"Why did you look at me like that yesterday? At Beaudry's?"

Beth nearly jumped out of her skin. "Damn it Layla! Make some noise when you approach someone from behind! Geez!"

"Sorry," I mumbled, shoving my hands into my back pockets.

As soon as Peyton took Alice home, I'd beelined it to the boarding stables in search of Beth. I'd found her bent over the watering trough, covered in soap suds all the way to her bicep, scrubbing like mad.

"By the way, Jake and I had sex." The plan was to wait to see if Jake told her that we were official, because you know, trust, but verify.

Beth's face crumbled and nearly turned purple. She quickly turned away from me and attacked the trough with a renewed passion.

"Did you hear me?" I asked.

"Yeah, I heard you."

"And?"

"Congratulations? Oops? Sorry? All of the above? I don't know and I don't care. Respect the boundaries Layla," she said, using an arm to draw a semicircle around her body. "I told you time and again, that people make me uncomfortable. I don't want all the gory details and insights into their lives."

She said the words, but they were lacking her usual swagger.

I stuck my face right in front of hers. "Not their, mine. And I'm your friend, it's okay to care."

She bit down on her lip and refused to meet my gaze.

"Anyway, I need to talk to you about Jake. This thing about his mom-"

Beth tossed her sponge aside. "Not here. Come on, let's go for a drive."

Peyton was picking me up to go to dinner soon, but I followed her anyway, wondering why she was being so skittish. It was very unlike her.

On the way to the parking lot, I saw Jake in the distance, mounted on Satan, running him in circles around the pen. He didn't see me but I grinned like an idiot anyway, wishing I had nothing to do so I could stand there and admire the graceful athleticism of his movements. I had it so bad for him it wasn't even funny.

Beth drove a new but slightly beat up white Prius with two mini horseshoes dangling from the rear view mirror. Wordlessly, she started the engine and backed out of the lot, bumping the curb in the process. When we hit the highway, she focused on the road ahead of us with the same intensity with which she did everything else.

Except she wasn't that great at driving.

I double checked my seatbelt and held on.

"Okay," she said. "Don't hate me, but do you remember how I told you that Jake would be good for you?"

That seemed like an eon ago. "Uh huh."

"Well, I take it back. All of it. Back off, Layla, stay away from him. And if you can, stay away from Peyton Bishop too. And definitely, definitely, stay away from Carson Beaudry. He's a very dangerous man."

Dumbfounded, I stared at her.

"I saw you going into Beaudry's with Mr. Duval the other morning. I swear to you, I was gonna take some time to organize my thoughts and talk to you about it, but you jumped the gun. And... here we are."

"So what are you saying, Jake is bad now? You said you would vouch for his character!"

"I did! And I still do! Jake's fucking awesome! But he's always been a victim of circumstances- no, that's not true. It's that hair trigger temper of his - his Achilles' Heel, and that combined with certain circumstances makes things... volatile."

"You're losing me."

"I underestimated everyone and everything when I thought I'd be a good wingman to him, but I take it all back now. I don't know what going on with all y'all, but I have a real bad feeling about this."

I blinked back my surprise. "Well, what did you think would happen?"

"Brutal honesty? Fine, when I said that, I believed the rumors about you and thought you slept around. And I thought I'd help Jake get laid, no harm done. I never imagined that..."

"That what?"

"Nothing," Beth looked back to the road, her knuckles white against the steering wheel.

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Does he talk about me to you?"

She sighed. "Layla, we're good friends, we talk. But it's never anything disrespectful so don't worry about that. And don't even bother asking me for details because I wouldn't tell you even under torture."

I was going to argue with her, but got distracted by the road. "Umm... I don't think your car can handle off roading."

Braking too quickly, Beth turned into a seldom used road that lead to a run down park. No one went there anymore. The city had failed its upkeep and the vegetation was growing wild, nature reclaiming the land.

"It's not far," she said.

"What's not far?"

"You'll see."

"You're not making a lot of sense, Beth. And you're kind of freaking me out."

She was getting real pale, her freckles standing out against sweat dampened skin. And when she swallowed, it was one of those swallows you do when you're scared enough to shit yourself.

