Chapter 20
HARVEE
When I wake up again, the light in the room is wrong.
Dimmer somehow, softer, even though I never touched the lamp. I lie still for a moment and try to locate myself in time. Morning or afternoon or something in between, I genuinely can't tell. My head pulses with my heartbeat. My tongue feels like sandpaper dragged across dry concrete.
I push myself upright slowly, everything protesting, and scan the room.
Bedside table. Lamp. Trash can. Half-empty water bottle.
Everything where I left it. And yet my brain won't stop whispering that something is wrong, won't stop cataloguing the air itself, which feels heavier than it should, used somehow, like the oxygen has been rearranged.
I look at the door. The lock is turned, same as I remember.
I stare at it anyway.
"Get a grip," I say, and my voice sounds very small in the quiet.
I reach for the nightstand to steady myself and stand up.
Four Liquid IVs later I almost feel human. It's already ten, and I've texted Donna and called the office to say I'll be late. Nobody seems to mind. Nobody is even responding, which is its own kind of answer.
I peek out the window. The patrol car is still there.
I stand at the glass for a moment and let the unease settle into something I can name.
Either they're keeping an eye on me after Friday, or they think I had something to do with Turner.
The interviews yesterday, the way they wrote everything down, the word motive in Donna's voice.
I don't know which version is worse. I pull on my blush pink flats, grab another water bottle, and leave before I can talk myself back into bed.
Donna texts.
You're grabbing coffee since you're late anyway, right?
I huff out something that almost resembles a laugh.
Double shot?
You know it.
Melanie is behind the counter at Freddy's when I walk in, and the warmth on her face when she spots me is the first thing today that doesn't make my chest tighten.
"Harv! How was the rest of your night with that guy? I never heard back and I was worried!"
"Drank way too much," I say, stomach tightening under the easy delivery. "Slept the whole weekend. You know how it goes."
"Oh, we've all been there." She's already reaching for cups. "What are we making?"
"Double espresso over ice with butter pecan and oat milk for my coworker. And a cold brew for me, your choice."
"I've been testing a white chocolate raspberry. Cold foam?"
"Please."
She hands me the drinks and I pay, and when she says don't be a stranger on my way out I mean it when I tell her I won't.
I get back to my car.
There's a folded piece of paper tucked under the windshield wiper.
We're watching you.
I read it twice. The words don't change. I look up and scan the parking lot, faces, cars, windows, a slow deliberate sweep. Nobody is watching me. Or nobody is making it obvious.
It could be a prank. The kind of stupid, pointless thing people do.
I fold the note and drop it into my bag like it's an old receipt, get in the car, and drive to work.
Donna greets me with coffee already waiting on my desk and I cling to the normalcy of her like a handhold.
We gossip about the firm, about what happens now that Turner is gone, about the upcoming cases and who picks them up and whether anyone is going to suggest I sit in on anything given my experience.
I'd throw my hat in the ring if I'd finished school. Something to think about.
We order delivery and eat at our desks and don't bother with a real lunch break. Outside, a police car is still parked in front of the building. Watching. Nobody knows if it's for safety or investigation or something else entirely. Nobody asks out loud.
After work Donna steers me toward a Mexican restaurant two blocks over and I go without argument, because the alternative is my apartment and the way the light looked wrong when I woke up and the note sitting in my bag.
She waves down the waiter before we've fully sat. "Two margaritas on the rocks, extra salt. Keep them coming."
My stomach turns at the thought of alcohol. Still raw, still fragile. But the knot in my chest needs something and this is what's available, so I pick up the glass when it arrives and I take a sip and I try to be here.
The restaurant is magnificent chaos. Red and green serapes on every wall, papel picado fluttering in the AC like confetti, a mariachi band working its way between the tables with trumpets that cut right through the noise of a hundred simultaneous conversations.
The bar is laughing. The couple next to us cheers as a waiter flips a hot sauce bottle and catches it clean.
Everything is color and sound and deliberate celebration.
It's the perfect place to pretend.
"Can you believe they're already talking about hiring someone new?" Donna spears a piece of grilled chicken. "Like Clark's body isn't even cold."
"Mm." I smile and tighten my hand around my glass.
The note is in my purse six inches from my knee.
The cop car is still parked outside the firm in my memory.
The light in my room was wrong this morning.
Friday night is black static and fragments, music and hands and cold air and then nothing, and I still don't know if that's alcohol or something else, and I'm becoming less sure it was alcohol.
"You okay, hon?" Donna's fork pauses.
The mariachi band swells through Cielito Lindo loud enough to swallow the silence.
"Just processing everything," I say, and smile, and take another sip.
She watches me for a beat longer than comfortable, then nods and picks her story back up.
I nod along. I sip. I keep the smile assembled.
The salt rim of my glass disappears by degrees and the band moves on to the next table and the room is so loud and so bright and so completely indifferent to the fact that I am quietly unraveling inside it.
What if there's camera footage of me leaving the bar Friday? What if someone saw me stumble to the car? What if Turner told someone about the photos before he died?
"You sure you're okay?" Donna asks again, eyes narrowing.
"Positive." I wave my hand and lean forward. "Tell me more about that new attorney they're looking at."
She launches back in. I nod and smile and sip.
Somewhere, someone is still watching me.
I can feel it.