Twirled Bond (Holly Woods Files, #5) (21 page)

“Oh, so, I’m taking you home too?” Brody asks, shoving his hands in his pockets

“Yes. Come on.” Trent turns to me. “We’ll meet you there.”

I nod, and Drake finally lets me drag him out of the door. Luckily, we manage to slip past Father Luiz without speaking with him any more and get through the crowd of people still waiting to enter and pay their respect.

I pause at the truck. “Should we have, I don’t know, lit a candle or brought flowers or something?”

Drake stares at me over the hood. “Babe, you’re trying to find out who killed her. I think that trumps flowers.”

Point well made.

We beat Trent and Brody to the house by a mere couple of minutes, and they don’t even bother knocking before they walk in. Of course. Why would they knock? How dare they use manners?

Sigh.

Regardless, we’re now all sitting around my dining room table. All three men are looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to pull out whatever Stacia gave me.

I dig my hand into my purse and put the neon-pink book in the middle of the table and look at it like it’s poison. Which, I suppose, it is. Complete and utter poison.

“That’s the most obnoxiously pink thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” Brody stares at it like even being near it will set him on fire.

“That’s also the key to your investigation and proving without doubt Daniela was abused,” I tell him. “Stacia didn’t read it all, but she said she didn’t need to.”

“Where did she find it?” Drake picks up the notebook.

I repeat what Stacia told me.

“Ahh. So your locker theory was correct.”

“Honey, my theories are always correct. I don’t know why this isn’t generally accepted by now.”

Trent rolls his eyes. “Are we reading this to see if it’ll help?”

“I’m reading it,” Drake says forcibly enough that Trent sits back without intention of arguing. “You have a twelve-year-old daughter. You don’t need to read this.” He opens the book, and I turn to the coffee machine, pointing at it.

My brothers both nod, so I busy myself with making it while Drake starts reading. Chills run across my skin at the rough knowledge of what is inside that book. I shudder as the coffee machine whirs to life and makes Trent’s coffee for him. I have a feeling that, as soon as Drake is done, he’s gonna head straight down to the station with them to get it logged into evidence and they’ll all be there all night like they usually are.

“Did Carlton find out who Lucas is yet?” The question comes from Brody right as the machine finishes filling Trent’s cup.

“Nope. Not yet. Last time we spoke, he had a short list. Of thirty people. So I dread to think how many people he’s already been through.”

He shudders. “Rather him than me.”

He’s preaching to the choir. At least I can change my printer ink now. That’s something.

“I hope he can find him soon,” I say. “I want to know what Daniela said in her letters. Even if he doesn’t have them, she must have said something that he’d remember.”

The second whir of coffee for Brody’s mug momentarily pauses the conversation. I make a third for Drake without stopping, and when I turn around, Drake is half slumped forward on the table, his hand buried in his hair, and the other flattened over the front cover of the notebook.

He can’t have read much.

“Thank you,” he says hoarsely when I slide the mug over to him.

I should have thrown a shot of something in there, I think.

My gaze settles on him as he lifts the mug to his mouth and sips. His hand is almost shaking as he does this, and I turn in my chair to put one hand on his back and the other on his thigh. The tight silence that descended when he opened the notebook just five minutes ago is almost vibrating through the air, none of us able to speak until he does.

“It’s like...” He pauses, and his throat bobs as he swallows. “It’s like she one day hoped someone would find this. That somebody would open it, read it, and know without a shadow of a doubt what was happening to her.”

“Is it graphic?” Brody asks, wrapping his hands around his mug.

“Very.” Drake rubs his hand over his face, his finger and his thumb briefly wiping over his closed eyes. “If we ever find out who did this...” He pats the book.

It’s a sure conviction.

I don’t want to know what’s in that notebook. I don’t want to know the horrors she endured, especially if she’s that graphic.

“Is there a name?” Trent asks.

“No, but we know we’re looking for a guy. Someone close to the family.”

Brody drags his fingertips over his lower lip. “Noelle, did you speak to Stacia much? Does anyone else know?”

I summarize my meeting with her again, this time adding on Mrs. Russo’s request. “I think she’s afraid it’s her husband or one of her brothers.”

“Well, statistically speaking...” My little brother shrugs. “It’s them or someone else equally close to the family.”

“I think we can rule out her brothers on the basis that her abuser called her ‘baby girl,’” Drake inputs with disgust in his tone.

I feel sick.

“That’s something I’m never gonna be able to call Aria again,” Trent mutters into his mug.

Pretty much.

“I wouldn’t rule her brothers out.” I look down at my hands on the table. “I wouldn’t rule anyone out until they’ve been questioned.”

“What do we do now?” Brody asks. “Do we pull them from the memorial for formal questionin’? Do we wait?”

Drake sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Man. He’s seriously stressed.
“We take it in, show it to Sheriff, and see what he wants us to do. We may need to read the entire thing before we can question anybody about it.”

Trent hopelessly looks into his coffee. “There goes that.”

I get up. “I’ll get the to-go cups.”

I
t’s eight in the morning and I’m eating a cupcake. Something I haven’t done in a very long time—which only says how stressed I’m feeling on this fine, sunny morning.

It’s not a lie. It is a nice morning. The sun is peeking through barely there clouds, glinting off the glass of my office window, and bathing the room in sunlight. My view of the park out of my window is treating me to flowerbeds bursting with color and leafy, green trees gently blowing in the warm spring breeze that made me eat my damn hair on the way from my car to the door. I’m also sure there’s a bird mama nesting in my drainpipe because there’s a lot of chirpy singing going on.