"So you want to know about Jake? Well, let's take it from the top, with Earl Waites. For starters, he was a lot more than Beaudry's Stable Master. If you wanna get all Godfather-y about it, he was his enforcer."

"Oh, I've never seen that movie."

She looked disgusted. "A hired thug. The go-to guy for when you need someone handled. Beat up, maimed, or worse. Come on Layla, Earl Waites hadn't worked in a decade but Beaudry took care of him until the end. Why do you think that is?"

"I never thought about it..."

"Because Beaudry takes care of his own, that's why. It's how you keep people's loyalty."

I wasn't entirely sure what she was talking about, but who cared about Earl? "Does Jake know?"

She rolled her eyes. "Of course he knows."

"So it's true then, that Beaudry got his start in drugs?"

"Amongst other things. Dangerous man, Layla. Bad man. Stay away. If you take away nothing else from this conversation, walk away with that."

Chewing my nails, I tried to wrap my head around all this new information and their implications. But my brain was stuck in first gear. "Well, I don't think I'm gonna have to worry about Beaudry, it was a one-off invitation, he probably just wanted to meet me because of the Satan thing."

Beth said nothing.

"As for Jake, I'm not gonna hold what his daddy did against him. He has no more control over his daddy's past than I do Brandy's. And as for his infamous temper, everyone's always talking about it, but I've never seen anything that even hints that it's true. I think he's changed."

She made a grunting noise. "Maybe. But do you want to bank your future on that?"

I ignored that. "So wait a minute, are you trying to tell me that Beaudry was behind the whole tire iron thing? That he controls Jake the way he did his daddy? And that's why he paid to get him off?"

"Who paid who for what?"

"You know, the whole getting the sentence reduced and having him sent to a nicer correctional camp as opposed to jail thing."

She glanced at me sideways. "I don't know anything about that, but no, I don't think that's what happened. Jake's not- well, no one can make him do anything he doesn't want to do. Don't you know him at all?"

That stung, but I ignored it too. "Then why did he do it?"

Beth sighed. And when she looked at me, her expression was full of sorrow. "She was his." Beth's eyes filled with tears but she cleared her throat and blinked them away. "Electra was, in every way but blood, Jake's little sister. He adored her."

When I looked confused, she frowned. "You do know that Jake used to live with the Beaudry's at their house right? He only moved out after Electra disappeared."

I exhaled. "Nope, didn't know that."

Beth made a sharp left. "So anyway, Jacob Waites, section three. He and Peyton Bishop were best friends. The bestest of best friends, attached-to-the-hip, we're-closer-than-brothers best friends. They did everything together. I'm assuming neither one told you that?"

I shook my head, feeling worse and worse with every passing second.

"Whelps, they were. And they were always together, him, Peyton, Charlotte and Electra."

My skin crawled at the mention of Charlotte's name. "And?"

Beth parked the car on top of crumbling asphalt, what remained of the old parking lot. She swallowed hard and her eyes kind of glazed over. It was terrifying.

I scooted closer to her, or rather, to the console between us.

Beth checked the rear view mirror and cracked her knuckles. Over and over again.

"And?" I urged.

"Jake and Peyton know what really happened to Electra Beaudry," she said. "And they covered it up."

If I hadn't been bigger than Beth in every way, I would've crawled right into her lap. As it was, I peed a little in my pants.

"What do you mean covered it up?" I asked in a hushed whisper.

"Four went into the woods that day and three came out. You do the math."

I tried to laugh. That sounded too ominous. "What, these woods?" I squeaked, gesturing to the trees in front of us.

She shrugged and chuckled nervously. "That's what they say, anyway."

"Oh stop, those are probably just rumors. Everything you're saying is straight out of a movie- things like that don't happen in real life."

Beth was quiet forever, her eyes downcast. "Yeah..." She flicked a speck of dirt off her thigh. "You're probably right."

We stared off into the horizon together, into the woods. For a really long time.

But Beth didn't gossip, did she?

"You saw them, didn't you?" I whispered. "You were there."

She looked at me with profound regret in her eyes. "I was right there," she said, pointing to a dilapidated playhouse that had long lost its luster. "Charlotte came out first, and then the boys, much later."

I chewed on my lips.

"They don't know that I saw. Nobody knows," she said.

We were quiet again for what seemed like hours and hours.

"I won't tell," I whispered.

