I Slept With My Enemy, Now He Won't Let Me Go novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Ring the Number

The man adjusted the microphone down to his height.

It squealed once, and the whole hall winced.

"My name is on the card at table nine," he said. "Most of you know me from the old yard days. I've run a repair shop in Rockland for ten years."

Ansel stepped back with a little encouraging smile.

"Go on," he said softly.

The man did not look at him.

"When I was fifteen, I walked in on Neil Ashworth changing in the boathouse. I saw something I didn't understand. I told two boys, and by Friday the whole lower school knew."

The hall was dead still.

Neil sat with his spine straight and his hand locked in Jude's.

"Jude Halvorsen broke my nose for it," the man said. "He told the headmaster it was a fight about a boat bid. Everybody here has heard that story. It isn't true."

A low sound moved across the tables.

"He did it so the school would stop looking at Neil and start looking at him. And I've been ashamed of my part for thirteen years."

Ansel's smile held for a second too long.

"That's very brave," he said. "Thank you. If I could just take the microphone back."

"I'm not done."

"I think we have what we need."

"You don't have what you paid for," the man said.

Ansel went still.

A chair scraped near the front, and the Gazette's editor sat forward with his pen in the air.

"Two months ago somebody called my shop," the man said. "He offered me forty thousand dollars to stand on a stage tonight and say what I just said. He said it would end Neil's chance at the chair."

"This is absurd," Ansel said.

"He paid me five thousand up front." The man took an envelope from his jacket and held it over his head. "A bank draft drawn on Harbor Light Holdings. I've never spent it."

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