Chapter 34. Isabel, the Assistant
Isabel, the Assistant
PRESENT DAY
When Scout didn’t show up at the movie premiere, I went searching.
Maybe it was intuition that steered my car to the Serpent Room, or some sort of sisterly telepathy—or hell, maybe I’d simply exhausted every other option.
But when I pulled into the parking lot behind the club and saw Scout sitting on the hood of her convertible—a little red one whose license plate we’d managed to shield from reporters, her silly Barbie car—my stomach dropped.
I’d found her, but it was obvious she was still lost.
No one but me would’ve recognized her. She was getting good at disguises.
She wore a black bandanna tied around her face, the top of it meeting her mirrored sunglasses, and a black baseball cap pulled low over her head.
With the intensely still way she stared at the Serpent Room, it looked like she was planning to rob it. That, or burn the place down.
I killed my engine and walked over. “There are a lot of people looking for you, you know.”
She said nothing. Stayed unmoving, her arms slung over her knees.
I leaned against her bumper. “I know Haley’s made your schedule overwhelming trying to twist this scandal in your favor, but the premiere—”
“I don’t care about the premiere.” Her tone was empty. “Or the tour. Or record sales. None of it matters.”
I tightened my jaw. I’d been expecting fallout over what we’d learned about Georgia, but this was severe.
Scout nodded at the club. It was early enough that we were the only people in the parking lot.
The Serpent Room was a nocturnal place for Hollywood vampires, vamps, and men cheating with underage girls.
Apparently. In the daytime it looked run-down, like seeing a famous actress without her wig and makeup.
Even the iconic fang-baring snake on the Serpent Room’s marquee, hung high above the street, looked smaller and less vicious than I remembered.
“She was here,” Scout said. “I can’t stop thinking about how she came here and I never knew. We could’ve sat at the same tables.”
“It’s surreal,” I agreed. The club was the newest entrant on the mental map Scout and I both kept of the places Georgia had been alive, the places that might, if you believed in that sort of thing, retain some mark of her. A trace of Georgia energy.
“That’s why Easton was so welcoming to her at the Christmas party, wasn’t it?” Scout gave a little laugh. I couldn’t read her eyes behind her sunglasses. “Because they were secret lovers.”
“I can’t even talk about it. The idea makes me sick.”
She ignored that. “Remember how he kissed her hand, and we thought she was so good at charming people? Way better than us.”
Of course I remembered. I’d never forget.
“And Easton’s friends were all nice to her, too. They’d probably already met!” She laughed again, a sound that made me wince. “Reese Griffin knew more about my sister than I did. How’s that for a joke?”
“I think we should go back to your house,” I said gently.
Scout took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were bloodshot. “It had to have been Easton. He killed her.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“I can’t stop playing it in my head. Georgia sneaking away to meet him in the pool house, thinking it was going to be romantic. Dating a married older man. She was such a rule follower. What made her do it?”
“I have no idea.” It was cliché, but Georgia never had daddy issues. No low self-esteem. She’d never even expressed an interest in older men. The only answer was one that hurt to acknowledge. “I guess there were parts of Georgia we never knew, and won’t ever understand.”
Scout’s voice turned hoarse. “When he strangled and hit her…” She studied my face. “Do you think she saw it coming?”
I stood. What Scout wanted to linger in, I couldn’t bear. “Brooks is going to bring the photos of Easton and Georgia to Detective Holloway. We’re going to get justice. It’s not too late.”
She was silent. Her gaze lifted over my shoulder to the horizon. And then she said, “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I don’t trust the police. Not even Brooks. I need to handle this on my own.” She looked back at me. “Easton’s in Texas with Gabriel Knox right now, at a political fundraiser.”
My heart raced with sudden understanding. “You want to take care of Easton the way we did to Alden.”
“Easton’s a monster. He knew he was guilty and let his son suffer in his place. He might as well have killed Alden on top of Georgia.”
“Scout, we might as well have killed Alden.” My too-loud voice echoed through the parking lot. It was a truth I’d spent ten years repressing. Admitting it out loud nearly split me in half.
“We were doing the best we could with the information we had,” she said evenly.
I gaped. “You gave Juliet so much shit for wanting to take things into her own hands, but you’re exactly the same. We’ve got evidence this time, Scout. Let the authorities handle it like they’re supposed to.”
She was already shaking her head.
“I’m not even talking about the fact that if you go after Easton—now, when you’re under a microscope—you’re going to get caught. I’m talking about the fact that there are some things you can’t come back from.”
We’d never talked about what happened to us after Alden.
That a single night of violence had unleashed a poison that had seeped through our veins, mutating us.
My thoughts went to darker places; so did the things I was willing to do.
Even the way I narrated in the privacy of my own mind became crueler and sharper.
For ten years I’d done my best to use the poison for good, to take what I was newly capable of and create a network of protection out of it.
But there was no running from the truth.
And the truth was, we’d scarred ourselves as deeply as we’d scarred Alden, only our wounds were harder to see.
“You’ve got it backward.” Scout dropped her hood.
“There are some things that are too important not to take into our own hands.” She stopped in front of me, the air between us charged.
“It’s okay, Iz. At the end of the day, she was my sister, not yours.
She wasn’t your responsibility. She was mine. ”
I touched my chest like she’d plunged a knife into it, unable to speak.
Scout slid into her driver’s seat and roared the engine. It was a Shakespearean tragedy, the way our lives kept returning to the same dark fork in the road, the same decision: someone who needed to be dealt with, a world that wouldn’t do it, a debt we needed to collect ourselves.
We’d gotten away with it for years. When would our luck run out?
I grabbed her steering wheel, forcing her to look at me. “This is my line, Scout. After everything we’ve been through—everything I’ve done for you—I can’t watch you throw your life away. I won’t help.”
“Then don’t,” she said. Like it was simple. Like our souls and fates weren’t entwined.
She stepped on the gas and the car ripped out from under my hands.