RILEY POV
A pair of fingers snapped in front of my face, inches from my nose. Startled, my eyes burst open.
"She's awake." A deep voice said, his voice lacking any sign of emotion.
I sat up, feeling pain shoot up my back when I realize I was sleeping on the floor all night. The room I was in was tiny, barely large enough for me to fit in. There was a dirty mattress on the floor and a toilet of similar nature in the other corner.
Rapidly, I turned my head to face the voice that I had previously heard. The owner of the voice was coming from the other side of a wall of bars.
Wait a minute.
I was in a jail cell.
Instantly, I got flashbacks from the events of last night. I was reminded of how helpless and guilty I felt when they arrested me.
"NYPD, OPEN UP!" someone shouted loud enough from the outside of the front door upstairs that I could hear them.
My heart was racing when I took notice of my surroundings, thinking about where I would go to hide. The first thing I did was run to the slide doors in the basement. I planned to run out through the backyard while a confused Katy Hart and her husband talked to the cops.
Maya's mother's voice sounded so warm and welcoming, just like her daughter's. "I'm afraid I have no idea what you are talking about officer. There's no Riley Matthews in this household." She answered nervously.
Those few extra seconds that I received from Katy talking to the officers were precious. I slipped on my shoes and ran for the slide door, pulling it open quickly.
Since it was already nighttime outside, I could barely see two feet in front of the other side of the glass door.
My heart sank when a figure appeared from out of the shadows as soon as I opened the door. "Where are you headed to in such a hurry, miss?" The person asked in an almost mocking voice.
"I- I-"
"Save it." He warned, beckoning for some more people waiting behind him to come forward. "I wouldn't say anything if I were you. Anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law."
I froze in my spot, unsure of what to do next. Maya and Lucas were gone. "I- I didn't do it!" I sputtered out nervously.
Everything happened so fast. Wishing minutes, there was what seemed to be an entire police squadron in Maya's basement. They thought that I was so dangerous that one person couldn't have handled me.
I held back tears as another officer roughly grabbed my hands and placed them behind my back, putting them in tight handcuffs.
"RILEY!"
Her voice was unmistakable. The sweet tone behind her call never seemed to fail when she said my name. I opened my mouth to reply to her, only to be stopped when a hand covered my mouth. A weak muffle escaped my mouth instead.
The next thing I remember was feeling my heart shatter as I watched her emotional breakdown. I mouthed her a quick 'I love you.' before being dragged away. The first time we exchanged our I love you's and due to my luck, it would probably be the last time.
~
"Hey. Up here." The guard said, directing my to look up at him. "Get up, they want you for questioning."
Numbly, I nodded in response and managed to stand up without any assistance. It wasn't until I tried to do any physical movement that I remembered I hadn't eaten in 2 days.
The guard opened to prison door for me guided me out and into a plain room. I sat down in one of the two chairs facing each other as he shut the door.
A table separated the solo ace between the two chairs, exactly like how it's portrayed in the movies. I chuckled to myself lightly, not believing my luck.
I only waited for a couple minute before the door to the interrogation room flew open. A thin yet intimidating man with glasses in the bridge of his nose entered with a clipboard. "Hello, Ms. Matthews. Are you ready for questioning?"
"Okay."
~
The only thing questioning me managed to do was raise further frustration between me and the detective. It seemed that the incident from last night sent me into some sort of shock that made me forget even more of whatever poor excuse of a memory I had left.
"Hi, I'm detective Larson." The man introduced himself and reached his hand out to shake mine. I took it tentatively, loosely returning the favour.
He sat down in the larger metal chair, slyly wiping the hand that I shook on the back of his trousers like I gave him a contagious virus. "Okay, let's get started then, shall we?" Detective Larson smirked and touched his slicked back hair.
"Remember," he started, a stern tone in his voice. "You can trust me. Everything will be a lot quicker and easier for your family if you tell the truth."
"My family?" I asked curiously.
He nodded, smiling because he knew I had fell into his trap. "Of course! If you cooperate then I'll see what I can do about letting you guys have a reunion."
