Author’s note: Thanks for reading! Please vote, comment and like! Truly, Madly, Deadly is the first of my YA thrillers published with Sourcebooks – coming soon in January is See Jayne Run. All of my books are available in print and digital from any major retailer.
Copyright © 2013 by Hannah Jayne
The words came out in a single, breathless string, and the second they were out, Sawyer desperately wished she could suck them back in. She stared straight ahead, eyes focused on the white dashes of the roadway, not daring to look at Detective Biggs.
“Were you in the car with Kevin?”
“No.”
Detective Biggs rubbed a big hand over his bald head, keeping one hand resting on the top of the steering wheel. He didn’t look at Sawyer. “Do you know where Kevin got the alcohol?”
Sawyer shook her head. “Not really. Sometimes he’d just take it from the fridge.”
“But you didn’t supply him with it.”
“No, sir. But I—I may have been the reason he was drinking.”
Detective Biggs put his other hand on the wheel, smoothly guiding the cruiser through the heavy iron gates of Blackwood Hills Estates. “Did you force him to drink the alcohol?”
“We were fighting. He was mad at me. I think that’s why he was drinking.” She licked her lips. “I’m sure that was why.”
A half smile cut across the detective’s face. “You didn’t force Kevin to get behind the wheel, Sawyer. You didn’t force him to drink and drive.” He looked at her, all amusement gone from his face. “That was his decision.”
Sawyer continued working the strap, her fingertips feeling raw from the course fabric. She wondered if she should mention the notes, mention the other reason she felt responsible for Kevin’s—
and now Mr. Hanson’s?—death. She thought about the crumpled peanut oil wrapper stuffed in her jeans pocket, thought of the fact that regardless of what Detective Biggs said, if Sawyer hadn’t broken up with Kevin that night, he wouldn’t have been drinking, he wouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel of his car. He wouldn’t
have died.
“I didn’t force anyone to do anything,” she mumbled.
•••
Sawyer’s cell phone started blaring the Notre Dame fight song the second she stepped through her front door.
“Hi, Dad,” she said into the phone. “I just walked in the door.”
“The school nurse called me. How are you feeling?”
Sawyer shimmied out of her jacket, dumped her backpack on the floor. “Better now.”
YOU ARE READING
Truly, Madly, Deadly
Teen FictionThey Said It Was An Accident... Sawyer Dodd is a star athlete, a straight-A student, and the envy of every other girl who wants to date Kevin Anderson. When Kevin dies in a tragic car crash, Sawyer is stunned. Then she opens her locker to find a not...
