Page 101 of An Oath at Midnight

“They’re convinced Willow is the one hunting them,” Bram said. “Someone planted evidence at The Cauldron, and they’re using some old high school resentment, and Isaac’s investment company, trying to buy Willow’s store, as well as the death of his brother and Willow’s supposed grudge against his family as a motive. And they pranked Willow, right? I doubt she’s the only one they did that shit to. They’re entitled assholes, all of them. We’ve seen them in action. I have no doubt they were the bullies in high school. We’ve been searching for someone they fucked with recently, but maybe we need to go back farther than that.”

“Like another high school prank gone wrong?”

Bram shrugged. “They were dicks to Wills; it’s easy to assume they were dicks to a lot of other people as well.”

“You think someone could hold a grudge that long?”

“If the damage they’d caused was bad enough? Yeah, I do.”

CHAPTER 26

Magnolia

“Do you think Chloe knows anything?” I asked Bram as we walked out of her office.

Chloe Chan was all about money, and the prom committee had that in spades. The wolf shifter made a killing off them, no pun intended, as their sole realtor.

“It doesn’t make sense to kill them off,” Bram said.

This was true. I couldn’t see her cooking the geese that laid all the golden eggs.

We’d started with the two members of Red who were in business with or worked for the group, then narrowed it down to those who were also Roxburgh High School alumni. If that didn’t bear fruit, we’d have to cast a wider net.

Thankfully, Chloe was several years older than me and had left school before I started, so didn’t recognize me when we showed up. She bought my fake name and our ruse as organizers of the next RHS reunion and that we were after stories to include in a reunion yearbook. High school was hard for a lot of people, and those people tended to remember the assholes, the kids they’d been forced to avoid in the halls or the cafeteria.

But Chloe hadn’t fallen for my attempt to draw her into any “off the record” gossip. No, she wasn’t going to say a bad word about any of them, not when the prom committee funded her very nice lifestyle.

We got in the car as another pulled up across the street. “Is that Ryan Alway?” He got out of his car, and Chloe strutted out of her office.

“Yep.”

She smiled wide and strode over to him. They kissed, deeply, then she got in his car and they drove away.

“Ryan sure likes mixing business with pleasure.”

“I guess they work closely. Ryan and Chloe most likely scout out potential investment properties before they take it to Isaac and the other shareholders.”

I locked this new bit of info away with everything else, and we headed for Luke Donaghy’s office next. Going by the yearbook we’d taken from the library, Luke hadn’t been one of the cool kids. He’d been awkward, kind of nerdy, the skinny mathlete with glasses and braces.

And a far cry from the male who’d rolled back into Roxburgh six months ago, quickly making a name for himself as the kind of guy you did not want to fuck with—and not just in business—and he’d most definitely grown out of his awkward phase.

“Do you think the rumors about Luke are true?” I asked Bram. Luke had been the same year as Willow. They hadn’t been friends, as far as I knew, but they’d shared several classes together.

Bram stared ahead, but his fingers tightened on the wheel. “I know they are.”

“You think he’s capable of murder?”

“Yes.”

I turned in my seat. “So you know him?”

He shook his head. “I know of him, because that’s the world I’m part of and because he likes people to know. He also introduced himself to Payne not long after he moved back.”

“What did Payne think of him?”

“He said he’d prefer to work with him than against him,” Bram said. “Payne couldn’t work out what he was, though. Shifter, most likely, at least that’s what he puts out there. Luke wasn’t forthcoming, but he’s powerful.”

“So he could totally be our killer?” I said, beginning to feel a little edgy meeting this guy.