Page 36 of The Guilty One
I gesture toward his head. “Give me your hat, then. You’re shorter and your hair’s a different cut, but we’ll cover the hair up with a hat and move quickly. From a distance, I can probably pass as you.”
“Only if you’ve gained forty pounds since we came in here.” He’s staring at me strangely, not sold on the idea, but he isn’t completely shutting it down anymore. I can sell this if I work hard enough.
“It’ll be okay. This is the best way to get this done. I’ll take your truck and drive around, distract whoever is following you. You take my car and go to campus. I’ll keep whoever it is distracted, and you can move the body.”
“Why can’t we just keep our own cars, and you move the body?”
Because I don’t totally trust you.
Because I don’t want to be involved.
“Because you’re stronger than I am, first of all. You’ll be able to get it done faster, and also because I want to see the person who’s following you. If you want me to believe that’s happening, I need to see it. And if you want me to trust that you’re truly trying to help me and not set me up, you need to be the one who moves it. It was your idea.”
His gaze narrows at me. “How do I know you won’t be setting me up?”
Thinking quickly, I say, “How do you want me to prove it?”
He’s always been easily manipulated. I just have to hope he makes this easy on us both. There’s no way I’m going anywhere near that body ever again.
He thinks for a moment, chewing on the inside of his lip as his eyes search the room. Finally, he lights up. “I want your phone. And your wallet.”
“What for?”
“So I have proof you’re coming back for me. If the police catch me out there, I have proof we were working together. I’ll say you were just here and ran off.” He tilts his head to the side, challenging me. “If you’re not setting me up, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“You don’t need my wallet and phone. This was your plan, and this is the only way to get it done. And we can’t trust Aaron, or I’d ask him to drive your truck so I could come help you. If you think moving the body is the best way, this is our only chance. Besides, my phone is back at the office.”
“So, we’ll go and get it. I’m not doing this without some sort of show of faith. Your wallet and phone, or no deal.”
I sigh. I have no idea how I’m going to explain a trip to my old college in our location app to Celine, but that’s a problem for later.
“Fine. Whatever. Deal.”
A beat passes, and finally, a smile cracks across his lips and he holds out his hand. “Don’t fuck me on this, brother.”
I dip my head down, taking his hand and shaking it over the table. “Come on. You know me better than that.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CELINE
For a long time, I resist the urge to look anything else up. Whatever happened all those years ago, I have no proof that it has anything to do with what’s happening now.
Maybe I’m just in denial. Maybe I don’t want to believe it. I have all of the pieces to a confusing puzzle, but without actual answers about what happened back then, Matteo Acri’s disappearance in college does not explain why Tate stole our money and disappeared now.
There is nothing concrete that proves it’s connected other than Aaron being shady, and even that could just be coincidence or the cowardly act of someone who hasn’t spoken to my husband in years and doesn’t want to get involved in a criminal investigation.
I don’t want to make a mistake by getting sidetracked, but I also don’t want to give up on a lead that feels promising.
After my parents leave, I lie in bed and remind myself of this over and over and over again. I toss and turn, unable to get the story out of my head. Why wouldn’t Tate have told me his friend went missing in college? Wasn’t that the sort of thing that came up once in a while?
Maybe Daphne was right, though. Maybe they weren’t actually all that close. Maybe he just happened to be there when they were taking a picture, and the boys didn’t want to be rude so they included him. I wish I had the ability to ask the rest of them, that there was anyone still around who might be more helpful than Aaron.
I should probably bring this information to the police, but really, what information do I have? A bunch of disconnected pieces to a puzzle that doesn’t match. Even with several of them missing or dead, none of it means anything unless I find a connection deeper than a friendship from a decade ago. Everything I’ve brought to the police so far has been dismissed. I don’t want to distract them with things that aren’t certain when they need to be focusing on Tate.
When I can’t bear another second of the silence and the raging questions in my head, I roll over and grab my laptop from the nightstand, searching the internet for Matteo’s name again.
I have to scroll to the fifth page of results before I find something new, and it’s a single mention of him in another article.