When I finally get back to the garage, Uncle Nick doesn’t say anything about me being away all afternoon. I go back to work, poking around my truck for a few minutes before taking care of a client’s car.

The whole time, though, I just keep thinking about Avery. I’m wondering what the hell that meant back there in the car. After we had sex, we just stayed parked and talked for another hour. She told me all about Max, his favorite stories, his favorite games and toys. I had a million questions, and we just lost ourselves in talking with each other like we used to do.

I can remember whole days passing like that, especially in the summer. We’d go find a good grassy spot near the water and I’d put a blanket down. We’d lie there all afternoon, sometimes having sex, but sometimes just talking with each other, her head in my lap, my hands on her skin. It felt so good, intimate, close, to just have a person that you can completely unload all of your thoughts and feelings without worrying about any judgment. That’s such a rare thing in this world, or at least that’s been my experience.

Of course, I didn’t have anyone like that in prison. After I found my crew, I sat with them and we talked, but I never felt close to any of them. Now that I’m out, I know I’ll never see or hear from any of them, and I’m good with that. Everything that happened in prison is like a bad dream to me.

I work hard for the rest of the day, and around six, Uncle Nick tells me to head home for the night.

“Everything okay?” he asks me before I leave.

I nod. “Everything’s good. I met Max earlier.”

He looks surprised. “Your son?”

“Yeah.”

“How was that?”

“Good,” I say. “A little strange, but it was good.”

“Good for you, son,” he says, smiling. “I’m glad you’re stepping up.”

“I won’t be like my own old man.”

He grins at that. “Never thought you would be.”

I wave bye and head out to my car. Once I get in and start the engine, my phone starts ringing. I fumble with it, pulling it out from my pocket, and answer without checking the screen.

“Hello?”

“Luke,” the scratchy voice says. “This is Jason Slick.”

That catches me off guard. “What can I do for you, Mr. Slick?”

“Call me Slick,” he grunts. “Come meet me at the address I’m going to text you.”

“Right now?”

“Right now,” he says. “I’ll be there in ten minutes and I’m not staying longer than an hour.”

“What is this place?”

“A bar.” He hangs up the phone.

I stare at it, not sure what to make of this. A second later, I get a text with an address. I put it into my maps app and before I know it, I’m following the directions.

It only takes me fifteen minutes to get there. It’s a pretty basic bar in the middle of a strip mall, with a pet store on one side and a Panera Bread on the other. It looks like a sports bar type place, and it’s surprisingly crowded when I walk inside.

I spot Slick toward the back wall sitting in a booth alone. I walk past the hostess and sit down across from him. He barely looks up as I get situated.

“Glad you came,” he says, sipping a glass of whisky.

The waitress stops by and I order myself a beer. He watches me for a second.

“What am I doing here?” I ask him finally.

“I like this place. Nice and crowded.”

“That’s not usually why people like a bar.”

“Quiet bars are dangerous. Makes it easy to eavesdrop on your neighbor. Loud bars are better for this sort of thing.”

I stare at him, and I feel my heart starting to beat fast. “What sort of thing is this?”

“You wanted to know about the case. I might be willing to tell you something.”

The waitress comes back with my drink. I take a pull from it eagerly as Slick smiles and thanks her. He eyes me, a little smile on his face.

“Well?” he asks.

“I’m just surprised. I didn’t think you wanted to get involved.”

“Truth is, you threw me off a little bit, kid,” he says. He takes out a cigarette and lights it up. Nobody else is smoking, but nobody seems to mind. “Thing is, when you said that name back at my place, I was a little blindsided.”

“Why?” I ask him, excitement building. “Am I on the right track?”

Another little grin. “Could be. Dominic’s been on my suspects list for a while now, but I don’t think he’s the guy that actually killed anyone.”

“No, but he did the bribing, didn’t he?”

“Maybe,” Slick says. “Can’t be sure.”

“It seems obvious to me.”

“Yeah, well, when you get as much experience as I have, you’ll realize that the obvious answer isn’t always the right one.” He finishes his whisky, rattling the ice in the glass. “But you might be right.”

“Why?” I ask him.

“You asked me where I got the hard drive. I’ll tell you, but you have to promise me something.”

“Okay,” I say, staring at him intently. “What do you need?”

“Don’t do something stupid and go running out there, guns blazing, making accusations. Can you hold this close to your chest until you’re absolutely ready?”

