The Cabin (13 page)

She scoffed and flicked her hand. “That's a load of rubbish. I thought it was a joke when I first found out. No one believes it—no one who matters anyway.”

Sure the people that really knew us believed we had nothing to do with it, but I still couldn't sleep properly knowing others considered me a killer. “What will you do if they never find him, Flis? I don't know how I can live with knowing they never got justice.”

She pressed her lips together and scowled. “I'll hate that, but life does go on, Mackenzie. I know that's harsh and horrible, but it's true. I hope they catch him, but if they don't, it doesn't change anything. Courtney and Josh will still be gone. Nothing will bring them back or make what happened to them OK.”

“If they never found out who did it, you'd be OK?” Just the thought made my head spin.

“No, not OK. I want justice, but it won't bring them back. Don't drive yourself crazy with this. You know Courtney would probably say something like, ‘Get a grip, Mackenzie. I'm dead, deal with it,' wouldn't she?”

I smiled and shook my head, hearing those words in Court's voice. “Yeah, she would.” But that didn't really make it OK to cover up for one of my friends. I changed the conversation. “So how's uni going, anyway? You still loving it up in Liverpool?”

“I do. It's a great place. Not sure I'll stay after I graduate though. I'm thinking of moving back when it's time to find a job.”

Felicity wanted to be a nurse and was three years into a four-year degree. It was the same course Tilly would have been starting next year.

“Are there better job opportunities here?” That seemed unlikely. The closest hospital was a forty-minute drive, and there were only three within a comfortable daily driving distance.

“Not really, but I want to be around family. I'm thinking of going into a walk-in clinic or doctor's office.”

“Sounds good. Would be nice to have you back this way.”

Liverpool was about two hundred miles north and just over three and a half hours away. Felicity didn't get to visit much, so it would be great to see more of her. Courtney's parents would love it too.

“What about you? School going all right?”

I turned my nose up. “It's going. Not looking forward to getting back after summer, especially now. But a friend of the family is a counselor in another uni so I'm hoping to pick up some work experience with her next year while she works in summer school.”

“You didn't want to do that this summer?”

“This year was supposed to be our last summer of freedom, so we were all spending it working our way through a before-university bucket list.”

She laughed. “Courtney mentioned something about that. How far did you get?”

“We'd done LEGOLAND and camping, which I hated because it rained constantly.” Two weeks into summer holidays, and our plans were ripped away. Court and Josh would never get the chance to do all the things we'd planned—or anything else for that matter. Again. I dipped my head and added, “Then the weekend away.”

“You don't want to do the rest of the things on the list?”

“One day maybe.” For Tilly, Gigi, and Courtney, I would do all of the things we'd planned to, but there were far more important things to deal with before I ticked off any activities from the list. I also didn't particularly want to do them anymore. It wouldn't be fun. It was just something I felt I had to do now.

“What's this Detective Wright like, then? I've heard interesting things.”

“You haven't had to speak to him?”

“I've been interviewed but not by him.”

“Oh. Well, where to start,” I muttered. “Interesting is one way to describe him. He's like one of those eccentric detectives you see on TV. Not sure if he realizes TV isn't real and that maybe he needs to be grown-up about his career.”

“There are no other leads?”

“Apparently not, but he's hardly forthcoming with information. We only know what he wants us to know and when he wants us to know it. I have no clue what he's thinking about the clothes.”

She frowned, stirring the mug of tea that everyone received as soon as they arrived whether they wanted it or not. The owners, Mr. and Mrs. Graham, were big on tea, and from the big pot in their hand, it looked like I was getting one soon too. “What clothes?”

“The ones the murderer was wearing. If it was one of us, then they have to be somewhere, right?” She nodded. “They can't find any, of course. But he still won't accept that it means it wasn't us.”

“Are you sure? They can't ignore that.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “I'm not sure about much anymore. There's been no mention of the clothes though.” I scoffed—like he would tell us even if he had found it. “I bet the first we'll hear of any new leads is when someone is arrested. Aaron was called in for more questioning.”

“Jesus. This is such a mess,” Felicity said, shaking her head.

You have no idea how messy it's gotten.
“Yep.”

It was a big mess, and I was caught in the middle of it and desperate to get out.

By the time Felicity and I had finished lunch and I'd made my way back home, I was feeling slightly better. Her strength was encouraging, and I knew, without a doubt, that whoever killed Courtney and Josh would pay the price. I would turn whoever it was in if I found out—no matter who it was and how much I loved my friends.

My phone beeped with another text message, and I froze. I'd never been scared of that tone before.

It was Megan, thankfully, asking if I wanted to do something that afternoon. I didn't. So I replied with an excuse and told her I'd see her soon. That would hopefully give me some time to work things out in my head and hopefully figure out what was going on.

As I sent the text, my phone rang. I sighed in relief as Aaron's name flashed on my screen. Did I expect whomever the anonymous person was who'd texted me to start calling now? Honestly, I didn't know what they were capable of.

“Aaron! Are you OK? I tried calling you last night!”

He chuckled. “Mum said you'd called. I'm fine.”

“What happened?”

“Apparently, Wright found some of my blood in the woods. It's OK though. I explained what happened.”

My heart froze. Oh God. It
was
his blood.

No.

God, Aaron?

No, he wouldn't…

“Start at the beginning,” I said, absolutely terrified of his answer. There had to be a reasonable explanation.

“Megan and I went for a walk that afternoon when we were at the cabin. She found what she thought was one of those stupid crystal stone things. I picked it up and it turned out it was an old, very sharp piece of green glass, which I chucked into some shed in the woods.”

We hadn't seen the green glass, but it hadn't been particularly light in the shed. The stone must have landed on the wrapper and fallen off when I'd picked it up. “Oh. You never mentioned it when you got back.”

