Mum glanced across at Dad and he ran his hands over his face in exasperation.
“We aren’t saying to forget,” he said quietly. “We know it’s harder for you. You were there. You saw it all. We can’t begin to imagine how awful that was for you. But if you keep that anger inside, then ultimately, it’ll destroy you. I won’t let that happen.”
“I wasn’t the only one there. What about Jensen, Chase, and the others? Weren’t their statements taken into account? They saw it exactly the same as I did.”
The Lockwoods held a lot of power, even I knew that. Surely their word meant something in this case?
My parents looked at each other again, exchanging a strange glance that I couldn’t read.
“They retracted their statements,” my dad admitted, not able to look me in the eye.
“What? But that’s insane. Why would they do that?”
This wasn’t making any sense.
“We’ve got no idea. Maybe they felt differently afterwards. They could’ve felt under duress or had drunk too much to know what they were saying. We don’t know. Their solicitor dealt with it, apparently. We couldn’t get a straight answer out of Don Lockwood when we called him last night. Not that we expected to. He’d always put his family name before anything else.”
I wasn’t used to hearing my dad speak like that about someone he considered a friend. Don Lockwood, Jensen and Chase’s dad, was an aloof, hard-faced man, but I’d never taken him for a coward. Dad was right though. The Lockwoods looked after their own, but before all this, that’d included Brodie.
What had happened to change that?
“I’m gonna go see Jensen. I need to hear him tell me exactly why he’s protecting that piece of shit. Why he’s not standing up for his best friend when he needs him the most. Brodie would never have done this if the tables were turned. He always stood by his friends.”
I went to stand up, but my mum grabbed my arm, making me stop and sink back down into my chair.
“I don’t think you should be going out today, Harper. Not after everything. You’re vulnerable.”
I gave a low laugh and then looked at my dad for back up. I didn’t find it. He was as stubborn about all this as she was.
“Your mum’s right. You need to stay here and focus on your well-being.”
“I’m not about to do a Britney; shave my head and start attacking people, Dad. If I want to go out, I will.”
I wasn’t being totally truthful. If a Britney-style meltdown were required, I’d probably have done it, just to get my voice heard. I wasn’t ruling anything out at this point.
“Fine. We won’t lock you in your room. Not yet, anyway.” He gave me a smile to try and show he was being jovial, but I didn’t return it. I didn’t doubt for a second that padlocks and chains would come into play if they had to. I’d still fight it, though. Bring it on. I’d lost my twin, my other half. I felt manic and unstable, and somebody needed to pay. Right then, anything was possible, and I was starting to realise that in this quest for justice, I was on my own.
Thirty minutes later, and I was banging my fist like a mad woman on the black, highly polished double front doors of the Lockwood house, blowing blonde wisps of hair out of my face and hoping I didn’t look as savage as I felt. I say house, but this place was a bloody mansion. The upkeep for the topiary in the front garden alone probably cost more than most people made in a month. We weren’t poor, but the Lockwoods were real money; old money.
I prayed it’d be Jensen or Chase that opened up. I didn’t mind their mum, Karen, either. She’d always been nice to me whenever I’d seen her. But I didn’t like Don. I felt on edge whenever he was around. Like he’d stab you in the back then shake your hand and ask you to thank him for the privilege. You couldn’t even call him a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He didn’t hide his disdain for other people and the world around him. He wore his wolf status with pride.
He’d also been the first to back away from Emily’s dad, Alec Winters, our local M.P., when all the shit came out about his dodgy dealings and what’d happened with his son. We didn’t know the Winters family all that well, but they knew the Lockwoods, and before Mr Winters had been arrested and charged with fraud and manslaughter, they’d been so far up each other’s asses you didn’t know where Don Lockwood started and Alec Winters ended. I guess the saying was right; fake friends are like shadows, always there on your brightest days, but nowhere to be seen in your darkest hours. Not that I condoned what Winters did. But it didn’t take a genius to guess that Don Lockwood probably knew a lot of what was going on, and he’d been happy enough to turn a blind eye for all those years. Corruption breeds corruption, after all.
I lifted my hand up to knock again, then let out a grateful sigh when Jensen opened the door. He didn’t look pleased to see me, but he soon painted on a fake smile to hide it.
“Harper, hey. How you doing?” He didn’t stand back to let me in. His greeting wasn’t that welcoming.
“What the hell is going on, Jensen? Why did you retract your statement?”
He glanced behind him, making sure no one else in his house had heard me rant, then he stepped onto the porch area and closed the door behind him. He tried to put his hand on my elbow and escort me down the steps to leave, but I shrugged him off and stood my ground.
“I want to know. What. The fuck. Is going on?”
He blew out a slow breath and leant against one of the sandstone pillars, crossing his arms over his chest and looking anywhere but at me. People were making a habit of that. Acting like I wasn’t there or talking to me like I was an inconvenience. I was sure if there was a block Harper app he could download, he’d have done it.
“It’s complicated, Harper. We had to think about what was best for us, for the family.” My eyes bugged out of my head as he said that. I huffed and his voice went lower. “I’ve gotta think about my career, my future. Dad didn’t want a court-case dragging the family name through the mud.”
He was un-fucking-believable.
“So, it’s okay to stab your best friend in the back. Your dead best friend. You know, the one who was murdered in front of you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does,” he hissed, and then gave another nervous glance at the door as if he expected to find his dad standing there glaring back at him. “But this goes higher than just us. It’s a Pandora’s box we don’t wanna open. We can’t. You need to drop it.”
“Drop it? This is Brodie we’re talking about. The guy who saved your ass on more than one occasion. You’d be in court yourself if he hadn’t covered for you when you first started fighting. Remember that?” I sure did, and I was more than happy to hold that little nugget over his head.
“I’ll never fucking forget it. But you need to. I mean it, Harper. Give it up.”
“And what about Chase? Is he following your lead like a fucking sheep too?” His eyes took on a more lethal, venomous edge when I mentioned his brother. At least we agreed on one thing; we’d protect our sibling no matter what.
“We both saw the same thing,” he said through gritted teeth. “Brodie tripped and fell. It’s the same story everyone’s given. The videos back it up too.” He shrugged like he hadn’t just driven a massive knife through my chest with his words.