“Yes,” I say. “I can do that.”

He nods, taking a long drag. “Okay then. When I went back to try and interview one of the supposed ‘eye witnesses’ that claimed to have seen your truck at the scene of the crime, I had a hell of a time finding him. Now why would that be?”

I shrug. “I have no clue.”

“Seems odd, right? Guy’s supposedly a local, and yet I can’t find him anywhere in town.”

“Maybe he went on vacation?”

“Maybe,” Slick says. “But as it turns out, the guy lives a few towns over, and he keeps to himself. A real quiet type, if you know what I mean.”

“I know guys like that,” I say, thinking of my uncle. He’s a private man, keeps to himself.

“Well, I put this guy to the screws. Really pushed him hard. He wouldn’t say a word, at least until I threatened him with contempt and lying under oath, gave him my best detective speech.

“And you know what he told me? He told me that he never lied, but he does know where an important piece of the puzzle is hidden. He told me that I could find it in a barn on this old piece of property at the edge of town.”

I’m sitting there, completely sucked into the story. I can’t believe this is how it happened, how I was finally vindicated.

“Now, a lot of questions are raised here. How the hell would this guy know something important like that? He’s supposed to just be a bystander, just a guy that happened to be there when the accident went down. How would he know where an important piece of evidence was hidden?”

“Who was he?” I ask him.

He grins. “That’s the right question. I did some digging, and I found out that he’s Robert Seller’s second cousin.”

I stare at him, blown away. “Avery’s father’s second cousin?”

“That’s right. Apparently he’s the black sheep of the family, you know how that can be. But I did notice a nice new television in his living room when I was there, though the house itself was a mess.”

“That bastard,” I say softly. “Seller paid him to point the blame at me.”

“Maybe,” Slick says, grinning. “Looks like that, doesn’t it?”

“So what happened with the hard drive, where was it?”

“Funny thing about that. You’d expect a piece of evidence as important as that hard drive would disappear. There’s a lot of places you can get rid of something like that, lots of easy places. Hell, just burying it somewhere in the woods would ensure it never appears again. But that’s not what most criminals do.”

“Why not?” I ask, totally engrossed.

“Who knows? They want a memento, maybe. Either way, I went to the barn and searched through it. The place was in bad shape, full of fucking junk, but in the very back, inside an old trunk, was the hard drive. I found four hard drives actually, had to go through them all, but yours was in there. Took me two days to comb through the whole place.”

“Who owns the barn?” I ask him, leaning forward.

He gives me a huge grin. “Gavin Walker. Seller’s partner.”

“Fuck,” I say softly. “Both Seller and Walker are involved.”

“Maybe,” Slick says. “Again, we've got no proof. Somebody could have dropped it off in that barn, not even knowing it was owned by the Walker family.”

“Not a chance,” I say.

He shrugs. “I agree. But we need proof.”

“We?” I ask, cocking my head.

“Don’t get excited, kid. I just don’t want to see you dead.”

“I’m not going to get hurt. Those bastards framed me.”

“Why do they hate you?” he asks. “Aside from the obvious.”

“Aside from getting Avery pregnant? I’m a Harper. My family’s trash. They hate me just because of who I am.”

Slick watches me silently for a minute and I sip my beer, rage flowing through me. I have to work hard to keep it under control.

“Okay,” he says finally, and stands up. He stubs out his cigarette in an ash tray. “I’ll be in touch.”

“That’s it?” I ask him.

“That’s it. What else do you need? You got a security guy that works for the Walkers, a barn owned by the Walkers, and Thomas Seller’s second cousin. Put it all together.”

“Who did it?” I ask him. “Or did they just take the opportunity to frame me?”

“Work the case. Don’t do anything stupid.” He nods at me and leaves.

I sit in that booth, nursing my beer for another hour, just staring at the wall. I can’t believe what I just found out.

I’ve been suspecting the Seller and the Walker families this whole time, but to hear something like this, confirming exactly what I assumed… it’s insane. I can barely believe it.

This whole town is corrupt. There’s no way around it. Coldwyn is in the pockets of the richest families around, and the town clearly let them get away with locking me up just because they wanted to. It’s so fucked up I can barely breathe, but I shouldn’t be so surprised. I know this is how the world works.

But that doesn’t make it right. I’m going to nail them, I just need the proof. When I get it, they’re going down. And I’m not stopping until that happens.