Chapter Twenty-Three
Blake
I stood up, letting the iPad fall to the bed. “I’m going to go talk to Donna and Keenan. Ask them to explain this.”
Indi frowned. “Shouldn’t we go straight to the cops?”
“Not yet. There could be a decent explanation for what we found. We don’t want everyone jumping to conclusions, Indi, and that’s exactly what will happen if we tell the cops about this right now. I think I should give him a chance to explain.”
“Okay. Well, I’m coming,” Indi said.
I shook my head. “No. If it is actually Keenan behind all this murder shit, then I don’t want you there when I go and ask him about his record. It’s not safe. I don’t want to leave you alone, but I don’t want to risk you getting hurt by him, either.”
Indi sighed. “Fair enough. But what about you? Why would it be any safer for you by yourself?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m stronger and bigger than him, and if shit gets out of hand, I’ll run and get that deputy the sheriff posted up outside. He’s got a gun.” I held out my hand. “I’ll walk you to Amy and Dean’s room for now. You’ll be safe with them.”
She shook her head. “I’ll just lock myself in the walk-in closet till you come back. You won’t be long, right?”
“No. I’ll be as quick as possible. But I really think I should take you to Amy and Dean’s room. I need to know you’re safe, Indi. And someone—whether it was just the show producers or not—got in here earlier to write that shit on the mirror to scare you. Obviously the locks on these doors aren’t all that great.”
She chewed her lower lip, then nodded. “You’re right. I’ll go. But I’m taking the iPad with me. If it’s not Keenan, then I want to do more research while I wait for you.”
“That’s fair. I doubt Amy and Dean will care that we broke the rules and have it at this point.”
I escorted her down the hall to our friends’ room. Amy answered the door, her face pale and fearful. “Oh, hi guys. I thought you were Dean.” She sighed and looked at her feet.
“He’s not here?”
She shook her head. “He went to talk to some of the crew to ask them to stop filming us. He’s been gone for ages. I’m sure he’ll be back soon, though.”
“Well, I need to go talk to someone as well,” I said. “Can I leave Indi here with you?”
Amy nodded and grabbed Indi’s hand. “Of course. I hate being alone right now with everything that’s going on.”
I left them to it and strode in the opposite direction down the hall. When I reached the Howiesons’ door, I rapped it on sharply. Donna answered. “Hey, Blake. Everything okay? Please don’t tell me that prick Ed is trying to make us film more stuff today....”
I shook my head. “No. I actually want to talk to Keenan.”
She lifted her brows in a puzzled expression. “Oh. Sure.” She turned her head over her shoulder. “Honey, Blake’s here! He wants to talk to you.”
She stood aside to let me in, but I stayed firmly in the doorway instead, making sure they couldn’t close the door or try to stop me from leaving in case something happened. If anything did, I was gonna bolt down the hall as fast as possible to alert the deputy out the front.
Keenan came over to me. “Hey, what’s up?”
“I managed to get access to a computer,” I said. “I guess Indi and I wanted to take things into our own hands, do a bit of detective work. We started looking up everyone on the show.”
Keenan groaned and ran a hand through his hair. “Oh, shit. You found it, didn’t you?” he said. “My arrest record.”
I was surprised that he owned up to it so fast. “Yeah.”
He sighed. “And now you think it could be me who’s going around attacking people with an ax. Makes sense. I’d probably think the same if I were in your shoes,” he said glumly, sitting on the end of the bed.
Donna didn’t seem surprised by any of this. She simply stood there staring at her husband with a pitying expression on her face.
“I just wanted to come and give you a chance to explain it,” I said. “I figured there could easily be some sort of reason behind it.”
“There is!” Donna said indignantly. “It’s all that bitch Alex’s fault!”
I raised my brows. “Alex? Who’s Alex?”
Donna sniffed. “Keenan’s ex-girlfriend. She’s psychotic. Before I met Keenan, she was already making his life hell, and when she eventually heard he was engaged to someone else—me—she doubled down.”
“What did she do?”
“Have you heard of the mugshot publishing industry? It’s basically an extortion racket.”
I arched an eyebrow. “No.”
“They basically dig up people’s pasts, including criminal records. Then they force people to pay them money to remove their mugshots and stuff like that from the internet. Alex’s father happens to own one of these piece of shit businesses.”
Keenan nodded. “Someone got ax-murdered near my workplace a few years back. I happened to be in the area, and I was wearing a similar hat to the actual killer, who they managed to catch on a CCTV image. So the cops brought me in on suspicion, thinking I did it. But then they caught the guy who really did it and realized I was innocent. The other guy even confessed and everything, and his DNA and prints matched the crime scene. So they let me go.”
“But the arrest record was still out there,” Donna said. “And ever since then, Alex keeps getting it plastered all over the internet, just to be a bitch.”
“You have no idea how many jobs I’ve lost because someone decided to Google me,” Keenan said with a sigh. “And we can’t afford to keep paying the stupid fucking extortion site to take it down. Especially seeing as Alex will make sure the stuff goes back up within a few weeks anyway, even if we do pay.”
I frowned. “Jesus, man. I’m sorry. I had no idea that could even happen. There must be some way to get your record completely expunged, though.”
“Yes, there is, but that costs money as well. For legal fees and so on,” Donna said. “That’s actually one of the things we wanted to spend the show prize money on if we won. So Alex won’t be able to torture us anymore.”
I nodded. “I see,” I said slowly, my mind ticking over. “Er… Keenan, you aren’t related to anyone called Tom, are you?”
I watched his face carefully. I’d know if he was lying just by a mere flicker in his eyes. It was a talent you picked up when you were the boss of thousands of people. But there was nothing in Keenan’s expression other than pure confusion. “No. Why?”
“It’s just that the guy who killed a bunch of people here fifteen years ago happens to share the last name as you. Kinda made us think of a whole lot of wild theories.”
Keenan rolled his eyes. “Great. Yet another thing that makes me look bad,” he said, throwing his hands up. “Trust me, man, I’ve got nothing to do with any of this. I can prove it, too. When Yuri was attacked, I was with three other people in the bar. They can all confirm that, and they already did when the sheriff interviewed us a couple of days ago.”
“Right. Of course,” I said, feeling more than a little stupid now. “Hey, look, I’m sorry for coming here like this. I didn’t mean to accuse you, it’s just that—”
Keenan held his hand up. “It’s fine, man. I get it. Really. This isn’t the first time this has happened. I’m almost used to it at this point.”
I nodded slowly. “I know some pretty decent lawyers who owe me favors,” I said. “When we get off this fucking island, I’ll give them your details and we’ll see about expunging your record, okay? For free.”
Donna gave me a grateful smile. “Thanks, Blake.”
“No hard feelings?”
“Sure.” The two of them answered in unison.
I stepped out, still feeling guilty as hell over the false accusation. At least I hadn’t gone straight to the cops with my wild theory, though. Things could’ve been a lot worse for Keenan then, and he was clearly innocent.
Perhaps Indi was right earlier. Maybe we should just leave all this investigative stuff to the cops. Still, it was hard to stop feeling like we had to do something when they were taking things so slow, and we were all trapped on a remote island like rats in a cage with a fucking killer on the loose. Even with the deputy on guard, the crazy bastard still managed to attack Elise, and any one of us could be the next target.
I didn’t know exactly what to do now, but I still knew one thing for sure—no one was ever gonna touch Indi.
They had to get through me first.