Page 88 of Riot Reunion
Ah, shit. The cops. I was supposed to call the cops. I go back to Pax’s car and sit in the front seat, thoughts racing as I take out my phone. The line rings only once.
“911. What is your emergency?” a calm male voice asks.
“There’s a body up at Wolf Hall Academy.”
“A body? Is the person injured?”
“No, the person’sdead,” I snap.
“You saw this body?”
“Her name is Alessia Regan. She’s hanging by her neck in one of the classrooms. You’re gonna want to take a full crew up there. It’s pretty messy.”
“Can I take your name, please, sir?”
“Wren Jacobi.” No point in refusing to hand over the information. They’re going to find out very quickly. I slipped in Alessia’s blood, for fuck’s sake. There’s no way I didn’t leave some DNA behind. Our muddy boot prints are all over the academy. Plus, we don’t have anything to hide. Sure, we’ll probably get a slap on the wrist for trespassing, but there’s no way they can pin Alessia’s murder on us.
“I’m gonna need you to wait with the body, Wren,” the 911 operator says.
“I’m not gonna do that. I had to come down the mountain to get reception, so I’m not even there—”
“Where are you, sir? We’ll have someone come and find you immediately.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “I’m not gonna do that, either. You can question me all you like in a couple of hours. The guy who murdered that woman is loose on the mountain. I’m going to find my girlfriend.”
Hanging up the phone, I accept the fact that I’m likely to get into more trouble for not immediately going to the police than I am for entering Wolf Hall without permission. Whatever. They can rake me over the coals all they like once I’ve laid eyes on Elod—
My phone lights up, notifications pouring in. Missed texts. A couple of missed calls. Apps all updating now that the device has reception again. And there, on the screen: a banner update that screams out at me, demanding to be opened.
Door Butler:There’s somebody at the door. Lucky you! You’ve got a visitor. Click here for live video camera access and to speak to your guest!
The house?Elodie went back to the house? Why would she go back there and then not make her way to the hospital? It doesn’t make sense. Unless…
Dread coils in my stomach like a pit viper, ready to strike. I hit the banner, my vision already swimming as a pop-up fills the screen.
Uh-oh!You missed your guest! Click here for video footage.
The link flasheswhen I hit it. A small, grainy recording appears on the phone, showing the steps that lead up to Riot House’s front door. At first, I see nothing. Just the porch light illuminating individual drops of rain as they come down beyond the eaves of the porch. But then…
“FUCK!”
Elodie, crawling in the mud, trying to get to the steps. And thenhimbehind her, bare skin wet with rain, a thick, tattered coat wrapped around his shoulders. Wesley Fitzpatrick, alive and in the flesh. Not locked away in Texas, as the news reported. Here, in Mountain Lakes. Outside my house. He grabs Elodie by the hair and drags her up the steps to the front door. His mouth moves a mile a minute, but this recording doesn’t have sound for some reason. Elodie gets to her feet, her head cast down as she struggles to punch the door code into the keypad I had installed at the end of summer. Then the door swings open, and the insane piece of shit pushes Elodie inside.
32
PAX
“She’s alive.Barely.”
Relief prickles at my fingertips, flooding me, so powerful that I have to brace against the doorframe so the rush of it doesn’t knock me on my ass. The doctor’s face is grim as hell, so I know whatever he has to say next isn’t going to be good. I need to be on my feet for it, I can tell.
“Presley has suffered an ectopic pregnancy. Do you know what that is?”
I stare at him dumbly. “Kind of. The baby isn’t growing where it’s supposed to be?”
“Yes. The fertilized egg was implanted in Presley’s left fallopian tube. Sometimes we can catch these things early when the patient comes in for a scan. In cases where it isn’t caught that way, issues usually arise a lot earlier in the pregnancy than this. Typically between six to ten weeks. It’s very unusual to have an ectopic pregnancy remain unruptured this late—”
“Unruptured?” I do not like the sound of that.
