Chapter Eleven
When she opens her eyes, the first thing Nomi sees is Simon Noone in her living room.
He’s stretched out in her brown leather lounge chair, knees loose, eyes closed.
Hands flopped over his stomach, chest rising and falling with the deep rhythms of sleep.
The top of his white Henley has pulled away from his collarbones; he’s got a puckered silver scar that she hasn’t noticed before in the right-side hollow there.
His head is canted at an awkward angle—he’s going to wake up with a crick in his neck.
Nomi won’t be the one to wake him. Mainly because she’s nervous about how he might react.
Which is, thinking about it, a dozen different kinds of fucked up.
She’s let him into her confidence on the Jackson case.
She’s let him sew her up—and with the reaction she experienced during the stitching, boy, was that awkward.
Now the guy’s asleep in her living room: She’s allowed him into her home.
But she still can’t read him. She hasn’t been able to get a read on him from the start.
And that’s a giant red flag, because with her upbringing and line of work, reading people is supposed to be one of her primary skills.
But Noone is like a goddamn Easter Island statue.
Actually, that’s not accurate. He’s not impassive—far from it.
But he’s . . . contained. She thinks about the way he freaked out Leo and his friends with the steak knife comment at Hector’s yesterday.
Did Noone just say it for effect? Or was he really angry?
She can’t tell if his behavior and reactions are genuine, can’t read the intention behind his eyes, behind his words.
Maybe it’s the amnesia. Maybe even he doesn’t know what he’s really thinking.
Seeing him like this—asleep, unguarded—is useful. She feels like maybe she’s at least getting a base reading.
It also feels a little sneaky. He sat up half the night to make sure she wasn’t affected by a concussion. The least she can do is not stare at him like a creeper while he’s unconscious.
Nomi gets up and goes to the bathroom.
She takes the Band-Aids off her face, examines everything in the mirror.
Ugly, but she’s seen worse. The stitches look neat, astonishingly professional; best to keep her mind off the sensations she felt as Simon Noone placed them.
She’s gonna need makeup for the bruising.
There’s still a little blood in her hairline; she dampens a washcloth to sponge it away.
Behind the cabinet mirror, the yellow kit bag with her tools hasn’t been disturbed. Noone didn’t do any snooping last night, or if he did, he’s been real subtle about it.
Nomi finishes with the blood, examines and tends to her new ear piercing—it’s a little swollen, but doesn’t look inflamed.
She cleans it carefully, then washes up, goes to make coffee.
She’s moving slow; the Vicodin last night was strong, and with the added concussion, she still feels dopey.
For the first time in a while, she wants a morning cigarette—probably because the smell of Noone’s Pall Malls is still hanging around the apartment.
She’s going to have to open some windows, spritz her plants to clear the air.
A soft whine from Simon Noone, flopped on the lounge chair. His mauve eyelids flicker, and he mutters, repeating an unintelligible word. His hands twitch as if he’s dreaming.
Nomi tries to ignore him as she shuffles around in the kitchen between the benchtop and the fridge. She pours two mugs, adds cream and sugar. Makes a few gentle sounds with the spoon on the mugs, the refrigerator door. Next time she looks over, he’s awake.
“Hey, you’re up.”
“I never really lay down.” Noone clears his throat, squeezes his nape. Some of his hard edges seem blurred so soon after waking. “How are you?”
“I’m fine.” Nomi makes a ghost grin. “Except some jerk woke me up every four hours to check I hadn’t slipped into a coma . . .”
“What an asshole.”
“Right? Thanks anyway.” Now she comes over with the mugs and hands him one.
He rubs his neck, peering up at her face. “You took the dressing off.”
She settles back, cross legged, into her nest of blankets and cushions on the sofa, blowing on her coffee. She hopes she’s not blushing. “It was itchy, and I wanted to take a look.”
“It’s not a terrible idea, to give the wound some air.”
“I can’t believe you sewed me up with stuff from my landlady’s mending basket.” She takes a sip. The coffee won’t be up to Noone’s exacting standards, but it’s hot and has caffeine in it, and that’s all that matters. “You talk in your sleep. Did you know you did that?”
Simon stops in the act of raising his mug to his lips. “No. What did I say?”