Yet it all seems...dull. The birdsong sounds more melancholy than normal, the flowers more pastel than neon, the trees mossier than emerald, and the sun seems weak, like a midwinter sunrise.

This case is affecting us all more closely than perhaps any I’ve ever worked on. It’s been such a long journey to get to where we are right now, so even knowing that, after a decade and a half, we’ve found Daniela is enough to set a cloud of sadness sweeping across town.

Everything else, everything I know, just makes it worse.

For the last god knows how long, we could have lived with a pedophile in our town. He’s gone unnoticed, hidden, his dirtiest secret silent, dead, and hidden in a makeshift tomb. For all we know, this man works in the police department to keep people safe. Maybe he works in the Town Hall, running Holly Woods. Maybe he works in a store where he comes into contact with kids on a daily basis. Maybe he’s even a teacher.

The possibilities are endless and, quite frankly, terrifying. I don’t want to think about them at all.

So I’m gonna sit here with my cupcake and lick frosting off my baby finger like it doesn’t matter. Because, right now, it doesn’t. I can’t do anything. I have nothing to do and nowhere to go in this investigation while Daniela’s father and brothers are being interrogated at the station.

Ho hummmm.

I suck frosting off my pinkie finger, looking out the window. I think I was right yesterday when I said we can’t rule anyone out. Drake summarized some of the diary without going into the tiny details, and while, in my heart, I don’t want to believe that anyone in her family is responsible for it, I can’t not believe it, either.

Right now, everyone here is guilty until they’ve been proven innocent. It’s just the way my mind works in situations like this.

Until then, I’m stuck in limbo trying to figure out why house-husband, Dave, would be cheating on his hotshot-lawyer wife, Denise. As far as I can see on their case notes, he’s at home all the time with their two youngest children, four and two, while she works relatively long hours. She’s sure he’s banging the part-time nanny and says that he accuses her of sleeping with her boss to get a partnership in the company.

Sometimes, I feel like a preliminary divorce lawyer. Like I should start charging more or some shit. Hourly instead of on a case-by-case basis. I could make so much more money the way some of these people have me going.

Damn... I might have to rethink my pricing infrastructure. Fifteen-hour flat rate and then hourly...

I bet that would stop this shit.

Oooh.

I’m gonna do that.

The thought passes quickly, and I sigh, slumping forward on my desk. I’ve given up ninety-five percent of my cases to deal with Daniela’s, but now that I’m pushed out, I have more free time than I know what to deal with. I can’t even drag our staff meetings out because that’s just not how it works. My employees are too efficient, which means the meetings are now nothing more than a formality.

More frosting piles itself on my tongue courtesy of my little finger.

Mmm, lemon.

I tap the fingers of my other hand against the desk. It’s becoming a nasty habit for me lately. As annoying as the sound is even to my own ears, there’s something oddly therapeutic about it too. I think it’s because my fingers move to a rhythm in the end, which makes it ultimately calming.

Lord, I need a life.

And to avoid my family for today, since it’s Friday and I’ll be expected at family dinner.

I’m mad. I’m still so mad Nonna dared to do something so crazy. I appreciate that she wants the best for me. Hell, she probably didn’t even know what she was doing, but then again, neither do toddlers, and they smear shit over walls sometimes, so that excuse doesn’t wash.

I seriously think I need to talk to my parents about putting her in the care home, even part time. She has to be losing control over her basic faculties, and since she’d rather make spaghetti than see a doctor when her mind goes woowoo...

I sigh again and lean forward, crossing my arms on the desk and leaning my cheek against them. My office turns sideways, but I’m too preoccupied.

With everything.

With Daniela.

With Nonna.

With Drake’s dad.

With Bek.

With Jason.

With Brody.

With Drake.

I take a deep breath, but it isn’t enough. The bubble of stress that’s been slowly blowing up inside me finally pops, and I feel it split right through my entire body. My hands shake as adrenaline fueled by emotion pumps through my veins.

I don’t know if I’ve felt stress like this before. I don’t know if I’ve ever been pulled in so many directions at once before.

No. I know I haven’t. I’ve never been torn in so many ways that I’d need to be an octopus to cope with it just to have an arm free to wipe my butt.

And I’m in the middle. Smack-dab in the goddamn middle of it all. Being pulled left and right in the investigation, in my best friend’s relationship, in my
own
relationship, and in everything else around it. I have no idea how I’m supposed to move forward or cope with any of this.

I have no idea how to balance all of these situations. How to give everyone who needs it my undivided attention.

How to keep myself together when everything and everyone wants me.

Tears run across my face and my arm, ultimately falling onto my desk, and as I sniff, pulling a tissue from the box to wipe my nose, I’m glad I locked my office door before I settled down with my cupcake.

The cupcake I no longer want.

Yeah.

It’s that serious.

I push it away and swipe at my cheeks. This mix of grief and sadness and frustration and helplessness has been building for days, and only now do I feel any element of lightness now that it’s being cried right out of me. Only now does it feel like my head isn’t going to explode with the pressure that’s been shooting through my forehead for the past eight hours and kept me up half the night.

I still don’t know how to face it all. I still don’t know how I’m supposed to juggle everything and not lose my mind in the process.

I feel like I am. Losing my mind.

It all has to happen at once, doesn’t it? The case, Drake’s dad, Bek’s relationship, Nonna’s interfering... Because that’s just how it happens. Everything at once or nothing at all. And they’re all such big parts of my life that there’s no way to block one of them out.

I want to solve this case.

I want Drake to find peace with his dad.

I want my best friend to be happy.

I want my nonna to keep her damn nose to herself.

Unfortunately, in situations like this, I rarely get what I want. If I do, it’s a long, winding path to the final destination.