Page 112 of Hard Evidence
“What’s she been doing?Running a marathon?”
“No, she just doesn’t handle pressure well.”
“The ECG isn’t showing anything concerning other than an elevated heart rate.She could try breathing exercises.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell her.Thanks, Doc.”Jez hung up.“You’re fine.There’s nothing wrong with your heart.”
Zach and Nolan put her back in her seat, and Brax poured her a glass of water.“Here, drink this.”
“Did you poison it?”
“I’m a businessman, not a monster.”
She took a sip and coughed.
“Do you want to continue?”Holtz asked her.
“I’m okay.”
“No more yelling,” Nolan muttered.“Please, no more yelling.”
Holtz fixed Jez with a cold stare.“You’re overstepping.Serafina wasn’t alone at the cemetery that day.I was with her, and we also had two—for want of a better word—outriders accompanying us.Plus there were other visitors around.If you want an independent witness, try finding one of them.”That would be a job for Ari.“What did you mean by ‘a pentagram has five points, not six’?”
“Whoever killed Amie tried to make the body look like Ruby’s, but they messed up.”
“By cutting a six-pointed star on her instead of a pentagram?”
“Yes.”
“That’s…weird.”
Serafina tried speaking again.“The whole…” She cleared her throat.“The whole pentagram thing is weird.The reports talked about Satanism, but the orientation was Wiccan or Christian.If Satanism was involved, the pentagram would have been inverted.”
Huh.Had she seen the crime scene photos?Jez exhumed a memory, Ruby’s body lying on the bed.The top point of the star had been nestled between her breasts, blood congealed at the edges.
“How do you know about the star on Amie?”Holtz asked.“Did you see the body?”
“We found the body.This was such an obvious setup that we just asked ourselves where someone would dump her if they wanted to make Justin look really guilty.We came up with a list of possible locations, and we looked in those places, and voila: there she was.”
“It was planned, but not very well planned,” Dawson added.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Serafina whispered.
“No, it doesn’t,” Ari said.“None of it does.Two women are dead, we have two barely plausible suspects, and we’re sitting here in a conference room sniping at each other.What if this isallplanned?”
What was she suggesting?That our presence here wasn’t simply a game of one-upmanship between Team Justin and Team Levi?That we were all being played?
“Hear me out…” she continued.“I’ve never met Levi, and Serafina’s never met Justin, yet we find ourselves on opposite sides of the table.But what if neither of them did it?”
“Neither of them killed Amie, you mean?”Greyson asked.
“Killed Amie or Ruby.This started with Ruby.”
“So what are you insinuating?”Brax asked, his voice raised.“That one of us murdered her?”
“No, but?—”
“Well, someone who lived in Blackstone House did.”
