Page 49 of All Fall Down

“All it did was hurt people,” he stops me.

“Then this is your chance to make things right.”

“How?” he asks.

“By catching the person who killed Nathaniel West once and for all.” I shove a few papers that have fallen out back into the folder. “I’m having a party at the Wests. All I need you to do is post a photo of this in the office.”

“Where he was killed?” Jonas’s face is ashen.

“Whoever did it will know it’s a message. They’ll come looking for the file.”

“And you’ll catch them red-handed.” Jonas pauses to considerate, then he shakes his head. “You can’t be sure they’re still following the account.”

“They are,” I say firmly.

“But how do you know?” He doesn’t share my certainty, but that’s not important.

“I know they’ll come looking for one reason, because they haven’t been caught yet.”

“You aren’t as clever as you think you are,” Maddox says, drawing my attention away from my cell phone after we leave Jonas’s house.

“What?”

“Running around town, whipping everyone into a frenzy. I know you’re up to something.” He keeps his eyes on the road, occasionally checking his blind spots. Maddox is always watching. Of course, he saw through my errands.

I have a choice: keep trying to lie to him or get him on my side. Considering I’m not the one paying his salary, he has no real reason to keep quiet—unless I give him one.

“Fine,” I level with him. “I am up to something, but it’s the only way to clear all our names.”

“And what happens when you catch who did it? What if it’s one of you?” he asks bluntly.

That’s the second time today I’ve been forced to face that possibility, but it doesn’t lessen my resolve. “It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Jameson.”

He chuckles. “So everyone else is on their own?”

The photos of the crime scene flash through my mind. Jameson found his father like that. No matter what had passed between them, he had faced that gruesome discovery. Someone left his father for him to find, and that person is going to pay.