The Perfect Alibi

New Year’s Eve. Highstakes poker. I swept the board twelve hands in a row, draining every last chip from Peyton. She stormed out.

She even stuck me with her tengrand bar tab as a twisted holiday bonus. My blood boiled. I blocked her number on the spot.

But when I pulled into my driveway at dawn, cherry lights flashed against my house. A cop flashed his badge.

His eyes locked onto mine. "Peyton was murdered and dismembered—and you were the last person she spoke to." Chapter 1 "Peyton? What happened? No way. That's impossible.

We were just playing cards. She was fine!" Carter’s gaze pierced right through me. "We checked the logs. You two had a phone call after she left.

After that call, she didn't go home." He paused. Every word hit like a hammer. "She drove out to the abandoned factory on the edge of town.

She was murdered." All the air vanished from my lungs. "Murdered?" "Dismembered. It matches the M.O. of the recent serial killings." Hearing this, I covered my mouth.

My eyes grew red. "What are you saying? A serial killer butchered Peyton?" I shook my head, my pulse hammering in my ears. "No. No, no, no.

We were just at the poker table!" Carter’s face was pure ice. "We talked to the witnesses. You and Peyton had a massive screaming match at the club.

Even Josie heard every word." My eyes snapped wide open. I stared at him. "Officer. Are you seriously implying I killed her over an argument? Yeah, we fought over cash.

She's my best friend. I was just pissed off." Carter scoffed. A harsh, grating sound. "Still lying. We know you two fought constantly over cards. Tonight was the tipping point.

You’ve been holding a grudge. You planned this out, didn't you?" I couldn't hold it in anymore and bent over laughing. "Officer, you watch way too many movies.

Yeah, Peyton and I argued. She was cheap. Always dragged me to these games, always expected me to bleed cash for her. But since you dug into my life, you should know I'm loaded.

Losing a few grand to her is pocket change. I was pissed because she treated me like an ATM, not a friend. But a grudge? Murder?" Carter didn't blink. "Impossible.

You're lying." The smile snapped off my face. The muscles in my jaw clenched tight. "Officer, you need a chain of evidence to build a case. You have nothing.

Are you trying to force a confession out of me? It's late. I'm going to sleep. I have nothing to hide. Peyton was my best friend.

Hearing this awful news just breaks my heart." I spun around and marched straight toward my front door. Carter’s voice cracked like a whip behind me. "You're lying!

I won't buy this act. I will find the proof." My hand froze on the doorknob. "Good luck with that, Officer." The more I thought about it, the more something felt wrong.

Peyton was cheap, sure, but she never made real enemies. It was New Year's Eve. She would have gone straight home. Why the hell would she drive out to an abandoned factory?

Unless she had a damn good reason. I ripped my phone out of my pocket and pulled up the county map. Our town was small.

It only took three seconds to pinpoint that decaying industrial lot. My eyes locked onto the screen. My pupils contracted. A harsh gasp tore through my lips.

My fingers shook as I hammered Carter’s number. "Carter," I breathed into the receiver. "I think I know why Peyton went to that factory." Chapter 2 Carter and his partner arrived faster than I anticipated.

I walked out of the kitchen, gripping two mugs of black coffee. Carter waved me off. "Don't bother with that.

Tell us what you know." I pulled out my phone and slid the glowing screen across the coffee table.

Carter raised a dark brow. "And this is?" "The county map," I rushed to explain. "That abandoned factory?

It's a dead zone now, but ten years ago, it was the absolute center of town." Carter’s gaze darkened. "We didn't drive out here for a history lesson." I shook my head, my hands fluttering slightly. "That's not what I mean.

Peyton had a high school sweetheart. The absolute bad boy of our senior class, Jaxon. He lives on the west side. You have to drive right past that factory to get to his place.

They broke up nearly a decade ago, but she kept obsessing over him. Peyton told me a million times she wanted him back.

She was definitely driving out there to see him." Carter leaned over the table, his eyes tracing the digital roads. Pierce stepped out to make a call.

He returned quickly, looking excited. "Carter, she's not lying. Dispatch just confirmed it. Peyton actually called her ex, Jaxon, that night.

Her crossing paths with the serial killer by the factory—it was a total fluke." The corners of my mouth twitched. I forced them down. "So there's the truth.

Just a horrific accident. Peyton was my best friend. This whole thing is just… sick." Carter turned toward the door.

Then he abruptly stopped, pivoting back to me. "Are you really completely in the dark about that night?

