For a long moment, nobody said anything.
“You think I’m delusional,” I said.
Jagger shook his head.
“Why would someone run your parents off the road?” Hawk asked.
“I don’t know, but they were, like, into making waves.”
“What kind of waves?” Vigo asked.
“Protests and town halls and asking questions about corrupt politicians. Stuff like that.”
Jagger scratched his head. “They were independent journalists?”
I hadn’t ever thought of them that way, but after looking at all the newspaper clippings they’d kept in boxes, all the FOIA requests and financial statements marked with red pen, I could see it. “I guess.”
Maybe not back then, but that was probably what they would have been called today, like all those people who posted their findings on social media or ran a podcast or a YouTube channel.
“So you think they got into something heavy?” Vigo asked. “And that’s why this Travis Dorsey ran them off the road?”
“I can’t prove it. Their notes were all mixed up in boxes. I can’t make enough sense of them to know what they were up to.”
“I can see why the DA didn’t bring a more serious charge,” Hawk said.
I glared at him. “That’s a shitty thing to say.”
“The case was thin. Drunk witnesses?— ”
“They weren’t drunk,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Witnesses who’d been drinking, no motive.”
“That we know of,” I said.
He lifted his eyebrows and I wished I could smack the skeptical look off his face.
“No motive that we know of,” I said.
“We?”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t know why I’d said that.
“No motive that I know of,” I corrected. “That the police know of.”
“Sounds like you need to let it go,” Hawk said. “Seven years is a long time to stalk someone with no proof they intentionally committed a crime.”
I pushed back so fast from the island that the chair scraped across the wood floor. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I listened,” he said. “And believe it or not, I know a lot more than you think.”
I wasn’t composed enough to even ask him what that meant. A wall of white-hot anger had descended over my field of vision, pain crushing my chest as tears stung my eyes.
“Really? You know a lot more than I think? Did you know that Bram was in the car when it went off the mountain?”
They were frozen, staring at me in shock.
“Did you know that it took twelve hours for the rescue team to find the car? That Bram was trapped inside with our dead parents, wondering if he was going to die too?” I gasped on a sob. “Did you know he sacrificedeverythingto take care of me?I don’t even know what dreams he had of his own. I don’t even know ifheknows. Because the only thing that mattered to him after our parents died was taking care of me. And I can’t eventalkto him about it because he’s got so much trauma, trauma he won’t even acknowledge. Ithurtshim to talk about it and I just can’t be someone who hurts him more than he’s already been hurt. So I carry this alone, not because I want to but because I don’t have any other choice.”