Page 81 of Hard Knock Hero

“Innocent until proven guilty,” Scarlett reminded him. “With all due respect, Mr. Rigsby.”

Sawyer nodded vigorously. “Of course. That’s all I’m interested in. The truth.”

I’d wondered before whether Sawyer knew about Dale’s operation on Refuge Mountain. I still wasn’t sure. But right now, everything about Sawyer screamedfalse. And somehow, his saccharine concern was even worse than Dale’s shouting outside the station.

I had a sweet tooth, and desserts were my passion. But there was something rotten about the founder of the Hart-Made Candy Company.

“Take Ms. Novo and her friends to a conference room,” Owen told a deputy. “I’ll interview them later.”

I was more than happy to get away from Sawyer. The door shut, and I sank into the seat at the head of the conference table. “Scarlett, you shouldn’t be here,” I said. “Sawyer is your boss. He controls half of Hartley. He’s going to blame you for standing by me.”

Better yet, I should’ve left Hartley on my own, I thought.Weeks ago. I never should’ve pulled anyone else into this. Not Aiden, not Scarlett. Not even Trace.

My fault.

Scarlett placed her hand over mine on the tabletop. “It’s like Trace said in the car. You’ve got your family beside you. Maybe you and I weren’t always this close, but I’m not going anywhere. You hear me? You’re my friend, and nothing matters more than that.”

I nodded, squeezing her hand.

My brother paced the length of the conference room, arms crossed, hair obscuring half his face. “Start at the beginning,” Trace said. “Everything that happened after I left the diner. I need every detail about how this unfolded. Because it doesn’t make sense.”

Scarlett raised an eyebrow at me. She was probably thinking of the condoms she’d given me. Trace didn’t needthosedetails.

I kept things vague, focusing on the events of the last half hour. The sudden knock at the door. The deputy’s claim of an anonymous tip, and the discovery of Mitch’s body in the dumpster. Trace listened with a tense frown.

“It’s not the best setup to frame someone for murder,” he said. “Not if they want the charges against you or Aiden to stick.”

I combed my hair back with my fingers. “That’s what Owen thought. The state police will investigate, and the evidence will show that Mitch’s body was planted in the dumpster. This is pure harassment. Either I would get arrested, or Jeremy probably guessed that Aiden would step in to defend me. Did he want to get revenge for Aiden embarrassing him? Or is this because we went near the warehouse? Somehow they figured out it was us.”

It wouldn’t have been that hard to guess. We’d overheard Chester say that he blamed me and Aiden for Mitch’s death. They hadn’t seen us distinctly on the camera footage, but they suspected we’d been poking around Refuge Mountain. Afterward, Chester and Jeremy must’ve recovered Mitch’s body from the ravine and figured out how to use it against us. They wanted to make our lives hell. That was reason enough.

But Trace was shaking his head. “It’s the timing. That’s what bothers me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Before Trace could answer, Owen stepped into the room, closing the door quickly behind him.

I got up. “I want to see Aiden.”

“That’s impossible. Besides, Aiden is fine.”

“What was Sawyer saying to you?” I asked.

“Just digging for info.” Owen rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m trying to do things mostly by the book, even though I agree with you that it’s bullshit. The Rigsbys have been planning this. When I had to leave the video call with Aiden’s brother yesterday afternoon, it was because Chester and Jeremy were asking for me. They wanted to file a missing persons report on Mitch.”

Scarlett sat forward, dropping her elbows onto the tabletop. “That’s what I’d heard. They were going around telling everyone that Mitch was missing. Probably because they were already plotting to stick him in Jessi’s dumpster. Sheriff, if you know what’s really going on, then you have to do something about it.”

“I will. But we have to be careful. Dale is out there shouting for blood. Sawyer…I don’t know what he has to do with this.”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, too,” I said.

“The way I see it, Aiden’s safer in custody than out on the street,” Owen continued. “Once the state investigators get here, everyone will calm down. We’ll get the forensics, and they’ll find that the evidence doesn’t line up. And hopefully, the Rigsbys will slip up and we’ll learn more about the illegal operation they’ve been running. But for now, you all need to sit tight and let this play out.”

Owen left the room. I wanted to run after him and shout my frustration. We knew so much that the Rigsbys were responsible for, yet we couldn’t prove a single thing yet.

We had to wait. That was Owen’s answer to everything. “I can’t just trust that this will work itself out,” I said.

Scarlett sighed. “I can only imagine how you feel. But Owen is right that we can’t act rashly. It won’t hurt Aiden to sit in county jail for a bit until we come up with something.”

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