Everything is just a neat little coincidence?" My brow furrowed. "Officer, I have absolutely no idea what you're implying. I didn't kill her. She wasn't driving to see me.

How is any of this on me?" Carter looked at me coldly. "I don't believe in coincidences.

A coincidence is just a wellexecuted plan." I met his gaze, refusing to blink. "I really don't know what you're talking about, Officer.

If you're still pointing fingers at me, I'll say it again—find the proof." The door clicked shut. I leaned back against the wall. I tightly clenched my hands hanging by my sides.

Nails dug into my palms. I bit down hard on my own tongue. A sharp, metallic tang flooded my mouth. The pain helped me clear my head a bit. They had nothing on me.

Absolutely no one would ever figure it out. Three days later, Carter hammered on my door at dawn and hauled me straight to the precinct.

Inside the sterile interrogation room, his eyes bored holes into my skull. "Are you really going to sit there and play dumb?" My face remained a total mask.

I slowly smoothed out the crease in my cuff. "Did you drag me all the way down here because you actually found a shred of evidence? I'm innocent. I did nothing.

What exactly am I confessing to?" Carter slammed a stack of glossy photos onto the metal table. "Do you know this man?" The guy in the picture had bloodshot, glazedover eyes.

Jaxon. Peyton’s ex. I glanced at the shot, barely blinking. "He's my boyfriend.

Why?" "He's dead." Carter leaned over the table, tracking every microexpression on my face. "Yesterday afternoon. Dropped dead right at his own kitchen table.

The autopsy showed terminal liver cancer, but the immediate cause of death? Acute alcohol poisoning." Chapter 3 I spoke very softly. "Oh.

And?" "And?" Tucker snapped, his volume spiking in the claustrophobic room. "Peyton is dead. Her ex is dead.

You are the only link connecting both of them!" I tilted my head up, keeping my tone deadpan. "Officer Tucker, is it a felony to date? Peyton was my best friend.

Her ex was single, he came after me, and I said yes. What exactly is the problem here? Is there some penal code against dating a friend's ex?" Carter didn't blink.

He just slid another manila folder across the metal table. "You really are going to ride this lie straight to the grave.

Jaxon graduated from high school but didn't get into college, ending up as a street punk. You were a straightA student who's now a corporate executive.

There is zero chance your worlds collided organically." I didn't flinch. "That's just my type. So what? He was the school's bad boy. I always thought that was hot.

As for him being broke? I'm an executive pulling seven figures. I don't care if he makes a dime." Carter could no longer maintain his composure.

He stared at me intently. "Since he started seeing you, he had gone from a casual drinker to a fullblown, raging alcoholic." I cocked my head to the side. "So you think I turned him into a drunk?" "We pulled Jaxon's bank statements for the last six months." Carter flipped open the file. "Over eighty percent of his alcohol purchases were charged to your secondary platinum card.

His biggest single tab was last month. Twelve bottles of highend bourbon, dropping twelve grand in one night." The interrogation room fell dead silent.

A soft laugh slipped past my lips. "Spoiling my boyfriend is a crime now?" Carter dropped his voice to a low, dangerous rumble. "It wasn't just booze.

We traced over three hundred thousand dollars you wired into Jaxon's accounts, flagged as 'investments'.

He blew every single cent at underground poker tables and the bottom of a bottle." The smile faded from my face. "I liked financing his life.

Got a problem with that?" Carter snapped. He shot up from his chair. He slammed his hand hard onto the table. "You're really going to sit here and deny it!

We dug into your high school files. Sophomore year. Peyton lured you to that sketchy offcampus party. Jaxon was there.

He sexually assaulted you." I cut him off, keeping my voice completely level. "Who wasn't a little wild in high school?" Carter let out a harsh, biting laugh. "Do I need to refresh your memory on exactly what happened that night?

Do I need to read the police report Colleen filed? The one that magically vanished?" My fingers went still. The air in the room suddenly turned to ice.

Carter’s voice relentlessly pushed forward, each word stabbing into my chest. "After that night, your mother spent three straight months begging Jaxon's family for answers.

Pleading with the school board for justice. Jaxon's family hired people to publicly humiliate her. Her heart gave out.

She collapsed right on the steps of the superintendent's office.

Dead before the ambulance even reached the ER." My voice turned to absolute ice. "You really did your homework, Carter." "So you're admitting it now?" Tucker pushed, practically vibrating with urgency. "You targeted Jaxon.

