Heated Conspiracies by Aiden Bates

Author:Aiden Bates [Bates, Aiden]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

15

Kaleb

There was no evidence left, of course. The police had swept in when Josh’s body was found. They’d taped off the area, taken their pictures, drawn the outline of my brother’s body around the pool of his blood. In the months since, the rain had washed it all away.

I stared at the dark stain on the pavement of the alleyway, the place where Joshua King had drawn his last breaths, and felt my sinuses burn hot with saline.

He was gone. Completely gone. Dead. Buried. And with only a dark stain on the pavement and a spider’s web of unanswered questions to show for it.

It was almost like he’d never been there at all.

“You okay?” Derek placed his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it gently over my jacket.

“Yeah. Of course.” I clenched my jaw and turned my eyes away. This was no time to be focusing on my own idiot emotions. If I wanted to give Josh the legacy he deserved, there was only one way to do it.

We had to finish this. Once and for all.

“I’ve sent us both a copy of the picture.” Derek held up his phone, a bright light in the darkness of the evening. The AC unit and the building that Josh had photographed glowed up from the screen. “Let’s do a walk-around. See if we can find a match.”

We set off from the mouth of the alleyway, cutting across side streets and in front of crunchy, leaf-covered lawns. The last vestiges of summer were long gone now. Soon, the trees would just be skeletons against the night sky, uncovered and bare. We peered through their branches, checking every window of every building in the hopes that one of them would be the one we were looking for.

If we were lucky, we’d find the AC unit from Josh’s photo or the building in the background. If we were less lucky…

I scowled. This clue might have come too late. The hot summer days that left everyone in King’s Place blasting their AC to try to keep cool had long since passed. Several houses and apartment complexes we passed had already started winterproofing their old, drafty windows, sealing them up with thick plastic in preparation for the cold that would set in once November came around.

As we walked, I could almost imagine myself in Josh’s shoes. My feet could be tracing his footsteps even now. Was he scared, I wondered? Did he know he was being followed?

“Let’s cut through there.” I spotted an alleyway and pointed to it. Narrow enough that someone who didn’t know the area would see it as a good opportunity to corner Josh. But Josh had known King’s Place as well as I did. We’d run these streets as kids, playing tag. Cops and robbers. Blind man’s bluff. The alleyway branched off into two directions, funneling out into a network of messy side streets. Easy to see if someone was following you down them. Even easier to shake them off your trail if you knew your way.

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