CHAPTER NINE #2
“We were playing hide-and-seek,” I wheeze.
“And you couldn’t find us.” I’m trying to catch my breath, but each time I get a fresh image of a disgruntled Lesley running around the dark library, failing miserably at a game he wasn’t even invited to.
Checking under tables and behind books. Shouting an exasperated OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE into the silence.
And the hysteria grips me all over again.
“Oh my God,” I say, wiping my eyes with a napkin. “You are the worst detective I’ve ever heard of.”
Lesley scoffs at me. “And just how many detectives do you know?”
Grant puts in, “I’ve read about several, and I have to say this doesn’t look great.”
“Well, come on, give him some credit,” says Lissa, crossing her arms. “From an intel perspective, you’ve got to admit this is all very impressive. It’s just … we tend to fall a bit short in the footwork.”
“In my defense,” interjects Lesley, “I’ve got a bad knee.”
“And I’m this,” Lissa adds, gesturing vaguely to her petite frame. Even seated, Lesley towers over her. “We’re quite a team when it comes to getting the scoop. Not so much in actually apprehending criminals.”
“We’d all but given up on catching Jack after you both fled the library,” Lesley says to me. “We spent the morning scouring downtown for his car, thinking maybe he’d return to the scene of the crime, but it wasn’t looking good. Until … there it was. Like fate.”
Fate. That’s a nice word for Anna refusing me even one morning of peace.
“Imagine our surprise when we realized you were at the wheel, and Jack had been dealt with,” Lissa says.
“So then, what do you want with us?” I ask. “We’ve told you everything we know about Jack. It’s not like we had a heart-to-heart before Grant bashed his head in.”
Grant winces next to me. “Come on,” he mutters.
“What? That’s what happened.”
“But do you have to be so graphic? It was an accident.”
“Okay, sorry. Before Grant gently discouraged him from being alive.” I glance back at Grant. “Better?”
“No,” he says, his face in his hands.
Lesley waves us off. “Listen, I don’t care if you put him through a wood chipper or sang him to sleep on a sinking ship. The point is: You caught him. You did what we couldn’t. Now, ideally you’d stop short of fatality and get some information out of the scumbag. But that’s what next time is for.”
Grant emits a strangled sound through his hands.
“Next time,” I repeat, a fizzy sense of anticipation building in my stomach.
“That’s the best bit,” says Lissa. “There’s going to be a murder in London, where it all began, in two days.”
“Mr. Page is bringing it home, baby,” says Lesley, arms raised in triumph. “And you can help us take him down. The Dynamic Duo. The Tenacious Twosome. The Avengers.”
“That’s already a thing,” points out Lissa.
“The Other Avengers.”
Grant wearily scrubs his hands over his face. “This has all been a mistake. We don’t even know each other. I’m only here because she hijacked my Uber last night!”
“Even so, think of all you two have done so far,” Lesley says. “Escaping a murderer, twice over. Thwarting his plot. You’ve got excellent getaway car skills. Good aim with a gun—as a projectile, anyway. And carjacking? Very cool.”
“I told you,” I hiss at Grant.
“Shh,” he cuts back.
“For randos who crossed paths by chance, you two make a solid team,” says Lissa. “And we want you on ours. All you have to do is pose as the would-be victims; once you’ve been targeted, you’ll turn the tables on them and we’ll take over for questioning.”
Grant snorts. “Oh, well, if that’s all we have to do.”
I cross my arms. “Why should we help you?”
Lesley shrugs. “Justice? Morality? Free trip to London, I suppose?”
It’s that last part, meant facetiously, that cuts off my retort and stops me in my tracks. Because unbeknownst to Lesley, he’s just said exactly the right thing.
· · ·
“IT’S A NO-brAINER. So explain to me why you look like you’re having second thoughts, or an aneurysm.”
Grant and I have stepped outside to discuss Lesley’s invitation in private. As a formality, or so I thought. London is where Anna Matthews is. London is the key to escaping this story. What could be an easier yes?
According to Grant, literally anything else.
“We don’t even know them,” he says, looking like he’s fending off a nosebleed. “We can’t just run off with them.”
“I mean, we kind of know them,” I point out. “He might be Banksy.”
“He’s not Banksy.”
“You’re the one who said we should go with them in the first place,” I remind him.
“Yeah, to the coffee shop around the corner! Not across the Atlantic. All I’m saying is this is a serious decision. We have lives and responsibilities. What will people think if we just disappear on a whim?”
Again with the responsibilities. Blah. Something occurs to me for the first time. “What, do you have a girlfriend you don’t want to leave behind?”
He frowns at me. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
This actually does surprise me. He’s tall, good-looking, employed, and knows his way around a frying pan. All things that would tick a lot of boxes in the dating market.
“There are plenty of other valid reasons not to follow armed strangers out of the country,” he argues.
He starts rattling off his laundry list of reasons, which could be titled A What-If for Every Occasion.
What if we lose our jobs. What if this is a trap.
What if the plane crashes. What if the cops are onto us and fleeing the country only makes matters worse.
What if Lissa and Lesley are not the good guys after all but diabolical psychos.
I glance at them through the window. Lesley has ordered another iced latte and is caught in a loop of sipping it, grimacing at the taste, then sipping again. Beside him, Lissa is folding a napkin into a cootie catcher. “They don’t seem diabolical to me.”
I turn to level with Grant. “Look,” I say. “Our best shot at ending this is to be at Anna’s event in London next Monday. One week, okay? That’s all we have to get through with these bozos. Then this is over.”
“That’s more than a week,” Grant says.
“I was rounding. You’ve read about rounding, yes?”
“Do we have to go with them, though? We could just book our own tickets and not have to offer ourselves up to serial killers.”
“The story’s just going to keep finding us either way,” I point out.
“I don’t know about you, but I’d rather stick with the people who at least kind of know what’s going on.
Also, you’re an adjunct professor and I’m a temp.
Are either of us really in a position to shell out for a same-day flight to London when there’s a free ride on the table? ”
His jaw tightens again. He’s going to crack a tooth if he’s not careful.
“It’s the only way,” I say. “You know it is.”
He lets out a shaky breath. “A week or so of hell for a lifetime of normal,” he says, weighing it.
I cringe. “A lifetime of normal? Jesus, Grant. A little optimism wouldn’t hurt.”
He frowns again, standing there with his defeated posture and his tired eyes and his khakis. “That was optimism.”
Well, to each their own.
“So,” I say, “we’re agreed? We’re going to London?”
“We don’t have our passports,” he says, a meager Hail Mary of resistance.
“Speak for yourself. I never leave home without mine.” I lean over to rap on the window by Lesley and Lissa. “We can get yours before we leave.”
Our new comrades look expectantly toward us through the glass, and I nod. Lissa lights up, clapping her hands, and Lesley continues sipping his latte, offering a stoic thumbs-up.
There’s no way of knowing what awaits us in London, but I do know this: one way or another, it will be an adventure. Far be it from me to ever turn down one of those.