You funded his addictions to get revenge. Is Peyton's death on your hands too?" Chapter 4 I let the silence stretch. I just kept my eyes locked on Carter.

Slowly, inch by inch, my spine met the back of the metal chair. "Carter, every single word that just came out of your mouth is pure speculation.

Do you have a shred of hard evidence? Anything proving I forced Jaxon to drink himself into a grave?

Anything showing I manipulated Peyton's route to that factory?" The corners of my mouth tipped up into a ghost of a smile. "If you're out of evidence, I'd like to call my lawyer now." Carter stared me down.

His chest was heaving. Finally, he shoved his chair back and unlocked my cuffs. "You're really something." I rubbed the raw, red skin around my wrists. "I'll say it again, Carter.

I have absolutely nothing to do with this. But if you catch a break in the case, let me know.

I'm always happy to cooperate." The midday sun was blinding as I stepped out of the precinct. I raised a hand to block the glare.

The ghost of a smile completely vanished from my face. Inside my car, I gripped the steering wheel but didn't turn the key.

The sickly sweet scent of cheap gardenia filled the cabin. A birthday gift from Peyton.

I ripped the air freshener off the dash, rolled down my window, and chucked the glass bottle straight into the nearest dumpster. My house was dead silent.

I slammed the front door shut and twisted the deadbolt. I leaned my back against the solid door for a long time until my tense spine finally began to relax. I kept the lights off.

I walked straight into my bedroom, reaching deep into the hidden compartment at the back of my closet. My trembling fingers pulled out a worn photograph.

I traced the faded lines of Colleen’s gentle, smiling face. My voice was a ragged whisper in the empty room. "Jaxon is dead. That rapist drank himself into the dirt.

It was a vicious way to go. Peyton is gone, too. He was pure trash, but she was the real monster." My throat tightened.

I pressed my forehead flat against the cold, glossy paper. "They paid for it. I made them pay. But there is zero trace back to me.

The law can never touch me." Peyton and I were never the rideordie besties everyone thought we were. Back in high school, she was the queen bee.

She was my absolute worst nightmare. I grew up in the middle of nowhere. A tiny rural town where nobody ever made it out.

Everyone in our small town used to say our family finally had someone going to college. But I was the straightA valedictorian.

My test scores were so high that an elite prep school in the city handed me a fullride scholarship. Todd passed away when I was little.

It was just Colleen and me against the world. She refused to let me move to the city alone, so she packed up her entire life for me.

We had to live in a cheap apartment in a sketchy neighborhood. But as long as I had my mom, I didn't care. Colleen didn't have a degree.

She scrubbed toilets and floors just to keep the lights on. So I studied until my eyes bled. I just never realized that my perfect grades would paint a massive target on my back.

Peyton led the charge. Her family wasn't even old money, but she threw around enough cash in a weekend to cover our rent for a year. She made it her absolute mission to break me.

It was either backhands in the hallway or dragging me into the bathroom stalls to teach me a lesson. I never fought back. I couldn't tell Colleen.

I couldn't add to her crushing weight. I endured all these hardships and pain with gritted teeth. Chapter 5 Graduation felt like my only escape hatch.

I had my early acceptance letter locked down. One more year. Just one more year, and I would finally crawl out from under their claws. College meant offcampus jobs. Real money.

A chance to finally pull Colleen out of the dirt and let her rest. I remained so damn naive. They never planned on letting me walk away.

After bullying me once again, Peyton miraculously changed her attitude.

She tried to get close to me, giving me things I had never seen before and telling me with a smile that she wanted to be good friends. The sick part? It worked.

I swallowed the bait. In a prep school overrun by trustfund brats, I played the resident charity case. The untouchable.

People would even cover their noses and turn away when they saw me. The isolation hollowed me out. But I never pointed fingers. I chose this elite academy.

The tuition rivaled a mortgage, but the administration handed me a full academic scholarship.

If bleeding through high school meant shaving off a fraction of Colleen’s crushing financial weight, I gladly took the hits. Peyton cornered me and fed me a sob story.

Claimed she deeply regretted the bullying. Swore she finally realized how toxic she acted and desperately wanted a clean slate. I never had a single friend.

Deep down, a pathetic, desperate part of me craved a rideordie. Someone to share secrets with in the dark. So I caved, cowardly choosing to forgive her and become her friend.

Perhaps because I was too young, I had absolutely no idea what this decision would bring to my life. My future. My dreams. My only family. Peyton burned it all to ash!

The locals back home always whispered about Colleen. Claimed she looked like an absolute knockout in her twenties. Poverty stripped away her chance to dress up and shine.

