“Someone’s gonna see you,” he mumbled around my fingers as I superglued his lip back together.
“I’ll worry about that when the bleeding stops,” I said, taping gauze over my handiwork. “Now sit still.”
He sighed at me through his nose but let me finish cleaning him up. When I was done with his face and chest, I moved to his knuckles, which were raw and bloodied. I frowned as I washed the blood away.
“I didn’t think you hit him that many times,” I said.
“We started long before you got there.”
“Mm. How long before?”
He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
I shook my head. “I guess not. What was that all about, anyway?”
“I had a hunch. Went nowhere, obviously.”
“What was your hunch?”
He glared down the street the way we’d come. “Don’t worry about it,” he said and shrugged.
“You think he killed Hunter?”
He shrugged, but didn’t answer.
I finished with his hands and put the kit back together, then balled up the trash and threw it away. “It’s a bit too late to tell me not to worry about it, don’t you think?” He shrugged again. “Come on, I’ll walk you home,” I said and set out a foot before him.
“Now you’re just trying to get caught,” he said, exasperated. “If you’re gonna act like this, why don’t you just tell your dad about us?”
I gave him a stern look. “These are extenuating circumstances. You could have a concussion. I’m not going to let you walk yourself home in that condition. What if you fall in a ditch and die? I’d do this for anybody, and everybody knows it.”
“Daisy—”
“Look, either you let me walk you home or I call you an ambulance.”
He rolled his eyes and stood up. “Well I guess if my financial future depends on it, you can walk me home.”
“There you go,” I said smugly, lacing my arm through his. “Now let’s see if you can walk straight.”
His bumps, cuts, and bruises looked worse than they were. He was in good enough shape that I had no qualms about continuing to question his thought process.
“You know Dayle’s a dealer, right?” I asked.
“Yup. Deals to kids.”
I sighed. “So what, you decided to go all vigilante? Turn him in if you feel like it. What would your PO do if he knew you were fighting? And what would he think seeing you get kicked out of Dayle’s house.”
Kash shrugged and pulled his eyes away from mine. “I wasn’t playing vigilante. Just had a few questions for him, that’s all.”
“What questions?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does, Kash. You were trying to get in on his business, weren’t you? Damn it, Kash, we agreed--!”
“Seriously, Daisy?” He glared at me. “You seriously think I was there to get a paycheck from that asshole?”
“Well what do you expect me to think when you won’t tell me? Either that or you think he killed Hunter.”
His expression darkened. “I expect you to trust me.”
We were at his motel then, to my dismay. I grabbed his arm. “Okay, I trust you. I trust you to tell me whatever it is you’re plotting!”
He shook his head. “That’s not trust and you know it. Go on home, Daisy, before someone sees you with me.”
His tone cut through my soul. He was hurt and angry, but damn it, so was I.
Why couldn’t he let me in to what he was doing?
What was so bad that he had to keep it a secret from me?
Kash walked away, not really quickly, but not slowly, either. Stopping, he turned at the door to blow me a deliberate kiss, then disappeared inside leaving me to stew on the ghosts of my unanswered questions.
Furious at him, Dayle, and myself, I stormed down the street to the store. I fully intended on leaving Dad’s beer on the table and running off into the forest for the day.
Frustration from the whole situation had built to an explosive level inside of me, and I couldn’t think of a more satisfying way to handle it than smashing dead branches against their parent trees until they broke into a million pieces.
Chapter 25
My mouth hurt. My head was on fire. I wouldn’t have cared, except that it was distracting me from what I was trying to do. I had my notebook in front of me and was flipping my pen between my fingers, frowning down at the chicken scratch notes I’d scribbled down in moments of inspiration.
Dayle had been a dead end. He hadn’t even tried to hide the fact that he was pleased with Hunter’s death and my incarceration—of course he’d been happy about it, it had been great for his business. He’d bragged about all the shady shit he did to keep his products moving, even admitted to taking a hit out on a rival drug dealer several years before. But he wouldn’t admit to killing Hunter.
Not that I trusted him or anything, but there was no indication in his expression or tone that he was lying. He’d stated his innocence as fact, just as he’d stated his guilt. What bothered me most was how badly I wanted him to be the killer. It would have been an easy fix to so many of my problems and Dayle being the culprit would also make a lot of damn sense. I could feel my mind trying to stretch reality to fit the hypothesis. It was the first step into a descent into madness and I knew it.
Murder is bigger than anything he admitted to, even the hit, I thought. But for him to admit to it, he’d have to be proud enough to brag about it. Hunter’s killer had been a coward, hitting him from the back. Which had been another reason they thought it was me—they assumed I hit from the back because I couldn’t stomach looking into my best friend’s eyes as I killed him. Dayle, on the
