Chapter 4
I spin around so fast I almost lose my balance, to find the old man from last night standing behind me.
He’s holding two takeout coffee cups and is wearing a puffer coat with a green scarf looped once around his neck. Without those big brass goggles covering half his face, I can see the wrinkles and age spots on his brown skin. Using his wrist, he pushes his wire-rimmed glasses higher up his nose.
“How do you know my name?” I ask, stepping away from him. “Who are you?”
“Donald D. Dellman.” His voice is rumbling and so deep, one of those voices that makes you calm just listening to it. He extends one cup toward me. “Can I offer you a coffee?”
I want to take the coffee—I sure need it—but I can’t bring myself to reach for it. I can’t bring myself to move at all, actually. Strangers who know my name always want something from me, and it’s never anything good. Journalists. Crime podcasters.
Donald—Donny—lowers the cup. “I recognized you last night, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d seen your face. Then it clicked this morning. You’re the Girl Who Played Dead.”
I glance at Nico, and he’s staring at me with a small crease between his brows, like all the pieces just connected for him, too.
I hate that people can just look at me and know every detail about the worst thing that ever happened to me, that it’s something people can Google over their morning coffee.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your family,” Donny says. “It’s exceptionally rare for people to see spirits, but it’s no surprise you can, considering what you’ve lived through. But if I recall, you didn’t die that night. You survived by jumping out of a window, is that right?”
I nod.
He presses his lips together, and there’s genuine sympathy on his face as he must realize my near-death experience happened after the murders. “That’s a lot of trauma for one person to carry.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrug. “It’s lucky I go to the gym.”
The joke lands like a lead balloon. Donny’s expression doesn’t change, and I want to bury my face in the asphalt. Why do I always do this? Someone shows me genuine emotion, and I make it weird by trying to be funny.
“Sorry,” I say. “I never know how to respond to people saying that to me, and my mouth goes rogue sometimes.”
“I’d imagine you had a long night.” Donny hands one of the coffees to Nico, and then produces a paper bag from his leather satchel. “Could I offer you a bagel instead?”
“Actually, my dog is alone in my car, plus I’ve got some shopping to do, so I’m going to go.”
“Before I can offer you a position on my team?” Donny asks.
Everything in my head just hits pause.
Nico whirls around to glare at Donny, his jaw clenching hard enough that a muscle bulges in his cheek.
Donny’s smiling at me like he offered me a perfectly reasonable career opportunity instead of the most insane proposition I’ve ever gotten in my life.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I think I’m having a psychotic episode because it sounded like you offered me a job.”
“In seven years of building my team, I’ve encountered perhaps fifty people in the entire United States who could see supernatural entities without the help of tools,” Donny explains. “I offer positions to the ones I see potential in.”
“What potential could you see in me?” I ask. “All you saw me do was a good job of being strangled.”
“I watched you testify at Stanley Daniels’s trial on television,” Donny says. “You were thirteen years old, and you looked that man right in the eye and told your story without flinching. That takes extraordinary courage.”
The parking lot tilts. I can feel the courtroom pressing in around me—the wood paneling—the harsh overhead lights—Stanley Daniels’s eyes drilling into me from the defense table.
He went on to kill five more women after my family.
I was his only surviving victim. My hands shook so much I had to sit on them, but I told the jury everything because that fucker had hung my baby sister with her unicorn bed sheet, and Dad would’ve wanted me to be brave.
I remember searching his face for anything that would explain why. Why choose my family when he only killed women afterwards? Why kill my nine-year-old sister and try to kill thirteen-year-old me when all of his other victims were older?
Stanley Daniels is rotting in a maximum-security prison now, but there was something so angry in his eyes when he beheld me up on the stand, something that said he wasn’t done with me, even from behind bars.
I guess it was a very public trial, so it’s not weird that Donny watched it.
It takes me a couple of seconds to figure out what to say. “The trial was a long time ago.”
“Bravery doesn’t have an expiration date,” Donny says. “You survived something that should have destroyed you, and you didn’t let fear win. That’s the kind of person I need on my team.”
He’s wrong. I’m not brave. I just feel too guilty to give up. But the words stick in my throat, all tangled up with everything else I’ve never admitted out loud.
Besides, I barely made it through last night. How am I supposed to do that on purpose? Every day?
“I appreciate the offer,” I manage, “but I already have a job.”
Donny nods like he expected this answer. “I understand.”
I give him a nod and turn to leave, but I only make it a step toward Walmart before Donny says:
“We would provide housing.”
I whirl around, narrowing my eyes at his friendly grandpa face. “Why did you say that?”
“Because you’re living in your car,” Donny says.
“How did you—”
“There are blankets visible through your rear windows. You were in a parking lot in your pajamas after the store had closed, which tells me you weren’t there to shop.
” He says it in a gentle voice, like he’s trying not to embarrass me, but my stomach is already twisting itself into a pretzel.