Our lives didn't start out as a tragedy. When Todd was still alive, he broke his back providing for us. Colleen stayed home, sewing patches and raising me.

The whole trailer park envied her. She had a rocksolid husband and a pictureperfect little life. That dream shattered the year I turned four.

Todd took a nonunion roofing gig under a ruthless contractor, Raymond. Zero safety harnesses. Zero guardrails. Todd slipped on a high beam and plummeted three stories.

His neck snapped on impact. Colleen didn't understand lawyers or liability claims. She only knew how to scream and fight like a desperate woman with nothing left to lose.

Raymond possessed zero empathy for a grieving widow and a fatherless toddler. He pinned the entire accident on Todd’s supposed negligence. Claimed my dad slipped on his own accord.

Raymond even threatened to call the cops, screaming that Colleen’s crying delayed his project timeline. Security physically dragged her off the lot.

After that, it was just the two of us against the world.

The poverty nearly suffocated us, but she fiercely refused to remarry. "Todd treated me very well," she constantly repeated. "If I bring a new man in, who protects my little girl?

I won't let her starve." Eventually, the nosy neighbors trying to set her up stopped knocking on our peeling front door. I knew the truth.

Deep inside, Colleen loved feeling beautiful. But she traded her youth and her mirror for my survival, aging a decade faster than everyone else around her.

Chapter 6 Staring at Colleen’s photo, the wiretight tension in my spine finally snapped. I brushed my thumb across the glass. The woman in the frame barely resembled my mom.

She vanished so violently, we never even got a proper portrait. Honestly, time was starting to blur her face.

But the second I flash back to that night, her features burn straight into the back of my eyelids. I still remember bursting through our apartment door that afternoon.

My fingers dug into the fabric of a handmedown dress from Peyton. "Mom, I finally have a friend," I told her excitedly. "I'm not completely invisible anymore." Peyton promised to introduce me to her whole crew.

She invited me to a massive offcampus party. She even played the sweet angel, loaning me her old dress so I wouldn't look out of place.

The sheer high of acceptance completely blinded me. I never spotted the trap. That night plunged my reality into total darkness. Actually, that’s an understatement.

The VIP room sat completely empty—just Peyton and Jaxon. Alarm bells shrieked in my head. But I swallowed the panic and slid into the leather booth.

I didn't want to make Peyton look bad. Then that absolute monster, Jaxon, lunged. He tore the fabric right off my shoulder.

A sick, twisted grin split his face as his heavy hands pinned my wrists to the cushions. I was completely terrified. I snapped my head toward Peyton, my eyes begging. "Please.

Help me." Unexpectedly, Peyton took out her phone and started recording me. "Look at this, guys," she sneered into the camera. "Our perfect little valedictorian.

The teachers' ultimate pet. Turns out she's just a desperate slut who needs a man to breathe. Look how easy she gives it up." Those words completely shattered my reality.

Jaxon took everything from me in that claustrophobic room, branding my brain with pure trauma. Naturally, I couldn't hide the wreckage from the woman who raised me.

Colleen, the gentlest soul on earth, just held my violently shaking body. She held me, and we sobbed for what felt like an eternity.

She gripped my hands so hard her knuckles turned chalkwhite. "Astrid, listen to me," she rasped. "I swear to you.

I will never let them get away with this." Back in the present, the memory still made my blood run cold. I ordered Colleen’s favorite takeout.

On such an exhilarating day, I couldn't help but celebrate her. But the person at the door wasn't Travis the delivery guy, it was Carter.

His eyes locked onto mine, practically burning with triumph. "Astrid. I locked down the evidence," he snapped, his voice slicing through the doorway. "The truth is coming out.

Killer or not, you are going down for this." Accountability?

I laughed so hard that tears almost came to my eyes as I looked at the detective standing stiffly in front of me. "Carter. You dug up my entire past.

And you have the nerve to stand on my porch and preach about accountability?" "If the guilty actually paid the price, Peyton and Jaxon would have rotted in a cell!

So why did they get to walk free? Why did they get to live the high life? Why did a fiercely honest mother, begging for justice for her daughter, get branded a grifter?

Why did a brutal assault get swept under the rug as 'kids just acting out'? You want the truth? Answer me that first!" The color drained straight out of Carter’s face.

He played the naive rookie. He possessed zero clue about the old coverup. He just connected the dots and aggressively shoved me into the killer box. Well, guess what.

I absolutely am the killer. Chapter 7