[5 Weeks 4 Days Coma]
The air behind the school gym was thick with the scent of damp concrete and rotting leaves. Ethan stood in the shadows, his pulse thrumming with a violent cadence, his eyes fixed on Rebecca Thorne. She looked small, her shoulders hunched as if she were trying to fold herself into the brick wall. She was trembling- not from the cold, but from the sheer weight of what she was carrying.
"I can't sleep, Ethan," she whispered, her voice cracking.
"Every time I close my eyes, I see her. I see the blood. I see the way she just... slid down the car."
Ethan stepped closer, his green eyes flashing like a predator's in the dark. "Then talk, Rebecca. Tell me why you were in that hospital room. Tell me why you were at that lockers. If you don't start speaking, I'm going to assume you're just as guilty as Vanessa."
"It was the money!" Rebecca blurted out, a sob breaking from her throat. "We didn't want to do it. Sarah and I... we were desperate. My dad lost his job, and Sarah's mom is sick. We needed quick cash, and Vanessa- she said it would be easy. Just hold her down. Just be there. She said Annie wouldn't fight back."
Ethan's jaw tightened so hard his teeth ached. "Vanessa paid you?"
"She was the handler," Rebecca nodded frantically, tears streaming down her face. "She had envelopes of cash, Ethan. Hundreds. She paid Peggy the most because Peggy hated Annie the most. Peggy didn't even need the money; she just wanted the excuse to hurt her. But Sarah and I... we were just muscle. We hated it. Sarah is so terrified now she won't even leave her house. She thinks if we stop, or if we talk, they'll come for us next."
"Who is 'they'?" Ethan hissed, moving into her space. "Vanessa doesn't have that kind of money. Who was paying the handler?"
"I don't know!" Rebecca wailed.
"Vanessa never said a name. She just said someone 'important' wanted Annie out of the picture. Someone who wanted her silenced for good. But Ethan... the car? That wasn't us. Vanessa and Peggy were talking about it afterward, and they sounded scared. Like it went too far, or like someone else took over the job."
Ethan didn't wait for her to finish. He turned on his heel, leaving Rebecca weeping in the shadows. He had heard enough.
He burst into his bedroom, the door slamming against the wall. He didn't turn on the light; he didn't need it. He moved to the center of the room where his "war board" was sprawled across the floor- a chaotic map of notebooks, photos, and public records. He paced the room, his voice a low, jagged rasp as he began to read his findings aloud, forcing the pieces of the puzzle to lock together.
"Okay," he muttered, his shadow dancing wildly on the wall. "Let's look at the facts. Fact one: Annie was nearly killed four years ago. A 'suicide' that I know was an attempted murder because I pulled her from that water. She won't say who did it, but she was being bullied then, too."
He kicked a notebook aside, his eyes landing on a photo of Margaret.
"Fact two: Margaret hates her. She hates her because she looks like Lilah. She hates her because Annie is a threat to the 'perfect' life she's built. And then there's Brandon." Ethan pointed a finger at the grainy photo of the man who looked like Kyson's twin. "The secret son. The secret father. If Annie found out- or if she reminded Dylan too much of the truth, Margaret loses everything. The house, the money, the status." He stopped pacing, his chest heaving.
"Fact three: The girls were paid. Vanessa was the middleman. Margaret has the money, she has the motive, but she's too 'graceful' to get her own hands dirty. She buys the school bullies to do the physical damage, to break Annie's spirit, to keep her too traumatized to talk."
He looked at the list he'd taken from the nurse's station.
"But the car..." He paused, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Rebecca said Vanessa and Peggy were scared. They're petty, they're mean, but they're teenagers. Driving a two-ton SUV into a girl and pinning her to a car is a different level of evil. That wasn't a schoolyard fight. That was an execution attempt."
He thought back to the security footage Kyson had described. The dark SUV. No plates. The cold acceleration.
"Margaret was at the mall," he calculated, his mind spinning. "She was killing time. She made sure she was seen. She has an alibi. But she has Brandon. Brandon, who is desperate. Brandon, who lives in squalor. Brandon, who would do anything for the woman who has been paying his rent for eighteen years."
He stood in the middle of the room, the pieces finally forming a terrifying picture.
"Four years ago," Ethan said, his voice trembling with a realization that made his blood run cold. "Did they do it together back then, too? Margaret whispers the order, and the man in the shadows carries it out? They tried to drown her. They tried to cut her. And when she came back, they realized they had to finish it."
"Margaret didn't hit her," Ethan whispered into the dark. "She just signed the check. And Brandon... he was the one behind the wheel. Or maybe... maybe it was someone even closer."
She didn't want Annie dead for Dylan; she wanted her dead for her.
"It's a cover-up," Ethan growled, his hands curling into fists. "The bullying was the distraction. The 'suicide' was the first attempt. The car was the second. They've been trying to kill her for four years because she's the only person who can see through Margaret's lie."
He grabbed his jacket, his green eyes burning with a lethal focus. He didn't need more records. He didn't need more logs. He had the truth.
"I'm coming for you, Margaret," he vowed, his voice a promise of total destruction. "And I'm going to make sure that this time, you're the one who disappears."