My heart falls.
It’s just a receipt from a dry cleaner. A refund, it looks like. I don’t know what River’s seeing that’s made him go so still and quiet.
I nudge his shoulder, dipping my head to catch his eye. My heart is beating out the milliseconds like a metronome set too high, echoing the nervous energy I can feel coming off him in waves.
“River. What?”
He blinks, still looking stunned and scared.
“Look at the amount.”
I glance back down at the paper, and my eyes practically pop out of my head. I didn’t even register it at first because no legit dry cleaner would ever give anyone this amount of money. It’s insane.
When I shift my gaze to River, he reads the expression on my face and nods grimly. “I know the name on the bottom too. Niles D’Amato. I’ve seen my dad talk about him with his lawyer buddies. He runs a drug trafficking ring that moves opiates through Connecticut.”
My mouth opens, and my gaze flies back to the papers in River’s hand.
Holy fuck.
In that context, the amount of money listed on this receipt takes on a whole new meaning. Why the hell is Judge Hollowell accepting “refunds” from a known drug trafficker?
Is this what got Iris killed? Did she find out about it?
My skin prickles as it hits me how much danger we’re all in. I don’t know what I was hoping to find up here, what I was expecting. But it wasn’t this. And if Hollowell killed Iris to keep this quiet, there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t do the same to us.
“Is there anything else in there?” I catch River’s eye and jerk my chin toward the file he’s holding.
He shakes his head. “No. Nothing that seems important. Everything else is just records of car payments. He either stuck this in here by accident or hid it in here on purpose.”
Lincoln makes a soft noise, and when I glance at him, he has almost the same look on his face River did before. Like he’s sorting through a series of disconnected images in his head, trying to piece them together so they form a cohesive picture.
Then something shifts in his expression, and his eyes harden like twin pieces of amber.
“Fuck. I know that name too.” He looks at River. “Bring that. We gotta get out of here.”
20
It’s a risk, taking the document with evidence connecting Judge Hollowell to a criminal drug ring. But I don’t trust a picture on a phone—although we each take one as backup. I’ve seen how easily that kind of evidence can be deleted with the swipe of a finger, and I feel better having something solid in my hand.
We put everything back in order, careful to leave no evidence of our presence. Then we slip downstairs and crowd into the large bathroom on the first floor.
I glance in the mirror as we pass by the sink, and it feels like a lifetime ago that I let the water run from the tap while Judge Hollowell waited outside. The evidence of my tears has faded from my face, although I still look haggard and exhausted.
The guys lower me down first, then crawl out the window one by one before boosting me up to pull it closed. It’s harder to get it tight this time, but I close it as much as I can, gripping the glass with my fingertips. Finally, there’s just a small sliver between the window and the frame.
All told, we were inside Judge Hollowell’s house for just over two hours, but it’s the last few seconds of sprinting across his lawn that are the most terrifying. We make it over the wall and return to Lincoln’s car, and as soon as we’re inside, he guns the engine and peels out.
His face is a mask of concentration as he careens around a corner. He’s driving too fast, definitely over the speed limit, but none of us tell him to slow down. I’m having flashbacks of the first time I left Hollowell’s house, of rounding a snow-covered corner at breakneck speed.
“Holy fuck.” Dax shakes his head. I’m sandwiched between him and Chase in the back seat, with River up front next to Linc, and I can feel his body shaking with latent adrenaline. Mine is too. “I can’t believe Hollowell’s in bed with these fucking guys.”
“It makes sense.” River’s turned sideways in his seat so he can watch both us and Linc. “Being tied up with a drug trafficking ring may not be as bad as murder, but I can see how it’d be a motive for one. If Iris found out and mentioned it to the wrong people, it could’ve ruined his career. Ruined his life.”
“So he killed her,” I murmur, pity for my old nemesis rising in my chest. “I bet she had no fucking idea the kind of person she was involved with. I wonder if she even knew what she knew. Maybe she didn’t think anything of the name. I didn’t recognize it, why the hell would she?”
“Yeah, but Hollowell wouldn’t take that chance,” River says starkly, and a sharp blade of fear slips between my ribs.
No. He wouldn’t. He didn’t.
He’s the kind of guy who likes things wrapped up in a neat little bow, no loose ends.
And the second we broke into his house—hell, even before that—we all became loose ends.
Chase leans up toward the front, sticking his head between the seats to peer at Linc. “Hey. How the hell do you know that name, dude? Niles D’Amato?”
“My dad.”
A new kind of shock almost stops my heart, and my gaze flies to Lincoln. He catches my horrified stare in the rearview mirror and shakes his head.
“Not like that. Thank fuck. Dad’s an asshole sometimes, but he’s not mixed up in that kind of shit.” He shifts his eyes back to the road, but I can see tension drawn in every line of his shoulders. “I told
