Page 61 of Wicked Promises

“How did they survive this?” Theo asks.

He leans down on the driver’s side, peering in. It’s streaked with blood. Most of the door is gone, cut away by the rescue team.

“The car was upside down,” Eli informs us, reading from his phone. “Hit from the side, just in front of the passenger door.”

I wince. Margo wasright there. She could’ve been killed if they were off by a fucking fraction.

There was a little article about it in the paper, but I wasn’t able to read it. Couldn’t stomach the thought. And now I’m staring at the actual evidence, and I think I might puke.

“Margo was in the passenger seat,” he continues. “And she wasn’t found at the crash. When her foster mother and case worker couldn’t locate her, she was reported missing.”

I shake my head. “They dragged her out and left Robert behind.”

I like the Bryans. They’re good for Margo, even after I tried to ruin it. They’re good people in general.

And someone tried to?—

“Don’t spiral,” Liam says behind me.

I find him watching me instead of the totaled cars.

“I’m not.”

“You are,” he argues. “Going down the wormhole. This close to letting the anger take over. Well, just—don’t.”

I grunt and try to listen to him for once. I take a deep breath, then another.

“Margo and Robert both survived this,” he continues. “Got it?”

“I fucking got it,” I growl.

I leave Robert’s car behind—I can’t look at it anymore—and go to examine one of the others.

“There’s barely any paint on Mr. Bryan’s car,” Theo muses. “Black.”

I raise my eyebrow. Only one of the cars here is black, and its back end is crunched in. Not likely to be the culprit.

“Check this out,” Liam calls. He’s across the lot, standing next to a maroon van that was not part of the cluster the worker showed us. “Could there have been a brush guard on it or something?”

There’s nothing on there now, but there are marks where some sort of apparatus was clearly removed in a hurry. Its front isn’t damaged at all. My anger flares, white-hot, but I push it down. There will be a time to deal with this later. When I have a body in front of me that can hold responsibility.

“That isn’t cheap. And not typically a rental.”

“I doubt it was a rental.” Liam circles it.

His dad has always been into cars. I heard he once thought about opening his own shop. The family restored a few cars and sold them to folks in Rose Hill with too much money to burn, and I know for a fact Liam was just as involved in the project as his dad and brother.

He opens the van’s passenger door and leans in. He cracks open the glove box. His hands, thankfully, are gloved. We’ve all seen too many crime shows to do any different.

“What are you doing?” Eli asks.

“Looking for the registration,” he says. Thejackasshe’d normally tack onto the end of such a statement is implied this time.

I roll my eyes.

He pulls out a piece of paper, grinning. “Not the Powerball, but no small potatoes either.”

“Sorry, is that a lottery analogy?”