Page 76 of Liars

I smiled as I reached for the door latch. “Thanks, but this is something I need to do alone.” I hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t mind waiting? I can always call when I’m done?—”

“No way. I’m not leaving. I’ve got an entire season ofTokyo Ghoulto binge on my phone while I wait.”

“Seriously don’t know what I’d do without you,” I muttered, opening the door.

She grinned. “You’d be way more screwed.”

She had no idea.

I crossed two lanes of traffic to the Elmwood Police Department. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as I entered, adding to the tension pressing into my ribs. After giving my name to the man behind the front desk, I was immediately directed to a room where I waited only a few minutes before Detective Reyes took the seat across from me, her gaze calm, alert, and not without compassion.

“Thank you for coming in.” She folded her hands on the table, and I noticed she wore a simple wedding band, and I couldn’t help but wonder about her family. “First, let me tell you we no longer believe your parents’ deaths were a random shooting.”

Everything inside me stilled.

“We have reason to believe it was premeditated murder.” She started with a simple question. “Kaylor, did you ever wonder where your father got his money?”

The question caught me off guard, and I blinked, confused. “What? No. He owned mechanic shops—several of them. That’s how he made his money.”

“That’s true.” Reyes offered a soft smile. “But did you know that at several of those shops, we recovered stolen vehicles? Expensive ones.”

A hollow feeling opened in my core. “What?” I breathed. “No. That—that can’t be right. Stolen vehicles?”

She nodded grimly. “The operations at those shops have been halted. They’re under investigation. We’ve linked them to a larger network of vehicle theft and trafficking.”

I shook my head vehemently. “No. There’s no way my father was involved in something like that. He wasn’t a criminal.”

Reyes’s gaze softened, but her tone stayed firm. “I’m not saying he was the mastermind, Kaylor. But the shops were under his name. That makes him liable.”

My fingers gripped the edge of the table, trying to steady my shaking hands. “You need to talk to his business partner. My dad trusted him to handle a lot of the operations. If something illegal was happening, he had to be involved.” I felt bad for throwing Rusty under the bus, but it was unfathomable that my dad knew.

Reyes tilted her head. “We’re looking into everyone connected to the shops, including his partner, but this isn’t an open-and-shut case. There’s a lot we still don’t know.”

Her words left me reeling. I couldn’t reconcile the man I knew—my father—with the accusations hanging in the air.

“It does give us a possible motive for the shooting,” she added.

“You think someone involved with the stolen cars killed them?”

“It’s an avenue we’re exploring,” she admitted.

I forced myself to swallow. “Do you have any suspects?”

“Not unless you remember anything new from that night.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying.

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Not a single new detail.

I pushed to my feet abruptly, grabbing my bag. “I have to go.”

Reyes didn’t stop me, but as I turned for the door, her voice followed. “If you remember anything—anything—call me, Kaylor.”

I needed to speak with my father’s best friend and lead mechanic, Rusty. I didn’t know what his actual name was. He’d always been Rusty to me and was like an uncle. If anyone could sort this out, it would be him. Should I leave it to the police? Probably. Would I? Probably not. I wanted Rusty to look me in the eye when he told me he knew nothing about boosted vehicles and that there was no way my dad would have been involved in such activity.

Outside, the brittle cold of January slapped me in the face, sharp and unforgiving.

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