Page 61 of The Couple's Secret
“As soon as we’re able to give you information, we’ll do that but for now, I need you to go back to your vehicle.”
“I can’t just go back to my vehicle!” he roared. “I need to know what happened to my wife!”
Zane put a hand on Jackson’s shoulder. “Hey, man, you need to back down. The last thing any of us needs is you in a jail cell.”
Jackson spun around, giving his brother a withering glare. “Stay out of this.”
“Stay out of this?” Zane said incredulously. “Stay out of this? Have you lost your damn mind? This is Riley we’re talking about.”
Jackson lunged, fisting the collar of his brother’s T-shirt and shaking him like a rag doll, until his feet lifted off the ground. “This is your fault! Your fucking fault!”
“Sir,” Conlen snapped. “Let go of him and return to your vehicle or you will be removed.”
Zane’s eyes narrowed. He brought his hands up, wrapping them around Jackson’s thick wrists. “How is this my fault? You were supposed to protect her!”
“I was protecting her!” Jackson thundered. “You’re here for two days and now she’s gone! Gone! Drinking like… she has a problem, and you just feed it and feed it and she never knows when to stop when you’re around.”
Zane pushed against Jackson with a surprising amount of strength given their size difference. “Screw you! Like you ever stopped her from drinking. You said you’d protect her. You promised. This is on you. Get the fuck off me!”
Conlen gripped Jackson’s shoulder and gave clipped instructions that went unheeded. Jackson let go of Zane’s shirt, pulled back, and delivered a punishing blow to Zane’s face. Josie sprinted forward before the younger brother had a chance to process it, joining Conlen, dragging Jackson away.
Zane didn’t bother to clutch his nose, despite the blood flowing liberally down his face, his chin, his shirt. Instead, he glowered at Jackson, watching as Josie and Conlen took his still-flailing body to the ground. “You didn’t deserve her,” he told his brother. “You never deserved her.”
Thirty-Three
Time crawled as the ERT worked along the boat ramp. Josie spoke briefly to Hollis. She wasn’t releasing the brothers until they’d had time to cool off. She wasn’t surprised by Jackson’s behavior. It would take time for both brothers to process the fact that they’d lost Riley forty-eight hours after burying their father. The reality kept poking Josie with small jabs of unease. What were the odds?
“Hey,” Gretchen said. “Which one do you want?”
The brothers had been moved to opposite sides of the road—Zane in the back of a second ambulance that had arrived, nursing his busted nose, and Jackson in the back seat of a cruiser, his hands zip-tied behind him. Both of them looked pale and exhausted, dazed even.
Josie pointed to the ambulance. “That one.”
Zane reclined on the gurney, an ice pack pressed to his nose. His voice was slightly muffled and nasal as he answered her questions. “The last time I saw her or talked to her was last night in Hollis’s living room. We stayed up late watching Netflix and, um, drinking.”
He said the last word quietly, shame coloring the skin of his neck and cheeks.
“Where were Hollis and Jackson?”
“Bed.”
Outside the perimeter of cruisers, several reporters began to set up for their live shots. Denton PD hadn’t released any information but given Jackson’s outburst, the bare bones of the situation were pretty obvious.
Another viral video.
Josie looked back at Zane. “How would you characterize Riley’s mood?”
“How do you think? She was sad.”
“Did she say anything to make you think she might try to harm herself?”
He lowered the ice pack, his red-rimmed eyes bulging. “Wait. Did she—is that how she?—”
“We don’t know what happened yet,” Josie said. “But I need to know if she talked about harming herself or if she appeared to be distraught enough to do so.”
“No.” Zane shook his head vigorously. “No. If I thought she was going to do something like that, I would have told someone. Woke Jacks up. Or Hol. I don’t know. Something. We talked about the press, about Dalton, about what the hell to do with ourselves now that finding our parents wasn’t a thing anymore. She cried a little, but she’s been crying on and off for days. Then we put on this show we used to watch when we were in high school and she fell asleep on the couch.”
His eyes took on a faraway look, as though he was transported back to those last hours with Riley. A host of emotions flashed across his bruised face. The sorrow that finally settled over his features was so devastating that Josie felt it in the pit of her stomach. Like Riley, he had been a teenager when the only parent he had left was taken from him. All he had was Jackson and Riley. The shared trauma bonded them like nothing else could and now they were fracturing in spectacular fashion.