"Well, what do you want to know?" I asked.
Detective Larson clicked his ballpoint pen and prepares to write. "What weapon did you use to kill Mason?"
I did a double take; shocked by the question. I guess he wanted to cut straight to the chase. "I didn't kill him. I barely even remember anything from my life before I blacked out."
He squinted his eyes, searching for signs of dishonesty on my face. "Let's start with the blackout then. What's the last thing you remember after waking up?"
"Uh..." I scratched my head, the event had occurred nearly a month ago. "I woke up on a beach. It was nighttime, I couldn't remember anything and there was no one else around. I was scared, who wouldn't be? So I did what my mom used to always do for me when I was anxious. I sung."
The dark haired man wrote furiously on sheets of paper that were hidden behind a clipboard.
"What about Maya Hart? When did she come into the picture?" Detective Larson questioned.
My cheeks reddened at the thought of the wavy haired blonde. She was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The way she held me like I was her entire world and stared at me the same way made my heart go crazy. I smiled to myself, thinking about our time together.
The detective brought me back to reality. He interrupted my thoughts, asking "Are you two romantically involved?"
I blushed even harder. "What does that have to do with anything?" I retaliated, a bit more aggressively then I had intended.
He shrugged. "Well, you seemed to prefer blushing and smiling at the mention of her name instead of answering my question."
"Sorry." I apologized sheepishly.
Detective Larson pushed up the glasses that were sliding down the thin frame of his nose. "That's fine." He stated. "I'll ask again. When did Maya Hart enter your life?"
"The same night I woke up."
"So the same night you woke up in the middle of nowhere on a random beach, Maya just happened to show up?" His eyebrows furrowed together, showing that he was deep in thought.
"Yes?" I hated the way he stared at me. His eyes were always scanning hungrily over my face in search of a sign of me lying.
Ignoring the look of disgust in my face, the grown man spun the chair around in a full circle before returning to facing me. "Had she ever told you what she was doing out that late?"
"No, I didn't care." I frowned.
"Did you not care? Or did she not want to tell you?"
"What are you implying." I growled angrily, clenching my fists underneath the table.
He hummed innocently, twirling a pen around his bony fingers. "Who's saying she wasn't the person who drugged you and lead you there- planning to make you believe that it had killed Mason."
"Are you insane? She didn't even know who I was, she just moved here that day, it was just chance that we stumbled upon each other." I yelled, not caring if they could hear me from the hallway.
"You said you didn't remember anything from before you blacked out. What if you just repressed all memories of Maya before that?"
"No, no." I shook my head in denial. "She freaked out when she saw my face in the newspaper. I know Maya. She wasn't the one who did this terrible thing."
The detective grinned devilishly. "If you know her, has she ever told you about her career has an actress?"
"No."
He nodded, understandingly. "So I guess you don't know her as well as you thought you did." The man muttered. "Well, according to these papers I have, Maya has received countless drama and acting awards for school plays and other professional productions. Are you saying she can't act?"
My eyes followed his hands as he slid a large stack of papers towards me. I looked through them quickly to see documents showing awards after awards of acting achievements for Maya. I flipped through a couple of them mindlessly until my eye caught a certificate that was awarded to her last year from John Quincy Adams high school. In New York. Not California.
"You're messing with my mind. Stop it." I demanded calmly, trying to keep my hands from shaking.
"Okay I'll stop it. But only after I show you what we found in her dresser the night we arrested you."
He reached into the pocket of his large trench coat and grabbed something, placing it in the table between us.
A handgun.
"Lots of people have guns, her dad used to live upstate. There were lots of bears and he needed to protect himself." I defended.
"Okay." He nodded. "Just wanted to let you know that the gun is one bullet away from being fully loaded. But here's the best part." He grinned devilishly. "It took one bullet to kill Mason Kieper and it just so happened to match the exact same bullet model found in Mason's autopsy."
And then he pushed his chair back, flattened his suit, stood up and left me alone.