“You repeated a word, maybe a name—Chris? Christian? Crystal?” Nomi tilts her head, until she realizes she probably looks like a crow examining something shiny. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“Not at all.” He seems genuinely baffled. He sips his coffee and manages to avoid grimacing at the taste. “Have you, uh, read my journals yet?”
“Not yet,” she admits. “I’ve been too busy getting beaten up. Although I’ve asked my ex-partner and a few other people for information on your leads.”
“That’s fine.” He rubs sleep out of his eyes, focusing on his mug. “It’s only that the journals might give you some insight into my condition. I have a few . . . weird symptoms.”
“What do you mean by ‘weird’?”
He sips his coffee and sidesteps the question. “Well, for one, I have a recurring dream. I’ve had it ever since I woke up in Flores’s house. Every night, at first. Now, maybe a couple times a month. More frequently when I’m under stress.”
“Like the stress of moving illegally to a new country,” Nomi suggests. “What’s the dream?”
Noone tries to look casual about it. “It can vary, but there’s always a forest, and a girl, and she leads me to the river, and I drown.”
Nomi is intrigued. “Do you recognize anything? The forest—”
“It’s not familiar to me. It’s not a jungle, is what I mean. It’s more European looking.”
“And the girl?”
Noone squints and thinks. Tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes suggest he might have woken up with a headache.
“She has white hair. That’s all I know about her.
I don’t know her name, I don’t know who she is.
She puts a crown of flowers on my head and takes me to the river, and I just .
. . go in. The current gets stronger, until I’m swept away. And I drown. Then I wake up.”
Nomi blows on her coffee. “Well, that sounds fucking awful.”
“No kidding.” Noone stops studying his mug and makes eye contact. “So you’re really okay? No vision changes? No ringing in the ears?”
“Nope. I’m really okay. A few aches, but nothing Advil won’t fix. The headache and dizziness and nausea are gone.”
“Good. The stitches look fine. You should apply some more Neosporin later.” He squeezes the back of his neck again. “So what’s the plan today?”
Nomi sips. She’s been thinking about it. “First, I have to find Janice D’Addario. I’m pretty sure Ricki wasn’t tortured to death because he spilled the beans to Janice, but she might know who he did talk to and what he said.”
“How does this get you closer to Brittany Jackson?”
“I might hear about a location—the place Ricki had to pick up his drug deliveries, maybe? I don’t know. All I want is a location. Where the hell are they holding this kid?”
He’s looking at her in a way that makes her think her facial expression might be a little too glowering. “Have you ever met Brittany?”
“No.” She glances elsewhere. But she can give him a reason without sounding overly invested. “I just hate the idea of a seven-year-old being held against her will. And her mom is terrified.”
“So you track down Janice, get more information . . .”
“Yeah. But not yet.” At every stage, process and common sense temper her impatience.
It’s such a drag, being a stickler. “I’ve got some business cards and phone numbers from Ricki’s wallet that I should follow up on first. I’d also like to find out a little more about Solange’s client, this Jeremy guy.
And I want to find out the name of the jerk who jumped me.
And it’s only eight thirty in the morning. ”
“Right.” He smiles faintly at the reminder that they’re both still newly awake. “How will you get the courier jerk’s name?”
“No clue,” she admits. “All I can do is ask around with a physical description. I haven’t got a photo, and there’s no CCTV here in the building, so no action stills. But I want to know who I’m dealing with.”
“What about CCTV at the subway?”
She shakes her head. “There’s no way I can get access to that. I’ll just write down everything I can remember about him. If you’ve got any details you can add, that would be—”
“I could draw him.” Noone leans to put his mug on the coffee table. “I followed him for a while yesterday—I got a fairly good look at him. I think I could just about draw him from memory.”
Is he telling her he can make the equivalent of an Identi-Kit picture? “But can you actually, like, draw? Because that’s where I always get tripped up—”
“Yes, I can actually, like, draw.” He sounds reasonably confident about it. “Just find me some paper and pencils.”
She does. In fact, to make it easier for him, she retrieves his topmost hardcover notebook from the stack on her office desk, so he’s working with a familiar format.
While she’s rooting around in the office, he goes to the bathroom.
When he returns, she’s set a small pile of materials on the table, including an eraser and a pencil sharpener.
“Will this be okay?”