There was something about the story that I didn't like, though it was completely plausible and Wright must have accepted it since Aaron was calling me rather than sitting in a prison cell.

“One, I'm a tough man. And two, it bled for a second, hardly bandage material. Wright just wanted me to clear it up. He'll probably want to confirm it with Megan. Can you believe he doesn't trust us?” he joked.

“Crazy, right?” I replied, forcing myself to laugh. “So everything is all right?”

“Yep. I gotta go. My parents and I are off to visit the family soon. I'll be home tomorrow so we'll meet up, yeah?”

“Wait, you're going away?”

“Twenty miles away, Kenz, not to Mexico.”

I bit my lip as I walked up my front path. “OK. See you tomorrow.”

Aaron hung up, and as I opened the front door, Mum came rushing out of the kitchen. I was home early, but she'd still worried herself sick.

“Hey,” I said, grinning like a fool so she would see that everything was fine, even if it wasn't.

“How was lunch?”

“Good. Felicity seems to be doing OK and she's going back to uni for summer classes.”

“That's good.”

I could tell that Mum wanted to quiz me on every little detail, but she was holding back. She could get a little obsessive.

“I'm gonna go to my room,” I said, giving her a quick hug and taking the stairs two at a time.

Dropping down on my bed, I rubbed my aching head. Aaron was visiting family last minute but usually did
everything
he could to get out of family gatherings. Last time, he was ill; the time before that, he'd had a make-believe exam. And I think he'd even used my break up with Danny as an excuse once too.

He hated his extended family because they were judgmental arseholes who constantly put Aaron down for not being a straight-A student. They thought he should be headed to Cambridge to study law, like his cousins were. So him going sounded a lot like he was running, maybe not from Wright and the police, but from his friends. It was like there was something he didn't want us to know.

I dialed Blake's number and laid my phone beside me on speaker. Hopefully he would make everything clearer—or just turn it into a joke. I'd have taken either one right then. Desperation kinda did that to a girl.

“Do I need to take out a restraining order?” Blake teased instead of a traditional hello.

“It was his blood,” I whispered, feeling as sure as I could be that Aaron was the killer. The line went silent. I waited for him to say something. “Blake?”

“I'm here,” he said. “Do you want me to come over?”

No annoying “I told you so”?

“I don't know what I want, Blake. How can it be his?” I shook my trembling hands as reality started to set it. “Do you think Aaron killed them?”

“You're asking me?”

“I'm too close, aren't I? I believe them all so much that I can't see clearly. Did Aaron do it, Blake? Please answer me.”

“For what it's worth, I don't think so. My money is still on Kyle.” I heard Blake rustling around in the background and then the sound of keys jingling. He really was coming over. “Just chill out. We still need to speak to Wright about Lawrence. Aaron's blood in an old shed doesn't prove he's a murderer.”

“Why are you doing this? You think it was one of them, so why help me with Lawrence and reassure me?”

“You asked me to, remember?”

“That doesn't answer my question. You could have told me to get lost, and don't tell me you're only helping me because you're bored because I know that's a lie.”

He sighed. “Fine. I like that you're so loyal to the people you care about that you believe in them and want to do everything you can to keep them safe. You don't find that much, and it's not a quality I've ever had in a friend. Plus, you're not that bad to look at.”

“You had to ruin it,” I replied. A small smile pulled at my lips. “Are you coming over?”

“On my way,” he said and hung up.

I put the phone down and shook my head. As much as Blake played the I-don't-give-a-damn card, he really did care. My heart soared so high I felt faint. I really did have a thing for him. A big thing.

This will be interesting.
The one guy I've felt like I could really fall for and he was brother of a guy I hated—a guy I was suspected of killing. Fabulous.

Blake knocked on my front door in half the time it should have taken to drive to my house. I wanted to yell because he had obviously driven fast, but I was too glad to see him. He led the way up to my room as if he owned the place.

“What did Aaron say?” he asked, sitting down on my bed and lying back against my pillows.

“Please, do make yourself comfortable.”

His light eyes darkened in a glare.

I refocused. “He said he was out with Megan and cut his finger on a piece of glass, but he never said anything when he got back.”

Blake's chest shook as he laughed. “Guys stop whining—or boasting—about their war wounds when they're about ten, Mackenzie. Do you believe him?”

“Yes,” I replied.
I think.

Rolling his eyes, he pushed himself up so he was properly facing me. All of a sudden, he had his serious face on, and I felt like I was about to get a lesson in who to trust. I didn't like where this was going. “Do you? There's not an ounce of doubt in your mind about Aaron's innocence?”

The way Blake looked at me made it hard to concentrate on breathing, let alone something as serious as murder. I licked my drier-than-the-Gobi-Desert lips and swallowed. “Um…”

“Seriously, Mackenzie, is he innocent?”

“Yes. I believe him. He might be hotheaded, but he's protective of the people he cares about. There is no way he could have ever hurt Courtney or Josh, Court especially. Aaron's uncle used to hit his aunt before she left and Aaron despises violence against women.”

He flopped down on his back again. “All right, then. I think you're right too. Aaron didn't do it. It's Kyle. We should delve into Megan a little more as well.”

“Megan,” I repeated.

“You said ‘girl or guy' once. She had the opportunity.”

I rolled my eyes. That was one of the stupidest things that'd spewed from his mouth, and that was saying something. “We
all
had the opportunity.”

“Shh,” he whispered. “I'm going to have a nap. We'll resume this when I wake up.”

If I hadn't been sitting down, I would've fallen over. “Excuse me?”

“Mackenzie, I am trying to sleep.” He lay back and closed his eyes.

“Why do you want to sleep here?”

“Because I'm scared of the boogeyman.”

I sighed. “Fine, Blake. I know it's really because you don't feel comfortable at home.”