Lucky Girl (Lucky Alphas Book 2)
By: Mallory Crowe“You’ve worked on a team before though. I hear you caused quite a ruckus to get yourself a spot on the football team. I’m assuming it wasn’t your charming demeanor with the other players that allowed you to have so much success there.”
“That was a lifetime ago. You don’t really know why you’re here, do you?”
“I know someone is trying to frame Wade Maxium. I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“I know Wade was trying to be clever when he hired you, but I don’t work under the same rules he does. He wants you to be on a need-to-know basis, and I think there are details you might not need to know but sure as hell could help you. Someone isn’t trying to frame Wade. The crime that is being alluded to in these hidden boxes really happened. Wade, along with me and a few others—we’re all complicit. I don’t feel comfortable naming names, but this was committed a very long time ago, and now somebody is trying to bring that crime to light.”
Lucas took a seat on the bed. His leather jacket crinkled with the motion. “What kind of crime, exactly?”
“Murder.” She debated ending it there. She’d already told him much more than Wade would ever feel comfortable with, but she forced herself to continue. “One of our friends beat Wade’s father to death. It wasn’t an accident and it wasn’t self-defense, but trust me when I tell you, his father deserved it. Wade and I helped to cover up the murder, because Wade’s dad was an asshole. The police didn’t look too far into the death. It was an open-and-shut case that ruined a lot of friendships and tore our lives apart, but at least it was in the past. Now, something’s changed.”
“What’s different now?” asked Lucas.
“Fuck if I know. Someone is damn intent on bringing Wade down for murder, but for some reason they’re not going to the police themselves. If we can figure out why they don’t want to be found, we might figure out who’s doing this.”
“The logic works, but what makes you think it would be any easier to find that out than the person’s identity in the first place?”
“I have no idea.” In all honesty, Harper was at a bit of a loss. Her main goal had been to get any remaining boxes out of those woods as quick as possible. The whole thing was kind of pointless if she couldn’t figure out who was planting them in the first place. The paper wasn’t any type of stationery that could be traced. The boxes themselves were pretty nondescript and didn’t give much to go off of. Unless she could get prints off them, she might be at a dead end.
“Do you have any suspects so far?” asked Lucas.
“You’re the investigator. Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“We’re partners now,” he corrected. “We should be asking each other.”
“Okay then, partner. Who's your main suspect?"
“My main suspect is Tara. Isn’t she yours too?”
Harper’s lips tightened at the mention of Wade’s ex-girlfriend. “I admit the thought crossed my mind.”
“Come on. Ex-girlfriend goes crazy, kidnaps her ex’s current girlfriend in order to ransom her off for money. The whole thing sounds crazy. About as crazy as someone planting murder boxes in the woods.”
“That all sounds pretty circumstantial,” she pointed out.
“I’m not a prosecutor. I don’t have to prove things beyond reasonable doubt. I just have to prove doubt. This girl Tara—she gives me doubts.”
“I don’t like Tara either, but Wade insists that he never told her anything. How could she frame him with information she doesn’t know?”
“Hey, I believe him when he says he doesn’t remember telling her anything. But he was with her for over a year. Who knows how many drunk rants he went on in front of her, or how many times those traumatic memories came up in his dreams, in which he may or may not have spoken out loud innocently. Let’s face it, your buddy might be an unreliable narrator in this case.”
“Still, he’s not going to accept that it’s Tara unless we give him some hard facts. Beyond a reasonable doubt type of facts.”
