CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Fully clothed and sitting a respectable butt’s width away from each other on the couch, Grant and I listen quietly as Lesley regales us with the story of their night. Lissa buzzes merrily around the room, serving up tea and chiming in to emphasize all the best parts.
They nabbed Alistair with relative ease, although he was tight-lipped once in the safekeeping of the Fake House. Lesley and Lissa spent all night trying every interrogation method they could think of, short of physical torture. Hours and hours of nothing, and finally they had a breakthrough.
“All thanks to this lunatic,” says Lesley, shaking Lissa by the shoulders. “Somewhere around the thirtieth time I tried to call you two, she finally cracked him.”
“Turns out, I’m amazing at psychological warfare,” Lissa says gleefully. “Who knew?”
I snort, struggling to imagine Lissa intimidating information out of anyone. “What did you do, sing ‘The Song That Never Ends’ until he begged for mercy?”
She casts a chiding look my way. “Please, Roxie. I’m an adult. It was ‘My Humps.’”
Ultimately, he was only annoyed enough to give away a single piece of information: the email address for his Facebook log-in. He insisted he doesn’t know who Mr. Page is, but has received a few private messages from him regarding details of the competition. There may be something useful in there.
“Okay,” Grant says. “So we have an email. What are we supposed to do, guess his password?”
Lissa and Lesley exchange a Grant’s not going to like this glance.
“Thing is, Double Grantendre,” says Lesley, “he’ll give us his password. On one condition.”
I can guess from Lesley’s tone that the condition isn’t that we donate one million dollars to UNICEF.
“He wants us to bring you two to the Fake House to talk to him,” says Lissa.
Grant sags back on the couch. I cross my arms. “What makes you think he’s not just angling for a second chance to kill us?”
“Oh,” says Lesley, chuckling. “He almost definitely is.”
“But he won’t be able to,” assures Lissa. “He’s well secured. Also, you beat him once; you could beat him again if you had to. Which reminds me: How did you manage that?”
There’s silence from the other side of the couch, so I have to clear my throat and stare at Grant until he realizes I won’t let him downplay his big win.
“I, um. Fought him,” he says dismissively, as if telling us that he went to the grocery store.
“In a duel,” I add, unable to suppress my grin as the thrill rushes back. “With swords. Even Alistair said he was like a sexy musketeer.”
“He didn’t say sexy,” Grant says.
“He had to have been thinking it.”
Lissa claps her hands, exploding with praise and sparkly-eyed delight. Lesley says nothing, but takes a step toward Grant and briskly raises his palm for a high five with all the gravitas of a Nobel Prize. Grant is going vaguely pink, but I can tell he’s trying to keep a grin at bay.
“So,” says Lesley, returning to his tea. “Who’s up for a chitchat with the Mangler?”
Grant and I each raise a hand—Grant a bit more reluctantly—while Lissa raises both of hers and yells, “Me, me, me!” before jumping up and running from the room as though someone lit a firecracker under her.
Lesley looks after her fondly, quietly downing the rest of his tea. When she’s out of view, he narrows his eyes, running his tongue over his teeth, and tilts his head in curiosity.
“Gritty,” he observes. “I tell you what, that girl’s got a talent for botching tea in new and inventive ways.”
“And yet you’ll never refuse a cup,” says Grant.
Lesley smiles. “How right you are, Grant Jeté.”
· · ·
I DON’T KNOW why I thought the Fake House would be some kind of ultra-modern steel box on the outskirts of town; instead, we’re strolling through residential streets that only get quainter as we go.
We pass doors painted robin’s-egg blue and lemon yellow and raspberry red, bicycles in front gardens, pink camellias in bloom.
Everything feels breezy and new, fresh as the first clean page of a still-crisp book.
It could be that spring is in the air, or that we’re on the cusp of a crime-solving milestone. But more likely, it’s about the guy holding my hand.
Grant and I have fallen behind, happy to put some distance between ourselves and Lissa, who has spent the majority of this walk stealing glances at us and then giddily elbowing Lesley.
Now they’ve stopped down the street—Lesley reclining on a wrought-iron bench, sunlight glinting off his aviators, and Lissa hopping from foot to foot as if her shoes were made of sparklers.
Grant lets out a long breath. “I do not feel great about this Alistair thing,” he says. “What if he’s Mr. Page? The ringleader posing as just another clown? He might be capable of a lot worse than he’s let on.”
I try to ignore the unease that thought gives me. “We’ll be fine,” I say, squeezing his hand. “Maybe Alistair just wants to see you again. I would, after last night.”
“I don’t know if you remember,” he says, trying not to smile, “but Alistair was specifically not invited to that part of the night.”
“Before that,” I say, heat rising to my cheeks.
Lissa must have clocked my blushing, even from half a block away. She truly can’t contain herself, dancing around like she has to pee.
No, wait. She holds out an urgent hand to Lesley, bouncing as he digs his keys from his jacket pocket, and bolts the moment he places them in her palm. She does have to pee.
