”

“What?” he and Marsh squawked together.

“We’ve been keeping it real quiet,” Abel said. “Didn’t want to upset anyone with all that was going on. She found me drunk at Pearl’s the night after Mitch and Cal were killed. I told her then. I needed to tell someone.”

Sean roughly ran a hand over the back of his neck and cursed. “Fucking hell.”

“We’re headed to Annie’s now,” Abel said.

“Did you call Charlie?”

“She’s not picking up,” Trevor said, voice trembling. “Neither is Wally, who was also supposed to be at Annie’s.”

“Fuck, we’re on our way.” He hung up the phone and shoved it in his pocket. When he dug into the other for the keys to the borrowed cruiser, he came up empty. He patted himself down frantically. “Fuck, where are my keys?”

Marsh clasped his shoulders. “Easy, Hale.”

He caught Marsh’s dark eyes, similar to Charlie’s, and the case began spinning through his brain again. He shook his head. “A lot of the pieces line up, but I’m not buying it.”

“Maybe you don’t want to believe your friend is capable of murder.”

“Would you?”

Marsh shot him a sympathetic look, then lowered his hands. “She’s in the wind, Sean. It doesn’t look good.”

“I know,” he said. “But so was Beth Martin, and she turned out to be innocent.”

“All we can do is get out of here and find out. Now where might your keys be?”

Calmer now, he retraced his steps. “Maybe under the bleachers.” He turned back in that direction, and sure enough, a glimmer of metal caught the shifting reflection off the water.

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