Free Finding Serenity by Eden Butler Page B

of traffic; the low rumble of engines and a particularly loud backfire from a black car eventually disappear and Mollie returns her attention to Walter and Declan.
    Spotting his girlfriend and Donovan arguing a few feet away, Walter moves his chin in their direction, curious. “What’s that about?”
    “Pranks,” Mollie says. “You have some information?”
    Walter takes a moment before he tears his gaze away from the arguing couple and focuses on Mollie. He directs both her and Declan to a cruiser set back from the crowd. “This is officially off the record.”
    “ You are breaking the rules, Walter?” That seems completely out of character from what Mollie knows of him.
    “I think the importance of this matter warrants it.” Mollie hates the way he speaks, as though he’s a bobby for Scotland Yard and not a campus cop in Tennessee.
    “What do you mean?” Declan asks.
    “This,” Walter says, looking over his shoulder to hold out a plastic evidence bag. Inside is the incendiary—an empty vodka bottle broken at the top and a black label curled at the edge. Tied to the neck is the charred carcass of some kind of rodent.
    “What the hell is that?” Mollie asks.
    “A rat, Mollie.”
    The implication is immediate and instantly Mollie feels as though someone has punched her in the stomach and a sinking, boulder-sized weight funnels through her chest.
    “What do you think this could mean?” Walter asks nudging the bag in her direction.
    “I have no idea.” She doesn’t like the hint of accusation that flits behind his words.
    “Something you want to tell me?” Walter is not threatening. He is lanky, tall and he has too much of a baby face to seem imposing. But that silver badge on his chest somehow has him acting like his pull on campus means something in the slightest. “Maybe something your father is involved in is touching a little close to home.”
    “My father is in prison in Mississippi, Walter. There’s no way—”
    “Your father is a convicted felon and the president of a motorcycle gang that deals meth. He’s also looking at a long sentence. It seems to me that with your burglary and now this,” again his motions with the evidence bag, “might mean dear ole dad is trying to work a deal. When you mess with the criminal element and then think about stabbing them in the back, they don’t let you do it so easily.”
    “That has nothing to do with her, mate.” Declan comes to stand just in front of Mollie.
    “Oh I think it might. If her dad has pissed off the wrong people, then they might be trying to scare him off of whatever he’s got planned.”
    She can’t look at Walter and the accusatory, smug glare on his face. Instead, Mollie scans the crowd again, not really focusing on anything. Her mind plays back a loop of Jackson, of the men that used to frequent the Compound. There were bikers, naturally, but there were also men in cheap suits, some approaching the house in dark cars late at night. There were whispered conversations and brown paper bags filled with cash on the top shelf on her father’s closet.
    Mollie isn’t naïve. She knew who her father was, she knew the life he’d chosen wasn’t picket fences and church on Sunday morning. She was also smart enough to understand the Ministry of Malice didn’t grow weed in the Compound garden and meth wasn’t cooked in the shed on the back of her father’s property. It all came from somewhere. It had to. Could her dad be working a deal? Was this happening to her because of yet more choices he made?
    “Well?” Walter’s frown has only grown deeper. This is her fault, that expression tells her. She is trash. She isn’t worthy of Layla’s friendship. It’s all there in the cold, hard look he gives her. And just then, the feeling comes back; just for a second Mollie is ten years old, standing outside of the teacher’s lounge, overhearing Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Franklin discussing her “disgusting father” and the “whores who are