The Graduation Trap novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Leave of Absence

Joanna's POV

They let Sullivan out at nine that night.

I had waited five hours on a plastic chair in the police station lobby.

Braden's photograph of the door log was open on my phone.

I had read it so often the numbers had stopped looking like numbers.

Sullivan came through the double doors with his jacket over his arm.

He looked tired, and he looked like himself.

"Well," he said. "That was shorter than last time."

"What did she say you did?"

"That I was waiting by her car in the hospital garage at eleven last night." He rubbed his eyes. "I was behind my own bar until two."

"Can you prove it?"

"A camera over the register, and a bartender who has never lied to a cop in her life."

"So it fell apart."

"In forty minutes." He looked at the phone in my hand. "What is that?"

I showed him.

He read the line twice.

His whole face went still.

"She was in room four," he said.

"At eleven forty-eight."

"She said seven."

"I know."

"Joanna." He closed his hand over mine, phone and all. "We can take this to the detective."

"The detective said to take it to the district attorney in the morning."

"Then in the morning."

I leaned my forehead against his chest in the middle of the police station lobby.

He was warm.

I thought about his hands on my ribs and the sound he'd made against my throat.

I held on to that as hard as I held on to the phone.

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