Chapter 24
Three weeks earlier, under the starlight by Jacob’s travel trailer, she’d first proposed her idea to him: “I want you to murder
my best friend.”
He’d coughed up a mouthful of smoke. “That’s dark, Babygirl.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sure thing, Babygirl.”
“It’ll be simple. I’ll take her someplace isolated, so it’ll just be me and her.” Her voice had been so confident, so precise.
“And she’ll have no idea you’ll be waiting for us.”
“Dramatic.”
“Put down the joint. I need you sharp while we talk about this.”
Ever since he’d watched that shivering naked man disappear in the red glow of his father’s taillights, Jacob had wondered
what it might be like to take a human life. Years ago he’d made a pact with his best friend to crash their senior prom with
a pair of twelve-gauge Mossberg Cruisers, but they’d both gotten cold feet at the last minute. The class of 2006 had no idea
how famous they’d almost become as they sipped their sparkling cider. That’s how it goes, though. You only hear about the
planes that crash.
“But you’d be the one who saw her last,” Jacob told her. “Your best friend dies while she’s out with you, and you instantly
look guilty.”
“That’s why we’ll stage it. It’ll look like she and I were both attacked.”
“A cover.”
“Exactly. I’ll tell the police we were ambushed at gunpoint by some anonymous scary killer played by you, to rob us or rape
us or whatever, and while my best friend was murdered, I barely survived.”
He felt himself nodding in agreement before he’d even agreed. This was her subtle charisma, like stepping into a river’s current.
It was easy to get caught up in the things she said. And sure enough, if you’ve decided you must murder your best friend,
this had to be the cleanest and most elegant way to do it. Enter Jacob Herman to anonymously do the ugly work while leaving
her, the sole survivor, with enough injuries to look innocent.
“It’ll only work if I’m hurt badly enough,” she said. “So you can’t just give me a few cosmetic cuts and bruises. It’ll have
to be convincing. Real.”
“I can shoot you up close and make sure the bullet grazes you.”
“That’s a horrible idea.”
“Here’s how it’ll happen.” Jacob aligned his index finger on the side of her face. “Scary killer executes you, but the bullet
only grazes your cheekbone. He thinks you’re dead, so he moves on and kills your best friend, too, and takes your purses and
wallets and leaves. You crawl to safety. No detective will question your story. No woman on earth would be crazy enough to
take a bullet burn to the face.”
“Including me.”
“Just let it marinate.”
It was fun to sit here with her and float hypotheticals, if only because what-ifs won’t send you to prison. He was well aware
of the risks.
“You’ll wear gloves and boots,” she said, “and a ski mask to cover your face and hair, so you don’t leave anything for forensics to pick up.
Nothing. Zero. Not a single skin flake or fiber.
Whatever you wear, you’ll burn. Do you understand?
The cops will study the scene afterward, every centimeter of it.
So there can be nothing connecting the murder to you, and nothing suggesting I had any knowledge of what was about to happen to her. ”
“I fully understand,” Jacob said. “I’ve read a lot of detective novels.”
“Not funny.”
“I think I’m delightful.”
“Not when you’re stoned.” She was thinking aloud, her mind buzzing with an altogether different high. “And to be safe, you
and I don’t know each other. None of my clothes can be in your trailer. None of my fingerprints. No texts, no emails, nothing
that leaves an electronic trail. Police can look all that up, and as far as they’ll know, you and I have never met, Jacob.
I can’t have them wondering who my secret boyfriend is.”
“Can we still meet up?”
“Discreetly.”
“Can we still bone?”
“Please stop making jokes.”
“Remember, I haven’t agreed to kill your friend yet.”
She looked at him with clear eyes. “You will.”
Somehow this felt like an insult to Jacob, a class thing, and he no longer felt much like joking. It was the quiet certainty
in her voice. She knew damn well the power she held over him, how much money it was, how anyone would want it. Jacob had seen
a man stripped and humiliated over a truck’s catalytic converter.
On a clear night out in the Gypsum River valley, far from the power lines and radio towers, the sky is an ocean of stars.
This place felt like an old world, still wild and full of secrets. His father had always told him they had Comanche blood.
The trailer hadn’t changed since Jacob was a kid—he just towed it with his Jeep now instead of his dad’s old truck.
He used to spend entire summers in these forests with his dad, moving from plains to riverbank just like their ancestors.
Salmon in July, whitetail in August. He’d learned how to tell time with shadows and the sun, which plants were edible, and the irreplaceable flavor of meat cooked over pinewood.
