Page 4 of Wicked Games

“Did he talk to you?” he asks, maybe not caring he irritated me, or maybe he’s just glad I got his mind off Hattie.

“Yeah. Just long enough to tell me to stay out of his way. Which I have no problem doing. Listen, I should go. I’m sorry, Bill, but I can’t⁠—”

“I know. You picked up, and I appreciate it more than I can say. Take it easy, okay? She loved you, Avery. She wouldn’t want you to waste your life over this.”

“I just need some time. If Darren wouldn’t have⁠—”

“He was a prick, and you know it. It shouldn’t have mattered that you⁠—”

And that’s enough of that. “Thanks for checking on me. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yeah. Thanks. Talk soon.”

My cell beeps and I put it down on the island in the middle of the kitchen. I lean over and hold my head in my hands.

He’ll call me in a couple of days and sit on the phone in silence. It’s become his routine since Hattie’s funeral.

Seth did look like a piece of shit, and I’m sure I don’t look any better. We’re a pair, he and I, though he’d never put together why. Hattie was murdered a few days after Theo was killed in a ransom exchange gone wrong. That same week, Seth’s wife, Brooke, left him, supposedly unable to handle the death of their son. Darren had the decency to wait a couple of months after Hattie’s funeral to tell me he was getting the fuck out of our marriage, but Brooke, she’s a real class act. Didn’t even wait for the cemetery crew to lay sod over her son’s grave before she took off.

One day to be on cloud nine, the next in hell. I feel for the guy, I really do. My drop was a little slower at least.

Okay. So, Detective Crane wants me to post something on Hattie’s blog. I suppose I should find out if I can log into her website. If I can’t, I’ll have to tell someone. Detective Crane, I guess. I met him once when he questioned me. I wasn’t a suspect, but he wanted to know if I had any idea who could have killed her, which I didn’t and still don’t. Seemed crabby, dismissive. Probably pissed off he was assigned to Hattie’s case and not out looking for the scumbag who shot little Theo Lockwood. Real career boost if you could catch him.

Bill’s right in a way, but not only because of Theo Lockwood. Hattie caused real damage in Ashfield, blew up a lot of careers, cops among them. They aren’t going to be champing at the bit to figure out who killed her. In their minds, whoever did, did them a favor. She cleaned up her dirt, sprinkled glitter over the rocks, but a rock is still a rock when it hits someone in the face. People don’t like getting stoned to death. The simple answer is to stop doing shitty things, but it’s easier to get rid of the person throwing the rock, right? Someone did, but I’m not like Hattie. I don’t have it in me to look into her death. I’d have no idea what to look for, and I’m not in Ashfield anyway. Can’t do much four hours away from the city.

I open my laptop that’s on the kitchen table, waiting for me to do some work, when I’m able, but I don’t know how long that will be. Julianne Marchand, Bloomscene’s editor-in-chief, keeps telling me to lean into my pain and write about it. Like the past ten years I haven’t been doing that exact thing. She knows Hattie’s my sister and the violent way she died, but she’s referring to Darren leaving me. How can I write about something so horrid? Not being enough. Put flowers all over it and find something positive? That’d be like pouring glitter over rocks. It doesn’t work so well. Well, the good part is he’s out of my life. I’m only thirty-six. Plenty of time to start over. If I wanted to. But I don’t know if I care that much.

What was Hattie’s website host? Crap. This might be over before it started. PinkRabbit, Dream Wave. Something. She didn’t use Hostfun. She said it wasn’t secure enough, and she was always afraid of hackers getting into her website. I search for EchoWeb, find their login page, and open an Excel spreadsheet of all my usernames and passwords. I shouldn’t keep my passwords like this, but I don’t know what else to do. I have no idea how or where my sister kept hers. Bill hasn’t gone through any of her things yet. He’s waiting for her to come back.

It's stupid, but I get it. I waited a couple of weeks for Darren to come back too. Say it was all a mistake and that he still loved me. He didn’t, and as the weeks passed, I was glad. It took him leaving to make me realize I didn’t love him anymore either.

I enter Hattie’s username into the field and type in her password. Obviously, she hasn’t been in her website for a while, and the site sends a verification code to her email. Luckily it wasn’t to her cell phone, but for fuck’s sake. Annoyed, I bring up her Gmail Workspace account and log into that. She has over two thousand emails that I should maybe look through, but not right now. The code is at the top, and I enter that into EchoWeb’s verification box.

Finally, it lets me in.

Hattie uses the same website building software that I use for my own website, and it’s easy to navigate around. I bring up her posts, and like Bill suspected, she has several in her drafts.

I click on the newest one, and the name that pops out at me is Brooke Lockwood’s.

Fuck.

CHAPTER THREE

Seth

My tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth. I can’t think, can’t open my eyes. I drank that whole bottle of champagne. I shouldn’t have done it, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. It didn’t take the pain away, but the alcohol hid it under a layer of fuzzy numbness. For a couple of seconds it seemed like I might actually make it out of this alive. Then I fell on the couch and blacked out. It’s better than this fucking shit.

My stomach quivers, but I don’t feel like throwing up. I’m just hungry. I haven’t eaten anything since noon, and that was . . . I grapple for my phone that’s on the coffee table . . . eight hours ago. Yeah, no wonder why I’m starving. A quick lunch through a McDonald’s drive-thru wouldn’t hold me over that long.

Fuck. I wanted to go to the grocery store after I checked out my neighbors and got a feel for the house. I try to swallow, but there’s zero saliva in my mouth. I need a couple glasses of water and something to soak up all the acid in my stomach.

Violet’s tried to reach me a few times, and my phone chimes as I hold it. It’s her, but I don’t want to answer, even if she’s worried about me. Sighing, I accept the call. “’Lo,” I croak.

“Seth, goddammit, you can’t do that to me.” There are tears in her voice, and I feel shittier than I did before.

“Sorry. I got drunk and fell asleep. I’m sorry.”

“You could have at least told me you made it in one piece.”