I return to Grant. “Maybe he wants a rematch, or wants you to teach him better swordsmanship. Or maybe he just wants to eat popcorn and sigh while you flash those magnificent forearms and do sexy swordsy things.”
Grant tamps down a grin. “Magnificent forearms? Go on.”
“I’m just saying—give me clanging metal and a rolled-up sleeve, and I’m done for.”
“Interesting,” he says, mischief flashing in his eyes. “So if I just …” He pulls away and makes a show of pushing up his sweatshirt sleeves with a great deal of impish bravado.
“Oh, Grant, please, we’re in public,” I say in a scandalized whisper. I’m about two-thirds joking. Maybe half.
“Sorry to interrupt,” calls Lesley from his perch down the street. “But if you lovebirds have had enough of making googly-boogly eyes at each other, I reckon we could do with getting a move on.”
“We’d be a lot faster if someone had let me drive the Jag I was promised,” I shout back.
He waves me off. Grant stifles a snort-laugh, then loops his arm around me as we continue on. I twine mine around his waist, unable to keep from smiling.
When we catch up to Lesley, he briefs us on what to expect. Alistair is locked up in what Lesley describes as a makeshift prison cell, although it sounds to me more like an apartment that would fetch a couple grand in Boston. It’s equipped with a bed, a toilet, even a TV.
“He can’t reach the controls, though,” says Lesley. “I left CBeebies running on loud. I figure it’ll either break him down or rehabilitate him. Anyone’s guess.”
Lissa promised to wait for us before going in to see Alistair. She’s probably warming up her Fergie impression as we speak, just in case he hesitates to hold up his end of the bargain.
We finally arrive at the end of the quiet road, and there it is—the Fake House, which looks anything but.
It has all the makings of a well-loved home—curtains in every window, a collection of blue-glazed pots sprouting greenery out front.
When we step inside I have no doubt we’ll be enveloped by more of that quirky, homey Lesleyness I’ve come to know and love.
We don’t get a chance.
Everything goes sideways—that’s all I know at first. That and the blast of light and heat and sound ripping from the house, so loud it goes quiet.
The air is ringing. It takes a few seconds to clear my vision before I can see anything around me—cement strewn with shards of glass and jagged bits of wood.
I’m on the ground, my lungs in overdrive.
Smoke is everywhere. My head aches. I try to push myself up and a sharp pain spikes in my palm; a piece of glass pokes out, blood streaming down my hand.
I pick it out with trembling fingers, throw it aside, stagger dizzily to my feet.
The world rocks like a ship beneath me. Grant.
Lesley. I try to call out, trapped in the ash-thickened air like an insect in a web, and then a storm surge rushes through me and I’m sick on the sidewalk.
Only when I come up for air do I notice the hand reaching for my shoulder. Relief cuts through the nausea like a hit of oxygen. He’s coughing and scraped up from temple to cheek, but Grant is all in one piece.
“Okay?” is all I can croak.
He nods, still struggling for a clear breath. “You?”
I mumble something in the affirmative and we stumble back together, falling silent as we take in what used to be the Fake House.
The structure itself is still standing, but it’s a shell now. Flames leap from the blown-out windows, fringes of glass jutting like fangs. There’s no more door, just a black hole spewing smoke. I can’t see anything inside. I doubt if there’s anything left inside.
Lissa.
Oh, God.
Something crunches under Grant’s foot and he freezes. He bends to pick it up and when he stands, he’s holding the remains of aviator sunglasses, cracked and coated in soot. He lifts his eyes to mine, full of dread.
I frantically sweep the scene, but there’s no sign of Lesley. Not a spindly figure in the haze, not a heap on the ground. We’re alone out here. Sirens begin to sound in the distance.
“No,” breathes Grant, staring at the burning house. “Oh, no.”
“He went in,” I say. I mean to phrase it as a question, something Grant can deny. But I know. I already know.
We both lurch forward helplessly, as if we’re not sure if we should be rushing in or stopping the other from doing the same.
But before either of us can do anything, there’s a sound from within the house—a scraping, hacking sound.
Something is changing in the yawning shadows of smoke.
It becomes more solid, more real, until Lesley and Lissa materialize in the doorway.
They’re smeared in soot, stumbling along with her arm braced over his shoulders.
“Yoo-hoo,” Lesley coughs.
Grant and I rush forward, simultaneously wrapping them in a group hug and pulling them to clearer air across the street.
I count us in my mind, over and over—One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four. All of us back on the street, looking a little like Winona Ryder at the end of Heathers, but still here, together.
For now, that is. My stomach curdles at the thought.
Because as the Fake House burns, an echoing who, what, why twisting through the billowing smoke and ash and flame, one thing stands out in ever-sharpening clarity.
Someone is onto us. Whatever this was—a trap, a message, whatever—it’s a game-changer.
I don’t have to be a crime novel expert to know that it’s the kind of showstopper crisis an author would save for just the right moment. It can only mean one thing.
The end must be near.