One of Us Is Next: The Sequel to One of Us Is Lying
One of Us Is Next: Part 2 – Chapter 28

Knox

Friday, March 27

Maeve shoved her bag at me before she got behind the wheel, and now I’m holding too much crap to put my seat belt on as she tears out of Jared Jackson’s street. I drop my backpack by my feet but keep hold of Maeve’s bag. “You need anything in here?” I ask.

“Could you take my phone out?” Maeve asks, eyes on the blue car in front of us. It turns a corner, and she follows. “Just in case. You can put it in the cup holder.”

I do, and then I look down at the MacBook sticking out from her still-open bag. I almost forgot what she’d been doing until Jared Jackson drove every other thought from my head. “Hey, what was that second document you opened? The one from my mom’s computer?” I ask. “Was there anything about Brandon in there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to look at it. Do you want to read it now? It’s still open, I just minimized it.”

“Might as well.” I pull out Maeve’s computer, stuff her bag next to my backpack on the floor, and position the MacBook on my lap. I open the cover and click on the document icon at the bottom of the screen. “Is this it? Settlement on Behalf of Eagle Granite Manufacturing Corporation…wait. Hang on a second.” I frown. “Why does that sound familiar?”

“It’s local, isn’t it?” Maeve asks. “I think it had an Eastland address.”

“Yeah.” I skim over a bunch of stuff I don’t understand until I reach the company name again and start to read. “Worker’s compensation settlement negotiated by Jenson and Howard on behalf of Eagle Granite Manufacturing Corporation, concerning the accidental death of…Oh shit.” I can feel my eyes getting wide as I take in the familiar name.

“What?” Maeve asks distractedly. Jared is kind of an erratic driver, and she’s speeding a lot more than she normally would to keep up with him.

“The accidental death of Andrew Lawton. That’s Phoebe’s dad. I forgot my mom handled that case when it happened.” I think back to Owen gratefully pocketing a twenty-dollar bill at Café Contigo, and to Phoebe’s apartment, which is nice but a lot smaller than average for a family of four in Bayview. “Mom always said Mrs. Lawton didn’t get nearly as much money as she should have,” I say.

“That’s awful,” Maeve says. Jared exits the highway, and she follows. I look up from her screen and register a familiar sign for Costco flashing past us; we’re not far from home. She grips the steering wheel more tightly and adds, “Did you search for Weber?”

“I’m looking.” Reading while riding in a car makes my stomach roll, but I keep scanning paragraphs until my eyes finally catch on the name. “Lance Weber, executive vice president in charge of manufacturing for Eagle Granite Manufacturing Corporation,” I read. My skin starts to prickle. “Lance Weber. Isn’t that Brandon’s father’s name?”

I hear Maeve’s breath hiss between her teeth as she quickly changes lanes to stay behind Jared’s car. “Yeah. My parents were just talking about him the other night. My dad’s done business with Mr. Weber before, and he’s definitely a big deal in manufacturing. He works for an aircraft supplier now, though.”

“Well, I guess he didn’t used to.” I keep reading, until I come to a paragraph that makes every hair on my body stand on end. I reread it twice to make sure it really says what I think it does, and then I say, “Maeve. Holy hell.”

“What?” she asks. I can tell she’s only half listening because she’s concentrating so hard on keeping up with Jared’s NASCAR moves, so I tap her arm for emphasis.

“You need to pay attention. For real. Mr. Lance Weber acknowledges that on October seventh, which was Take Your Child to Work Day at Eagle Granite Manufacturing Corporation, his thirteen-year-old son was present on the manufacturing floor. Despite repeated admonitions to stay away from equipment, Mr. Weber’s minor son mounted a forklift and operated its controls for what one worker reported as a five-minute period. That same forklift jammed shortly thereafter while transporting the slab of concrete that ultimately crushed Andrew Lawton.”

I look up from the document at Maeve’s pale, rigid face. Her eyes are still trained on Jared’s car. “That was Brandon. It has to be,” I say. “Messing around with a forklift that killed Phoebe’s father. Shit. Brandon fucking Weber.”

Now, the conversation I overheard between my parents makes perfect sense. The case never should have been settled that way, my dad had said. By “that way,” I’m guessing he meant keeping Brandon’s involvement out of any public documentation of the accident. All it did was show Brandon that actions don’t have to have consequences. For a second, I’m so angry at the mental image of Brandon screwing around with a piece of heavy machinery—Brandon, as usual, doing whatever he wanted and not caring how it might affect somebody else—that I forget he’s dead.

And then I remember. The thought settles on my chest, compressing my lungs so it’s hard to breathe. “Well, I guess that answers my question, doesn’t it?” I ask.

“What question?”

“About who has a reason for hating Brandon enough to want him gone.” I stare at the red taillights in front of us until they go blurry. “It’s Phoebe.”

“Phoebe?” Maeve echoes in a small voice.

“We kept wondering if maybe she knew Intense Guy, right? Seeing as how he’s been chasing her all over town, talking about some deal they made on a revenge forum.” My stomach churns as every disturbing, damning thing we’ve uncovered about Jared in the past few hours comes crashing up against the girl I’ve gotten to know. Sweet-faced, sharp-tongued, impulsive Phoebe Lawton. “Maeve. Do you think there’s any way she could’ve…”

“No,” Maeve says instantly.

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“Phoebe had no clue about this,” she says urgently. “She can’t have. She was hooking up with Brandon! She’d never do that if she knew he’d had anything to do with her father’s accident. Plus, she wouldn’t spread horrible gossip about herself.” Then she hesitates. I can almost see the gears in her mind sifting through memories of Simon Kelleher and Jake Riordan, and all the twisted things the two of them did to get revenge last year—on people whose wrongs were a hell of a lot tamer than Brandon Weber’s. “I mean,” she says with less certainty, “someone would have to be a stone-cold killer with an unbelievably good game face to pull that off. Right?”

“Right.” I try to laugh like it’s ridiculous, because it is. Except for the part where it makes as much sense as anything else that’s happened over the past few weeks. If it weren’t for Brandon’s carelessness, Phoebe’s father would still be alive, and her whole life would be different. What does knowing something like that do to a person?

I take a minute to register our surroundings, and it hits me with sickening certainty that we have an entirely different problem right now. And as horrible as the last train of thought was, this is even worse. “Maeve, do you realize where we are?”

“Huh?” she asks, tense and distracted. “No. I’ve been staring at Jared’s license plate for the entire drive. I don’t even—” She lets her eyes rove for a second, and her face gets as pale as mine feels. “Oh. Oh my God.”

We’re on Charles Street in Bayview, the sign for Talia’s Restaurant glowing white to our left. Eli and Ashton’s rehearsal dinner afterparty is happening right now, and we’re supposed to be there. But we’re late, because we’ve been busy tailing the guy who sent Eli death threats for weeks. And that guy just pulled into a parking spot across the street and, finally, cut his engine.