"I know you won't."

***

And wouldn't you believe it?

As we drove back to the ranch, there they were again, Peyton and Jake, having a cozy little tete a tete in Peyton's car. Which might've been okay had they not been hiding away in the employee parking lot!

I freaked out. "Look! Beth! Look! Do you see them?"

"Fuck! Calm down, Layla, I'm gonna crash the car!"

"Beth, seriously! You know what this is?" I hissed. "I'll bet they're planning to do whatever they did to Electra, to me!"

"Are you fucking insane? Have you completely lost your mind? Listen to yourself!"

I grabbed her forearm so hard that she swerved. "No, you listen to me before you end up becoming the last person to see me alive too! Peyton's picking me up in half and hour to go to dinner and Jake's coming over later tonight."

She interrupted me with a repulsed look.

"It's not what you think, but that's not the point. Don't you see? Daniel and Faith are away for the weekend visiting her sister. That's why Peyton picked tonight and that's why they're discussing "The Plan" right now! This is what they've been buttering me up for all along!"

"You know, you really are an incorrigible Drama Queen." She shook her head. "This is the problem with pretty girls... y'all can never understand that the world doesn't revolve around you."

Well, that wasn't what this was. This was my defense mechanism kicking in because I'd rather it be this than the alternative which was too horrifying to consider.

"But Beth!"

"But Beth nothing! Look, I told you everything I know. What you do with the information, is up to you."

"Well, now I wish you hadn't told me anything! What am I supposed to do? You're so much smarter then me, tell me what to do!"

"I already did."

I scoffed. "I'm not throwing both of them away just because of a story."

Beth rolled her eyes. "Then you're too stupid to live."

She must've felt bad after that comment because she spoke again. "Okay fine. Whatever happened that day, for whatever reason, I know one thing for sure: Jake is innocent. Maybe not of the cover up, but of the crime, it was a classic case of doing the wrong thing for the right reasons."

"So is Peyton," I said quickly. "He would never hurt anyone on purpose."

She gave me a long look and shrugged. "Then you're back to square one."

***

By the time Peyton picked me up to go to the Golden Dragon, I'd had to change my shirt three times because my armpits were sweating so bad. Apparently, anti-perspirent didn't do a damn thing to help with fear sweat.

I'd considered calling dinner off, but then what? It wasn't like I could hide forever. Besides, if there was some kind of nefarious plot brewing, I didn't want to rouse suspicions.

Oh God, Loser, would you shut up about that?

Besides, I had a plan. I'd come up with a list of casual and seemingly innocuous questions that I would ask Peyton, designed to maneuver him into revealing the truth.

So I tried to act natural in the car, you know, good-cop style. It probably would've helped had I not been sitting stiffly at the edge of my seat, hands clasped tightly on my knees.

"Do I have something on my face?"

Jumping at the sound of his voice, I waved my hands frantically in front of myself. "What? No! No!"

He returned his attention to the road. "Then why are you staring at me?"

"I'm not staring at you! Silly!" I tried to laugh but it came out hideous- high pitched and nervous. So I stopped. Too abruptly.

"You've been gawking at me from the moment you opened the front door," he said. "And my hands. You're alternating between my face and hands."

It was true about his hands. I was wondering what they were capable of, and whether they had blood on them or not.

Giggling frantically, I turned my head and stared straight ahead.

Yikes, no one else on the road with us, we're all alone for miles and miles.

"You could've brought Alice, you know," I said.

He shrugged. "I could've."

But what? You didn't want to leave a witness? Are you here to kill me too? Or sell me over the border? Is that why you picked this new "restaurant"? Is that the drop?

I'd read 'The Mafia Leader's Captive Bride', I knew how these things worked.

No, stop that nonsense. Use your brain for once. And tread carefully, we're swimming with the sharks now.

"I saw you talking to Jake! Again!"

Well, shit. That kind of outburst hadn't been part of the plan at all.

Peyton fiddled with the buttons of the air conditioner. "Yeah?"

"What did you two talk about?"

Watch the tone. Too accusatory.

"Just catching up," he said.

"Oh, I didn't you guys were friends."

Peyton rubbed his thumb against his knuckle. "We were. Good friends."

Try Best Friends.

