She’d played him for a fool and he’d eaten up every second of it. Lapping up the lies, eating them up. Never once thinking about why all the evidence seemed so stacked against her. Not even once wondering if he was being tricked and taken for a fool. Not even once trusting his brain over his gut instinct.
She’d lied to him.
Oakley stood up, stiff as a statue, shoving the desk chair back. It clattered against the wall as his eyes stayed locked on the screen. Her time was up. Her justice would come. He’d read her wrong, so incredibly fucking wrong, but all he had to do was step back and she’d catch everything that was coming to her. He didn’t even have to throw her to the wolves. They were already there. Justice was coming, and all he had to do was step aside and let them through. Maybe she was the one who deleted the security footage and pretended it had been destroyed.
His eyes narrowed and he turned away. Turned away from it all, turned away from helping Poppy, turned away from the footage, turned away from all the hurt and the anger and the frustration, and turned away from the whole damn thing.
He was retired.
And he was going to stay that way.
At approximately three o’clock in the afternoon, Poppy’s life got significantly shittier.
Because at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon, Poppy received an email with a video file and the subject “Forget this?”
She took a break from her immensely busy day of cleaning the house and waiting endlessly for any good news. Oakley had been out on the hunt for what he called the “stone”, which took her a little while to figure out was a metaphor. He’d randomly stated that he needed to find a stone without explaining anything, but eventually, it came to make sense.
For the past few hours, she’d been waiting. There was only so much that she could do while under house arrest. She wasn’t huge into TV in the daytime when she would be working and she didn’t exactly have a lot of friends to text, so she mostly tried to find things to do to waste the time until she heard something from him. It took a lot longer than she was expecting, and it seemed like every ten seconds some random app would notify her about something for no reason and she’d anxiously whip up her phone to discover that it was not, in fact, any news about saving her life and clearing her name. And then, finally, at approximately three o’clock in the afternoon, he’d finally reached out to her.
Her phone pinged, and when she checked it, an email notification waited for her onscreen.
A wave of relief washed through her at seeing his name. Thank God. It was actually him, not a notification about a friend request or the top ten secrets to making a great shortcake. It was finally Oakley, and based on the amount of curiosity she’d been holding in, hoping that he’d been able to crack the security camera footage and prove her innocence, she felt like a kid on Christmas, ready and raring to tear open presents before drinking hot chocolate.
She unlocked her phone and fired up her email. Was this it? The stone? Or rock, or whatever it was? Had he found it? She kept her emotions cool and calm. This didn’t necessarily mean he’d found anything. Maybe this was just a—
Her heart jumped into her throat as she saw the video open. The security camera! He’d found the footage. God bless him, he’d somehow tracked it down! Whoever had been there that night had destroyed it, but somehow he’d actually tracked it down. Right there, he’d proven her innocence! And this was the good camera too, the one with the best angle of the store. If any of them could verify that she’d left and not come back, it was this one!
She backed out of the email app before watching it to text him in delight. Her fingers did a little dance over the screen before she returned to the video. Better watch it first and see what it was. It fired up. Her smile drooped down.
It was two hours. Two hours of probably nothing. Ah, but she could fast forward. Using her thumb to scroll, she shot through it. Yep, there she was, waiting for the store to close, going into the back to make the potion. Her smile returned as she watched herself hustle to the door with the potion and leave. Ha! Proof! She had left! She couldn’t have been there. She’d left, and she had verified proof that she hadn’t been there when Raz had been killed.
“Oakley, you beautiful man, you!” she squeaked in delight as the relief washed over her, tearing the anxiety from her. Okay, so they didn’t have all the evidence of who actually did it. But at least they had proof that she had left! And the package had left the building, so whoever had poisoned Raz and left him to die in the shop had come after she’d gone! But, it still didn’t add up. The potion had the exact same makeup as the one that she, herself, made with only one different ingredient. She was the only one who knew how to make it, including Raz. How had he been poisoned? The box had been sealed up. Nothing could have gotten in or out without it being obvious.
She kept watching. Sooner or later, the evidence would show up. It had kept recording, and she still had a good bit of footage left to watch. Maybe the real culprit showed up. Still, Oakley’s message rang in her mind, not holding all her attention, but enough that she couldn’t quite get it out of her head. “Forget this?” That didn’t sound like the tone of someone who’d found the unturned stone. He’d been working hard to locate it, and here it was! She couldn’t claim to know him incredibly well yet, but still, he seemed like he’d be more excited and less…accusatory? Surely he didn’t mean it that way. He was probably just kind of…
A frown settled over her face.
Why the strange tone? Maybe he was tired? Grumpy? She tossed it around in her head, trying to make sense of it as she kept scrolling. Nothing, nothing, nothing. The lights were off, nobody was there. A few cars drove by, and though she couldn’t see them through the windows because of the camera angle, she could see the lights flash over the products and shelves.
Abruptly, the lights turned on in the back room. She sucked in a quick inhale, overshot it, and almost choked. This, right here! Someone had come in! This was the person! The girl that had been having sex with Raz! This was the girl that had been seen by a few people, the red-haired girl or whatever that they’d caught a glimpse of! This must be her entering the room, and oh, ohhhhh.
Poppy wasn’t sure what to expect, but she sure as hell hadn’t been prepared to see Raz’s naked ass appear in front of the camera. He cockily strutted his way out from behind the register, cock swinging around like he owned the place. Poppy’s face hardened and she glared at him.
“You asshole!” The words slipped out of her mouth without her really noticing. His red, naked demon ass landed on the chair, her chair, and twirled around to face something out of view from the back room. Poppy’s heart began to pound in her chest. That asshole! He had the balls to strut around in her store, naked! And sit on her chair, dunking his balls all over her stuff! Her fingers twitched, hoping, praying that he’d come back to life for a second so she could actually kill him this time.
How many times had he done this? How many times had he apparently gotten in? However he’d done it, he hadn’t set off the alarm and she hadn’t checked the security camera footage before because nothing had been stolen, but maybe he’d done this before, dragging his nuts all over everything like he owned the place and Goddammit, he deserved to die, that lying, insulting ass! Her fingers curled around the coffee cup she was holding until it felt like it might crumble under her grip. Her vision blurred as she watched him spin around in her chair, winking at whoever was slightly offscreen.