“Your boots have concrete dust embedded in the treads, and fresh scuff marks on the toes—heavy labor, maybe construction work, considering the calluses on your palms and the way you move. I also noticed you didn’t go to the hospital last night. ”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“They would have done a more thorough job cleaning that rope burn,” he says.
“Perhaps you didn’t go because you didn’t want to leave your dog alone.
But considering you’d have to leave him alone to work, I’d wager it was because you have no health insurance, which suggests day labor rather than a permanent position. ”
I feel like I’ve been transported into one of those embarrassing dreams people always say they have, about needing to present to their elementary school classroom while standing in their underwear.
“Construction pays well,” Donny continues.
“Perhaps one hundred dollars per day—in cash, if you’re a day laborer.
If you’re working weekends when you can get them, minus days lost to illness or weather—inevitable, in your line of work—you’re earning twenty-two, maybe twenty-three hundred dollars a month?
That would be enough to cover a studio apartment, which begs the question—why don’t you have one?
I’d imagine you’re waiting to see if your current position becomes permanent before you sign a lease.
Day labor doesn’t inspire confidence in long-term planning, but I suspect there’s more to it than that. ”
I follow his gaze to my car. Specifically, to the white passenger door fastened to my dented silver sedan.
“Car repairs are expensive,” Donny says, and I shrink until I’m approximately two feet tall.
“They put many people into debt. Unless you bought your car outright, you also have car payments. Plus insurance. New Jersey has some of the highest rates in the country. For someone your age, I’d estimate five hundred a month.
Add in gas. Vehicle maintenance. Necessities like groceries, laundry, and that gym membership you mentioned you have…
My guess is you’re living in your car until you pay off your debt, and waiting to see if you get a more permanent position from your current employer before looking for an apartment. ” He pauses. “Am I close?”
My auto insurance is actually five hundred and ten dollars a month. It’s highway robbery, but it’s what happens when you’re under twenty-five here.
I’m lucky Bob and I weren’t in the car when some asshole rammed into it in a parking lot, and drove away without leaving a note.
The person smashed my side mirror and the door so badly that the whole thing was dented.
I pushed off repairs as long as I could and duct taped the mirror onto the car, but the car door was so dented that there was a gap in the top of it, so water got in every time it rained.
When winter came around, I couldn’t put it off any longer.
I’m painfully aware that my financial situation is a problem of my own making.
My family’s murders made national news. Overnight, I became the country’s most famous orphan.
The press named me The Girl Who Played Dead.
After Stanley Daniels was convicted and found to be a serial killer, everyone wanted to hear my story.
I had people telling me I should write a book.
Big streaming companies did documentaries on Stanley Daniels and wanted me in them.
One even wanted to do an entire exposé on just me.
Everyone was talking about the girl who escaped one of the country’s most infamous serial killers when she was only thirteen.
My social worker encouraged me, saying the money would set me up for life, but even thinking about telling the story makes me sick. Mom, Dad, and Rosie are mine. I refuse to let other people boil everything they were down into an hour of entertainment.
I told the story at the trial. That’s the only time I ever will.
I must be standing there with a stupid expression on my face, because Donny adds:
“I’m not trying to alarm you,” he says. “I’m only offering you a way out.”
“Did you Google me before this?” I ask.
“This is not information that would be made available on Google,” Donny says, and there’s this twinkle in his eye that tells me he’s enjoying this.
I want to be annoyed, but honestly? It’s impressive. Unsettling, but impressive.
“I appreciate your Sherlock Holmes routine,” I say, “and I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m still not hunting ghosts for a living.”
Donny produces a business card from his pocket, then pulls out a pen and scribbles something on it before handing it to me. “Give me a call if you change your mind.”
I take the card. It’s made of faded beige card stock with soft corners and brown text. There’s a phone number with an area code I don’t recognize, and above it, Donny has scratched out the words PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR and written PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR in careful handwriting.
Part of me wants to crumple it up—or maybe just run away again—but another part is already thinking about what an actual bed might feel like. Sheets instead of a sleeping bag. A pillow that doesn’t smell like my car. It’s amazing what feels like luxury to me now.
“Thanks, but don’t hold your breath,” I say, jamming the card into my pocket.
Donny smiles warmly. “Take care of yourself, Eden.”
I turn toward Nico, planning to say goodbye, but he’s still glaring at Donny with his jaw clenched so tightly I’m worried his teeth might crack.
Maybe Nico doesn’t want a random girl who punched him twelve hours ago joining his team. Can’t say I blame him. I’d probably be annoyed too if my boss recruited someone off the street without asking.
“Don’t worry, I’m not taking this job, so you don’t have to stress about me showing up and punching you on the regular,” I joke.
Nico’s eyes snap to mine, but he just gives me a curt nod and turns away, climbing back into the van without another word.
Okay then.
I don’t have time to decode whatever that just was because Bob’s still waiting in the car, and I need to get my salt and iron and whatever else I can afford to keep us safe. So, I head toward the glass doors, gearing up to burn through the last penny of my emergency fund.