He laughed. "Why, who've you been talking to now?"

Beth, are you in danger too?

I scooted back a little. "No one. So why aren't you friends anymore?"

I'll bet you guys had a falling out over whatever happened to Electra Beaudry.

"He went away. We grew apart."

He went to jail. For beating up a guy who supposedly took Electra. Or did he take the fall for all of you?

"Mmmm hmmm. Are you gonna be friends with him again?"

"I don't know, I won't be around much longer," he said.

That much was true, and the thought sobering. In a few weeks, he'd be off to Harvard, leaving me and all of this behind. I slumped down into my seat.

This was silly. I trusted Peyton, I could just ask him. "Peyton?"

He looked at me. "Yeah?"

Did you kill Electra Beaudry?

And as I stared at his profile, an overwhelming sense of despair came over me. Because my in my heart of hearts, I'd known the truth as soon as Beth told the story.

Did Charlotte?

Peyton frowned. "What is it? Tell me."

I shook my head and smiled. "You know what? It's nothing. It's nothing at all."

What he'd done, whatever it was, it didn't matter to me. And I wouldn't judge him for it either, because I don't know that I wouldn't have done the same under the similar circumstances.

None of that changed who he was to me.

What was it that they said? Good friends help you move, but great friends help you move the body and never speak of it again? Something like that.

If Jake had been a good enough friend to help bury the body, the least I could do was hold the faith and keep the secret.

Beth had kept Jake's secret for the same reason. Hadn't she?

Maybe it was a case of misplaced loyalty for all of us. Peyton's to Charlotte, Jake's to Peyton, Beth's to Jake and mine to them all.

But Electra Beaudry was dead and gone. No one could help her now, we could only help each other.

***

By the time Jake came over, I'd run out of clean shirts to wear.

See, while I was with Peyton, safely cocooned in his calming influence, I was comfortable with my decision to let sleeping dogs lie, or I guess, leave buried bodies where they belonged. Six feet under.

But once I was home alone, I started freaking out all over again.

Thing was, I knew Peyton better than I knew Jake. I knew what motivated him, what he was driven by.

But Jake.

If Electra had been like a sister to him, why did he go along with the plan? And out of loyalty to who? Peyton or Charlotte? Or had it been something entirely different? Had Jake been the one who'd dealt the death blow (if there was a death blow involved) and could the Bishops have helped with the cover up? After all, loyalty was a two way street.

I couldn't think of a reason why Jake would kill Electra, but there was that nagging issue of the temper thing...

All those thoughts had activated my armpits again, soaking through multiple shirts. At the end, I ended up pulling on the same dress I wore to the fair and kept paper towels in my pits while I paced the hall.

"Why are you all dolled up? Did you want to go somewhere?"

"Fuck! What the hell, Jake! Why didn't you ring the doorbell? Shit!"

He raised both hands in the air. "Sorry, it was open so..." He frowned. "Why do you have tissues in your armpits?"

I yanked them out, tossed them in the trash and got right to it. "I saw you talking to Peyton today. Again."

Yep, definitely time to scratch Undercover Detective off my list of possible careers.

Jake took a seat on the couch and grabbed for the remote. "Yeah?"

"I know everything."

"Here we go again," he said.

I grabbed some more tissues and stuffed them under my armpits. Then I walked around the coffee table and took a seat on the edge of Daniel's lazy boy.

Jake stared at me. I put my hands on my knees and stared back.

"If you don't wanna talk, can we fuck? I love the way your tits look in that dress."

I scowled.

He shrugged and flipped through the channels. "Fine then, sit there and stare at me all night. Maybe I'll magically figure out what it is that you're skulking about and fix it."

Ask him, ask him. Do it.

I opened my mouth.

"Don't ever say her name in front of me again."

I couldn't do it. I can't pinpoint the why, maybe I was a little bit scared of him, maybe I didn't want to hurt him, or maybe I didn't want to know the truth because I was afraid it wouldn't change the way I felt about him. Maybe it was a combination of all those things.

But I stayed silent.

All in all, it was a huge fail in terms of relationship management that night.

At the end, I did end up finding out the truth, or a version of it, but it didn't come from either of them.

That was the thing about people. So very few of us were what we seemed.

***Vote, Comment & Share! ^_^ ***