Nearly Gone - Nearly Gone Part 68
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Nearly Gone Part 68

"I don't understand," I uttered in complete denial. "You're kidding, right?"

He kept walking, but I stood my ground, letting him crash into me, desperate to make him look at my face. I lowered my voice to a frantic whisper. "Lonny is dangerous. The drugs he sells are dangerous. Why are you doing this?" I reached for his hand, but he wouldn't let me touch him. I saw his lip tremble a second before he clenched his teeth. What was he hiding from me? Why was he buying roofies? He couldn't be the one responsible for these crimes. I knew Jeremy. Didn't I? "I don't get it, J. This isn't you."

He laughed through his teeth. "Yeah well, this isn't you either! You put on one hell of a show Friday night." His sneer felt like a mask. I hardly recognized him under all his disdain. "I guess it's true what they say. You really can't take the girl out of the trailer park. You're more like your mother than you give yourself credit for."

"Go to hell." I shoved him hard enough to knock him back. When he righted himself, his arm was wound back. His gray eyes were hard and unapologetic. This wasn't my Jeremy at all.

"Jeremy, stop."

The small voice belonged to Anh. She stepped between us, turning her back to me to look at Jeremy. Did she know what he was involved in? Had he told her more than he told me? All this time I'd been trying to protect him by keeping my distance, but I'd only succeeded in pushing him away.

"It's okay." Jeremy smoothed his shirt where I'd pushed him. "Our conversation was over."

He reached out to her. She hesitated before slipping her hand in his and letting him lead her away. She looked back at me over her shoulder, unspoken apologies on her perfect guilty face.

The bell rang and I was alone. Just like that, he'd let me go.

41.

I was intentionally late to Respite Meadows cemetery. Sweat trickled over my neck and I peeled off my hoodie, tying it loosely around my waist. Kylie Rutherford's funeral had ended hours ago, but the air was still heavy with grief. I weaved carefully between the angel-topped stones and mausoleums, inscriptions obscured by colorful arrangements. Loving mother. Adored father. Beloved brothers and sons.

The rows narrowed until the perfectly level landscape felt less like Astroturf and more like the crabgrass that thrived in Sunny View. It was neatly trimmed, but bare in spots and smelled of onion weed. I slowed and raised my head in a grove of less ostentatious memorials. Some only headmarkers, devoid of color and ordered in neat, tight rows. I stopped by a mound of soft brown soil. The small temporary plaque read Kylie M. Rutherford. 19982014.

Damp grass had been crushed into the earth a few brief yards in either direction, bearing footprints of those who'd come to pay respects. I studied them, kicking at the ruts and feeling like an intruder on their grief, because it had been my name etched in her skin. I fought back a deepening sadness, tripping my way backward over shallow stones, regretting my decision to come.

I gasped as I backed into something hard, too tall to be a headstone. A hand clamped down on my shoulder. The fingers were covered in tattoos. I turned slowly and swallowed hard, looking into the dark and shining eyes of Lonny Johnson.

I put two quick steps between us. "What are you doing here?" Wind blew my hair across my face, and I left it there like a curtain, hating the way he looked at me.

He grinned, as though amused by my discomfort. His steel-toed shoes stepped forward until they almost touched mine. He squeezed my shoulder, brushing a thumb over my collarbone until I tasted metal and blood, anger and violence, and the saltwater burn of his grief. Beneath it all was a barely perceptible sting of regret. It hardly felt like enough.

"Came to pay my respects. She was a good girl." He tipped his head. "Like you." His cool smile disintegrated as he took in the fresh dirt on her grave. "This should never have happened."

My face twisted, anger welling up from some dark place inside me. It wasn't fair that I should feel so guilty when Lonny was the one dealing the drugs. He'd sold the ketamine that was at least partly to blame for her death.

"Don't you feel even the least bit responsible?" My hair stuck in the corners of my mouth, muffling my words. I swatted at it, feeling clumsy and childish.

Lonny's face lit with something I could almost mistake for affection, his own sinister brand of warmth. "I like you, Boswell. You've got guts. A lot of people wouldn't talk to me like you do. Even fewer while threatening me with a baseball bat." Lonny lowered his head to mine, brushing back the stubborn wet lock of hair. My flinch didn't faze him as he tucked it behind my ear.

