Page 64 of Thicker Than Water
“Did she ask if he had an alibi?”
A crease appears between his brows. “I told her he has one, yes.”
“And what is it?”
He leans back, resting his head against the top of the couch. He answers with his eyes closed. “I told you, I can’t share that. Just like I told you he wasn’t worth investigating.”
“I can’t accept that. I need to know.”
Wyatt picks up his head to look at me. “I wish you trusted me. I understand I made it so you felt like you couldn’t, but—it’s been a year, Sienna. What are we doing here?”
It catches me off guard, the speed with which he spun this into something about us.
“Give me a reason to trust you,” I say. “You didn’t even tell me Jason was a witness at the restaurant. But you’ve known since the beginning, haven’t you? That’s why you were all confused that Jason hadn’t told me about the altercation. And then you didn’t even mention it at the station, when you knew I’d see it in the arrest report. Why?”
“Because,” Wyatt says, harder now, “I don’t know what to make of it. Jason being there that night. Jason speaking to someone right before they attacked Gavin, and then, a week later, having all that evidence in his car.”
I curl my hand into a fist, but I don’t allow myself to be derailed by what I hear in Wyatt’s voice, the same thing I heard in Julia’s—doubt.
“It’s got to be connected,” I say. “I don’t know how or why exactly, but I think Henry could be framing Jason. And look, I know you’re not allowed to tell me his alibi. I know, as a person, you have a strict moral code, but—” A bitter sound escapes me. “You’ve broken that code before, right? That’s how we got here, isn’t it?”
I gesture to the distance between us, the closeness we lost the night he cheated, but my hand goes still at the change in his eyes, the hurt and shame that well there.
“Please,” I say, softer. “Tell me where Henry was that night. Because my gut is telling me he’s involved. And I can’t just let that feeling go, not without knowing the whole story.”
Wyatt looks at the ceiling again, quiet for so long that I wonder if he’s ignoring me.
“If I tell you,” he finally says, “will you let this go? Will you accept that it wasn’t him?”
“If the alibi seems sound, then yes.”
He presses his lips together, exhales through his nose. “Fine. He was at work that night.”
“Work? What work? Gavin blew up Henry’s company.”
“Sure, three years ago. I imagine he’s had to make a living since then.”
“Okay,” I concede. “So where does he work?”
“That… doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t. Wyatt, I’m two seconds away from doing some kind of”—I grope for the right phrase—“stake-out on this guy, so if I have to follow him to work, I will.”
“Donotdo that,” he cautions. “He works at Home Depot, okay?”
“Um, you mean the place that closes by, like, ten p.m.? The cops are saying Jason could have done it because he left Maeve’s at tenthirty. How does Henry working at Home Depot eliminate him as a suspect?”
Wyatt sighs. “He didn’t have a car that night. It was in the shop. A friend drove him home, and they have the friend testifying to that.”
“Afriend?” I say. “So his actual alibi is afriend?”
Wyatt pauses. “A co-worker.”
“That is the flimsiest thing I’ve ever heard. How do they knowhisfrienddidn’t drive him to Gavin’s first? How do they know Henry didn’t get, like, an Uber to Gavin’s, after his friend drove him home? And isn’t that kind of a convenient excuse—his car being in the shop?”
“Sienna,” Wyatt says, voice weary, “you said you’d drop this.”
“If it’s sound, I said. And this is anything but.”
