“After they put us into the SUVs, Niles stood outside talking to two of his men. He said Judge Hollowell was the one who killed Iris—I think she saw Hollowell meeting with them or something, and they told him he had to clean it up.”
Dunagan’s eyebrows lift, and he cocks his head, glancing down at his notes before looking back at River. “I see. Were the windows open on the SUV? Or the door?”
“No, sir.”
The detective shakes his head, looking almost disappointed, as if he didn’t want to catch one of us in a lie. “Well then, I don’t see how you could’ve heard their conversation with such clarity. If they were outside the car and you were inside—doors closed, windows up.”
River shrugs lightly. “I didn’t hear them. I read their lips.”
Now Dunagan’s eyebrows drop down, as if he’s trying to figure out how to make sense of what River just said. “I’m sorry?”
“I’m mostly deaf. I have almost no hearing in my right ear, and just a little in my left. Since I can’t hear, I read lips.”
As he speaks, my gaze flies to him, and I can sense Linc and Dax tensing beside me. River hides his hearing impairment from almost everyone, keeping it a secret at school with the help of his three best friends. But he just told everyone in this room about it as if it were nothing.
Mr. Bettencourt’s face tightens with something like embarrassment, and he suddenly won’t look at River, but the boy with slate-gray eyes and messy brown hair doesn’t spare a glance for his father either. He keeps his gaze on the detective, and he looks so calm, self-assured, and confident that my heart swells with a burst of pride.
His father may be ashamed. But River isn’t.
“I see.” Dunagan looks at the boy beside me again, and I wait to see some sign of pity or dismissal in his eyes. But the only thing I find is a bright gleam of interest. “And what did they say? I’m assuming they were unaware you could eavesdrop on them like that?”
“Yes, sir. I think so.” River takes a breath, speaking carefully like always. “Niles said Hollowell was more trouble than he was worth. He said first it was one teenager they had to get rid of, now five more. I got the impression they pressured Hollowell to kill Iris after she found out about them. Then he asked one of his men if he’d taken care of the car that killed Iris.”
My spine stiffens, my stomach flipping over like a floundering fish as I turn to stare at River. Holy fuck.
He never mentioned this. Not that there’s been any fucking time in the whirlwind of events of the past several hours. But now I understand how he knew Niles planned to kill us.
And the car. The car that killed Iris…
“What did his man say?” Dunagan’s pen hovers poised over his pad of paper, and he’s watching River with an unblinking gaze.
“He said it hadn’t been destroyed yet. That it was in the warehouse on Chapel Drive. Then Niles told him to deal with it as soon as they dealt with us.”
Dunagan makes a note, scribbling so fast I can tell his brain is outpacing his hand. Then he glances up again. “Anything else?”
“No, sir. That was all they said before they split up to get in the cars with us.”
“All right. And then what happened?”
We continue on with our story, detailing our arrival at Hollowell’s house and what happened after the judge arrived back home. The guys do most of the talking, because my mind is stuck on one thing.
A car.
There’s a dark sedan in a warehouse somewhere with Iris’s DNA on it.
A car that’s not my mother’s.
I try to tamp down the surge of desperate hope that rises up in me, but it seeps up through the cracks in my resolve anyway, infusing my body with a buzzing energy.
The boys slow down again toward the end, and I tune back into what they’re saying as they haltingly describe the moments after Mitch tried to execute us. The whole thing probably only lasted a minute or two, but so much happened that it felt like a hundred times that, and everything so was chaotic that it’s hard to paint a clear picture of what went down.
Between the four of us, we’re able to sort out the timeline of events pretty well, and when we finally stop talking, the room goes completely silent. The guys’ parents all look like they’re in fucking shock, and even the cops look a little rattled.
Detective Dunagan finally nods, casting a glance down at his notebook before looking back at us, rubbing his fingers over his temple. “That was incredibly dangerous. Monumentally stupid. You know that, right?”
“Yes.”
All four of us speak without a moment’s hesitation.