One autumn Jacob remembered returning home to find his mother gone, her closet emptied.
She’d left a window open somewhere and the entire house had been cold.
He eased back into his camping chair. “We’re like Bonnie and Clyde.”
“We’re nothing like Bonnie and Clyde.”
“I think we are.”
“I swear to God, Jacob, when you say things like that, it makes me nervous about doing this with you.”
He laughed. He loved to pick at her.
“We’ve already crossed a line,” she added. “Even us talking about it, right now, makes it premeditation. That bumps it up
to first degree.”
He’d always believed you could look back on your life and identify the little hinges everything turned on. This conversation
under the galaxies on the sandy bank of the Gypsum River was one of them. At the time he hadn’t fully understood why they
were targeting her best friend, and he honestly didn’t care. There’d be time for questions later. It felt like the start of
a science fiction book he’d read as a child, something wild, dark, exciting.
And dangerous.
Jacob wasn’t that pizza-faced kid with a duffel bag full of Walmart buckshot anymore. Suicide by cop sounds romantic only
when your teenage brain hasn’t finished developing. “This friend of yours. You’re sure she won’t suspect a thing?”
“She trusts me.”
“Will she try to fight me?”
“She’s a hundred pounds.”
“I’m just covering my bases,” he said. “She lives in the city, right? So how will you get her to willingly go somewhere isolated
enough for this? It can’t just be some campground or bike trail. It has to be somewhere truly remote, where there’s no way
she can call for help. Lots of places sound remote in theory, but there’s always a chance some random dipshit will hear a
scream or a gunshot. Babygirl, if I’m going to do this for you, I need a controlled location that guarantees the three of us are alone, with one way in and one way out.”
For a moment, she said nothing.
Then she plucked the joint from his fingers and took a long drag. She exhaled hot smoke into his face, and it curled over
her lips like canine fangs.
“Jacob,” she said, grinning. “Have you ever gone caving?”
“The talented Allie Merritt,” Washington says. “What can you tell me about her?”
Tess hesitates.
“Come on. Don’t feel like you have to flatter her. You’ve known her since junior high. You lived with her family. You have
to know where the bodies are buried. Who is Allie, really? Has she ever lied? Has she ever cheated on a test? Anything she’s
ever said to you that secretly disturbed you, maybe sent a chill down your spine?”
Tess doesn’t blink. “Nothing.”
“Any secret boyfriends Ethan doesn’t know about?”
“She’d never.”
“Any history of violence?”
“None.” But then she reconsiders, a subtle doubt.
There it is.
“Except back in junior high,” she remembers. “Allie split a guy’s lip, but he deserved it.”
“He bullied her?”
“He bullied me.”
“So Allie can fight.”
“Anyone can,” Tess says, “if they’re pushed hard enough.”
And, of course, Allie isn’t just anyone. She’s worldly, intelligent, an enviably successful travel influencer, and apparently
a crack shot with a handgun. She’s also the target of an ongoing federal investigation—at this very moment, every transaction
her personal business has made over the past five years is under a microscope.
Almost 50 percent of digital advertising is estimated to be wasted. Metrics are weightless and theoretical. Impressions can
be faked. Tracking pixels can be spoofed. If you traffic the ad space or boost the social media deliverables yourself, as
Allie does for her wide network of partners, it might be tantalizingly easy to take a client’s payment while only telling
them you’re running their pre-roll or cobranded post. She’d reinvented herself from Alma to Allie, shedding her identity with
apparent ease—to Jacob, was she Babygirl? What has she really been doing with Keep Calm, behind all the sponsored tropical trips?
“What about her moral character?”
“She’s always been nice to me.”
“Not what I asked.”
“She was basically perfect.”
“I’m sure her breath still stank in the morning.” And, of course, no one should ever confuse being nice with being a good person.
A stillness falls over the room.
Washington’s eldest son is forty now, but back when he was in elementary school he’d had two teddy bear hamsters, littermates named after his favorite Nickelodeon cartoon.
One night he came running into her bedroom, sobbing and red-faced with blood on his hands.
He’d been crying too hard to speak. Without warning, Stimpy had chewed the flesh off Ren’s skull.
Her husband hadn’t known what to say. Honestly, neither did she. They’re animals, she’d tried to rationalize. Sometimes animals are just unpredictable. She’d later learn online that hamsters can happily cohabitate for years before suddenly resorting to violence and even cannibalism.