Choking back the doubt, I hit the call button, and it barely rings once.
“Where the hell did you go?” Rafe demands. His voice sounds muffled as if he’s speaking far from the receiver. “Where are you?”
I rattle off the street name I spy on the nearest sign, feeling the back of my neck prickle with every step I take.
“I don’t know how long I can wait here—”
“I’m already pulling up to you,” he replies.
Not even a second later, a black car peels around the corner, skidding to a stop across from my location. I race to it and finally risk looking back.
In my head, I’d imagined Branden chasing after me on foot, always one step behind.
But I don’t spy him or his van anywhere.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” Rafe demands, eyeing the residential street with a frown.
I slip inside, locking the door after me. Facing him, I raise an eyebrow. “How did you find me?” Call it a hunch, but I doubt he frequents this part of town.
A harsh sigh betrays his guilt. “Fine.” He nods to the cell phone propped against his dashboard. A map is displayed on the screen, with two blinking dots in close vicinity. “I tracked your phone’s GPS. Cops show up at my place, and you go missing. What was I supposed to think other than—”
“You thought I had told them something?” I ask, too stunned to feel truly insulted. “Tipped them off?”
He flinches and snatches one of my hands, gripping it tight. “Hell no. I thought some dickhead tried to drag your ass away in the chaos. Was I right?”
I clench my teeth rather than answer him right away. Scanning his expression, I try to picture him on the other end of Faith’s messages. Receiving those pictures from her. Asking for them…
“Were you seeing Faith?” I ask bluntly.
He nearly swerves off the road and pulls his hand away to steady the wheel. “Not like that.” His tone deepens, fully serious. “I swear it on my fucking mother. I wasn’t fucking her if that’s what you’re asking.”
Relief goes to war with doubt until my head spins with the potential outcomes. “I saw the texts,” I say lamely.
“I can explain that,” he counters, grimacing at the thought. “I was frustrated. She kept giving me the fucking runaround, and all I wanted was—”
“Nude images?” I snap. God, I can’t get them out of my head.
But when I finally face him, he doesn’t look like someone caught in a lie. Instead, shock displaces any hint of deception.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I saw the messages,” I say. “All of them.”
He frowns. “Then you saw me cussing her out. That’s it. She promised to meet me at my shop but never showed… I should have gone looking for her, but you showed up instead.”
I remember that night. He’d been on edge, but I’d been too wrapped up in my own issues to notice.
“So, she never sent you pictures?” I ask.
“No.” He risks taking one hand off the wheel to brush my cheek. “It wasn’t like that with us, I swear.”
“But, the police were looking at your shop for a reason.”
“The fuck they were,” Rafe hisses. “Luckily, the bastard cops could enact their ‘warrant’ without me being there. Sons of bitches—”
“Do you know what they’re looking for?”
He shrugs. “Anything they can use to pin it on me if I had to take a guess.”
He could be lying, but I’m tired of living in doubt.
“I think I know what,” I admit, reaching into my pocket. “I think they were there because of me. Because of something I have.”
He shoots me a skeptical frown. “What?”
“This.” I hold the hair clip up to the light, awed by the detail. Delicate and light, it must have been expensive. Something Faith wouldn’t lose easily.
But if Rafe recognizes it, he’s an expert actor. His face reveals nothing.
“It’s Faith’s,” I say without beating around the bush. “She was wearing it a few days before she died.”
Still, he says nothing. When I gather up the nerve to look at him, he’s staring forward, gripping the steering wheel so tightly the car starts to drift and nearly crosses into the oncoming lane.
“Watch out!”
“Shit.” He rights the car easily, but his expression is more distant than ever. Even after a few days in his orbit, I can clearly identify the emotion responsible for the tension hardening his jaw. Mistrust.
“How?” he demands finally. “How the hell did you get a hold of that?”
I look at the hair clip again and try to see it how someone like Branden might. Not as a threat meant to terrify me, but as a desperate ploy by someone who probably thought I wouldn’t recognize it. Or know who it belonged to.
“Someone planted it in my apartment,” I confess. “I think he was trying to hide it in case the police searched his place. I think… I think he hurt Faith, but I don’t know why.”
The silence between us is deafening. I squirm, feeling my heart race as I try to interpret his reaction. His eyes are dark and thoughtful. Like while this wasn’t exactly the plot twist in the narrative he expected, he had been anticipating something similar.
“Your brother?” he asks coldly.
“Yes,” I admit. “But now it’s my turn to ask a question. Branden Dewitt. Did you know who he was all this time?”
His brows snap together, and he strikes the steering wheel so hard the horn blares. “Branden Dewitt? That’s who your brother is?” He looks at me so incredulously that I know it’s not an act. He didn’t know.
“You said his name was Bran,” he says, pulling over to the side of the highway. “Though, fuck, I guess I’m the idiot for not putting it together. Branden.”
“So, you know who he is?” I ask thickly. “I’m guessing his name wasn’t circled on your list by accident?”
He swivels his head to face me. “You want to know the truth? That list was the name
