"Willa, are you okay?" Levi's voice washed over me, his heavy hand on my shoulder as he tried to pry me up from the icy tarmac beneath my knees. "Come on, you have to get back, okay, honey?"

I'm sure he was as sweetly persuasive as possible, but in my mind only anger registered kicking the shock out of my head until my whole body pulsed with heavy rage.

"I got it," I snapped, allowing him to lead me over to his squad car only noticing at the last second over Levi's shoulder that my brother had passed back out in the back of his SUV—with the blood on his hands. "I can't..." My voice shook, breaking, and I rubbed the heel of my hand against my eye to hide the tears freely tracking down my face.

"I have to call this in, Willa. Can you stand?"

When I nodded he shrugged out of his uniform jacket and draped it over my shoulders. The instinct to thank him was lost to my frantic scheming to get my brother off the hook for murder.

I didn't—couldn't—think that he had done...this.

But then, Levi would clearly see he was under the influence. Anyone with half a brain in this town knew what Owen was capable of when he wasn't sober. He wasn't sober very often, at least not before rehab.

The blood. The blood on his hands. I hadn't found an injury.

I curled my fingers tighter into Levi's leather jacket and tried to blink back the dots that were connecting in my mind. No use, I fought to straighten under the weight of the knowledge I carried and sniffled while the world around me turned into the ordered chaos of a crime scene.

I doubted Owen had an alibi, let alone any memories of tonight.

I wanted to stamp my foot like a small child and deny any understanding or involvement. A complete rejection of everything that had happened in the past, what, ten minutes? Numbness climbed over my body as if I were a trellis. There was static, a crackle over a radio, and footsteps.

Levi ducked back into my line of sight.

"You got to tell me what happened. Do you think you can do that? Backup will be here soon and I need the truth before anyone else gets here."

"It was me. I—I—did it."

His rich, dark blue eyes turned a shade darker in the night until his pupils were swallowed up. But there was no mistaking his frown.

He shuffled from foot to foot, hands dropping to my shoulders and he squeezed as if he were trying to convey some silent communication. A tendril of hair fell forward from his slicked back professional do. It only highlighted the sharp hollows of his cheekbones, smudges under his eyes, and the small bump in his otherwise perfect nose.

When he swore, unwilling to look at me again, I knew he'd seen the car—he'd seen Owen.

Of course he'd seen him. The man wasn't blind.

Panic tightened around my chest as if twin steel bands were squeezing all the breath out of my lungs.

There wasn't enough air. So hot, I was so hot.

A flash erupted across my skin at the same time that my teeth chattered in my skull like the stupid Halloween candy wind-up toys.

"Okay, stay with me. You're going into shock, sweetheart. It's going to be okay, I just need you to focus on me, Willa."

"He didn't do it! He didn't do it!" Even while the hysterical babble streamed out of my lips another police cruiser jerked to a stop in the back lot. "He couldn't have, I swear, no..."

But I didn't know that for certain, did I?

"Oh Christ, my parents. I have to tell my parents."