CHAPTER SIX #2
I center myself back on my seat, shivering in the predawn chill. The sky is a gradient of blues, with burnt orange bleeding in at the eastern edge. Grant is a frowning silhouette against it, staring at the water.
“Thank you, by the way,” I say quietly. He looks to me, his brows still knit, the beginnings of morning light softly illuminating his face. “For what you did.” I hasten to add, “Even though I didn’t need it.”
“Yeah,” he says curiously. “It sounded like you were putting up a pretty good fight.”
“Seven years of self-defense training finally paid off. I should get a trophy or something.”
The day I signed up for my first class feels like ancient history now.
What started as a way to feel safer traveling alone quickly became my obsession.
I felt like such a badass, obliterating opponents and honing my technique in the gym while repeating that refrain beloved by well-adjusted trainees everywhere: I hope I never have to use it.
Little did I know that expression would be rendered null and void by one capricious British author and her stab-happy brainchild.
I roll my neck, trying to release some of the tension, but find it all pent up in my head.
“I don’t get this,” I say. “The bad guy’s gone.
Is this the world’s shortest novel? Did we break it somehow?
” As a person who just barely survived the night, of course, I’m glad.
But as a reader? Honestly? Not impressed.
Grant shifts uncomfortably, staring out across the bay. “Unless it’s a false victory,” he murmurs.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning—if I believed this, and that is a very big if”—he gives me a sharp look, though it’s undermined by a shiver—“he wasn’t the bad guy.”
My stomach turns. The bad guy, worse than Jack? I don’t even want to imagine who that would be.
I deflate like a sad balloon, my head in my hands.
“I’m so confused,” I groan. “I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.
How could we kill Jack if he was just a character in a book?
Did he just dissolve like the fucking Wicked Witch of the East the second he hit the water? How does any of this work?”
I stare at Grant, desperate for answers I know he can’t give me, and he stares back.
“West,” he finally mumbles.
“What?”
“West. The Wicked Witch of the West is the one with the water. East is the one with the …” He shrinks back from the force of my glare. “… With the shoes.”
“You must be in hot demand for trivia night,” I snipe.
“My team is undefeated,” he says. “Not that it matters.”
I take the oars from him and start rowing, needing to do something other than sit here. “Don’t suppose any of those factoids you’ve got filed away could help us figure out what happens next?”
The sun is rising, lighting up the shadows under Grant’s eyes and the bedraggled muss of his hair. He rubs his forehead.
“Is there any chance this is some kind of guerrilla marketing tactic for the book?” he asks, his voice dragging with fatigue.
I shake my head, though it’s darkly funny imagining a PR associate absolutely shitting her Aritzia trousers when she finds out what we’ve done.
“What I really don’t understand is how Jack found me,” I say. “He couldn’t have followed us, could he? Did you see him when we left the city?”
Grant shrugs. “I don’t know. I was a little busy watching my life flash before my eyes.” With a yawn, he adds, “Did you check your phone? Maybe he tracked you somehow.”
I stop rowing, frozen by the memory of Jack plucking my phone from my hand and “adding his number” outside the library.
I snatch my phone from my pocket. Nothing seems amiss—no sketchy new apps, no notifications.
There’s the built-in location sharing app, but I doubt he’d be so obvious.
Then again, that probably would be Anna Matthews’s idea of high-tech.
I tap through, and there it is:
Jack Smith can see your location.
God. I really am the stupid character you yell at for being so stupid. And Smith? That’s the best he could do for a fake last name? It’s just adding insult to nearly fatal injury.
I revoke Jack’s location sharing permissions—a couple of hours too late, one could reasonably argue—and chuck my phone to the boat’s floor, cursing.
“You see why I need you?” I say to Grant, a little more aggressively than I mean to.
“So I don’t keep falling for shit like this.
You know what to look out for. I can beat the bad guys, but you can tell me when they’re coming. ”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “It’s not a formula, you know. That’s kind of the point. Crime novels are supposed to be suspenseful.”
I laugh. “Yeah, right. Like you don’t read them and gloat about solving the crimes before the characters can.”
He shoots me the kind of silent glare that tells me I’m not wrong. But then something ticks in his brow—something a little more honest, maybe even vulnerable—and he says quietly, “I don’t want to kill anyone else.”
“That’s fine,” I say. “I’ll be the criminal; you be the mastermind.” I grab the oars back. “Maybe you could start by helping me figure out how we’re going to get to the Gifter, since we’re currently stranded at this house with no transportation or food or water or heat.”
“We can take the car,” Grant says softly.
“The one that’s now a submarine?”
“No, the one in the driveway,” he says. “Jack drove here. His car is still out front. I took his keys out of his pocket before I wrapped him up.” He pulls them out of his own pocket and gives them a lethargic shake.
I stare at the keys, catching sparkles from the rising sun. I’m too exhausted to be relieved.
When we make it to shore, Grant helps me drag the rowboat back under the house, positioning it carefully to look like it hasn’t been used in months and certainly not to transport a dead body to its watery grave.
“And now,” I announce, “to the Gifter.”
Grant pulls Jack’s keys from his pocket and plods toward the driveway.
“Great,” he sighs. “I’m driving this time.”