"Because I like you," he said, "I'll tell you a secret." His goatee tickled my cheek when he leaned in close. I shivered, completely aware that we were alone. His confession was a whisper in my ear. "I do feel responsible. And someone's going to pay for that."

Lonny pulled back slowly and reached behind himself. A voice inside me screamed "Run!" but it was too late.

Lonny retrieved a single black rose from his back pocket and held it delicately poised between his fingers. I fell hard on my knees, legs numb with fear. Lonny strode past me, stopping just short of Kylie's grave.

He tossed the rose onto the clump of dirt, near where her headstone should've been. It could have been mistaken for such a callous gesture, but his shoulders sagged. He paused a moment, lowered his head. His arm moved almost imperceptibly in an up-down-side-to-side motion. Blessing himself, I realized, stunned that he might recognize a power higher than himself.

"Be careful, Boswell," he said, head bent over the grave. "It might have been a game before, but now it's gone too far."

"What do you mean?" Knees still watery, I pulled myself up and followed him through a winding maze of headstones, stubbing my toes on the low plaques that Lonny seemed to float over like a ghost.

"Think about it," he said without slowing. "Steckler? Washington? Marshall? . . . Kylie? . . . They only had one thing in common."

Like I needed to be reminded.

I gritted my teeth and scrambled after him. "I didn't do this."

His laugh rumbled through him. "Don't have to be a genius to have figured that out." He paused beside a gleaming white stone. Slipping his hands in his pockets, he eased back against it, leg stretched out to the side like he was leaning on a barstool. He pushed and pulled the barbell through his lip while he studied me, a catlike curiosity behind his eyes. "You didn't do this, but you know who did. Someone's trying to frame you. It's personal."

"I don't have any enemies. And if I knew who was doing this, I'd have told the cops."

"If I've learned anything, Boswell, it's that you can't trust criminals or cops. You can never be sure whose side they're on." Lonny kicked the headstone with the heel of his boot, drawing my attention down. Ryan Whelan. Beloved Son. July 13, 1995March 25, 2013. The stone was crowned with a sagging thistle and said nothing about a beloved brother, though it was large enough for the sentiment. Reece's brother's grave. He'd been telling the truth when he said he didn't have any family . . . not anymore.

"Thistle." Lonny massaged his knuckles, watching my face. "Interesting choice."

I looked again between Lonny and the stone. Lonny knew something about Reece. Something I didn't know. His eyes lit with a crooked smile at the curiosity he must have seen on my face.

"Old legend . . ." Lonny studied his fingernails and looked past me, over the flat expanse of a thousand graves. "Norse soldiers planned a night raid on Scotland. They infiltrated barefoot, which might have worked except one stepped on a thistle and screamed. That one thistle"-Lonny lifted a single finger-"one insignificant thorn in the heel-alerted the Scotts. The Norse were slaughtered."

I touched the thistle's hanging head. "Ryan Whelan was a thistle?"

"Ryan Whelan was a narc. His little brother, Reece, was trying to break himself in as a dealer. Reece was young and full of himself. He never thought his brother would turn him in. A little over a year ago, Ryan blew the whistle on a deal his little brother was involved in, and the police set up a team of undercover cops to make the buy. Reece figured it out and got spooked and blew big brother's cover. The bust became an ambush. Shots were fired, and Ryan took a bullet for some undercover lady cop."

An undercover lady cop? I think he'd take a bullet for me. It all made sense. Gena was more than a narc, she was a cop. She said she'd met Reece a year ago, and they both worked for Nicholson. That was why she was so protective of him. Why she treated him like a little brother. Reece's brother had taken a bullet for her.

"Reece's brother saved her life?"

"He died doing it. And Reece got nine months in juvie. He was only supposed to serve six for the drug charges, but rumor has it that the lady cop's boyfriend came after him during the trial, and Reece got an extra three months for assaulting an officer." Lonny's eyes were adrift in a memory. "The thistle doesn't get to win, Boswell. Doesn't matter who steps on him first, he gets crushed." Lonny scratched his chin and shook his head. "A lot like us, you know. Stuck by the roots. Up until a few nights ago, I wasn't sure what side your boy was on. An enemy can make himself look like a friend. A wolf in sheep's clothing."

I kept quiet, determined to hold Reece's secrets close to the vest. He'd been responsible for his own brother's death, lost his family, and now he'd thrown away his future trying to make it right. Trying to balance the equation by protecting me. I didn't care whose side Reece was on. I only knew he was on mine.